The Lantern Bearers (Maxfield Parrish, 1908)

 

Aspirations

Loneliness

黃強

http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MjM5NjYyMjM0MA%3D%3D&mid=401585343&idx=1&sn=55e02e66ba7a468cfbe25f4524b4329d&scene=4&srcid=0129V4C6AIwDx23NRcGno4nP#rd

Work in Progress

Let's all of us lie down & die in the hole we've dug ourselves. 

(today. or tomorrow. whenever is more convenient.) 

Oranges

One side of a paper box containing oranges. I'm particularly fond of this sort of design.

Pina

You

via on Pinterest

Jason Freeny

Plunger Monsters

Noose

Gingerbread Man Dissected

Domo Qee Anatomy

[more @ Moist Production by Jason Freeny]

Dew

[more @ Naupe]

Franciscan Monks & their Favourite Dessert

[more little people at minimiam]

The Tin Eye (reverse image search)

Been meaning to show you one of the cool things I came across the other day via Dan (head geek of GeekHouse). Clarice posted this image on Fb, and wondered if anyone knew where the source image came from:

My first guess was Brueghel because the style looked similar. I thought it might have been a detail from one of his more complex paintings. I quickly did a Google image search of Brueghel and browsed his paintings but it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. I popped onto gchat and asked Dan if such a thing as a reverse image search engine exists. Why yes, he said, and pointed me to the Tin Eye.

Within a second of plugging in this album cover, the Tin Eye had correctly identified that it is in fact The Concert in an Egg by Hieronymus Bosch - and it managed to do this despite the fact that the album cover is cropped and confused with the addition of text overlay.

Cool, huh?

I think Tin Eye can also be used for source attribution. I read a lot of blogs and often see images reposted by bloggers. Some bloggers point to a source (frequently a line specifying 'via' or 'reposted from') but these 'sources' often then point to other 'sources'. It's very difficult to find out who originally owned these images. The Tin Eye can be useful in this instance because I could just plug the image in and see what it comes up with. Today I experimented with this image:

Unfortunately this didn't work as well as I had hoped. It turned up 40 results and by just looking at the web addresses I couldn't tell which ones might be the original source. So still a little bit of looking for a needle in a haystack, but it does sometimes manage to track down the origin site. Eventually I did a Google search with 'what the fuck have you done installation.' Turns out someone else had been asking the same question and according to the comment section of his post, the installation is by one Philippe Lhomme, and photographed by Michael Roulier.

It took a little bit of detective work to find this out - especially on Roulier's portfolio site, scrolling through many many photographs to come upon the right one.

Ideally images would always come tagged with its point of origin but this is sadly not the case right now. I often drag images I like on to my desktop and save them in my digital 'scrapbook' but to be honest, I have no idea where any of them come from, or who authored them.

I do find it interesting that people have a sense of the importance of attribution on the internet via links to one another (retweet, repost, etc.) - though this is of course several hundred steps short of the rigour with which print media practises attribution. I am interested to see how these conventions will play out, i.e. whether internet attribution will take on a specific format, if technological intervention will make it easier (images which are auto-tagged every time it's copied or linked, for instance), and of course, how our conception of originality and intellectual property will continue to evolve.

Sometimes I have difficulty finding my trousers...

No, of course I don't. But I have been really into taking self-portraits lately and here's one with me wearing Richard's red hoodie.

Infographics

[This American Infographic based on episodes of This American Life]

Tiarnan pointed me to these infographics and I am totally into the idea of visual representations of data. It always struck me as strange when we were in school how people didn't like graphing in math class - to me a parabola is more or less the same except the data is a bit more abstract... I think I might have to try and make some of these. I also saw something similar at the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA - a Corpse Bride size comparison chart of all the characters... which I loved.

work in progress

Here's a part of something I am working on at the moment. The more I look at something though, the less I like it. I had better stop looking.

Today

Appeals

So I listen to two podcasts regularly and both are really truly wonderful. They are well written, full of mind-bogglingly fascinating content, and totally free of charge. But actually they are not free of charge - every episode comes with appeals to listeners to donate to the podcast. To be honest I really, really like this system. I'm the kind of person who (if I really enjoy a service) would be willing to pay for it. I donated a tenner to Wikipedia, and I'm going to put a few more websites on my donations list (need to get my new credit card first): Radiolab, This American Life, and also Transmission (a Mac torrent client).

This reminds me very much of my street-performer friends and their often practised 'hat-lines,' i.e. the bit where, just before the finale of their act, they tell you that this is what they do for a living, and if you've just enjoyed a good show for nothing, well, how's about digging deep in your pockets to help support the person who's just swallowed knives, juggled battle-axes, or walked on a bed of nails for you?

When this honour system of financial contributions work, it's a very wonderful thing. Perhaps these radio stations and freeware developers should watch more street-shows and learn from the masters of of hat-lines whose sweat soaked toppers have the magical ability to turn your money into their money.

I leave you with this video for the German band Einstürzende Neubauten... a VERY good appeal video. As the band leader sagely points out: 'Did you ever consider subscribing?... and maybe if you did consider maybe you'd want to consider again and maybe you'll really do it this time. You won't get the record otherwise.'

10 Days in the News

[10 DAYS from ripo on Vimeo.]

10 Design Quotes Visualized

[see them all at FreshBump]