Alex Queral carves and paints these fantastic portraits from a phone directory. Alex says, “My fascination with heads began as an art student. For me, the human head was a natural choice of subject matter because of its inherent expressiveness. I carve the faces out of phone books because I like the three-dimensional quality that results and because of the unexpected results that occur working in this medium. The three-dimensional quality enhances the feeling of the pieces as an object as opposed to a picture.

In carving and painting a head from a phone directory, I?

The Nigerian feature film industry is sometimes known as Nollywood. Here’s Pieter Hugo’s inspiration for the spectacular images of The Cinema of Nigeria:

In his travels through West Africa, Hugo has been intrigued by this distinct style in constructing a fictional world where everyday and unreal elements intertwine.

By asking a team of actors and assistants to recreate Nollywood myths and symbols as if they were on movie sets, Hugo initiated the creation of a verisimilar reality.

His vision of the film industry?

Laurie Hill’s marvelous animated short about the odd customer requests at the Hulton Photo Archive.

Winner Animation Grand Jury Prize - SIFF 2009 Short Film Jury Awards.

[Oh, if you were really expecting a photograph of Jesus, click here]

 
I’m fascinated by what’s often the fuzzy line between representation and reality, so I guess that explains my interest in photographer, Jaime Diamond, and her slyly subversive series, Constructed Portraits.  Diamond assembled groups of strangers in rented hotel rooms, and took their picture.  As she explains it:

It all began with my own family portrait.  Somehow the image it portrayed didn?

 
The initial peek at Tim Burton’s Alice tale looks plenty striking, but, in the meantime, you might want to check out this two-part adventure as envisioned by visual artist, Robert Cauble.  The imagery comes straight out of Disney.  The dialogue, though, that’s a far more curious matter.  As Cauble explains it:

Alice, unhappy with her prim, proper existence in Victorian England, travels through time into an age that allegorically resembles our own.  There, she encounters elitist tea-partiers and a philosopher cat, before she is consumed by an assaulting music video.  Her only hope for understanding this foreign world of spectacle is to somehow find Guy Debord.

That’s right, Alice desperately needs to locate Guy Debord, noted theorist, filmmaker, and founder of the Situationist International.  It’s wacky, yes, but there’s a method (of sorts) to Cauble’s madness.  He aims to embed these shorts as “special features” in the Disney disks themselves, so as to render,

the meaning of the whole product ambiguous.  Within the confusion as to the legitimacy of the d?ɬ

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what’s this video worth?

Brought to you by the fine folks at yellowBird

GaiaStreetArt.com

Some of Gaia’s other work

(via Wooster Collective)

There’s no consensus on exactly when “Bombin’” came out.  IMDb says 1988, but other sources say between 1985 - 1987. Who knows? Whatever the year, “Bombin’” is a treat!

Scratchworx says:

First shown on Channel 4 in the UK, Bombin’ chronicles the journey of NY artist Brim through the UK media, as well as meeting a young Goldie, who in turn travels to NYC to meet Afrika Baambaata. This was filmed at the times of the Birmingham riots and shows the parallels of life in the inner city on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bombin’ on Flicker

(via Nerdcore)

Style Bubble has a fun post about De Culinaire Werkplaats’ “Taste the Unwearables” edible fashion installation and menu created for fashion week. The designs are made from fruit and vegetable gelatin-based fabrics (no meat, they’re vegetarian.) Style Bubble says, “So we entered and immediately I went on a camera frenzy snapping everything and anything… fruit gelatin-based fabrics form neckpieces, dresses over chicken wire and dried fruit/vegetables make earrings, rings and bracelets. They’re even constructing an edible wedding dress this weekend that will be eaten in a communal feast.”

Style Bubble’s “Eating with Eyes”

 
The fine people at TED just posted a talk by Carnegie Mellon-based artist and educator, Golan Levin.  One of its more, ahem, eye-catching moments involves Levin’s demonstration of the Opto-Isolator.  As Levin’s website, Flong., explains it:

The sculpture presents a solitary mechatronic blinking eye, at human scale, which responds to the gaze of visitors with a variety of psychosocial eye-contact behaviors that are at once familiar and unnerving.  Among other forms of feedback, Opto-Isolator looks its viewer directly in the eye; appears to intently study its viewer’s face; looks away coyly if it is stared at for too long; and blinks precisely one second after its visitor blinks.

Levin’s entire talk is a fascinating one, and Flong. itself describes a number of his projects, each one exploring “the intersection of abstract communication and interactivity.”

 
Golan Levin @ TED