Archive for the ‘design’ Category

The Steel Yard, Rhode Island

Classes, youth programs, metal work and studio space from the Steel Yard, Rhode Island.

Paul Klotz

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Smashing Pumpkins Album Art

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is the ultimate expression of unrestrained ambition, zealous stargazing, and confronting the "human condition of mortal sorrow."

On the cover of the album (illustrated by John Craig), the angelic figure embedded in the star is a collaged combination of Saint Catherine of Alexandra (1507) by Raphael and The Souvenir (Fidelity) (1787-89) by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. The provided muse for this album was born across two centuries of European fine art, removed from our earth and cast into a glowing constellation claiming Infinite Sadness.

In 1995, the physical copy of the album came with a booklet of artwork. Corgan’s description of the music to designer Frank Olinsky was "psychedelic music by a heavy metal band from the 1920s." The collage-style artwork reflects this with daring and surreal anthropomorphic scenes indebted to both Renaissance and Rococo art.: Continue reading :

Flock Light : Tom Raffield

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IBM Innovation Predictions for 2016

In this installment: you will be able to power your home with the energy you create yourself; you will never need a password again; mind reading is no longer science fiction; the digital divide will cease to exist; and junk mail will become priority mail.

The Art of R by Norman Matloff

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Free download from the Three-Toed Sloth, buy the current book, here.

R is the world’s most popular programming language for statistical computing. Drug developers use it to evaluate clinical trials and determine which medications are safe and effective; archaeologists use it to sift through mounds of artifacts and track the spread of ancient civilizations; and actuaries use it to assess financial risks and keep economies running smoothly. In The Art of R Programming, veteran author Norman Matloff takes readers on a guided tour of this powerful language, from basic object types and data structures to graphing, parallel processing, and much more. Along the way, readers learn about topics including functional and object-oriented programming, low-level code optimization, and interfacing R with C++ and Python. Whether readers are doing academic research, designing aircraft, or forecasting the weather, R is the tool of choice for statistical application development, and The Art of R Programming is the definitive guide to learning R.

Web Submissions: Fabio Novembre

Le sigh… these things are always so damn complicated.

The following is from a web submission we received from Studio Fabio.  Artist (?) Fabio Novembre is (apparently) doing an exhibition dedicated to Steve McCurry.  Why someone would do such is a mystery, since it ain’t like dude is dead.  Anyway:

I have the pleasure to send you the material about the latest project by Fabio Novembre: the solo exhibition dedicated to Steve McCurry at the MACRO Museum opened the 3rd December and lasts until the 29th of April 2012.

On the occasion of the celebration of the great reporter famous worldwide for the portrait of the Afghan Girl, Fabio Novembre creates an exhibition setting inspired by the nomads’ village with structures that merge with the aim to restore that sense of solidarity that you can breathe in McCurry’s photos.

The exhibition setting project comes along with the curatorship activity that Fabio carried on according not to a criteria of space-time but of similarity of subject matter and emotions, seeking out the common threads and unimaginable ties that link people and places, even of different latitudes.

Ok, to be fair, unlike last time, this guy actually has a better-than-terrible webpage.  They ALSO included some pretty detailed material in the packet they attached.

Upon further reading, I found out that the McCurry photos seem to be organized in terms of assonance and placed inside of structures meant to loosely mimic those of the nomadic people of Afghanistan that McCurry studied back in the 80’s.  Looks kinda cool, no snark. Check out the release/page, but exhibition runs til sometime in Feb 2012.

A Life in Film and Design

"Saul Bass. Before I ever met him, before we worked together, he was a legend in my eyes." As introductions go, that’s a humdinger and a half, but coming from Martin Scorsese? It doesn’t get much better than that, and the iconic director goes on to say that his designs, "found and distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialized world." Saul Bass is such a significant figure it would be hard to begin to do him justice in book form, but this mouthwatering 440-page opus by Saul’s daughter Jennifer and Patrick Kirkham is a worthy tribute to both the man and the legend. :Continue reading:

Marble Lego

Entitled "Alpha, Beta, Gamma," the blocks are handmade out of Carrara marble rendered in sophisticated and interesting shapes, allowing for dozens of display configurations. These certainly aren’t those brightly coloured pieces of plastic your friends would stick up their noses for fun. The set of 13 handmade blocks is a decidedly adult take on one of our childhood pastimes, providing something that is at once visceral and familiar, arranging and rearranging forms to create something new. (Source)