In a recent post, I drew a distinction between two groups of artists that use Google Street View as part of their creative work:
Art
Accidental Street Photography: Google Street View Scavengers
The launch of Google Street View services in 2007 was followed almost immediately by the emergence of its very own art genre: Street View Art. In 2011, just a few years after the launch of GSV, Pete Brook of Wired hailed the emergence of the new genre with exuberant excitement, announcing that
The Street View car is like the ultimate street photographer, a robo Cartier-Bresson methodically scouring the streets and documenting what it sees — Pete Brook, Wired
While Brook’s article offers a great selection of early Street View art, the comparison between a digital mapping machine and a hybrid mashup of RoboCop, a Hollywood created SciFi robotic police officer, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, the flesh and blood pioneer of street photography in the twentieth century, may seem hyperbolic and somewhat besides the point when it comes to the impact of Google’s Street View images on the arts and popular culture.
The First Eco-Warrior of Design
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the designs of William Morris – his trellises and willows and honeysuckles – are a little out-of-date and irrelevant. Popular designs like Strawberry Thief adorn cushions and mugs, but do they really fit the modern interior? Surprisingly, not only have these botanical themes made a massive comeback, but Morris himself has been enjoying a new wave of popularity – as an environmental prophet and anarchist.
Yayoi Kusama ‘Infinity Mirrored Room’ to Go on View Permanently at Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas
Most times, when Yayoi Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored Rooms” get shown at museums, they stay on view for several months at a time, and during their run, they get stormed with visitors. But one U.S. museum has plans to keep a Kusama installation for much longer than usual.
Dreamlike indie game Etherborn draws inspiration from Monument Valley – and classic artists of the past
Classic 20th century artists such as Escher, Mondrian and de Chirico have influenced a surreal new platformer from studio Altered Matter.
Indie games have been becoming more dream-like these past few years, ranging from the ethereal classics of Monument Valley and Gris to the Twin Peaks bad-trip of Petscop.
A new name to add to 2019’s roster of anticipated games is Etherborn, as created by Barcelona’s Altered Matter studio and distributed by 20th Century Fox games label FoxNext this spring.
Inside the visual aesthetic of Kubrick films
A new exhibition highlights the auteur’s keen eye for design and the work of collaborators of Kubrick like Saul Bass and Milena Canonero.
20 years after his death, the vision of auteur Stanley Kubrick continues to resonate, whether in homages found in films like Ready Player One, the style of Christopher Nolan or album covers by the Arctic Monkeys.
The influence of his visual aesthetics came in part from Kubrick’s background as a photographer, and his collaborations with designers like Milena Canonero and Eliot Noyes to create the look of cinema classics like A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Play Chess with Marcel Duchamp: A Virtual Online Chess Game
A new software program makes it possible to play chess with a virtual Marcel Duchamp. It is basically a chess program with one intriguing feature: the game features an opponent based on Duchamp’s recorded chess matches.
“I’ve come to the personal conclusion that while not all artists are chess players,
all chess players are artists.” Marcel Duchamp
Earlier this year, Colin Marshall told you how “Chess has obsessed many of humanity’s finest minds over centuries and centuries and Marcel Duchamp seems to have shown little resistance to its intellectual and aesthetic pull.”
His passion for the game led Duchamp to design a now iconic Art Deco chess set, to print an array of chess tournament posters, and to become an adept chess player himself, eventually earning the title of “grand master” as a result.
The First Photograph of a Human Being
“I have seized the light. I have arrested its flight.”
LOUIS DAGUERRE, 1839
This picture, the earliest known photograph to include a recognizable human form, was taken in Paris, France, in 1838 by Louis Daguerre. The human in question is standing in the bottom-left of the photograph, on the pavement by the curve in the road. He is having his boots shined.
The exposure time for the image was around seven minutes, and although the street would have been busy with traffic and pedestrians, it appears deserted. Everything moving was too fast to register on the plate.
Photographer Documents the Death of Real-Life Conversation
As our smartphones make it easier to connect with people across the globe, they often can make it harder to connect face-to-face.
London-based photographer Babycakes Romero doesn’t own a smartphone. Instead, he treks along in his beloved city, camera in hand, capturing whatever catches his eye. “As a person dedicated to observation, I just feel I would be missing too much of the world around me if I was staring into the palm of my hand the whole time,” he says.
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