April 13, 2011
Sala Keoku is a park featuring giant fantastic concrete sculptures inspired by Buddhism and Hinduism. It is located in Thailand, near the Thai-Lao border and the Mekong river. The park has been built by and reflects the personal vision of Thai spiritual leader and sculptor, Luang Pu Bunleua Sulilat and his followers (the construction started in 1978). It shares the style of Sulilat’s earlier creation, Buddha Park on the Lao side of Mekong, but is marked by even more extravagant fantasy and greater proportions.
Some of the Sala Keoku sculptures tower up to 25m in the sky. Those include a monumental depiction of Buddha meditating under the protection of a seven-headed Naga snake (Mucalinda). While the subject (based on a Buddhist legend) is one of the recurrent themes in the religious art of the region, Sulilat’s approach is highly unusual, with its naturalistic (even though stylized) representation of the snakes.
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April 13, 2011
Dichroic [dahy-kroh-ik] glass is glass containing multiple micro-layers of metal oxides which alter its optical properties. The invention of dichroic glass is often erroneously attributed to NASA and its contractors, who developed it for use in dichroic filters.
Dichroic glass dates back to at least the 4th century CE as seen in the Lycurgus cup, a Roman relic.
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April 12, 2011
A bottle wall is a wall made out of glass bottles and binding material. A building construction style which usually uses 1l glass bottles (although mason jars or 1/2l glass jugs may be used as well) as masonry units and binds them using adobe, sand, cement, stucco, clay, plaster, mortar or any other joint compound to result in an intriguing stained-glass like wall.
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April 11, 2011
‘Harrison Bergeron‘ is a satirical, dystopian science fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in 1961. The story is set in the year 2081. Due to the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution of America, all Americans are mandated equal.
‘They were not only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way.’ In America no one is more intelligent than anyone else, no one is better looking or more athletic than anyone else. In order to stop any sort of competition in society these measures are enforced by the United States Handicapper General.
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April 11, 2011
The Dream Director is a touring installation by artist Luke Jerram intended to alter dreams. It continues the artist’s exploration of creating art inside people’s heads (‘on the edges of perception’) rather than in the physical world. Participants in the Dream Director (usually 20 in total) stay overnight in specially designed sleep pods.
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April 11, 2011
A street piano is a piano placed in the street which passers-by are encouraged to play. The best known examples is the ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ project by artist Luke Jerram. The concept originates quite by accident in the early 2000’s in Sheffield, England, where there was a piano on the pavement on Sharrow Vale Road.
It was left outside temporarily because the owner could not get it up the steps into his new house. As a social experiment he attached a sign inviting passers by to play the piano for free. This offer was taken up by a great many people and the piano became a part of the local community.
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April 11, 2011
A macaroni [mak-uh-roh-nee] in mid-18th century England, was a fashionable fellow who dressed and spoke in an outlandishly affected and effeminate manner.
The term pejoratively referred to a man who ‘exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion’ in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling.
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April 11, 2011
Amigurumi [ah-mee-goo-roo-mee] is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ‘ami,’ meaning crocheted or knitted, and ‘nuigurumi,’ meaning stuffed doll. The pervading aesthetic of amigurumi is cuteness. To this end, typical amigurumi animals have an over-sized spherical head on a cylindrical body with undersized extremities.
Amigurumi are usually crocheted out of yarn using the single crochet stitch. They can also be knit. Typically, crochet hooks or knitting needles that are slightly smaller than normal are used, in order to achieve a tight gauge that retains stuffing. Stuffing is usually standard polyester or cotton craft stuffing, but may be improvised from other materials. Plastic pellets may be inserted beneath stuffing in order to distribute weight at the bottom of the figure. They are usually worked in sections and then joined, except for some amigurumi which have no limbs, only a head and torso which are worked as one piece.
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April 11, 2011
An internet Surf Club is a group site (usually a blog) where artists and others link to ‘surfed’ or ‘surfable’ items on the Web and also post some of their own creative work. ‘Nasty Nets Internet Surfing Club’ was the first to use the words ‘surfing club’ (ironically) and others followed the form or adopted the word ‘club’ to sound relevant. The original clubs were never true clubs but there has been much rancor over the issue of invited membership in the supposedly open and democratic web that still exists outside Facebook-like commercial enclaves.
Dump.fm is a real-time image sharing website that has many aspects of a surf club; however, anyone can sign up for Dump. The core surf clubs (Nasty, Double Happiness, Loshadka) are barely active now—their heyday was 2006-2009, which could be called the ‘surf club era.’ Arguably the widely-used, configurable tumblr, and other a microblogging platforms have made surf clubs obsolete.
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April 8, 2011
Kevin Carter (1960 – 1994) was an award-winning South African photojournalist and member of the ‘Bang-Bang Club,’ a collective of war photojournalists that also included Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek, and Joao Silva.
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April 8, 2011
Nardwuar the Human Serviette (b. 1968), is a Canadian celebrity interviewer and musician from Vancouver. He is the lead singer and keyboardist for ‘The Evaporators’ and plays in ‘Thee Goblins.’ He legally changed his name from John Ruski in 1986.
Nardwuar got his start in media at the University of British Columbia radio station CITR 101.9 FM in Vancouver. His show has been running every Friday afternoon (3:30-5:00 p.m. Pacific) since October 1987. The program features a mix of eclectic music, along with interviews and commentary.
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April 8, 2011
Tyler, the Creator (b. 1991) is an American rapper and record producer from Los Angeles, California. He is the leader of the hip hop collective OFWGKTA. He has rapped on, and produced for, nearly every OFWGKTA release.
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