[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

How It’s Made: The Impossible Project (by petapixelcom)

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

Images are all around you:

This picture frame, made from an ancient Pentium II laptop, displays images sniffed out of public WiFi connections: “Many coffee shops in Vancouver feature both local art and wi-fi, so why not combine the two?”

WiFi-sniffing picture frame (via Boing Boing, via Wiretap picture frame [Free Geek Vancouver via JWZ])

Above: "Look at me! I'm Johannes Vermeer!"

My local supermarket carries gouda featuring Johannes Vermeer photo paintingbombing The Milkmaid.

Cheesy, indeed.

Above: Tom Gauld's illustration from Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Two of photography’s most-renowned theorists were name-checked in the May 8, 2011 New York Times.

Roland Barthes appears in Ken Johnson’s discussion of the widely-circulated (and oft parodied) photograph of U.S. officials watching the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Does it truly convey the “situation” in the situation room?:

… the expression of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stands out. She holds her hand over her mouth and appears, what? Shocked? Awed? Dismayed? She is what the French critic Roland Barthes called the “punctum,” the not necessarily conspicuous detail that gives a photograph its emotional resonance.

But Mrs. Clinton has said she does not recall what they were watching, and attributed her hand-to-mouth gesture to allergies. For all we know, the officials might have been watching a ballgame.

Barthes and Susan Sontag get a mention in A.O. Scott’s “On (Digital) Photography: Sontag, 34 Years Later” in the Magazine. If you’re in a hurry, Tom Gauld’s illustration (above) succinctly summarizes Scott’s “riff”. We are awash in images. A once precious drip has become an uncontrollable flood. How do we move forward?

Above: Dash Snow and Lise Sarfati in the New Yorker

The New Yorker generally features excellent art and photography, but this pairing of a detail of Dash Snow’s “Untitled (Hell)” (2005) and Lise Sarfati’s “Sloane #30, Oakland, CA” (2003) — illustrating Sam Lipsyte’s story “Deniers” — stood out. I’ve long loved both of these images; the third effect of this pairing conjures intense feelings of desperation and stillness.

Above: An animated GIF by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.

Photography presents itself as the medium best equipped to capture the small, visual moments of our everyday life. But the drawback of a photo is it’s democracy: the lens sees everything at once, without favor for the thing the photographer is seeing.

The animated GIFs of Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg combine the stillness of photos with movements captured on video to create a beautiful, elegant mix of the two media.

[ From me to You ] (Beck and Burg’s Tumblr)

(via FastCoDesign)

The May 2011 issue of National Geographic has a brief article on my “all-time favorite thing” — the camera obscura.

Included is some discussion with alpha-obscurist Abelardo Morell as well as a gallery featuring his obscura-driven work.

Also cool — a 90 second video of National Geographic staffers making their own camera obscura room. It’s a concise “how-to” video for any of you who’ve never converted a room into a camera.

Above: "Isabel Herself", or so says The Onion.

The Onion goes for the low-hanging fruit of coffee shop art. Hilarity ensues:

Isabel By Herself, which sells for $150 and is currently hanging next to an untitled black-and-white photograph of an old Guatemalan man, has reportedly been called “a piece of shit” by no fewer than 40 customers since it was first placed on the wall in December, and has on dozens of occasions been mocked as “the most clichéd thing ever” and for appearing as though “a retarded eighth-grader made it.”

The painting also stated that at least once a week, a patron points at it, laughs, and loudly exclaims to a friend, “A hundred fifty dollars? What, are they fucking nuts?”

[ Piece Of Art For Sale On Coffeehouse Wall Has Had It Up To Here With The Wiseass Remarks ]

Previous art-related hijinks at The Onion: Struggling Museum Now Allowing Patrons To Touch Paintings

Sad Stuff on the Street hits that glorious but elusive target: photographs of sad, uncomfortable things that make you laugh and sigh at the same time.

It began as an exchange between two people; now you can submit your own sad stuff. Keep your camera ready and your eyes to the ground.

Above: Mass of daffodils found near The Four Seasons from Jesse Whiting & Unicorns have bad days, too from gnouf.

A book printed through a printing chain made of four desktop printers using four different colors and technologies dated from 1880 to 1976.

(via xavier antin / Just in Time, or A Short History of Production)

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

[ Imported from /// Shikaakwa | A Mobile Photo Blog | Chicago, IL ]

Above: iPhone wallpaper by Tymn Armstrong.

New Year’s resolutions should be reasonable, achievable goals.

Unlike the above, which everyone knows is an impossibility. (Wink!)

Happy New Year!

(From the To Resolve Project, via Northcoast Zeitgeist)