Chocolate Bunny

This was deeply disturbing for me, but in a beautiful surreal way. I was reminded of Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle.

Millionaire Lottery Home

Like many other people, I watch HGTV and flip through the pages of Elle Decor and Architectural Digest. The pictures are undeniably beautiful and definitely represent, in almost all examples, the way I would like to live. However, I am also of the opinion that, your house should be YOUR home, renovated and decorated to suit YOUR needs and aesthetics (unless, of course, you are staging your house for sale). Hiring an interior designer means your desires are merely interpreted through his/her style and way/habits of living. Moreover, the decorated rooms, as exciting as it is that they are all dressed up almost in an instant, always seem perfect but uninhabited. They look like showrooms that sell swanky designer furniture, complete with hefty price tags. Personally, I like the process of collecting items and pieces of furniture that make up who I am and the look I strive for respectively. However, there are cases where the designer is expected to create interiors that appeal to everyone. The following is one such case:


These picturs are of the latest lottery home situated in White Rock, British Columbia, overlooking the beautiful sea. It will be given away to someone. All you have to do is buy a ticket or two to be entered into the lucky draw. Proceeds from the tickets goes to Vancouver General Hospital.


"When British Columbians are faced with the most serious, complex and life-threatening illnesses and diseases, they rely on the “super-specialists” at VGH, UBC Hospital and GF Strong for hope. Whether it’s for a catastrophic, traumatic accident, cancer care, cardiac care or other serious diseases, our medical teams are among the world’s best and brightest, providing leading-edge patient care and research. Discoveries in the lab are quickly translated to new patient treatments and cures. Patients have access to the latest, most sophisticated equipment." All this cost a lot of money, especially with our public health care system.


It is for a good cause. So, the designer decorated rooms are the icing on the cake. But on the designers' end (the rooms are the work of Sarah Richardson and her team), how do you create a room that appeal to everyone? It can neither be too feminine nor masculine; it needs to be child-friendly and even elderly-friendly (there is an elevator installed in the 3-storey house); the colours and fabrication need to be crowd-pleasing, yet are not generic. In all, I think these rooms were very beautifully designed. And while I certainly have that glimmer of hope to win the grand prize (though I will most definitely not be able to afford to maintain a house like that), I am more happy that the money goes to health care services.

To get your tickets for the draw (the grand prize is worth CDN$2.8 million), go to the Millionaire Lottery homepage.

Blank Catalogue

In any printed matter, the text and graphics are always the centre of attention. Their aim is to provide you with information and visual stimulation. So it is not surprising that little of the backgrounds is registered in the brain. But the backgrounds cannot be overlooked because they do play a very essential role in a any layouts: they section off nuggets of information where necessary; they unify a layout and make an otherwise stark design stand out.

Today I came across a project that puts the spotlight on the background:


Created by Jason Salavon, "[t]his suite of ten prints abstracts selected facing-page layouts from the 2007 IKEA catalogue based upon the original page design, leaving only color and structure."


He has also created a large light box, as shown above, that contains "all 374 pages of the 2007 IKEA catalogue, each simplified to a rectangle of pure color and arranged them left-to-right, top-to-bottom."

2010 Olympic Mascots

Originally, mascots were created to bring luck, not unlike a talisman. But its intent has changed in recent times. It is used to represent a group with a common identity and to portray the spirit of a certain cause. It is not more like a spokesperson. Of course, this ist he product of marketing - they are almost always anthropomorphised animals to convey character traits that help instil desire among potential consumers. However, in the case of the Olympics, mascots have an additional role: to symbolise and summarise a host's culture, background and ideals.

In 2010, Vancouver will host the Winter Olympics. The mascots used to represent us and the Olympics and Paralympics were revealed yesterday. Inspired by our heritage (First Nations), they are:


Miga is a mythical sea bear, part orca and part kermode bear; Quatchi is a sasquatch (an entirely mythical creature); Sumi is an animal guardian spirit with the wings of the Thunderbird and legs of a black bear; Mukmuk is a Vancouver Island marmot. Of the four, only three will assume physical representations; Mukmuk will only exist online. Globe and Mail journalist Rod Mickleburgh got from feedback from children (whom these mascots are targeted towards):

"I like the shark and bear dude," said 11-year old Luken Lake, referring to mascot Miga, which is actually part whale. Luken's friend Anthony Arnason agreed. "The whale dude was the best. He snowboards and so do I."

The mascots were created by Vicky Wong and Michael Murphy of Meomi Design in Vancouver. "[We] did a lot of research into aboriginal mythology and B.C. culture in order to come up with their designs. It all just came together in our heads. They represent our values, environmentalism, our affinity with nature, and the fact we all have different backgrounds," said Vicki.


"Vancouver officials have said for months that the mascot selection represents one of their most significant Olympic milestones on the road to the 2010 Winter Games. The importance of the mascots to VANOC goals was made clear by the extraordinary lengths the committee went to keep the selections secret and the media management resembling a budget lockup. The few VANOC officials who have known the mascots' identity for months were sworn to secrecy. Even their families were kept in the dark."

"We really tightened up internally," said delighted VANOC boss John Furlong. "It was very important that the mascots be a surprise ... like Christmas morning, with the children coming down and seeing that look in their eyes... This is about children and making them happy." This alone, I think, could very well be the element that makes all the money spent on hosting the games worth our while.

For more information and background on the mascots, go to Vancouver2010.

Theory of Everything

From Wikipedia, "Symmetry in common usage generally conveys two primary meanings. The first is an imprecise sense of harmonious or aesthetically-pleasing proportionality and balance; such that it reflects beauty or perfection. The second meaning is a precise and well-defined concept of balance or "patterned self-similarity" that can be demonstrated or proved according to the rules of a formal system: by geometry, through physics or otherwise."

Symmetry exists almost everywhere around us: in Mathematics, science and technology, in religion and culture... It can be simple or excedingly complex. The latter is used to describe this following pattern:


It is called the E8 graph. It is one of the most complicated symmetrical structures ever studied, a 248-dimensional shape known as E8. And it is the basis of a new "Theory of Everything" by Garrett Lisi. "[Lisi] has high hopes that his new theory could provide what he says is a 'radical new explanation' for the three decade old Standard Model, which weaves together three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the electromagnetic force; the strong force, which binds quarks together in atomic nuclei; and the weak force, which controls radioactive decay... Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works."

E8 encapsulates the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional and is itself is 248-dimensional. Lisi says "I think our universe is this beautiful shape." From Times Online, "Lisi first encountered E8 six months ago and thought he saw mathematical echoes of his ideas about the cosmos in its structure; so he started 'playing around' with it. When he used its shape to relate all the known fundamental particles and forces in the universe with each other, the pieces seemed to fit together like a jigsaw. He realised that this could be something profound."

"If Lisi’s calculations are correct, the intimidating beauty of E8 could be the key to uniting all the fundamental forces and particles in the universe. For the first time, science would have an overarching explanation for why the cosmos is the way it is."

"It would be kind of nice if it all made sense, mathematically anyway," Lisi says. "It’s nice to think that there’s a bigger picture that’s beautiful and that we’re all a part of it."

Most of the scientific articles is way beyond my comprehension, but it does not take a quantum physicist to see that the pattern is undeniably, indescribably beautiful. More wonderment at the great beauty of all that is around us...

Real Surreal

Photographs are meant to capture a point in time. Traditionally, this 'point in time' is based on reality. However, with the help of technology, realities can be blurred, nay - even conjured up. It is this power that allows photographers to attain their true vision - the perfect picture.


Today, I came across a Canadian (Vancourite too!) photographer who made me question my eyesight. The photographer is Scott McFarland. From Monte Clark Gallery, "Scott McFarland's vision has evolved out of a familiarity with the particular environments he photographs... Regardless of the [environment], a personal consideration is present in which the artist attempts to reconcile a 'true' notion of the real with the limited one which is captured by the camera lens. McFarland's photographs, which employ subtle digital alteration, return the image as much as possible to its orginal appearance seen by the eye."


The first time I laid my eyes on the above picture, I thought to myself, "what a unique scene!". But upon closer inspection, the shadows of the cacti face radically different directions. That is simply impossible in a natural setting. I felt like I was looking into some extraterrestrial scene, albeit one that closely resembles the Earthly ones that I am accustomed to. It is simply amazing how such a subtle change can dramatically alter one's perception.


It would be sort of wonderful to visit McFarland's world...

New York Times Building

I have come to believe that space is very much like clothing. If you do not feel that great on any particular day, putting on immaculately tailored beautiful clothing can immediately change your mood. Same with a good haircut. You just feel better about yourself. Similarly, if you walk into a open airy space awash with glorious sunlight, you feel instantly more positive and awake. However, unlike attire, buildings are almost always much more permanent. So mistakes could easily cost decades worth of low morale. This gargantuan undertaking is not foreign to architects, yet in this case, the same make-or-break element must have been magnified by several times. The building in question? New York Times Tower.


The building is designed by Renzo Piano. Being a newspaper, New York Times is steeped in both past and present. Its journalistic intent means it observes the world and compiles a daily collection of news articles, while back issues archive all history. How did Piano approach this task then? he tower rises 748 feet (228 m) from the street to its roof, but the exterior curtain wall extends 92 feet higher to 840 feet (256 m), and a mast extends up to 1,046 feet (319 m). The building has 1.54-million square feet (143,000 square meters) of gross space. This story describes it all, but here are some of the pictures and quotes (all excerpted from the article) that really awed me:


Nicolai Ouroussoff calls Renzo Piano’s new 52-story home for The New York Times "a towering composition of glass and steel clad in a veil of ceramic rods” that “delivers on Modernism’s age-old promise to drag us — in this case, The Times — out of the Dark Ages... The last decade has been a time of major upheaval in newspaper journalism, with editors and reporters fretting about how they should adapt to the global digital age. In New York that anxiety has been compounded by the terrorist attacks of 2001, which prompted many corporations to barricade themselves inside gilded fortresses... Mr. Piano’s building is rooted in a more comforting time: the era of corporate Modernism that reached its apogee in New York in the 1950s and 60s. If he has gently updated that ethos for the Internet age, the building is still more a paean to the past than to the future."


"The architect’s goal is to blur the boundary between inside and out, between the life of the newspaper and the life of the street. The lobby is encased entirely in glass, and its transparency plays delightfully against the muscular steel beams and spandrels that support the soaring tower."


“People entering the building from Eighth Avenue can glance past rows of elevator banks all the way to the fairy tale atrium garden and beyond, to the plush red interior of TheTimesCenter auditorium. From the auditorium, you gaze back through the trees to the majestic lobby space. In effect, the lobby itself is a continuous public performance. The sense of transparency is reinforced by the people streaming through the lobby.”


"Depending on your point of view, the Times Building can thus be read as a poignant expression of nostalgia or a reassertion of the paper’s highest values as it faces an uncertain future. Or, more likely, a bit of both."

You can also view Annie Leibovitz's photographs of the building here.

Meiryo

Just discovered these beautiful Japanese fontset called Meiryo that comes along with Windows Vista:

From TokyoTDC, Eiichi Kono - the designer - said that "[i]n all ages and cultures, Gutenberg is called the father of modern printing technology and his discovery "Movable Type Technology" spread an information revolution rapidly throughout the world. Since then in the Western world, "creating letters" has been seen as the source of design for the fountain of knowledge that is books. Even now extremely high quality printing books are printed with high quality type-face that has been traditionally polished. "Creating type-face" became "creating phototypesetting" in the latter half of the 20th Century, and now it has further become gcreating digital letters". "Paper" is also becoming "screen" and brilliant color 3D graphics are meaning that printing is moving away from typesetting but without letters one could not use a mobile phone. Technology is always on the move and now Western and Asian characters are being mixed into horizontal typesetting in increasing regularity from books to business documents. I would like to work toward creating a book and useful font to understand the increasingly confused and different language and culture."

Art Pepper

I remember driving home from work a few years ago and restlessly skipping through several channels on the radio. I was in an odd mood that evening and was, the reason unfathomable even by myself, somewhat upset at the state of 'music'. To me, good music must be written from the heart and performed from the soul. Sadly, there are very few musicians and composers with true artistic integrity; the overwhelming majority of them rely too heavily on other means (such as visual, as opposed to purely aural) to help set them apart from other manufactured outfits. However, even with this compensation, they cannot feign the musical talents that true artists have. As I frantically flipped through the channels, the sound of a wailing saxophone suddenly came on. There was something in the lone sound that made me sit up and listen: genuine feeling. I was thus introduced to the music of Art Pepper.


Photograph of Art Pepper by Andy Freeberg.

From NPR, "Art Pepper was a self-taught jazz saxophonist who never practiced. But he earned acclaim as one of the greatest alto players to follow in the footsteps of Charlie Parker, and one of the foremost exponents of West Coast jazz. His career was interrupted by 10 years in prison on narcotics charges, and he died in 1982 at the age of 56. Now his widow, Laurie Pepper, is trying to tell his story on film, doing it one chapter at a time and posting it on YouTube."

"Laurie says she expects to be done in about a year with the first of three hourlong films — one for each period of Art Pepper's life, between his jail terms... The images are layered, kaleidoscopic — almost hallucinatory. Laurie says that the animation and drawings are an attempt to re-create the way her late husband saw the world. "The stories — the things that he tells — really did happen," she says. "But the way he saw them is the way that, you know, a baby or a schizophrenic sees things.""


Photograph from 17 Dots.

""It's always dangerous to equate art with autobiography," says Fred Kaplan, a jazz blogger for Stereophile magazine. "But in Art Pepper's case, I mean, the two are at one, because … he's pouring out the miseries of his life into the ballad. And by using these songs as the background material, she enriches that." Kaplan thinks that the point of Laurie Pepper's documentary is the way Art Pepper turned his misery into music. "And that's how Art saved himself for so many years as he did, which was by utilizing this pain and experience and making it into something that can be shared, and that was rich and meaningful.""

In conjunction with the project, Laurie Papper has launched a website here.

Skewed World

When I was really quite small, I remember seeing snow globes everywhere I went. I then thought to myself: why are people so fascinated with the idea? I cannot deny that I compulsively shook the living daylights out of it whenever I came across one and then waited to see the bits and pieces of snowflakes settle down again. I also remember thinking that our planet Earth is very much like a snow globe, albeit one that spins instead. Perhaps that is why we remain ever so intrigued with it?


The photograph/sculptures seen in this post are by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz. From Imitation of Life, Dan Cameron writes that "[t]he slippage between states of dreaming and waking is symbolized in the sculpture... by an ongoing tension between the purely visual qualities of the work and a type of functionality that is enacted without ever being applied... [S]surrealist tendency is achieved within the scope of a visual "first glance" that is based on the expectation of finding a certain logical order within the world. Once the more whimsical aspects of the work are revealed, however, its ties to the world's logic become accentuated rather than erased."


"While it may be pointless to reduce Martin's and Muñoz' sculpture to a fixed world view - indeed, the humor in the work argues against such rigid interpretation-, it seems clear that the metaphors... represent an attempt to explore some of the deeper aspects of their philosophies about life. Not only the works embody a strong distrust towards the place given to rational thought in most accepted notions of western civilization, but the artists unusual ability to distill these meanings into a single visual statement privileges the perceptual over the conceptual."


"At the same time that they produce riddle-like parables about modern existence, they do not shirk the artist's obligation to invent a new formulation of tactile and even sensual pleasure. Like the philosophy conveyed by their predilection towards visual paradox. Martin's & Muñoz' critical awareness is balanced by the knowledge that no matter how far the human species evolves (or devolves), we will never invent a credible substitute for experience."

Subconsciously, perhaps we see ourselves in the very idea of a snow globe perhaps - Somewhat trapped, wondering whose hands are going to come down on our green sphere, then shake and observe, shake and observe...

Bubble-Popping

The second most rewarding feeling I get when I open up any fragile purchases is the opportunity to pop bubble wraps (the first, of course, is the joy is buying something nice, shiny and new!). I get all flushed with excitement and greedily try to pop as many as I can in the least amount of time possible. It is then of no surprise that I find my fingers itching to get my hands on a few sheets of these when I saw it on Xin Hua:


"In Japan, the plastic packaging material is best known by a local brand-name Puti Puti... and Kawakami Sangyo Co, its biggest manufacturer, has set up the Puti Puti Culture Laboratory dedicated to finding unusual uses for it. "I'm not an expert in psychology, but it is said that if people see a chair, they want to sit in it. If they see a button on an intercom, they want to push it," said Ayaka Sugiyama, the head of the laboratory... It's the same with Puti Puti. The bubbles stick out, so you want to squash them.""

"Hoping to tap into Puti Puti's appeal, Sugiyama started jotting down notes on unusual uses of the packaging material about seven years ago and the ideas were compiled in a "Puti Puti Official Book" published last year. Among the suggestions are injecting the bubbles with colored ink to create mosaic-like artwork, sitting on the sheets at picnics, sewing them into in a wedding dress and -- this from an 85-year-old woman -- popping bubbles to help prevent senility."


"Pucchin Sukatto, a box of small bubble wrap sheets developed solely for popping, went on sale at convenience stores for 198 yen ($1.78) in October and a Puti Puti Calendar comes with a square bubble on each day of the month. "For those who think one Puti Puti per day is not enough, there are extras at the end of each month," Sugiyama said."

Aye aye I say! Bring the bubble-popping devil out in me!

Office Furniture Ad

Simple and to the point by Emmpathy/Communion. No other words necessary:

Red Phone Booth

I never grew up with red phone booths, but I certainly knew it from the Avengers. It is just one of those objects that I can never forget after seeing just once. In my opinion, it really is a national emblem of the UK. It even has its own (rather lengthy) Wikipedia page. However, in recent times, the cell phone has really become the communication device of choice. Everyone seemingly has one. So what happens to these beautiful structures?

Blake Morrison from the Guardian asks the same question.

Beard Hat

Saw this amazingly quirky hat created by Vik Prjónsdóttir in Iceland. Now that is function + personality:

Savages Poster

Every now and then, a movie poster comes along that simply compels you to find out more about it and, perhaps, even to watch it at the cinema. This one by Chris Ware for The Savagesis one such example:

New Computer

This post is written from my new 24-inch iMac furnished with Leopard. Oh, and WOW!

New Zune - UI

I have never really used iTunes for music playback. I simple did not like the interface. I also never used Windows Media Player until very recently for the exact same reason. I am not sure why I switched to the 9th version of it because I still do not like the interface. Zune was just as bad. As were the many different offerings in the same market. I believe I switched to Windows Media Player because of the "WOW" factor. I have to admit I like shiny things, and naturally gravitate toward beautiful NEW things. But once the initial awe ends, I immediately switch modes to resume that of a jaded frustrated user. It got me thinking: how do you extend the WOW factor?


The above is essentially a much more beautiful version of the dreaded visualisations in Windows Media Player. Subtle changes such as sporadic and periodical switching of album artwork within the collage makes it much more appealing and much less distracting. The playlist and command buttons (like 'play' and 'pause') are all hidden away but will reappear upon rollover.

There is also a more conventional playlist like the screenshot shown above. Here, I am quite sure the use of a rather flashy texture in the background could get stale after a while. However, Microsoft did provide 5 different background patterns in addition to a plain one. Perhaps, down the road, to help build a community, users will be able to share background patterns. If so, I think the layout fits this idea very nicely.

Personally, I think one of the most interesting directions in UI design is the shift away from a standard buttons, toolbars and workspace layout. The links and features in here are presented much more organically. It also makes for a much more visually appealing design, with a major focus on typography and beautiful icons. This new Zune software is by no means perfect, but I think Microsoft has shown that it too can play in the field with innovative UI (as evidenced here and in the new Office Suite). I realise it's only been two days since I started using application, but I have not pulled any hair out yet, so that must say something.

Is it possible to dethrone the iPod's reign of the portable music market? Can Zune give users that joy every time they use the device? Not yet, as I think there is definitely still some work to be done, but the "wow" factor (note the non-capitalisation) is present, albeit fledgling.

Ads Without Voiceovers

Sometimes, effective commercials simply do not need extraneous voiceovers to convey the idea. In fact, I think sparse soundtracks that accompany great visuals simply create stunning and memorable ads, like the following Nissan ones show: