It’s Moving Day!

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The World Was Supposed to End Last Week.

On schedule, July 16, 2011.

A grassy 3-D slant anamorphosis optical illusion globe entitled “Qui Croire?” (“Who to Believe?”),  designed by French artist François Abélanet to focus attention on environmental issues, was to have been removed from in front of Paris City Hall last week.

While Abélanet’s green world is probably gone, the earth’s environmental issues remain, as does this fascinating 2 minute video of his assembly process. (My French is rusty, so I sometimes watch with the sound off.)

The project, installed on a flat lawn in front of Paris City Hall, was created to look like a giant sphere from a certain view point. Assembled by 90 people over a five day period, the installation was about as long and wide as a football field. It used 600 cubic meters of sand and hay covered by 300 square meters of sedum.

I’d love to hear about anamorphic installations this side of the pond. Know of any?

Optical Illusion Wordplay: Ambigrams

Ambigrams. Rotate the art 180° and it still reads the same! Remember the Angels & Demons logo for Dan Brown’s book and film? John Langdon created it. John and I met 15 years ago when we were both exhibiting at a big trade show in New York City.  We were impressed with each other’s optical illusion fun.  We exchanged cards and talked of exchanging products. Can’t recall if we ever actually followed through though. John’s inevitable success was obvious even then.  But I recently discovered to my surprise he didn’t invent the art. The earliest known ambigram dates 100 years before! Wikipedia’s ambigrams page (see excerpt below) has a good history of the technique. And here’s an ambigram generator. Don’t get too excited though about the generator. What it puts out is at best a starting point.  It needs the refinement of a sensitive ambigram artist like John Langdon. Or maybe you, yourself? Give it a try!  Please share your wordplay with me.

“An ambigram is a typographical design or art form that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation. The words readable in the other viewpoint, direction or orientation may be the same or different from the original words. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an ambigram as a ‘calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves.’ ”

I’d love to see your creations!

Shopping Bags That’ll Grab YOU!

Simply had to share these terribly clever shopping bags. See more created by BoredPanda.com.

                 

Deception. It’s All in Your Point of View!

Joseph Egan and Hunter Thompson are first year Graphic Design Communication Students currently studying at Chelsea College of Art & Design in London.

Exploring the relationship between graphic design and architecture, they learned about master artist Felice Varini‘s amazing anamorphic work – a form of optical illusion that lures the viewer into a unique, immersive 3-D physical experience which, when that viewer arrives at a predetermined end point, delivers the appearance of a flat 2-D printing.

Egan and Thompson selected an ideal architectural space within the college buildings to execute their project installation.

Egan shares, “When planning an anamorphic installation is it important to consider that to maximize the fracturing of the design, it is best to try and touch as many planes as possible. We eventually decided to carry out our installation in a corridor of our college (as shown in the images) using the long walls to maximize the distortion of the letter forms. All of our work is site specific and we spend as long as possible discussing a choosing the perfect architectural locations for our works.”

   

What fun it would have been for me to watch them figure out the projections!

What I love about this kind of art is the surprise –  turning the annoyance viewers feel trying to figure out what’s going on here into complete delight as they gradually move  into a place where all the pieces coalesce!

Please let me know of anyone in this country who’s doing anamorphic typography! I’m dying to watch the process in person!

…there are tops, and then there are TOPS !

Spinning tops are one of the oldest recognizable toys found on archaeological sites.  They originated independently in cultures all over the world – doubtless due to a basic human fascination with things that spin and teeter and balance. (Good old physics!)

Japanese spinning tops (“koma” or “goma”) are considered some of the very best in the world. New designs come out each year displaying a very high degree of craftsmanship and multiple-action spinning sophistication. They’re usually made of native wood and painted by hand. They can take the shape of animals, fruits, and even gambling games. Some modern tops are cinched with metal bands.

Here are four sets of my Japanese multiple-action spinning tops I have cherished for decades. Their colors have faded over time, but their quirky, unpredictable behavior still engaged and delighted the sophisticated grown-ups who played with them while I tried to film them.

A. “Sandan koma” A palm-spun triple-decker of tops (above, left). Not so hard to start the largest top revolving.  More challenging to spin the middle one in the indentation of the big one. Downright next to impossible to get the small one balanced on the whole gyrating stack. (I managed this once for five seconds!)

B. “Tobi-koma” Flying top. (right)  My favorite! This is a string-pulled top comprising five coin-sized tops nested inside a cup. When launched, the smaller tops come shooting out of the cup. Lots of fun guessing which color will spin the longest. Never the same! Skilled players even get the cup itself to spin upside-down!

C. “Okkake-goma”  Chasing top. (left) This string-pulled top is spun in its tray. Two disks dropped against the spinning top get launched to leap each other in the track or knock the other out of the way.

D. “Oyama Koma” top (a town name ). These are Fighting tops. “Kenkagoma” competitions are held all over the world.

Professional top spinners in Japan also do shows in which they perform  clever tricks like spinning a top on the edge of a sword!

Eyes closed I can still see and feel and hear my first sparking, humming spinning tin top. Can you remember yours?

Digital Choreography

Ingenious performance art from the old Tonight Show.  I missed it the first time around not being a regular viewer. Thanks to Bernie DeKoven (Major Fun) we get to enjoy this delightfully timeless bit.

This is an SOS

“SOS: Save our Supplies” is a video for DOC2DOCK, “a non-profit organization that saves usable medical supplies from being discarded in the U.S. and sends them to hospitals in the developing world.”  The silk screened words on Kraft-faced corrugated boxes is brilliantly economical. The message is terribly moving.

Forget Justin Bieber. Just Get Rebuses!

Have to entertain a group of middle school kids? Believe it or not, rebuses can wow ‘em!

I was a new art teacher at an affluent private school in Virginia.

Three of us were assigned lunch duty to keep order in the cafeteria and police the area. Well, I remembered how bad it felt as a kid – having some authority try to control me and subdue my spirit, so, now,  to make fun out of work, I started a lunchroom contest among my four tables. Kids with the cleanest table and floor would get a special reward. Tables even challenged each other’s claim of “done!”

Winners got the first five minutes of the prize all to themselves – pages from my collections of easy, middle and hard rebuses.  (Gulp. This could go either way – they’d love it or I’d bomb.)

We worked a few rebuses together and then the winners jumped right in. I was amazed by their delight decoding the picture puzzles. Laughter or groans erupted.  They praised each other’s solutions. Their joy was infectious.  Other tables quietly craned to see, and then were allowed to join the fun. Kids pressed forward. Such enthusiasm!

After several days of this delicious phenomenon – a clean lunch area and throngs of engaged, happy middle schoolers glued to me, word must have reached the assistant principal, for her dour face suddenly appeared wanting to know exactly what sort of (ahem) intriguing materials I was showing the children.  I swear she actually looked disappointed when I showed her!

Predictably, we parted ways at the end of the term, but not before I invented one last rebus for my art classes. I made a clip art version below that you can use next month!

Did you know that rebuses have a rich linguistic history going back possibly thousands of years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebus

How Cracker Jack Changed My Life

August 1950. A magical month for 8 year-olds at the Jersey Shore.

We got 25₵ each day to spend anyway we wished, on comic books (10₵) or candy or games at the arcade! Our best fun adventure, though, was crawling under the boardwalk to find fallen treasure – coins or small gumball machine prizes  – that had slipped out of tiny hands or torn pockets through the cracks into the sand below. It was a joyous time of freedom and discovery for our little barefoot band.

     

  All the charms were wonderfully detailed miniatures from our everyday life – plastic and metal fans that actually spun, chrome toasters, one-inch playing cards, jewelry, record albums, Loony Tune characters, REAL knives, and Cracker Jack wiggle pictures.

In the evenings we traded with friends to complete our own collections, lovingly organizing charms by color, shape, item and uniqueness. At bedtime we returned our treasures to their cigar boxes and secreted them under our pillows.

I remember being endlessly fascinated with the visual trickery of Cracker Jack wiggle pictures.

   I’m certain these must have been the first optical illusion playthings that started my journey to becoming an award-winning anamorphic toy inventor.  An omen?  Cracker Jack, thank you!

Wiggle pictures (or flip pictures) are technically known as lenticulars.