Painting the sky

In the urban landscape we only get small glimpses of the sky; at least from the street level view-point of our every day comings and goings. Yes, one could see a fair share of sky from a high building, but it always the urban skyline that dominates the experience, not the vast horizons of the countryside.

Basically, the sky is absent from the urban landscape.

This is why sky-artist Thomas Lamadieu fills in the small sky-gaps with his strange creatures.

 

via design taxi

See also:

• The sky’s the limit
• The domin-ation of the Starry Night
• The sky turned blood red

 

I need some space…

If you consider your apartment in New York tiny, or in Tokyo a closet, be ready to reconsider and to be shocked. Imagine living in a space as big as your king-size bed, or less. Meet the cubicle apartments of Hong Kong.

Apparently a single square foot of real estate in Hong Kong costs on average $1,300. As a result, whole families are constrained in 40 square feet apartments. That’s less than 4 square meters in metric!

Kitchen appliances are cramped under bunk beds and all of their belongings are stacked one on top of the other. Tenants don’t have enough space to take two steps, and any talk of ventilation or hygiene is science fiction.

These photos are part of a campaign by the  Society for Community Organization (SoCO), a Chinese human rights group as an effort to raise awareness about the inhuman living conditions city dwellers are facing.

via Inhabitat

See also:

• Behind closed windows
• A little urban living
• Where children’s dreams dwell

Day and night in one shot

An image of a metropolis where the sun meets the colors of the night. Day and night together in just one image.

Photographer Stephen Wilkes in his series called Day to Night captures views of New York City , where day and night are so beautifully united together.

See more photos after the jump

Watching from above

Watching the city from above: “the constant flow of taxis, the merging of traffic, the waves of pedestrians crossing at the change of traffic lights, and the sounds of honking horns and sirens”. That is what fascinates New York-based photographer Navid Baraty in his amazing series of photos of New York City.

See more photos after the jump

London tube sticker commentary

Whatever you call it, subway, tube or metro, you can’t deny that long comuting trips can get pretty boring. And if you are anything like me, you end up counting stops by checking the map obsessively. Well, if you’re riding the central line in London you’re in for a surprise. Witty remarks have replaced some of the stations. And, of course, there is a tumblr about it: stickers on the central line.

See also:

• The strings of the NYC subway
• Cinemagraphs: the art of the animated gif
• The streets are sad

A little urban living

Very little, as a matter of fact.

German street artist Evol stencils urban dwellings on various street objects.

We love ourselves some urban art.

via kuriositas 

See also:

• Urban file sharing
• Filling up the gaps
• Taping up the city

The streets are sad

Sad stuff on the street is not only amazing in its own right, but it also has a cute back story (which I’ll let you find out by yourselves).  

Broken, dirty, lost or abandoned objects lying on the streets. That’s what it’s all about. And all the thoughts and feelings that go along with it.

via good.is

See also:

• Filling up the gaps
• Dogs left in cars
• Larger-than-life people in candid shots

Filling up the gaps

Bodies in the service of filling up the urban void? Choreographer Willi Dorner squeezes human bodies in brightly coloured hoods into the city’s most peculiar places. Into nooks and crannies, actually.

Bodies in Urban Spaces’ project was first conceived in an abandoned residential building in Vienna, in 2004, but it rapidly spread around the streets of the world, from London, France, Norway to downtown Manhattan. Willi Dorner works with performers, dancers and passengers, placing them into spaces where bodies normally do not go and occupying the urban landscape in a completely new way.

More photos after the jump

Before I die I want to go to the Galapagos Islands

What are your wildest dreams? What is your deepest existential wish? Now it is time to express it. And in public view.

Candy Chang turned one side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood in New Orleans into a giant chalkboard where residents could fill in the blank by expressing what they would want to do before they die.

The feedback  was massive and the Before I die … in NORL chalkboard was completely filled out within 24 hours. Check out the wall of responses after one day.

More photos after the jump

Northern lights, WiFi lights

Our city is a landscape of (invisible) networks. Three designers from Norway wanted to reveal this immaterial terrain. In their project titled Immaterials, Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen and Einar Sneve Martinussen used light and long-exposure photography to capture the conduits of WiFi signals.

They built a WiFi measuring rod that visualises WiFi signal strength as a bar of lights.  The more lights activated on the rod, the stronger the signal is.

“The size of the measuring rod and the light paintings it creates emphasizes the architectural scale at which WiFi operates, and situates the networks in the physical environments that they are a part of,” as Einar Martinussen wrote on YOUrban blog.

See more photos of the project after the jump

Urban file sharing

Imagine that, instead of visiting virtual places like Dropbox to share files, you visited real places: a street, a bus stop, a bridge. Where you would find a mysterious USB peaking through the wall. And you could download its files, or upload your own. For anyone to find. True, unconditional (file) sharing.

This is the idea behind Dead Drops a public intervention project by Berlin based artist Aram Bartholl. In  his words “Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer-to-peer file-sharing network in public space”. There is even a Dead Drops manifesto. He launched the original Dead Drop in New York in 2010, but there have been more around the world since. Check this list to see if there is a Dead Drop happening now near you.

And what’s best, Dead Drop is open. Anyone can start one. Here are the instructions.

near you

We float

Franck Bohbot is a Paris based photographer. In his series levitation he puts everyday people, in urban settings, a few inches above the ground. Without any photoshoping, that is. He captures people as they jump, but the effect is that of an etherial stability.

tip: the photos must be viewed while listening to this (one of my favorite songs of all time):

See more photos after the jump