Onebyfourbynine

I really like Derek Stroup's Candy and Chips series. Here he explains what lies behind his work:

"My recent digital photographs explore the relationship between language, commerce, and objects. These photos begin with candy purchased from my locall convenience store. I photograph them and then use Photoshop to remove all traces of language or other signs. The results are images that are simultaneously familiar and strange. I am curious about this moment of suspended recognition. With labels, we instantly assign these objects to their proper category in our mind. With labels removed, there is a moment when our categorical impulse is suspended. It is similar, but different from, the sensation of encountering a foreign language. In this work there is a clear discourse about branding, and the exposure of the apparatus that enables a manufacturer to assert their brand strength. But there is also a phenomenological discourse that interests me as much, if not more. With the words removed, we are returned to a physical encounter: an object of a certain size, a certain shape, a certain color, texture, and, of course, flavor. These are all small objects, attainable pleasures. They make a direct appeal to our senses. These photographs seem like pictures of sculptures—perfect objects that don’t exist anywhere in the world. All the work in this series oscillates between individual specificity and archetypal form."

Seen on Chad Muthard's Encapsulate and Regurgitate blog.

From the TED talks

"Since about ten years Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been busy creating a new nature with plastic tubes, cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, hose, and tape as the basic material for creatures which are able to walk feeding only on wind. Eventually he wants to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives in the wild, multiplying and striving for survival.

Artist, technician, inventor and you might also say poet, his walking sculptures look alive as they move and are able of basic reactions to their environment thanks to antennas, legs, muscles (pneumatic pistons within the plastic tubes), stomachs (plastic bottles for storing air), and nerves (primitive logic gates) that can for example be used to reverse the machine’s direction if it senses dangerous water, or loose sand where it might get stuck. By applying the principles of evolution to the world of machines through breeding of the most successful species, and using algorithms on a computer he managed to take the best bits from each to make them better generation after generation."

This guy is a biomechanics genius. How a single man can achieve that alone with such limited resources blows my mind. It's not only the technical realization of his sculptures that is amazing - he has a true vision of creating new lifeforms. All of this without a single piece of electronics. Makes you wonder what he could do given a solid budget and access to state-of-the-art technologies. In this digital age who'd think that the first artificial lifeforms would be analog?

You can find more information on his website and on Wikipedia.

Also see this amazing solar powered kinetic paper creature by James G Watt.

No at lot of informartion about the interesting the artist besides the fact that his seems to be from Italy. In his Fritture series he gives consumer goods a whole new meaning by making them literally (almost) consumable. Ipod tempura, anyone?

German artist Martin Klimas freezes the last instants of falling objects right before they cease to exist - at least in their intended form. Interestingly - and ironically - they seem to briefly come to life as they are about to disappear, finally liberated from their porcelain bodies for a brief moment of freedom before turning to dust.

Great nudes and still lifes by American artist Jeff Bark. Reminescent of Renaissance Dutch and Flamish painters, each carefully composed image resonates with symbolism and depth rarely found in traditional photography. While his images place the models in a calm place between distress and pleasure, I see him as a painter using a palette of soft lights, shadows and long exposures instead of oil paint.

"Grasses"

"Nauset Beach"

"Summer On Port Susan"

Christopher Harris is a great Washington-based photo artist whose work explores the American West using a home-made pinhole camera and long exposures. I like the idea that even though they look like paintings, his images are actually real landscapes and seascapes. It's not just blurred or out of focus; there is a certain quality to the textures and colors that really make his images unique and poetic.