Brought to you by designer and illustrator Christoph Niemann "I LEGO N.Y." is an endearing little book that shows bits and pieces of New York rendered with legos. Yep, its as good as it sounds. From taxis to wasabi, the Holland Tunnel to a stack of $20 bills, all are made from Legos and completely adorable. This book makes an excellent coffee table book ( I can attest to this because it currently is sitting on my coffee table)
Last summer when I walked through Times Square, I noticed there was a crowd gathering and thus aroused my curiosity. There was a piano placing right on the street and there was a guy playing. After all I realized that was an art project called “play me, I’m yours”, and the project put more than 60 pianos around the city for people to play whenever they want. For people that usually didn’t have a chance to play, or people that had good piano skills and wanted to show off a little bit, or people just got curious, that was definitely fun to give it a try. Let’s take a look of this project from the “Without Border” Film Festival in Rome, 2010.
“The piano is like a facebook resource, like a blank canvas, for people to share their creativity with one another.” Luke Jerram, the creator of this project says his inspiration was from waiting for the bus. Luke notice that people got bored and had no conversation while they were waiting, so he thought he could do something to help people to interact with one and another.
Because of the interaction that brought to the cities was so successful, this project has been keep going on since 2008. The “play me, I’m yours” project will be held at Austin, Texas during April 1–May 1.
Like straight out of a movie, Steven Duncan explores the underside of hidden urban spaces going into sewers, to the tops of bridges and even along subway tracks. He calls it Guerrilla History and Urban Exploration - I call it plain old crazy and brave. Duncan says he's "peeling back the layers of a city to see what's underneath." To see NYC's strangely gorgeous sewer system, the first (closed) subway station and a breathtaking view of the city from the top of the Williamsburg bridge, watch the video below. My fear of heights kicks in on the bridge part and I felt like I was watching an action movie
Duncan also sells these INCREDIBLE photos from all of his journeys which include cities all over the US as well as London, Berlin, Paris, Rome and tons of others.
If we think about the subculture in NYC, graffiti art is the most substantial thing that we we see it everyday in our lives. But when and how did graffiti start spreading over the city? The curiosity project brings you back in the old days to the 1970's–a video from Jon Naar's view about graffiti art in New York.
Jon Narr is a photographer in New York who enthusiast about graffiti photography, and he published "The Birth of Graffiti", which was his photo collection of graffiti.
It is incredible that subway trains was still full of graffiti in the 1980's. The documentary film "Dream City"(1987) depicted the graffiti culture at that time: some graffiti writers were busy creating their new pieces during midnight, and some of the artists tagged their names on every train that they wrote. Until 1989, The Clean Train Movement started and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) begun a program to eradicate graffiti on the subway trains.
Ork Posters are amazing type based "city neighborhood posters" by designer Jenny Beorkrem. She started with a Chicago poster back in 2007 and they have exploded since then adding an additional 15 cities, as well as two human organs!
I have the Manhattan poster in my living room finally, after pining after it for years. It certainly did not disappoint and I highly recommend these to any urban map/typography lovers.
Manhattanhenge is one of the best little known facts of New York City in my opinion. Twice a year the sun sets in exact alignment with Manhattan's east/west street grid.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (the guy who coined the term) says that "Manhattanhenge may just be a unique urban phenomenon in the world, if not the universe." The alignment of the grid, coupled with the shear verticality of the city create this phenomenon in NYC unlike any other city.
This year Manhattanhenge will take place on Tuesday May 31st at 8:17 pm and Monday July 11th at 8:25 pm. A half sun will also be visible May 30th and July 12th. Mark your calendars!
For your best view, go as far east in Manhattan as possible while still being able to see New Jersey. The wider two way streets like 14th, 23rd, 34th and 42nd are recommended for even better views.
***Side note*** Welcome to the second theme of The Curiosity Project - Urban Experiences. The last two weeks we brought you fun/random/crazy inspirations focused on being passionate. If you missed any of those posts, we'll be uploading a poster soon that shows a little bit of each of them.
A young French photographer Erica Simone, is launching her exhibition"Nue York: Self-Portraits of a Bare Urban Citizen" at The Dash Gallery in New York. The exhibition will be held on April 14th-28th. In this series of nude pictures, she photographed herself experiencing daily life as if she was not undressed. She takes the pictures of herself using a remote trigger. She says that this series is not about sex, and she is trying to convey a concept of how people represent themselves with clothing and fashion. She took 20 pictures for this exhibition, including scenes of taking the subway, shoveling snow, and buying things at a street vendor.
Brilliant video concept and execution by Hollerado. I love the idea of humans creating the basic pixels of the video and just think how long it must have taken to get all this choreographed. The whole video is a single continuous shot. While shooting the video, Americanarama was slowed down by 400% in order to give the 24 stage hands enough time to complete all of the sequences, meaning Hollerado performed their song four times slower than its normal rate, taking thirteen minutes to complete the entire video in one take.
This video reminds me of another project I've seen that uses a similar but more advanced idea. In August 2010, The Standard Hotel in NYC was taken over by an installation, funded by Target, and created by Mother NY & LEGS. The (in)famously clear glass floor-to-ceiling windows of the hotel reveal an extremely complex light show with dancers in the rooms as well.
