Urban Experiences - Soft Maps

Haptic Lab brings us these AMAZING quilted city maps - quite possibly the best way to interact with a map ever!

Haptic Lab was started by Emily Fischer, a Brooklyn-based architect and designer. Soft-Maps started in 2002 as an academic experiment in tactile wayfinding; the quilts were inspired by Emily’s mother Peggy who had begun losing her eyesight.

The website has quilts, baby SoftMaps and even custom maps available. I am dying to own one of these someday!! If you join the mailing list you can be entered to win a free quilt :)

What a great way to reimagine a city.



Related awesomeness -

Map and topography pillows can be found here.
CityFabric where you can get awesome maps on shirts and canvases.

Urban Experiences - Minature Art Installations

Slinkachu is a UK based artist who does these great installations of miniature model train characters around London.

He says: "My 'Little People Project' started in 2006. It involves the remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which I then place and leave on the street. It is both a street art installation project and a photography project. The street-based side of my work plays with the notion of surprise and I aim to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings. The scenes I set up, more evident through the photography, and the titles I give these scenes aim to reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed. But underneath this, there is always some humor. I want people to be able to empathize with the tiny people in my works."

Check out more of his works on his blog or see all of his work/exhibits/books etc on his website.




































































Buy his book Little People in the City: The Street Art of Slinkachu here - its great...and another must have for coffee table browsing. Again...I have this book and can definitely recommend it!

All Slinkachu photos are from the website.



Another of my favorite artists working with mini people is Vincent Bousserez. He's an all around amazing photographer but his miniatures are spectacular! He has them all posted to his Flickr account here and here. And here is a great article on his work in My Modern Met. Below are two of my absolute most favorites!!








































Photos from Vincent Bousserez's Flickr stream.

Be passionate-body motion

"Art Expands" was a project designed the company Eyeball for Target. By using Target's outstanding logo and working with choreography and movement, this video became a powerful work of art and is full of elegance and beauty.



Target - "Art Expands" from LAIR.tv on Vimeo.

Ok Go is a popular rock band originally from Chicago. When it comes to music videos you know theirs with be great - always full of creativeness and excitement. This music video, "Here It Goes Again", released in 2005, was one of their best works. It is so successful and only cost $10 by just dancing on the treadmills.



OK Go - Here It Goes Again from OK Go on Vimeo.

Be passionate-from the eye of photographers

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.

All pictures from http://www.nue-york.com/

continue reading:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/03/25/photographer-erica-simone-bares-all-on-new-york-city-streets-for-new-exhibit/

http://gothamist.com/2011/03/23/next_month_photographer_erica_simon.php