Grass Mirror by h2o Architects

About the project:

Antique philosophers often turned to nature for contemplation. Nature was used as a mirror. The Grass Mirror project revisits, in a way, this idea of contemplation. But to convey a contemporary image requires further complexity. Nature overflows, it is multiplied by the different reflections. One’s own image is fragmented. Frontiers between nature and culture are blurred. It is the twist (geometric deformation) of the rectangle which reveals this nature. The plants sit in the hollow of the deformation. This basic figure can be repeated indefinitely, from object to surface and surface to object. The whole is a little more than a multiple of its parts… 

–Miguel Mazeri, anthropologist

Organs and Organisms by David Earl Crooks

About the work:

Organs and Organisms is a reflection on the human condition from a biological , mythological, philosophical and political perspective. The origin of life, the struggle for survival, reproduction, science, fantasy, existential vertigo, the fragility of the body, death …these are some of the themes explored in the paintings gathered here.

Colors of Shadows by Hiroshi Sugimoto is a 10 year long project inspired by the scientific experiments developed by Newton and Goethe on the origins of color, East Asian Buddhist doctrines and our psychological response to color. 

About the project:

The establishment of cognitively verifiable natural science brought the world closer to the modern age, a world that could be analysed and quantified. A century after the publication of Opticks, however, criticism of Newton’s mathematical approach was heard from an unexpected quarter: in 1810, poet, novelist and playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe compiled a twenty-year study on the effects of colour on the human eye, and in his Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours) found Newton’s impersonal scientific exposition wanting on artistic grounds. Granted Newton’s spectrum of seven defractively differentiated colours was perceived by the human eye via the central cortex, but what did that prove? Colours, he argued, appealed directly to our senses; red and blue had effects upon the human psyche that would not submit to mechanistic quantification. Furthermore, while we perceive light precisely because of darkness, light travelling through the blackness of outer space was imperceptible to the eye; only once light hit the atmosphere and reflected off airborne dust did we see a blue sky. Seeing the darkness tint ultramarine each dawn as I sighted the morning star, I really got a sense of what Goethe wrote in his preface: “Die Farben sind Taten des Lichts, Taten und Leiden.” (“Colours are acts of light, acts and sufferings.”) I interpret this to mean colour occurs when light strikes some obstruction, suffering the impact.

…Gazing at bright prismatic light each day, I too had my doubts about Newton’s seven-colour spectrum: yes, I could see his red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-purple schema, but I could just as easily discern many more different colours in-between, nameless hues of red-to-orange and yellow-to-green. Why must science always cut up the whole into little pieces when it identifies specific attributes? The world is filled with countless colours, so why did natural science insist on just seven? I seem to get a truer sense of the world from those disregarded intracolours. Does not art serve to retrieve what falls through the cracks now that scientific knowledge no longer needs a God? I decided to use virtually obsolete Polaroid film to photograph the spans between colours.

What began on Polaroid film has now been expanded to include large pieces of Hermès silk that will be available to be viewed starting June 12 here. 

The Human Project by Jean-Yves Lemoigne

Lemoigne on his work:

Modern man has become a cog in a very complex society. We live in a society that praises individuality on the one hand and conformity on the other. A society with 6 billion people is a society standardized to meet the needs of each individual: work, leisure, transportation… In this standardized society, man himself becomes standardized, anonymous. Man is an elementary particle in the global mass.

The Zentai suit fits perfectly with this vision of man as an elementary particle. It makes any individual as uniform as possible. We stop distinguishing between faces, races and genders. I seek the greatest possible contrast between these smooth characters and the rich variety of textures, vegetable and mineral, that nature has to offer.

American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse is a fascinating 2009 story by Wired about the creation of the mysterious Georgia Guidestones.

Here’s an excerpt:

Called the Georgia Guidestones, the monument is a mystery—nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the “guides” themselves, directives carved into the rocks. These instructions appear in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a peculiar New Age ideology. Some are vaguely eugenic (GUIDE REPRODUCTION WISELY—IMPROVING FITNESS AND DIVERSITY); others prescribe standard-issue hippie mysticism (PRIZE TRUTH—BEAUTY—LOVE—SEEKING HARMONY WITH THE INFINITE).

What’s most widely agreed upon—based on the evidence available—is that the Guidestones are meant to instruct the dazed survivors of some impending apocalypse as they attempt to reconstitute civilization. Not everyone is comfortable with this notion. A few days before I visited, the stones had been splattered with polyurethane and spray-painted with graffiti, including slogans like “Death to the new world order.” This defacement was the first serious act of vandalism in the Guidestones’ history, but it was hardly the first objection to their existence. In fact, for more than three decades this uncanny structure in the heart of the Bible Belt has been generating responses that range from enchantment to horror. Supporters (notable among them Yoko Ono) have praised the messages as a stirring call to rational thinking, akin to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason. Opponents have attacked them as the Ten Commandments of the Antichrist.

Continue reading about the monument and the anonymous stranger that requested them here or check out a new interactive web series about it here.

Philosophy posters by Max Temkin is a Kickstarter project that’s already raised 10 times its original goal with over 2 weeks left to go. It’s not just a good idea, it’s a whole bunch of them. Temkin has designed posters featuring quotes from 10 of history’s greatest thinkers.

What is Death? is a series of posters by Andreas Leonidou. 

Butterfly Effect is a series by Yuri Laptev based on chaos theory.

About the Butterfly Effect:

The term in the natural sciences, denoting a property of some chaotic systems. Negligible impact on the system may have large and unpredictable effects somewhere else and at another time.

Design Interactions Research asks the question:

What happens when you decouple design from the marketplace, when rather than making technology sexy, easy to use and more consumable, designers use the language of design to pose questions, inspire, and provoke — to transport our imaginations into parallel but possible worlds? Our research explores new ways design can make technology more meaningful and relevant to our lives, both now, and in the future, by thinking not only about new applications but implications as well.

One possible answer to this question they’ve explored is the 5th Dimensional Camera. What makes this camera different than any currently available cameras?

The 5th Dimensional Camera is a fictional device that captures glimpses of parallel universes suggested by quantum physics. How might we seek to interact with these other worlds? Would we become jealous of our parallel selves? What would happen to our sense of morality if we knew that we had committed inconceivable acts in another world?

Considering the progress being made in building quantum computers, the 5th Dimensional Camera might not remain purely fictional for much longer.

From Klaus Weber’s show If you leave me I’m not coming on display at Nottingham Contemporary through January 8.

About the show:

Klaus Weber’s art works create ruptures with what we would call reality. In so doing they call our deepest belief systems into question. They provide an ironic counterpoint to the shared understanding – social, natural, scientific – that underpins our society. They also expose the maverick forces of nature that disrupt our own ability to control.

The natural world – and our changing view of what is natural – is a strong theme of the exhibition. The “natural” could also be regarded as the given – the underlying assumptions we all share. In the past it was thought society was shaped by just such a “natural” order. Perhaps it is not so different today.

As science progresses those beliefs are constantly destroyed and recreated, as is our view of ourselves within the universe – and society itself. Shape of the ape consists of kitsch copies of a 19th century sculpture of an ape squatting on a stack of books, contemplating a skull. It recalls the profound upheaval that followed Darwin’s theory of evolution, a discovery that placed man among the animals and refuted the divine idea of creation – a scientific advance that, to some religions, still remains contentious.

Read more…

Thinker Tables by Tom Price were commissioned by the Chinese gallery Chapter 7. Tables were made with the likenesses of the Greek philosopher, Socrates, and the Chinese philosopher, Confucius (or Kongzi) and were chosen by Chapter 7 to reflect the cross-cultural philosophy of the gallery. 

From Julian Voss-Andreae’s 2009 - 2010 exhibition Quantum Objects. Voss-Andreae’s exhibition had a rather lofty goal: “My hope is that the unique ability of art to transcend the confines of logic and literal representation and to offer glimpses of something beyond can help us open up to a deeper understanding of the world and to wean ourselves from the powerful grip classical physics has had over the last centuries on our every perception of reality.”

About this specific piece:

The Platonic solids are five mathematical objects that have a particularly high degree of regularity. Known for thousands of years, they are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who theorized that the classical elements were constructed from these regular solids. I fabricated the five Platonic solids out of bronze, the material of classical sculpture, and collapsed them by suctioning the air out of them. To me, Collapsed Platonic Solids provide a tangible illustration of the breakdown of superseded theories. In the sense of sculpture theory, the collapse turns the pure mathematical from a simple constructive object into an organic one with a vastly higher degree of complexity.

Bibliothèques idéales is a project by the amazingly imaginative François Rauzier.

About the project:

The artist builds palaces of culture where he gathers and celebrates the authors, the artists, the thinkers. These dreamed places welcome knowledge and those who elaborate seek it.