Tag: art

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Animals Nature

The Picasso bug, where art and nature collide

The Picasso bug, where art and nature collide
Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Alandmanson

You can’t beat the brushstrokes of nature. Native to tropical and subtropical Africa, the oval-shaped Picasso Bug or Zulu Hud Bug is truly nature’s work of art.

The Picasso Bug (Sphaerocoris annulus) is a shield-backed bug species with a vibrant carapace that does more than illustrate its aesthetic beauty. The mosaic markings serve as a warning to predators.

Nicknamed “stink bug,” the tiny creepy crawler also emits a putrid smell when disturbed.

As the famous abstract artist Pablo Picasso once said, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” But seeing a bug like this would’ve tempted Picasso to become a naturalist instead.

The Picasso bug, where art and nature collide
Photo: Eu Curto Biologia (via TW/Nature_Is_Lit)
The Picasso bug, where art and nature collide
Photo: Twitter/Rainmaker1973
Photo: Twitter/Kiddopediatv
Categories
Architecture & Design Culture & Society

Meet Bolivia’s powerful female wrestlers, Flying Cholitas

Photo: Courtesy of Todd Antony

Photographer Todd Anthony took pictures of Bolivia’s indigenous female wrestlers for his new project, Flying Cholitas.

This unique group of athletes wear more than stylish dresses and beautiful petticoats — they come together to demonstrate pride in their history.

Once colonized by the Spanish and rejected as lower-class citizens, pejoratively known as “cholita,” they have since embraced the name to symbolize their persistent fight against subjugation and hierarchy.

Symbolizing the culmination of strength, power, and beauty, the cholitas will not be denied in activism nor aesthetics.

Categories
Animals Architecture & Design Travel

Topiary sculpture of a sleeping baby bird

topiary sculpture of a sleeping baby bird
Photo: Instagram/mavieenloireatlantique

Here’s a bird you’ll never get tired of looking at.

Children’s author and illustrator Claude Ponti’s gigantic topiary named Poussin Endormi or Sleepy Chick resides in Jardin des Plantes’ botanical garden in Nantes, France.

The outdoor installation relaxes nearby Ponti’s zany other works, the sleeping koala. Who wouldn’t want these in their front yard?

Check out some of Ponti’s surrealistic books below. What a wild imagination!

Categories
Architecture & Design

Yarn artist Liisa Hietanen makes human embroidered figures

Knitting is a popular hobby in Finland. But 30-year-old artist Liisa Hietnanen takes the practice to a whole new level.

She uses wool to create life-size crocheted sculptures of the neighbors in her village.

“The slow handcraft techniques work as a counterforce to the accelerating pace in different areas of life,” says the
artist, who uses photographs and face-to-face meetings to help create these fiber people.

“To me the more important values in my works are not likeness or resemblance.

“The works are rather about encountering someone very concretely, seeing the other for real and getting to know them slowly. I see these as relevant values and balancing actions especially in contrast to quick stirs and thin encounters in social media.”

Check out more of Hietanen’s creative vision below.

Categories
Animals Culture & Society Nature

Neanderthals were great hunters but poor artists

Neanderthals were great hunters but poor artists
An early human painting of a lion from the Chauvet Cave in Southern France

Neanderthals were great hunters but poor artists.

According to a study done by UC Davis psychology professor Richard Coss, Neanderthals used basic spear hunting techniques to capture tame prey.

Meanwhile, Homo Sapiens developed the ability to throw spears as a result of chasing more elusive game in the open grasslands of Africa.

Homo Sapiens were also careful planners, sharpening their hand-eye coordination by drawing out hunting scenes on cave walls.

43,900-year-old hunting scene found on island cave of Sulawesi, Indonesia (Science News)

Such artistry not only made modern humans better visualizers and hunters, but it also helped them develop smarter brains.

Historian and author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Yuval Noah Harari also argued that while Neanderthals might have had larger brains and finer tools than their fellow Homo Sapiens, they lacked the cognitive abilities for language.

Homo Sapiens developed rounder skulls and bigger parietal cortexes that allowed them not only to translate visual images but share stories through word of mouth.

Categories
Architecture & Design Health Nature Travel

Beautiful apples from around the world

Beautiful apples from around the world

William Mullan is a photographer who specializes in taking pictures of rare apples from around the world.

The golden Knobbed Russet, the star-shaped api etoile, hard red Black Oxford apple — these are just a few of the varieties that appear in Mullan’s 200-page photo-book, Odd Apples.

Writes Atlas Obscura on how Mullan’s fascination with apples came to be:

Mullan was born in the United States, but grew up in the United Kingdom, where a teenage encounter with an Egremont Russet led to his love of apples. Its spicy, persimmon-like flavor “just blew my mind,” he says. But many of the apples he’s photographed were born in North America, including such romantic cultivars as the Black Oxford and Hidden Rose.

“There’s just this sense of infinity with [apples] that I love,” Mullan says. While he imagines he’ll move on to other subjects in the future, for now, he’s still entranced by apples.

Even better, during his exhibits, he slices the apples open and passes the edibles around for his audience to enjoy.

You can follow Mullan’s work on Instagram.

Beautiful apples from around the world
Beautiful apples from around the world
Beautiful apples from around the world
Beautiful apples from around the world
Beautiful apples from around the world
Beautiful apples from around the world
Categories
Architecture & Design Nature

Waves in progress

Waves in progress
Gif by 00.032

Here’s something you can look at for hours: looping waves in progress.

Created using visual effect software Houdini by Polish motion designer who goes by the name 00.032, according to her dribble page, the piece takes after Matthieu Lehanneur’s original physical work of the same vein.

Waves in progress
Gif by 00.032

The French designer Lehanneur constructed a furniture collection called Ocean Memories that depicts three-dimensional ocean currents frozen into stone and bronze sculptures.

Lehanneur and 00.032 demonstrate both static and motion-centric representations of the Earth’s ocean.

Waves, a symbol of natural energy, have been a fascination with artists such as Hokusai for centuries.

Categories
Architecture & Design Technology

Pablo Picasso’s “light drawings”

Pablo Picasso’s “light drawings”

“Everything you can imagine is real,” said the legendary painter Pablo Picasso.

In 1949, photographer Gjon Mili captured the painter using a small electric light in a dark room to paint the artist’s iconic centaurs, bulls and greek figurines.

The chaotic images vanished as soon as they were created but thanks to Mili’s two separate cameras, Picasso’s timeless “light drawing” live on.

Thanks to today’s advancements in virtual reality, one can replicate Picasso’s moves using Google’s Tilt Brush application on the Oculus Rift. The app lets your paint in 3D space with virtual reality.

Photos by Gjon Mili for TIME, 1949

Categories
Architecture & Design Health Science

A 3D render of your eye under a microscope

ADrenderofyoureyeunderamicroscope

What does your eye look like under a microscope?

Instagram 3D artist Frank J Guzzone gives us at least an imaginative glimpse into the workings of an eye.

Don’t get carried away by the reality or irreality of the visualization. Just admire the concept.

Eye doctors on Twitter have promptly responded to Twitter account ZonePhysics with rightful criticism. “There’s no windstorm in the anterior chamber,” writes Dr. Cheryl G Murphy in debunking the graphic tweeted with the headline “This is your eye under microscope.”

Renders do not explain science — at least this one — but we can admire the fascinating illustration nonetheless.

Categories
Architecture & Design Technology

The floating un-Christmas tree

Theun Christmastree
Photo: Twitter/boredpanda

Are you looking to think outside the box this Christmas?

Look no further than the levitating un-Christmas tree, which features all the aspects of the traditional Christmas tree minus the pine tree itself.   

Photo: Twitter/boredpanda

Whether by virtual reality or a Harry Potter magic wand, the ability to minimize a Christmas tree into nakedness is a fascinating concept. As Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

PS: If you’re interested in building a floating Christmas tree, you can find the instructions here.

If you’re looking for other creative Christmas tree ideas, look no further than teasing people’s imagination by going through the roof! 

Through the roof Christmas Tree
Photo: Twitter/boredpanda