Art
Turner Prize 2012
It's that time of the year again, a favorite moment for all WU-vies. The shortlist for the UK Turner Prize is announced! We get to see a selection of the best and the brightest UK artists, those figures who contribute to humanity's glorious heritage of imperishable art that uplifts the soul and defines what it is to be human.
My personal fave this year is Lali Chetwynd. "She reworks iconic moments from cultural history in deliberately amateurish and improvisatory performances." Such as you see above.
Monet, eat your heart out!
Posted By: Paul - Wed May 02, 2012 -
Comments (7)
Category: Annoying Things, Art, Avant Garde, Performance Art, Science Fiction, Europe
Nagi Noda’s Hair Hats
Learn more here.
Posted By: Paul - Tue May 01, 2012 -
Comments (6)
Category: Animals, Art, Surrealism, Body Modifications, Asia, Hair and Hairstyling
More Placenta Weirdness
After posting a few days ago about the doctor who was speculating about the benefits of eating placenta, I realized I had merely scratched the surface of placenta weirdness. There's also a growing interest in placenta art — that is, smearing the placenta against a piece of paper and calling it art.
Another option is to transform your placenta into a placenta teddy bear. Your kid is sure to need years of therapy once he gets old enough to realize what he's been cuddling up with at night.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 14, 2012 -
Comments (3)
Category: Art, Babies, Pregnancy
John Graham
[Click either to enlarge]
Apparently, the painter John Graham was highly eccentric, both in his personal life and in his art. One fascination he had was with crossed eyes, as seen above.
His self-portrait below shows a certain, ah, uniqueness.
Read more about him in this LIFE magazine article and at this site.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 05, 2012 -
Comments (2)
Category: Art, Surrealism, Eccentrics, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Russia
The Toilet Art of Adrian Rodriguez
His art involves spending a lot of time staring into toilet bowls. He calls his creations "toilygraphs."
Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 31, 2012 -
Comments (3)
Category: Art, Bathrooms, Photography and Photographers
Angel
See how long you can last through this 1966 film without ingesting any drugs. Caffeine permitted.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Mar 14, 2012 -
Comments (13)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Surrealism, Body Modifications, Dreams and Nightmares, Drugs, Movies, 1960s
Interior Clouds
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates temporary clouds inside rooms by regulating the temperature and humidity inside the rooms.
When I saw this it immediately reminded me of an experiment conducted in the eighteenth century by the Dutch scientist Martin van Marum. He created two artificial clouds by filling calf's bladders with hydrogen, causing them to float around his laboratory. He gave one of these bladder-clouds a positive charge, and another a negative charge. As these charged clouds floated around, sparks would pass between them. This was Van Marum's way of simulating a lightning storm.
But van Marum had an extra trick that was always a great crowd pleaser. He introduced a third (non-charged) cloud into the room. When this non-charged cloud passed between the two charged ones as they were exchanging sparks, it would noisily explode into flames (kinda like a miniature Hindenburg). That's how to do an interior cloud installation properly!
Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 13, 2012 -
Comments (11)
Category: Art, Science, Experiments
One Night in a City
Wu-vies--Originally, this nine-minute clip was viewable in its entirety. Since I created the post, however, it's been marked "private." So here's a two-minute trailer for it, to give you just a taste, unfortunately.
One Night in a City from İstanbul Animation Festival on Vimeo.
Now that I do a little more research, it appears that even the nine-minute clip was a fraction of the 76-minute feature. Might be worth searching out on DVD.
More info here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 18, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art, Body Modifications, Music, Puppets and Automatons, Stop-motion Animation, Europe
100 Radioactive Men
A "guerrilla lighting installation" by Luzinterruptus that appeared in Hamburg, August 2011, during the Dockville Festival. According to de zeen magazine, its purpose was to "demonstrate, in a humorous tone, the paranoia that we are suffering from since the escape of radioactive material in Japan... to simulate, for the festival, a life under the constant threat of nuclear accidents."
Posted By: Alex - Mon Feb 13, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art
La Napoule
According to this LIFE magazine article, art collector Henry Clews had a taste for the bizzare, as seen in the statue above. His French Mediterranean home is now a museum, and you can visit, or even apply for an arts residency there!
Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 09, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Aliens, Art, Avant Garde, Surrealism, Dreams and Nightmares, Eccentrics, Collectors, Museums, 1950s, Europe
| Who We Are |
|---|
| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |