Category:
Art
Art
Comb Art
A dominant theme in modern art is to transform everyday, seemingly mundane objects into art. I guess we can blame Warhol for this trend. In the case of Sonya Clark, her object of inspiration is plastic combs. She makes sculptures out of them. She explains: "Combs imply order in as much as they are tools that organize the fibers we grow. They suggest thorough investigation as in 'to go through something with a fine-toothed comb.' When a comb has broken or missing teeth there is evidence of struggle. The missing teeth provide a new rhythm, the music of a new order." [via junkculture]
Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 03, 2013 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art, Hair and Hairstyling
Sending meteorites back home
Artist Katie Paterson is planning to send a meteorite back into space. I like this idea. The universe has been flinging rocks at the earth for billions of years, so it's high time we start flinging them back.Paterson writes that the meteorite has been "cast, melted, and then re-cast back into a new version of itself, retaining its original form." I'm not sure what the point of all that was, but it's art, so I'm not sure we're supposed to understand. I'm also not sure whether the meteorite will ever make it further than the International Space Station, or whether there are plans to fling it deeper into space. [wired.com]
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 27, 2013 -
Comments (0)
Category: Art, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy
Beached Whale
It looks like a beached whale, but it's actually a "life-size, hyperreal statue of a sperm whale" created by a group of artists that calls itself the Captain Boomer Collective. They explain:the beached whale is a gigantic methaphor for the disruption of our ecological system. People feel their bond with nature is disturbed. The game between fiction and reality reinforces this feeling of disturbance.
The faux whale was recently beached at the Greenwich Fair. Event organizers assured the public that the whale was "family friendly."
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jul 10, 2013 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art
The Art of Jack Kevorkian
In addition to promoting assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian also dabbled in art. Although according to the owner of the gallery that sold his work, he didn't consider himself an artist, "In fact, he disclaims the paintings as art." Predictably, all his paintings have somewhat morbid themes. [pbs.org]
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 09, 2013 -
Comments (2)
Category: Art, Death
Petrified Potato Art
As a follow-up to my prior immortal potato post, here's Dave McConkey who claims to have found a way to petrify potatoes, and he then makes works of art out of these perma-potatoes. I'd be curious to know what exactly his process involves, but I doubt it's actual petrification, since soft tissue doesn't petrify (as far as I know).If you want to delve deeper into the mystery of petrified potatoes, check out the Potato Rock Museum, which describes itself as being "all about the search for the elusive 'Potato, Rock' or the 'Petrified Potato' or the Per Mineralized Potato."
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 06, 2013 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art, Vegetables
Parking Ticket Art
Artist Ruth Rieffanaugh creates pictures of the Boston skyline out of old parking tickets. Her rule is that she doesn't take the tickets directly off of cars. She has to find them on the ground "discarded in disgust by others." [Boston Magazine]
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jul 05, 2013 -
Comments (1)
Category: Art
Salvador Dali Swimwear
A further installment in the Boese-Di Filippo Weird Swimsuit Wars.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jun 26, 2013 -
Comments (5)
Category: Art, Surrealism, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Fashion, 1960s
Endless Toilet Bowls
Constantin Brancusi's 1938 sculpture "The Endless Column" is quite famous. So much so that, as the Box Vox blog points out, not one but TWO artists independently came up with the idea of paying homage to it by making endless columns of toilet bowls — Tim Thyzel using white ceramic bowls (2001) and Konstantin Bojanov using red, acrylic resin casts of toilet bowls (2008).
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jun 20, 2013 -
Comments (1)
Category: Art, Bathrooms
Gustav Fassauer-Ferron
Although he was hardly as famous as Stradivarius, Gustav Fassauer-Ferron created some violins that still have their fans today. As one site says, "Pupil of Oswald Schaller of Frankfort (Germany), with whom he underwent a thorough training, proof of which is found in his work. Well made instruments after the Guarneri I. H. S. model, adorned with an orange oil varnish. His violins are esteemed by both artists and amateurs." You can hear one of his instruments in the video.
But when he wasn't busy making full-size ones, he turned out the occasional miniature. Don't you wish you had this for those times when you wanted to mock someone's self-indulgent hard-luck story?
Here is an image of the creator with his miniatures. Copyright prevents reproduction here.
Source of story.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 18, 2013 -
Comments (3)
Category: Art, Crafts, Eccentrics, Enlargements, Miniatures, and Other Matters of Scale, Music
Brainwave Art
Artist Lisa Park wears a headset that monitors her brainwaves, which are then translated into sound waves that vibrate pans of water. So she's making the pans of water splash and bubble with her mind.Or, at least, that's what she says. It occurs to me that no one would know the difference if she sat there looking very serious, wearing a headset that did absolutely nothing, while speakers randomly turned on and off beneath the water.
Eunoia from Lisa Park on Vimeo.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Jun 16, 2013 -
Comments (1)
Category: Art
| 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 |