A collection of favorite posts and a good introduction to the kinds of things you’ll find on Wonderlust. Please excuse the old blogger formatting style on the older posts!
This is SO This American Life!! Apparently I’m waaay behind on this one, but just in case some of you were too, I had to share it!
Guy resolves to have more adventure in life. It snows in New York, he decides to ski in Prospect Park for some adventure. Finds a film canister in the snow. Develops it. Makes a film about and puts it on youtube to try to find its owners. The video gets over a million hits, and emails pour in from people who believe they may have clues for him.
I don’t want to give away the end of the story, because it’s just much better if you watch the videos. (I will tell you he travels to Europe as a result!) Definitely watch part 1 (about finding the film and requesting help finding the owner) and part 3 (about his journey to Europe).
It’s convenient that he, Todd Bieber is his name, makes films for a living– I can’t remember for whom now, I think it was Upright Citizens Brigade– so the story is really well told in the video.
I think storytelling as a thing is underrated– it’s something that everyone loves, but perhaps not consciously, as it’s not often discussed as it’s own thing. People love movies and great conversation, but it’s rarely discussed that it’s because we all enjoy great storytelling. But why else would this video have gotten over a million hits? Anyway, I think this is one of the best examples of storytelling I’ve come across in a while. The actual “plot” is awesome, and Todd is a wonderful storyteller, not only giving you the facts, but drawing some wonderful conclusions at the end. Enjoy!
E. Tautz, whose awesome branding I mentioned back here, is sponsoring an effort to bring back snail mail. As a part of this project, they are asking influential fashion icons and writers to write postcards with quotes or quips or lessons about style. I loved this one above– it’s so true! If you could have all of those things your style would be pretty unstoppable.
PS – Patrick Grant, the guy who bought E. Tautz and it’s parent company Norton & Sons, gives an interesting interview on his own thoughts on style here.
You MUST watch this video. It’s very short, and it will add a lot of wonderment to your day. I’m enthralled.
These “animals” move. Or I should say, they walk. They’re wind-powered. It’s amazing. They look like a cross between an exoskeleton and an erector set, which is basically what they are, and then they start moving and they become so anthropomorphic, you wonder if they’re alive in some way.
Many of his creatures are so “evolved” that they are now capable of “living” on the beaches on their won– the wind powers their “walking,” and they have sensors that tell them to stop and turn around when they hit either water or dry sand, keeping them permanently on the wet sand.
They even have sensors that tell them when a storm is coming, and their “brain” tells them to start pounding a stake into the ground so they don’t fall over in the storm.
Can you imagine having a brain that dreamed up stuff like this?
In the video above, you see the “rhinoceros”-like sculpture walking.
If you want to learn even more about Jansen and his work, click here for a ten minute video presentation by Jansen that shows more animals walking and an explanation of how they work.
It’s also extremely interesting to hear how he talks about the animals– he doesn’t discuss them as art, or really as machines or product prototypes either– he talks about them as though they are animals that he is looking after, and he doesn’t seem to feel any need to explain the “purpose” of them, which I think is an amazing insight into the brain of someone this creative.
I think that science and art are going to continue to merge in this way, in the minds of people like Jansen who are capable of seeing their relation to each other, and have a desire to explore their intersection without the desire to make a practical product or advancement in technology. While in art, it seems sometimes that “we’ve seen it all,” and there’s nothing new under the sun, science is continually evolving and pushing boundaries in material ways, and through the integration of science and art, art could do the same.
THIS IS A REAL MAP. I saw this and thought someone had painted something pretty on top of an old map.
Not so, which means this might be the most amazing map I’ve ever seen.
In the early 1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers commissioned a guy named Harold Fisk to make a map of the various courses the Mississippi River has taken over time. He showed each course in a different color, to show when and how they happened. This is the result.
Just goes to show, the representation of practical information can be executed in a way that is also aesthetically pleasing.
I feel like I could look at these forever. I’ve searched and searched and I’m pretty sure you can’t buy any prints (original or reproduced) of this, but I wish you could*! I would frame a whole bunch and hang them on my wall!
Rivers are constantly in flux, as they erode banks and make deeper curves (or “meanders”), until the meanders become so meandering that the two sides of the curve almost touch. At this point, the river cuts off the curve and so that it has a straight path again, and it leaves an oxbow lake behind.
When all the pages, each showing a different section, of his study are fit together, they form this long continuous path of the Mississippi. I can’t get the image to load any larger, but it looks really cool when it’s shown as the same width as the pages above.
An amazing short by Spike Jonze of only 2 minutes and 26 seconds.
Aren’t they the fulfillment of all your childhood tree house daydreams?
Click the jump for more treehouses….
Another great looking built-in sofa… those pillows and the cushion in the simple ticking stripe look perfectly casual and comfortable.
A super posh one!! It has a chandelier!
Love the awning windows on this one, and the gingham pillows.
All images from the book Exceptional Treehouses.
French journalist, environmentalist, and photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand started an image bank called Altitude Agency, for which he commissioned and assembled over 500,000 aerial photographs of the earth.
Then, alongside UNESCO World Heritage, he gathered the most beautiful images into a project called The Earth From Above (la Terre vue de ciel).
when a certain tide changes the water level in the Loire River.
More of one of my favorite things– bookshelves wrapping over things… doorways, sofas, etc.
Now this is interesting — this is the same room that I posted in the last post on this subject, but now the walls are this olivey green-brown! They are white in the other one! Totally changes the room. By Courtney Giles.
love the ladders above and below..