From a cat translator to 3D “left shark” toys, we’re bringing you the week in creativity
Design news from around the world that will delight romantic souls with beauty and wonder.
Visual artist Rafaël Rozendaal, who uses the “internet as his canvas,” showed us what a magical kiss looks like. “Much Better Than This” is a lovely, color-changing flash/visual of two silhouette faces kissing each other; with each passionate touch, a feeling emerges via a new vibrant hue. Starting this week, the artwork will be displayed on Times Square’s electronic billboards from 11:57 p.m. to midnight each night in February.
Speaking of Times Square, not only will a kiss be shown on a massive screen, but you can also feel and hear a “HeartBeat.” This new public art installation, celebrating Valentine’s Day, comes as part of a collaboration between the Times Square Alliance and The Architectural League of New York. An enormous vibrating and glowing heart, spectators are encouraged to engage with the project by playing various percussion instruments.
This week readers of ArchDaily voted for the Building of the Year awards, choosing 14 winners out of hundreds of entries. Highlights included a staggering bookstore in Brazil (category: commercial architecture); a dynamic counseling center in Denmark (category: healthcare architecture); and a contemporary-style mosque in Turkey (category: religious architecture) seen above.
Converse Inc. and The Andy Warhol Foundation united to design a limited edition Converse Andy Warhol All Star Chuck ‘70. Limited to only 200 pairs, this off-white high-top shoe went on sale at the end of last month. But we’re sure you can find them on Ebay.
Hashtag of the week went out to #poetweet, created by the Brazil Contemporary Art Centre in San Paolo. Poetweet is a new website that designs your tweets into poetic works of art. The site gives you the option of transforming your 140-character musings into three types of poems: a sonnet (made popular by Shakespeare), rondel (French lyric Poetry), or indriso (a format created by Spanish poet, Isidro Iturat, derived from the sonnet). Check out our very own GOOD poem above!
The National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo presented “Chairs and the Table in Perspective, 1966” by Jir? Takamatsu, open through March 1. The exhibit by this influential artist, theorist, and teacher, focuses on his body of work, which dealt with light and shadow. A prodigious artist, Takamato “created tables and chairs with strange perspectives, incorporated sagging fabric, took photographs of other photographs, and made paintings that combined the simple and complex.”
I recently Googled “cat therapist” because sometimes I worry that my cat is depressed. However, now I won’t need to look for outside help to get inside the mind of my cat, Zoe, with the new Meowlingual translator. This nifty gadget (retail: $169) can analyze the expression on your cat’s face and break it down into six different moods. It can also translate 200 cat words (aka meows). It’s temporarily sold out, because of course it is.
And last but not least, if you fell in love with the Katy Perry’s Left Shark during the Super Bowl halftime performance show and wanted one of your own, you’re shit out of luck. Perry’s lawyers issued a cease and desist letter to Shapeways, a 3D printing service, demanding a 3D model depicting Left Shark be taken down.
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