The Orrery

Protect and Preserve: Mobile Art-Conservation Van Helps Save Treasures

I just wrote for Wired about a mobile team of art conservators that roams Europe analyzing and protecting priceless works of art.

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... MoLab.

Art from Explosions

My good friend Rosemarie Fiore uses everything from lawnmowers to waffle irons to pinball machines to make art.

For her latest works, called "Fireworks Drawings," she sets off smoke bombs and fireworks on big pieces of thick paper, then collages the results layer by layer into huge, colorful pieces that look a little like stylized fireworks themselves. They're awesome.

For her "Scrambler drawings," she turned an old fairground ride (rechristened the Good-Time Mix Machine) into a gigantic Spirograph. (These are my personal favorite, since she got the germ of the idea when we were at Busch Gardens together.)

Lost Art of the Luggage Label

Continuing the Golden-Age-of-Travel-Art theme, here's a Flickr collection of over 1,000 luggage labels from the 1900s through the 1960s.

Many were made by the same artists who designed the travel posters from last week.

 They were collected and posted by the creative director of a Florida ad agency.

What do we get now - baggage handler bootprints?

You kids get off my lawn.

Posters From the Golden Age of Travel

From the Boston Public Library, a wonderful set of travel posters from the 1930s on Flickr.

Man, don't they make you just want to pack up the steamer trunk and head for or the train station, or the docks?

With their bold colors and art deco aesthetics, some of them remind me of these WPA posters of the U.S. National Parks.

Vintage airline logos

The Coulourlovers blog has a collection of vintage airline logos.

How much cooler are these than today's yawners?

(Except, of course, for Alaska Air. And Pulani, Hawaiian Air's flower girl.)

Burning Man 2008

 

(c) 2008 Julian Smith

Finally got around to posting my photos of Burning Man. I was there for four days this year, my first time. It was a crazy experience, one that I had pretty mixed feelings about.

On the one hand, Burning Man is an incredible spectacle, like nothing I've ever seen. The sheer effort involved-- all voluntary--is mind-bending. Imagine creating a completely self-contained city of 50,000 from scratch, complete with streets, police force--hell, a damn DMV--in a place that makes Death Valley look lush and inviting. And erasing it utterly afterward, like it was never there.

There's amazing art, art cars like you've never seen, and the no-cash, no-advertising vibe is overwhelmingly positive. People are just so happy to be there. (That's understandable, considering the time, effort and money it takes just to show up.) It's pure fun and self-expression. For a week, absolutely anything goes, as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's happiness (and isn't overtly illegal when the wrong law enforcement officials are watching).

On the other hand--at the same time--it's utterly ridiculous. Maybe it's that deep Puritan-roots aversion to hedonism we seem to have bred into us as Americans. But I often found myself thinking: this isn't the big green world-changing event it's billed as. It's just a big drug-fueled excuse to dress up and act stupid in the middle of nowhere, one that generates 28,000 tons of carbon between people getting and playing there.

What's wrong with that? Nothing at all. (Except for the carbon.) You just have to be in the mood, I guess, and for a few personal reasons, I wasn't always. Then I'd step outside of things for a moment and look around and think, Jesus, get me the hell out of here. It doesn't help that the environment couldn't be any more uncomfortable: searing heat, tongue-cracking dryness, talcum-fine playa dust up to your ankles that gets into everything.

I'm glad I went. Would I go again? Maybe, with some better planning. I'd arrive later, go with a big group of friends, and this time I'd know a bit more what to expect.

The Time-Eater Chomps the Minutes

An incredible new clock was recently unveiled at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge University: the "time-eater."

Stephen Hawking unveiled the £1 million device, which doesn't have any hands or numbers--just zipping blue lights and a huge insect-like creature on top that "eats" every minute as it passes.

"It is terrifying, it is meant to be," said John Taylor, the creator and funder..."Basically I view time as not on your side. He'll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he's salivating for the next. It's not a bad thing to remind students of. I never felt like this until I woke up on my 70th birthday, and was stricken at the thought of how much I still wanted to do, and how little time remained."

It's beautiful, intricate and a little creepy. Definitely check out the video.

Drawing calligraphy with light

Julien Briton draws Arabic calligraphy with light.