a collage a day keeps the apple at bay

A collage a day keeps the apple at bay. I am a big fan of Martin O’Neills collage work. Here is his website: http://cutitout.co.uk/ He did an illustration series for the Guardian a few years ago, and I bought every issue just for the illustrations.

keep calm

I made these cards based on the now famous British World War poster “Keep Calm and Carry On”, which is in the public domain. You can read about the history here. Rip-offs have become something of a meme. Mail artist and brilliant typographer Keith Bates created the font, based on the original poster series.

keep calm and mail art

love respect and mail art

please do not ever feed trolls

 

 

The last one ‘please do not ever feed trolls’ may come in handy, when confronted with internet trolls appearing in internet forums. You are free to use it, whenever you feel the need.

rubber stamps and fonts by Keith Bates

Keith Bates – Rubber Stamp Mail Art. Keith Bates is a personal hero of mine. Not only is he a mail artist, but he makes beautiful fonts, including free ones, which I have been using. Check out the amazing type shop: http://www.k-type.com/

british food

Exquisite paintings by Joel Pinkman. See more here: British food series.

illustrations by Alain Gree

I am pretty sure as a child I used to have some books illustrated by Alain Gree, or even played with this memory game. I wished I could track them down. Looking at them just makes me happy. Read more here on Jane Foster Blog and about reprints in the Anorak magazine on grainedit. 

postcrossing

I used to love buying and sending postcards, but with the internet, email etc. somehow  have stopped doing so. The last postcard I sent was to my grandmother, before she died last year.

Every summer I remind my son to send postcards from his summer travels to his grandparents in two countries and to us and he dutifully obliges. Everybody, grandparents on all sides, me and my husband are delighted. However, recently he told me, that even though he does send the postcards (usually after being gently reminded though a facebook message) he “does not get this postcard thing.” Why would anybody want to receive some random card with a superficial note, when one could send photos and phone, skype, facebook or chat instead?

I don’t know if I managed to explain it to him properly. In any case – for those who grew up without the internet, with telephone land lines, mix tapes and analog film – a card, which has been bought, written, stamped and mailed by somebody, and physically made its way across the globe is still something special.

A few days ago, I signed up with postcrossing.com – a platform in support of sending and receiving postcards from people all over the world. I posted my first cards, on to Belarus, one to Hong Kong and one to Germany and now I will wait and see who will write to me.

I am interested in vernacular creativity, the kind of things ordinary people get up to, the creative practices and processes and the way people connect and interact in creative ways. David Gauntlets “Making is Connecting” comes to mind.

I browsed the gallery of hundreds of postcards posted online, which people have mailed to each other through postcrossing. Yes, the postcards are sent through mail but can also be “collected” online. I particularly like the multiview tourist  postcards, which use the letters of the name place as a frame for images. Perfect combination of word and image! So I have picked a few from postcrossing.com to share with you. I would be really chuffed if I got one of those! I’ll keep you, ahem, posted.

See also the academic paper on postcrossing by Ryan Kelly  Understanding participation and opportunities for design from an online postcard sending community

And did you know, today is World Post Day!

oh yeah!

Yeah Yeah! Art Print by Duru Eksioglu | Society6.

stitches

more by Lauren DiCioccio  via Obsolete Embroidery / Handmade Charlotte.

handstitched postcard

Handstitched Postcard via Handmade Charlotte.

nostalgic media and mediated forms of nostalgia

Hey, I did not know that there used to be a superhero, ahem, space ranger called Rocky Jones with television show, comics, merchandizing and all. Makes me proud to be a Jones myself. :-)

Check out the squeaky clean Space Ranger Code: I pledge

• to obey my parents at all times
• to be kind an courteous to all
• to be brave in the course of freedom, to help the weak
• to obey the law at all times
• to grow up clean in mind, strong in body

Children actually bought this? How times have changed.

Which reminds me of the conference  “Flashbacks – nostalgic media and mediated forms of nostalgia” coming up on 13-14 September 2012 in Basel, Switzerland. The preliminary program is here http://flashbacks2012.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/flashbacks_program3.pdf*

story mapping

Another illustration of a traditional tale by Warja Lavater.

via gramatologia

little red riding hood

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge via Little red riding hood (Warja Lavater, 1965) 

This is a great take on the traditionale tale of Little Red Riding Hood  by Warja Lavater. The story has been mapped out mainly with with simple geometrical shapes, providing a new – bird’s view – perspective.

the electro library

Another serendipitous find: This is a page from an issue of MERZ, the Dada journal published by Kurt Schwitters in 1923. ( I was actually looking for merz, a German journal on media education.) It features extracts of El Lissitzkys text “Topography of Typography”. El Lissitzkys proclaims pen and ink dead and stresses the importance of the relationship between content, typography and the mechanics of print, and the predominance of the visual over the phonetic. Ah, I just found a translation here. The text ends with this enigmatic sentence:

“The printed page transcends space and time. The printed page, the infinity of the book, must be transcended. THE ELECTRO-LIBRARY.”

Its odd, no?  It sounds like he is talking about the internet and world wide web  – in 1923.

a house of dust

A house of dust
on open ground
lit by natural light
inhabited by friends and enemies

 

A house of paper


among high mountains


using natural light


inhabited by fishermen and families

 

A house of leaves
by a river
using candles


inhabited by people speaking many languages wearing little or no clothes

…

Here are some stanzas of a poem I came across when looking for poetry which may inspire young children to write. The simple structure of the stanzas could be used as a model, offering endless possibilities for new poems.

Then, to my surprise I realized that this may well be the first computer-generated poem. Artist Alison Knowles (b.1933) and James Tenney used programming language and word lists for a poetry project  in 1967, creating a poem of the following structure:

a house of (list material) (list location) (list light source) (list inhabitants)
in which combinations of the variables were randomly generated.

Alison Knowles’s A House of Dust is an early example of computerized poetry that plays on the unlimited possibilities of the random juxtapositions of words. To create this work, Knowles produced four word lists that were then translated into a computer language and organized into quatrains according to a random matrix. Each of the four lists contains terms that describe the attributes of a house: its materials, location, lighting, and inhabitants. The computer program imposed a nonrational ordering of subjects and ideas, generating unexpectedly humorous phrasing and imagery, such as “A house of dust, in a hot climate, using all available lighting, inhabited by all races of men represented, wearing predominantly red clothing,” or “A house of broken dishes, on the sea, using natural light, inhabited by vegetarians.”

Printed on perforated tractor-feed paper common to dot matrix printers of the time, Knowles printed out numerous pages of these phrases in the form of a long scroll. She then created a book of sorts by tearing off a block of approximately twenty pages at a time, folding it in the manner of an accordion, and placing it in a plastic pouch. Hundreds of variations of houses are possible, as every version of the poem begins and ends with a different set of quatrains. Knowles’s collaboration with the computer highlights the underlying arbitrariness of language, demonstrating how words acquire different meanings through structural relationships and shifting contexts.

via: Reinhard Döhl Computertext zur Netzkunst. Vom Bleisatz zum Hypertext. More on it in English here on Calarts, here at Kemper Art Museum and here Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities.

A couple of years ago I found some of this green and white perforated paper with some kind of “computer art” among my dad’s things.  It gave me such a weird flashback. All over a sudden, I was transported back to those days when computers and photocopiers were new and people started experimenting with their affordances. Remember the many photocopied hands and faces or other stuff, like … cats? I am digressing. Way back then, the computer paper stood for everything that was ugly, in my eyes. I like the poem and so I am reconciled with the computer paper. Now its retro.

fantastic flying books

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore 

 

bubbles

I cannot remember where I found this. Must be written in the tradition of Christian Morgensterns Fish’s Nightsong from 1895.

charming poster ads

Here are some funny faux vintage ads from Maximidia Vintage Ads – Poster download.

art and maps (9) Bombus

British artisans Bombus use découpage cover all sorts of items, which can be bought at notonthehightstreet.com. I have been meaning to cover a chair like this for ages, but of course will never get around to do this, it would be great to have a set, maybe one for every city I lived in!

via Words & Eggs.

future magic

UK illustrator Paul Thurlby makes future magic!. Wishing you a Happy New Year!

how to brighten up your walls

“How To Brighten Up Your Walls” Poster by Mike Arnold is a 16.5″ x 23.5″ screenprint, has an edition of 50, and is £15.

OMG Posters!

new literacies

© Gavin Dudeney 2009

This is just so funny.