Artists Mandy Smith and Hal Kirkland collaborated on a macabre interactive sculpture project called “Paper Cuts”. The touring installation, which has visited Amsterdam and London so far, replicates the infamous guillotine with a colorful version that leaves the “victim” with nothing worse than a paper cut.
Each time the blade falls on a volunteer a camera records the participants expression. The photos are then displayed on a big screen and on the “Paper Cuts” website.
Bruges, Belgium is, with good reason, one of Europe’s most popular cities with travelers. Stunning architecture, romantic canals, beautiful churches, terrific art, and mind-blowingly fabulous chocolate—Bruges has it all. It even has the world’s only frites museum. Now Bruges has launched its first beer museum.
On July 5th, entrepreneurs Thibault Bekaert and Emmanuel Maertens opened the Bruges Beer Museum in the old Postgebouw building on the historic Grote Markt in the heart of town. Of course the highlight of the attraction is a chance to sample some of Belgium’s hundreds of phenomenal brews.
Ireland a Literary Atlas maps the rich literary heritage of Ireland. The infographic was produced by BuyBooks.ie and designed by UK-based NeoMan Studios. Too bad they left out my favorite contemporary Irish writer Kevin Barry.
A clever and timely new peer-to-peer app called We Are On A Boat connects people who would like a boat ride with folks who would like to “share” their boat. The app, which has been appropriately launched in Amsterdam, enables boat owners to post geotagged photos of their vessel with seating availability and requested form of payment for rides. The Uber-like app plans to expand to other waterfront cities such as Venice, Bruges, Hamburg and London.
Each July the small riverside city of Agueda in north western Portugal hosts an arts festival called “Agitagueda”. And for the past two years a local arts group called Sextafeira Producoes has added a playful touch to the festival with a canopy of colorful umbrellas over a pedestrian street.
photo credit: Cristina Ferreira
The terrific flow-motion video below was shot by the very talented Rob Whitworth and is aptly titled “Barcelona Go !”. The super fast moving short was edited down from 78 hours of shooting around some of Barcelona’s fantastic sites and attractions. Makes me want to hop on a plane and go back tomorrow.
Los Angeles-based artist Mike Stilkey turns discarded library books into whimsical works of art. The one-time street artist creates wonderful mixed media portraits of people and animals that have a decidedly early 20th century vibe. You can see lots more of his colorful work here.
In a city packed with attention grabbing tourist attractions, monuments and museums, Washington D.C.’s National Building Museum is often overlooked by visitors. But this summer there’s a new incentive to check out this marvelous museum.
Referencing classic European hedge mazes, a tall labyrinth constructed from Baltic birch plywood has been built in the spectacular Great Hall West Court of the museum. The mindboggling maze was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group as an introduction for an upcoming exhibition on building practices.
Housed in the magnificent 19th century former home of the U.S. Pension Bureau Headquarters, the National Building Museum is the U.S.’s leading cultural institution devoted to the history of the built environment. It tells the story of design, architecture and engineering in civilization.
Ranganath Krishnamani is a very talented artist/design/illustrator based in Bangalore, India. His new series of travel posters and postcards of iconic Indian landmarks has a marvelous early 20th century aesthetic that wouldn’t be out of place in a Wes Anderson film. You can see more on his blog.
We’ve all seen lots of websites featuring “then & now” photo mashups—I’ve even posted a few here on TBTP. Now a handy app called Timera 2 allows users to create their own composite photographs right on their smartphones. The secret to Timera is an enormous database of crowd sourced archival and historical geotagged photographs.
Creating then & now images is dead simple with this free app (iOS and Android). Users just choose a Timera image of a nearby location, overlay the photo on the device display, then just line-up the archived image with the real world scene and snap the photo.
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