These photos have apparently been around for a while, but this is totally new to me. An enterprising group of robotic vacuum cleaner owners have used LEDs affixed to the top of their Roombas to create these amazing long exposure photographs. Check out Roomba art group for more. Photos via IBR Roomba, Mike Bala, and Steve Doll. (via laughing squid)

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[Image: Log Chop Bench by the Practice of Everyday Design].

For their project Log Chop Bench (2011), the Canadian design firm The Practice of Everyday Design used "a logger's brute strength and surgical precision to carve out seats on a reclaimed log."

[Image: Log Chop Bench by the Practice of Everyday Design].

Seats made from "fine, hand-sewn upholstery by a motorcycle saddle maker" were then added to the spaces chopped into the log, creating a surreally massive piece of high-end furniture.

Here is the log's chopper—a lumberjill—in action, as well as the sketch it was all based on.

[Images: Log Chop Bench by the Practice of Everyday Design].

Resulting in this:

[Image: Log Chop Bench by the Practice of Everyday Design].

I would love to see a movie theater or lecture hall furnished with two or three dozen of these, with higher backs for long-term seating but each individual perch unique.

Other projects are viewable at the Practice of Everyday Design's website.

Artist Jeremy Hutchison commissioned a series of intentionally incorrect products from factories around the world.

"I asked them to make me one of their products, but to make it with an error," Hutchison explains. "I specified that this error should render the object dysfunctional. And rather than my choosing the error, I wanted the factory worker who made it to choose what error to make. Whatever this worker chose to do, I would accept and pay for."

Hutchison received a comb without tines, the ordering of which prompted a letter from the confused factory rep:

I have read your email, which makes me confused. As you know, combs shold be fabricated correctly and customers should like to buy combs which can comb hair. However, from your words, it seems you need us to fabricate combs incorrectly and combs can not comb the hair. I can not understand this well. Pls kindly explain detailedly.

There is also a Magritte-esque pipe with no place to put tobacco, and these impractial sunglasses:

(via @kevmaguire)

Tags: art   Jeremy Hutchison

“Dear Photograph,
Disney will always be magical, no matter what age.”

Taylor Jones has a blog called Dear Photograph in which he holds up old photos in the exact location that they were taken, bringing the past back to life. With each photograph, the owner of the image makes a statement about the photo. At first he was just posting his own photos, but now he gets tons of email submissions from all over the world. He is now hard at work on a book.

“Dear Photograph,
This was the best day. 650 days and counting…”

“Dear Photograph,
I’ll always remember the summers in that truck.”

“Dear Photograph,
Dad never took a picture of me, ever. Then I noticed his reflection in the glass.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.”

“Dear Photograph,
I miss that playground.”

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© 2011 Design Milk | Posted by Jaime in Art | Permalink | 4 comments

Setting off fireworks without a permit in NYC is illegal, which means the NYPD has been busy confiscating them during the annual July 4th fireworks crackdown. While there's a special focus on Staten Island's fondness for illicit pyrotechnics that make neighborhoods "war zones," fireworks are being grabbed everywhere, which means the police have a stockpile of fireworks. Which they destroy! Check out this video of the bomb squad setting off 5,000 pounds of them at the NYPD firing range in the Bronx. [ more › ]