4 products combined into one winning patent!

The banana phone cover + swiss army blade

This new age self-defence phone gadget hides the phone in a banana shaped cover to conceal it from thieves and if it is discovered a button can be pressed to unleash a blade for self-defence.

The perfect product for modern ninjas!

Patent pending!!

Fitbit

 The design is unobtrusive and the simplicity and minimalism is futuristic. Interesting to note the connection between zen and "science fiction".

Gotye's somebody I used to know

Triangles is my favourite shape > for now.
Gotye has interesting music videos. very fine-art directed.
I used to listen to this song a lot.

Reflection: Forced connection 2

http://thinkjarcollective.com/tools/linking-disparate-ideas-and-building-musical-sculptures-out-of-trash/

Wow I really like the art of Felix Thorne. the machines are good looking - steam punkish and yet organic, lively. and the music is clever and curious. reminds me of gamelan, but yet, fairy like.


I love these multi-disciplinary and multi-layered art. this one touches on the following disciplines:

1. performing art - music and visual
2. performance art - live show
3. engineering
4. computing
5. sculpture
6. Music (composing, as well as the playing out)
7. lights...
8. video (when the works are constructed for such platforms)

http://felixsmachines.com/

The reason that I enjoy works that offer/present multiple perspectives is that I had read and been influenced at a young age, that there are many facets and faces of truth. Truth is supposedly objective, but can only be interpreted subjectively.
Thus, I feel that it is interesting and thought-provoking for art to provide different ways of interpretation and can provoke the audience to understand different levels.

In some ways, I think that there's some truth expressed in sincere art works, and it's this subjective truths that are essential to the art work. and sometimes, it is this truth that makes a piece of work beautiful and moving.

Many would disagree with my sweeping definition or generalisation, for the problem with the definition of beauty and art are divergent lines that would never satisfy.

Forced Pinocchio

PINocchio

Camera transformer

Also more than meets the eye.

Basically all transformers are examples of analogical thinking / design.

Crocodile transformer

Crocodile transformer more than meets the eye

Blue crystals

Scene of new cbd shrouded in haze. Coordinated blue glass facade and their angular shapes make the buildings to look like crystal formations.

Jaba the bubble tea

Combining elements of popular culture

Analogical thinking: coffee table

Reflection: Familiar objects that embodies analogical thinking

This post is a response to an assignment that requires us to find 3 familiar items that display analogical thinking. These are some items that display analogical thinking in my everyday environment.

 Motivational pen holder with ancient poem
This pen holder is adorned with an ancient poem about the importance of learning. It provides functionality for the student as a pen holder as well as encouragement to study hard.

 Coffee table with little birds/ tree-design
This bird coffee table combines functionality as a table with an analogy or allusion made to a tree's branches and inhabitants as in the birds.

 This coffee table combines functionality as a table with an analogy to a wooden barrel.

 This is a plastic plant. I suppose the first maker of plastic plant also made a leap of creative thinking: a plant that doesn't need to be maintained or kept alive, which goes against the very basic idea of plants.
I thought this is a humble display of good analogical or parallel thinking.

Self-watering plant pot. A plant pot which helps to keep the plant in it well watered. This is an idea that is also analogous. For it combines a plant pot with the idea/action of watering the plant.

Analogical thinking: 3 products

Analogical thinking: 3 products inspired by other objects This exercise is to find 3 products that were inspired by other objects. Ideally the products are luxurious, and inspired by a humble item/reference.

Fashion Dress by Alexander Mcqueen Bloom En Provence 

Packaging by L'Occitane
The folding of the box is economical, therefore, reduces waste and cost. The flower inspired folding protects products firmly by locking the bottle within the structure when its shipped. There is no second layer. The folding of the box is economical, therefore, reduces waste and cost. The flower inspired folding protects products firmly by locking the bottle within the structure when its shipped.



Peix (Fish) - Architecture, Frank Gehry
The animal is 56 metres long and 35 metres high and seems to be longing to jump into the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

Laura Carlin, Iron Giant

Work by another illustrator, Laura Carlin.

The image is made up for simple, childlike likes, but it's very visually interesting. why?
repetition of patterns, lines, shapes, what else??

from her work on The Iron Giant.

Left vs Right brain

This ad and many other portrayals glorify the right brain creativity and thinking. I think, however, the left brain is the one that allows "right brain" ideas come true.
The world might be a better place without these unnecessary dichotomies.

Planes in space and repetition

Alexander Mcqueen, I think.

Comic relief

Good design and humour is when something that is meant to be funny is funny.

Images from http://sgag.sg/posts/12-singaporean-local-food-puns-to-round-up-your-national-day-weekend

Breaking rules 3: Paul Signac & the neo-impressionists

Was trying to recall Georges Seurat's  name when I was pointed to Paul Signac.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Signac


By deconstructing painting (and portraying things with dots or points) he helped set the direction for neo-impressionsists as well as dot-matrix and ink jet printers, perhaps?


I particularly like the following image for its highly stylised background that reminds me of modern graphic design.

Artist	Paul Signac (1863–1935)
Title	Deutsch: Portrait Félix Fénéon English: Portrait of Félix Fénéon
Date	1890
Medium	oil on canvas, enamel of a rhythmic background of measures and angles, shades and colors
Dimensions	73.5 x 92.5 cm
Current location	Museum of Modern Art

Breaking rules 2: Pollock

When I thought about breaking the rules, Jackson Pollock came to mind. Sure, there were the impressionists from the 19th century that were moving away from the traditional style of painting, but nobody was quite as thorough as Pollock at breaking ALL the rules of painting.


"By the mid 1940s, Jackson Pollock introduced his famous 'drip paintings', which represent one of the most original bodies of work of the century, and forever altered the course of American art. At times the new art forms could suggest the life-force in nature itself, at others they could evoke man's entrapment - in the body, in the anxious mind, and in the newly frightening modern world."

Personally, I feel that there is some similarities between his creative process and that of Chinese ink works, for his works are, as he puts it,

"Energy and motion made visible - memories arrested in space." Jackson Pollock

 Convergence, 1952, 93.5 inches by 155 inches (237.49 by 393.7 cm),  Oil on canvas

http://www.jackson-pollock.org/convergence.jsp#prettyPhoto
http://www.albrightknox.org/collection/collection-highlights/piece:pollock-convergence/

Breaking rules 1: HDB

 

The HDB apartment blocks has become an icon of Singapore. It's the result and testament to one of the most successful public housing policies in the world. The void deck is its most distinctive feature.

 In the past, HDB apartments are made of bricks - red bricks, laid one over another - but now, prefabricated walls come from factories. Many like to compare the new apartments to the old ones. Explaining that the old types give its inhabitants a sturdier feel - especially if one didn't watch cranes hoist concrete slabs to be joined together like lego toy bricks in the estate facing your windows.

Oh but isn't it a marvel of human engineering? It resolves problems like land shortage and rising labour costs with new technology.

Good design solves problems.

And which design rules did it break?

1. I think all over the world, except in Singapore, and some mega cities, highrise buildings were not usually associated with cheap, public housing, as they tend to be more expensive to build.

2. The Void Deck - why did who decide that the first level of all the apartment blocks be left empty. It seems intuitively not right to balance a tall and heavy building on just a bunch of sticks - other than if one refers to the kampong houses that were built on stilts.

Bamboo leaves

A view from beneath. Bamboo plants by the fence of a private estate. I was outside the gate.
Local bamboos tend to be bushy instead of wispy like those in temperate countries.

Nature has good designs. It grew more leaves to adapt to our humidity and climate.