If you haven’t already listened to any of the TED Conference presentations, I encourage you to hop over to TED.com and check them out.  I watched quite a few and all of them were quite excellent and engaging. There are talks about mushrooms to the intelligence of crows (I love crows), so I’m certain there is something in there for everyone.

Here are a few of my favorites as they relate to the “arts”…

Art

Siegfried Woldhek: Shows how he found the true face of Leonardo
Leonardo revealed… ’nuff said.

Ron Eglash: On African fractals
I love Fractal Generators: Oxidizer (mac), Apophysis (pc). Dont let those sites fool you either, Check out the programs. I never really understood all of the math behind them, until Eglash walked through the process. Very cool to see the equation based African villages.

Chris Jordan: Pictures some shocking stats
Scary stuff.

Sculpture/Engineering

Theo Jansen: Creates new creatures
Magnificent creatures. The thought behind these is so great. I would like to see someone animate a horde of these things marching into battle against man. These critters would actually be fun to procedurally rig in 3D, so that they could just get pushed along an axis and fully animate. One of these days…

There is only one fault in his plan to set these things loose on the beaches. Kids will want to ride them, throw rocks, break off limbs, or light them on fire, yah know… kid stuff.

Arthur Ganson: Makes moving sculpture
He shows his intense moving sculptures, my favorite being the walking man, but the exploding chair is also quite beautiful. Art and engineering collide.

Design

Ross Lovegrove: Shares organic designs
I look to the elegance of nature for a lot of things. The thought of nature being optimized was of particular interest. I have looked at this for a little while and Lovegrove presents a lot of great references to micro-structures that I really didn’t look into much before.

The form to that water bottle is exceptional as well. Great stuff.

Architecture

Moshie Safdie: On building uniqueness
Even though this one is on architecture, it really got me thinking on abstract concepts, and reinforcement on approaching each endeavor like you are doing it for the first time. When you get into the “grind” of things, it just comes as second nature or formulaic to follow a thought process. In doing that, there is the chance that you may miss a greater opportunity for exploration. Be unconventional.

Norman Foster: Green Agenda
This is a longer speech, clocking in at 32 minutes…

Playing Sim City a bit growing up probably fueled a lot of my interest in architecture and over all space planning. I had sketchbooks filled with concept houses, citygrids, floorplans, down to my attempts at a 1 room multiuse house/space (something amazingly cost efficient).

This struck a nerve (good nerve) with me, when he says “These are the new cathedrals”, because I have had the same conversations with friends about where are sense of architecture is going. Stripmalls and Wal-Mart megacenters don’t exactly paint an awe inspired gaze on your face. He goes on to say that the new airports and public buildings are taking the position for architectural experience. For the most part, it is a bit depressing to see a lot of the old styles go by the wayside, but as materials, needs, and styles change we will move forward.

Also, here is one that doesn’t relate to the Arts because he is too awesome to not include…

Stephen Hawking: Asks big questions about the universe

There are new speeches added all the time, so there is plenty to see.
Enjoy.

I had a chance to stop out to Future Tenant tonight for Dr. Sketchy Pittsburgh. Its headed up by Joe Wos curator of the Toonseum and this local installment is a part of the greater Dr. Sketchy Anti-Art School.

It was a pretty great time, really my first time figure drawing since… High School (Which accounted to all of 2 sketches). While I have drawn for quite a few years, I have mainly drawn from imagination or nature, lots of trees… birds, bees, that sort of thing. While drawing males without reference or monsters comes naturally to me, the female form is less tangible. In the past I have found myself turning every reference picture into a form of androgyny. I let it rest at that for many years, but I feel it is time to conquer my inept scribblings of the opposite sex…

Featuring the fashion stylings of Vontinka, here are a few of my renderings from the evening…

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While visiting Norway, I stumbled across a book whose face captured me…

The piece was “Limbo”, by Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum… whose name is a little hard to forget, especially after seeing his work.

As you burrow through his gallery, you may stumble on a few pieces which are a little “odd” (sorry),  but every single one is beautiful. The dark alien feel sucks you right into the paintings and the ethereal, ghostly  appearance haunt you. Personally I found his “Void” series to be my favorite, while the “Lack of Darkness” series is less dark (go fig), yet just as distant.

His work was also referenced in the y2k film “The Cell”. The filmmakers cut Nerdrum’s “Dawn” into a pretty eerie scene…

For more, visit his site at www.nerdrum.com

I recently watched the HBO Documentary “The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale”. It was a very good documentary, and it opened me up to his work. Chuck has a very interesting style, and I personally was drawn toward a lot of his Scaboda pieces. They are the pieces that were painted by his alter-ego which can be easily identified by a black dot as the signature. A few of the favorites that I saw in the documentary, I wasn’t able to locate on his gallery, but there is quite a cross section of his work within.

Visit his site at www.chuckconnelly.com

Below are a few to whet your appetite. Enjoy!

“Trojan Rocking Horse”

“Artist and Model”

“Gold City”

I visited the Ron Mueck exhibit at the Warhol last night with the local Arthouse Meetup Group. I had a great time talking with the local members and touring the work.

Mueck has a real command of his craft. It was interesting to see the process in an informational video. He seemed almost as alien as his work, speaking just about as much. I went in liking “Mask II”, a self portrait, but I left with my favorite piece being “Wild Man”. It almost felt as I crouched down and examined his feet that the giant man would hop up and give me a non too gentle kick to the teeth.

The “Spooning Couple” was also quite impacting along with any of the smaller works. The level of detail on such a small area was intense.

Examining all of the pieces, I could see a resemblance between all the pieces of the artist himself. The depth of the eyes were all very akin.

There were seven works in total that were shown: “In Bed”, “A Girl”, “Wild Man”, “Spooning Couple”, “Man in a Boat”, “Mask II” and “Mask III”.

His work is a must see, cameras cannot capture the mood of his work… Truly impressive work.