DUNNE & RABY

i recently watched gary hustwit's new(ish) film, objectified, which is a 90-minute documentary about industrial design. i would highly recommend it.

among the designers whom he interviewed for the film were dunne & raby, a pair of experimental designers based i london. their modus operandi is to use design as a means of intellectual exploration and discussion.

among the work of their discussed in the film was a series of hypothetical robots that they designed. one of the robots was an information storage unit. in order to access your information you would have to cradle the robot in your arms and stare into its electric eye for five minutes—the idea being that we don't exactly know the long-term effects of such a prolific cloud of information surrounding us at all times, so what if a technology existed that would require the user to have a "conversation" with it in order to achieve the desired result?

they also have a "product line" for people with irrational fears such as alien abduction and nuclear war.

anyway. i find their work to be interesting and worth at least a glance, so please—click here.

FOUND ITEMS 1

I found these items in our kitchen this morning.

A message taken down by one of our housemates. Although fairly straight-
forward, there is still something a little mysterious about those 7 words.

A map of the North and Central America, drawn from memory by one of our housemates . . . 

. . . and the accompanying map of South America.

NEW PHOTOS

so i've been experimenting a little bit lately with various features in photoshop—they're simple and basic, but effective. this came from what i can with an uncomfortable amount of cheesiness call a "personal discovery" about my desired style as far as photography is concerned. most often what i'm trying to communicate in photography is atmosphere, and it's hard to describe beyond that. here are some photos that i've been working on lately. i don't know if i'm through with tweaking the style yet, but i'm fairly happy with the results so far. unfortunately they're not super high quality so the full effect might not be there.

A cheese factory near where I live, built about two years ago. I was intrigued by how pristine is still is, there was something unreal about it—maybe a little bit sinister.

An outside wall at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. 

Also at the MIA. 

MIA again—that's MCAD in the background.

Field a few miles outside of Sioux Center, where I live.

This was taken this past summer in Winnipeg. The Queen was in town and a group of people were waiting outside the Lieutenant Governor's house for her to appear. It was a hot, hot day. I took several pictures of this group of people. 

 Wall of the Lieutenant Governor's house. 

JOSEF SCHULZ

i found this photographer via the iso50 blog. i'm not sure how to describe his work other than to say that it's sublimely beautiful but also frightening and challenging. please take a look.

iso50 also features a lot of really great music, in case you're interested.

here's a link to some of josef schulz's work.

WINTER 2009-10

Admittedly, I did post this image on my other blog last year, but I just came across it on my hard drive again and thought to myself that it was worth a second look.

Somewhat sadly, my wife and I no long live in this nice little house in Sioux Center—we moved this fall—but of the few images that I have of this house from this same angle this one is my favourite.

This one was taken just a couple of days after we returned to Sioux Center after being in Winnipeg for Christmas. While we were gone there was at least one big snow storm and we came home to discover that our entire property was a good 2 feet deep in snow and the pilot light in our furnace had gone out so it was, like, 35 degrees in our house the day that we got home. Not pleasant.

But this picture is.