Friday Finds 08.02.13

Jaime: Optical Illusion House

Argentine artist Leandro Erlich created this interactive optical illusion for the Barbican in London. An angled mirror reflects the facade of a faux terrace house laid out on the ground, enabling people to set up funny and sometimes alarming shots. Sound confusing? It is, kind of. But awesome! More info here.

Olivia: Dark Sky App

This beautifully designed app lets you know the precise minute in which it is going to storm, how severe it is, and when it is going to stop. 

Diana: Having a Face

With a simple addition of googly eyes, Finnish designer Lucas Zanotto has created an army of forest creatures—pareidolia at its finest. h/t The Fox Is Black

Megan: Marbelous Wood

"Marbelous Wood challenges the way we use wood in our built environment, where function and aesthetics work together in new ways. Pernille Snedker Hansen has repurposed an old marbling technique giving wood a supernatural, organic, colorful and vibrant pattern. The applied decoration engages in a dialogue with the natural growth rings of the underlying wood. Marbelous Wood reveals the mysteries in wood, exposing its story and the immense details embodied in nature." Talk about unique and beautiful!

Julia: City Map Poster by Jazzberry Blue

I came across these wonderful abstract city map posters by artist Jazzberry Blue and fell in love. The geometric patterns and bold colors would look great hung on any wall! 

Anna: Face-detecting "Portrait" Series

Shinseungback Kimyonghun is famous for creating "Cloud Face" a face-detecting algorithm software for clouds.  They've gone a bit further and applied the software to movies with a creepy result that combines all the recognizable faces in the film into one ghostly character.

Erika: Voice Tunnel

For the next three Saturdays, as a part of Summer Streets 2013 in New York, you can hoof it across the Park Avenue Tunnel (for the first time ever) and be a part of Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Voice Tunnel. The 1,400-foot-long tunnel will be outfitted with 360 theatrical spotlights that produce arches of light along the walls and ceiling. Walkers will be able to influence the intensity of each light by speaking into a special intercom at the tunnel’s center, which records their voice and then loops it. Louder speech will increase the lights’ brightness proportionally, resulting in a series of flashes throughout the tunnel. The voices will be broadcast on a series of loudspeakers synchronized with each light.

Kelsey: Architectural Hermit Crab Habitats

Japanese artist Aki Inomata started this intricate, intense project in 2009 wherein her crafted tiny, plastic habitats for hermit crabs. The house hats are influenced by the architecture of major cities—and apartment in Paris, the skyline of New York City, or a Japanese house—and are semi-transparent. With her (very funny) microenvironments, she relates the hermit crabs' physiological need to shed their habitats after a growth spurt to the restlessness of humans.

Eujin: Maria's Transformation from Metropolis (1927)

Today marks legendary director Fritz Lang's 37th year of passing (coincidentally sharing the date with fellow comrade Jean-Pierre Melville), so in memorium, relive arguably the Austrian director's most iconic scene featuring the German actress Brigitte Helm from his 1927 feature, Metropolis.

To see last week's picks, click her​e!