Christopher Schwarz at Lost Art Press:

For at least the 12th time this month I’ve looked at the work on my bench and found that the odder it looks, the better.

I’m building a near-replica of a chair on display at St Fagans National Museum of History, and replica work is not usually my bag (or it hasn’t been for a long, long time). At every turn, this chair does the opposite of what I would do if it were my design. But I vowed to stick as close to the original as possible.

Why am I doing this? To attempt get inside the head of the original Welsh maker and perhaps learn something.

Just an excelent motion artist having fun:

Dito Von Tease:

In Classicool the subjects of the paintings abandon their classical pose by literally taking the canvas to “paint themselves”.

Via BruceS.

Anny Shaw at The Art Newspaper:

Girl with a Balloon (2006) was the final lot of the night, and just as the canvas hammered at £860,000, or £1.04m with fees—just above his auction record in pounds achieved in 2008—an alarm was triggered inside the work of art. Onlookers turned just in time to see the canvas slip through its faux-gilt frame and be shredded into pieces.

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Going, going, gone…

A post shared by Banksy (@banksy) on Oct 5, 2018 at 6:45pm PDT

Christopher Schwarz at Lost Art Press:

Whenever I finish an important project, I feel I should give a cheesy “acceptance speech” like you see for awards programs (“I’d like to thank all the world’s mentally defective sea turtles…”). Though my speech (said quietly to myself) always thanks certain tools and fellow woodworkers.

Were I a wanker, I would post photos of my latest chair and say things like: Check my new design, brh. Then a series of acronyms – FISKET and YAMLO. Then the hashtags – #gravycouncil #billyraycoochierash #sponsored.

But that’s not fair. Every piece of furniture is the culmination of the designer’s experiences, influences and previous work. We’re just the blender that takes these ingredients and frapps the frothy result. And so I try to acknowledge these influences whenever possible.

So many good things here. A random sampling:

Łukasz Uczkiewicz:

Brendan Gaffney at Lost Art Press:

When I was a kid, my family had a wide selection of “bathroom books.” These were books that had been taken down from the shelves on a whim and left behind on the shelf above the toilet, either because their contents were intriguing or seemed appropriate for a brief perusal. I remember a manual on grading gravel roads, a book of palindromes and, most memorably, one called “The Art of Chindogu.” Chindogu, as I learned over many short reading sessions, is the Japanese art of the unuseless (yes, unuseless) invention. These creations either fulfilled a need or solved a problem, with the catch that the solution was often overbuilt, silly looking or impractical.

What I grew to like about chindogu was the enthusiasm and professionalism with which the wacky, hyper-specialized or odd inventions were pursued by their inventors. Each one was (somewhat) professionally manufactured and photographed, despite being prototypes that were never meant to be sold. They seem like a byproduct of the design process – sometimes, pursuing something niche, unprofitable or outlandish can teach us a lot about our work that doesn’t fall to such an extreme.

Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF), the Greek representative in the international digital arts scene, returns for its 14th edition

Via BruceS.

Masahiro Kikuno is a master craftsman who belongs to an exclusive international group of independent watchmakers. These consummate artists create timepieces that reflect their deepest ideals, with no connection to commercial watch manufacturers.

Via Marcus Trimble

Cecelia Condit:

Also on Vimio. Her website

Gerco de Ruijter:

See also http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/gerco-de-ruijter-grid-corrections-highways-driving-wichita

And his amazing past project Cropped:

Lexi Pandell at Wired:

It’s hard to explain Poppy to the uninitiated. But I’m going to try.

Let’s start with the edge of the Poppy rabbit hole: You see a woman in a YouTube video. She is blond and petite with the kind of Bambi-sized brown eyes you rarely encounter in real life. She seems to be in her late teens or early twenties, though her pastel clothing and soft voice are much more childlike.

Maybe you start with “I’m Poppy,” a video where she repeats that phrase over and over in different inflections for 10 minutes. That’s right. Ten minutes. She seems, by turns, bored, curious, and sweet. As it continues, you notice that her voice does not quite match the movement of her lips; it’s delayed just a beat.

You watch more. There’s a video of her interviewing a basil plant.

And two of her reading out loud from the Bible. In one, her nose spontaneously starts bleeding. All of her videos are like this: unsettling, repetitive, sparse. Imagine anime mixed with a healthy heap of David Lynch, a dash of Ariana Grande, and one stick of bubblegum.

I discovered a new part of the internet today:

Gonwild is a place for closed, Euclidean Geometric shapes to exchange their nth terms for karma; showing off their edges in a comfortable environment without pressure.

Dave at Bees and Bombs is pretty great:

and not so gemetric, but very artistic:

World Press Photo 2017, a must read as always.

General News, First Prize, Singles—Offensive On Mosul: Iraqi Special Operations Forces search houses of Gogjali, an eastern district of Mosul, looking for Daesh members, equipment, and evidence on November 2, 2016. The Iraqi Special Operations Forces, also known as the Golden Division, is the Iraqi unit that leads the fight against the Islamic State with the support of the airstrikes of the Coalition Forces. They were the first forces to enter the Islamic State-held city of Mosul in November of 2016.

Laurent Van der Stockt / Getty Reportage for Le Monde

And the series on Iran is great.