Adam Neate Free Art

This Friday Nov 14th, Adam Neate, a street artist renowned for giving away his work for free by leaving it on London's streets will distribute 1,000 silkscreen prints around the streets of London. During the night, teams will work from the outskirts of London towards the centre, leaving the prints as they go.

It's estimated that the collective worth of these prints is £1million, so if you walk past one of these prints, looking a little out of place, give it a second thought and pick it up, it might make Christmas all the merrier!

Onedotzero at the BFI

onedotzero_adventures in motion, london 14-16 nov from onedotzero on Vimeo.

A new series of events at the BFI - Onedotzero - Adventures in Motion - 14th Nov-16th Nov.

The blurb from the BFI site gives us an idea of what to expect:

the festival showcases a tantalising mix of the brightest up-and-coming talents alongside world-leading creative luminaries; an international array of creators who stretch ideas of motion entertainment, where code clashes with hand crafted, street art tussles with technology and new modes of storytelling are unleashed from the small screen to the BFI IMAX. all underpinned by a theme of citystates, a creative inquiry into the idea of how we live in the modern metropolis.

And best of all, it's FREE

Under Scan at Trafalgar Square

Next week the Trafalgar Square North Terrace will be covered in the world's largest interactive video installation. It's going to cover an area over 2000m squared. Two projectors will cover the area with over 100,000 rays of light so that anyone who walks through the space. As a person enters the area they will be detected by a camera and tracking system and a series of video portraits will be projected onto their shadows. It's going to make for some interesting photos I think, I'll be sure to take some and they will be uploaded here next week. The Under Scan project is designed by electronic artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

A concept sketch is shown above and below is a photo of the installation in action

The Photographic Adventures of Nick Turpin

Here's an example of a brand having a good online idea to promote one of it's products only to be let down by a poorly laid out and frustrating website.

Samsung sent renowned street photographer Nick Turpin around Europe with their new 8 megapixel cameraphone. His mission was clear and simple, to take the best photos he could using the Samsung phone. Visitors to the website suggest the themes that Nick must focus on during his travels. These range from "Beer" to "Space" to "Sticker" and "Danger".

The site is well linked, Nick has a Twitter page, a Flickr gallery and you can see where he is on Google via GPS and the associated pages work well. But the microsite itself looks cheap and is annoying to navigate. It's a shame, because the quality of the photos and the quality of the idea is high,but it's let down by the microsite. It could have followed a much better formula, as shown in a website like this - put together by an amateur photographer. Anyway here's some examples of how Samsung have used various platforms to spread the message.

Reverse Graffiti

Reverse Graffiti

Where graffiti is often viewed as making marks on otherwise "clean" surfaces, reverse graffiti involves cleaning previously dirty wall with high pressure hoses in order to make a picture. This flips our usual ideas about the artform, highlighting how dirty some of our surroundings really are. The examples above come from road tunnels which are covered in layers of grime.

Reminded of the Power of Black and White

Having a browse through Flickr and thought I would post a few of my recent faves. I could spend hours on that site, the quality of photography from amateur photographers is outstanding. The three I have posted above were taken in Beijing and Shanghai by travelight and sakura love. It would be hard to find better examples of where black and white photography can work than the two above. As England gets colder and darker by the day as we push into winter, I can see myself turning to a spot of the old black and white photography!

Barack Coverage in China

Couldn't resist a quick China related Obama post. The story was front page new for most national media. I found this picture on a good blog called 56minus1, written by a fellow who takes a look at underground China and youth culture, especially things like Neocha and The Shanghai Beat. His videos have also appeared on Danwei.

(The original image comes from Danwei)