blog.kavefish

US Government Selects a New National Emblem

By kavefish | Filed Under Humor

NC State student gets 2 Girls 1 Cup ... on a license plate

By kavefish | Filed Under Humor

A North Carolina State University student recently purchased a customized NC license plate to commemorate one of the most recent and most disgusting viral videos on the Internet. The plate, which was originally opened and questioned by his mother, will soon be driving around the streets of Raleigh. While most people will not understand what this plate means, those who have seen the video will either chuckle at the sight or will shake their head as they realize that sometimes people have just gone too far.

source: The Wolf Web

College Entrance Exam Day in Kabul, Afghanistan

By kavefish | Filed Under Pictures

More than 1,800 perspective cadets rise for the playing of the Afghan National Anthem before the start of the Afghan College Entrance Exam for the Afghan National Army Academy, Kabul, Afghanistan, Oct 25. The perspective cadets here are hoping to be one of the approximately 300 chosen for the new freshman class. The exam makes up 80 percent of their final admissions score.

Also, the person who so perfectly aligned all those chairs deserves an award.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)
(source: U.S. Air Force, Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson)

Can you spot the differences?

By kavefish | Filed Under Humor

The guys over at CrazyMonkey Games have developed this beautiful, interactive version of "find the differences."

Carmen Sandiego Found!

By kavefish | Filed Under Pictures

After all these years, they finally found Carmen Sandiego. Waiting for a train in Washington, I wonder where she is going next?

Sing it, Rockapella!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The highest escalator in the world

By kavefish | Filed Under Pictures

The Umeda Sky Building is the seventh-tallest building in Osaka City, Japan, and one of the city's most recognizable landmarks. It consists of two 40-story towers that connect at their two uppermost stories, with bridges and an escalator crossing the wide atrium-like space in the center. The escalater ride is an event in itself as it feels like you are floating up into the sky. This is a cheap way to see the city, less than $10 USD to go up to the observation area.

Located in the Umeda district of Kita-ku, the building was originally conceived in 1988 as the "City of Air" project, which planned to create four interconnected towers in northern Osaka. Eventually, practical considerations brought the number of towers down to two.

The 173 m (568 ft) building was designed by Hiroshi Hara. It was constructed by Takenaka Corporation and was completed in 1993.

Ron Mueck: Hyper-Realist Sculptor

By kavefish | Filed Under Art

Ron Mueck is an Australian hyper-realist sculptor working in the UK. His incredible sculptures of creepy, grotesque, mottled skin and uncannily gigantic proportional figures have adorned the Millennium Dome as well as Charles Saatchi’s living room for a number of years now. It would be fair to say, Mueck’s one of the leading contemporary artists of today.

His early career was as a model maker and puppeteer for children’s television and films, notably the film “Labyrinth” staring Bowie. Mueck moved on to establish his own company in London, making photo-realistic props and animatronics for the advertising industry. This eventually led him to conclude, “photography pretty much destroys the physical presence of the original object”, and so he turned to fine art, in particular, sculpture.

In the early 1990s, still in his advertising days, Mueck was commissioned to make something highly realistic, and was wondering what material would do the trick.

Latex was the usual, but he wanted something harder, more precise. Luckily, he saw a little architectural decor on the wall of a boutique and inquired as to the nice, pink stuff’s nature. Fiberglass resin was the answer, and Mueck has made it his bronze and marble ever since.

It’s the attention to detail, technical brilliance and the (odd) scale of his figures that takes your breath away. His work, while proportionally correct, is either over or under-sized. For example, an enormous 4.5m crouching Boy, a 3 ft tall naked man, a 20 ft long newborn, a replica of his own head (seen above) 6 times its actual size. Consequently his hyper-realistic sculptures, while extraordinarily lifelike, challenge us by their odd scale. The "psychological confrontation for the viewer is to recognize and assimilate two contradictory realities". However, the real magical appeal of Mueck’s sculptures lie in the meticulous process, which begins with…

crafting of a series of small clay models - this enables him decide on figure positioning
Mueck then creates a series of drawings in different sizes - this enables him to make decisions about scale
Next, Mueck sculpts the figure in clay - this includes fine details of expression and skin texture
a mould of the sculpture is made using silicone (or in the case of larger works, fibreglass).
Mueck completes the process by meticulously painting (by hand) finer details (like veins and skin tones) on the surface, before finally sculpting the eyes, bringing his creations to life.

The artist is able to achieve a very high degree of realism in his figures, which, in turn, invites close inspection. For this reason, I’ve purposefully included some close-ups, alongside selected works by Mueck, see below..

Here is an interesting video describing Mueck's creative process (caution, some parts of video may be NSFW):

Perplexing Reflections

By kavefish | Filed Under Pictures

Check out this picture of Tokyo, taken from the inside of a skyscraper.

(click to enlarge)

Pictures from the sky

By kavefish | Filed Under Collections

These beautiful pictures were taken from higher altitudes. The source is unknown, except for a small watermark on the bottom of the pictures. If anyone knows anything about these incredible pictures, please let me know. Smaller pictures are displayed; click on them to view the full-size picture.

More of the Thousand Islands

By kavefish | Filed Under Collections

Over the past few months, I have made a couple of posts (link and link) about the Thousand Islands chain that straddles the United States / Canada border in the Saint Lawrence River as it emerges from the northeast corner of Lake Ontario. Here are a few more pictures of some of the larger and smaller islands of the chain, and the magnificent houses on them.

site

Site Sloagan

US Government Selects a New National Emblem

NC State student gets 2 Girls 1 Cup ... on a license plate

College Entrance Exam Day in Kabul, Afghanistan

Can you spot the differences?

Carmen Sandiego Found!

The highest escalator in the world

Ron Mueck: Hyper-Realist Sculptor

Perplexing Reflections

Pictures from the sky

More of the Thousand Islands

featured

files.kavefish.com

categories

advertisement

stay updated

new comments

resources

other blogs