Aakash Nihalani’s Tape Art. Duct Tape Spider Web. Packing tape has gotten MacGyver out of many a jam, but he never managed to make an entire home out of the stuff. So he could probably learn something from Viennese/Croatian design collective For Use/Numen. The team uses nothing but packing tape to create huge, self-supporting cocoons that visitors could climb inside and explore. Installed three times in the past year, the next deployment will be next week from June 9–13 at DMY Berlin's International Design Fair, which is now in its 8th year.
The installations, which look like the work of horrifyingly large arachnids, grew in scale and scope as the year progressed, first deployed inside a small Croatian gallery, then an abandoned attic during October’s Vienna Design Week. At the last installation inside Odeon, a former stock exchange building in Vienna, the group used nearly 117,000 feet and 100 pounds of tape. 651_65528_do-ho-suh.jpg (JPEG Image, 599x480 pixels) Pic of the Day: Press-On Nails Art. In her Peacocks series artist Laurel Roth, a former park ranger, uses fake fingernails, nail polish, barrettes, false eyelashes, and Swarovski crystals as her medium.
“My work juxtaposes traditional craft and artisanal techniques with non-traditional materials to examine mankind’s drive to modify itself as well as its environment,” she explains. “By playing with the convergence of biology and product design to create new cultural artifacts, I try to question social constructions of need, design, and individual desire.” Click through to view more pretty peacocks. Beholder, 2010. Beholder (detail), 2010. Beloved (detail), 2007. [via Neatorama] Bowls - tertium non data. Artful Jellyfish-like Bowls From Upcycled Plastic PET Bottles (Photos) Photos: Gülnur Özdağlar Plastic bottles -- that environmental bane of a disposable, modern society -- can be both an abundant form of pollution in waterways and oceans, as well as a materials source for mind-boggling art. In the skillful hands of Turkish architect and upcycling designer Gülnur Özdağlar the unremarkable PET plastic bottle is transformed into gorgeously diaphanous and functional objects like bowls and jewelry.
Using simple tools like a candle, scissors and a soldering iron, Özdağlar upcycles bottles into a bewildering range of ephemeral accessories that under the light, look like fantastical, tentacled sea creatures or little undersea treasures. So from this: ... to this: That's pretty neat! Alchemy of upcyclingAs TreeHugger Lloyd has mentioned before about how 'redesign', not recycling, will be the wave of the future, Özdağlar asserts that large-scale recycling is not the solution, rather ... the real solution is "upcycling" rather than plain recycling.