OZ | April 28th, 2008
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Last Friday ArTect.net was hacked. While I’ve managed to repair the database and remove offending code, due to ArTect’s extensive customization, the damage is extensive and some material (sidebar contents) is not recoverable.
Complicating matters, I’m overseas working on a film and have been for the last couple of months. Combined with other endeavours and non editorial tasks related to ArTect.net, I have been unable to devote the necessary time to writing new material. The hack was particularly ill-timed as I had alloted time this past weekend to add a few more articles and celebrate ArTect’s one year anniversary.
ArTect will be back up and running in its full capacity with new content and additional security measures as soon as possible. New site features are also in the works.
ArTect is also seeking to cover projects involving design & architecture in media. If you’d like to submit information regarding a project you’ve worked on, please use the contact option above.
Oliver Zeller
OZ | April 13th, 2008
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Considering the proliferation of sub compact low cost cars in fast growth countries, exemplified by TATA’s venture to create a car costing a mere two and half thousand dollars, this joke is that much more ingenious.
Thanks to Penn for sending this. Author unknown.
OZ | March 23rd, 2008
| Architecture, Books and Events |
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En route to Marrakech I finally began turning the pages of Erik Larson’s factual based bestseller, Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.
From Marrakech, the Pink City, to the White City… Eric Larson’s opus captures Chicago circa 1890’s during the building of an empire. An inside look at the nation’s leading architects developing the 1893 World’s Fair in record time amidst a turmoil marred process. While nearby a handsome doctor created his own fortune at the expense of others through swindling, murder and devious architecture.
The architecture of the World’s Fairs exuded grandeur and scale, eliciting awe and highlighting the march of progress whilst celebrating the accomplishments and ingenuity of humanity. The Chicago World’s Fair, a.k.a. the World’s Columbian Exposition, was no different. While spearheaded by Chicago based Burnham & Root, numerous architectural luminaries participated from Frederick Law Olmsted and Charles McKim to Richard Morris Hunt and Sophia Hayden Bennett, the first American woman to receive an architecture degree. It became known as the White City for its abundant use of white stucco and electrically lit promenades courtesy Tesla and Westinghouse.
Continue reading ‘The White City’
Perspective, the Journal of the Art Directors Guild & Scenic, Title and Graphic Artists has been made available for free download. The magazine offers a fascinating look at the set design and art direction behind film & television productions.
Considering the difficulty in attaining copies in the retail stream, the free availability of issues in PDF format is a welcome move by the Guild. Unlike its cousins, American Cinematographer or the quarterly visual effects journal Cinefex, the articles in Perspective are frequently written by the artistic practitioners themselves.
The most recent February/March issue includes features on The Spiderwick Chronicles, Into the Wild, Best Picture Oscar nominee There Will be Blood and winner No Country for Old Men, Fox reality series Hell’s Kitchen and the CBS series Moonlight. Also featured, 5D: The Future of Immersive Design written by Minority Report production designer Alex McDowell, production designer John Mutto and art director Judy Cosgrove.
Continue reading ‘Perspective’
OZ | February 25th, 2008
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Where architect Santiago Calatrava transformed sculpture into architecture, the principals of Beijing architecture firm MAD, Yansong Ma, Hayano Yosuke and Qun Dang, push the boundaries even further. In a previous life, founder Yansong Ma might have been a glassblower. Today, advances in engineering allow such designs as the Absolute World Towers (above) in Mississauga, Canada and the Guangzhou Twin-Tower (appended) to become reality.
Continue reading ‘Architecture with a Dash of MADness’
OZ | February 21st, 2008
| Advertising, Automotive and TV |
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Director Joseph Kosinski has unveiled two new Chevrolet commercials at his website, Baby and Clay Model.
Both feature a noteworthy congruency of poses & space. While Baby’s evolving protagonist finds herself surrounded by an industrial digital set built by Digital Domain, Clay Model was filmed at the Malibu Synagogue off Pacific Coast Highway with the final scene shot at the Irvine based Nikken Building. It’s fitting that Clay Model is accompanied by the impeccably selected Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Take Five. Kosinski has wrapped on three other Chevrolet commercials soon slated to debut.
Continue reading ‘New Image for Chevrolet’
OZ | February 21st, 2008
| Games |
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The fundamental strength of computer games resides in choice. The player’s ability to make decisions, to direct a course of action and effect a narrative or simulation is a remarkable and distinct quality of digital games that highlights the medium’s future potential.
Power of Choice offers the beginnings of a theoretical framework for computer game design and is a rare excursion beyond ArTect.net’s visual design focal point.
Continue reading ‘Power of Choice’
At the dawn of film in 1898, miniatures proved a vital special effects tool in recreating the sinking of the Battleship Maine during the Spanish-American War.
The following article offers a look at film miniature history from Metropolis to Titanic and its future in the CG age. Also featured, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, From the Earth to the Moon, Independence Day, Star Trek and Tora! Tora! Tora!. [Ed. Note: The proceeding article was originally written in 1998].
Download Realizing Epic Film Environments: Miniatures.
OZ | February 16th, 2008
| Products and TV |
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From the office of Dr. House to the interrogation room of the major case squad in Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and countless other television series, stands an iconic chair. Emeco’s classic 1006 Navy Side Chair. In production since 1944, the chair continues to gain popularity. Apparently it’s even a product of the twelve colonies, making a cameo in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series.
“Legend has it that Wilton Dinges, who founded Emeco in 1944, actually tossed a 1006 Navy Chair out the window of a six-story building. The result? A few minor scratches. Emeco’s 77-step patented construction process was invented to satisfy a military need for lightweight, corrosion-resistant equipment” for use on aircraft carriers, submarines, etc.
Continue reading ‘Television’s Most Favored Seat’
OZ | February 9th, 2008
| Architecture and Film |
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One wonders what influence the work of architect Antonio Gaudí (1852 - 1926) may have had if Adolf Loos had not jump started the modernist movement with Ornament and Crime. An essay that arguably marked the downfall of the Art Nouveau movement for which Gaudí has most commonly been associated with.
Granted, Art Nouveau’s time was destined to be short-lived. Its expensive cost was antithetical to the world’s burgeoning capitalistic industrial economies. Furthermore Gaudí’s designs were often polarizing, leading to the mistaken belief that he himself was the etymology behind the adjective gaudy.
His individualistic work, also influenced by nature and Gothic architecture, has made him one of the world’s most eternal architects. He also has the unique distinction of being the architect behind the longest under construction building in modernity. The Gaudí designed Sagrada Familia, a Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, began construction in 1882 and is slated for completion in 2026. As Gaudí once said, “My client is not in a hurry.”
On March 18th the Criterion Collection is releasing a “visual poem” of the architect’s work. A documentary by Oscar nominated director Hiroshi Teshigahara; further immortalizing the incredible architecture of Antonio Gaudí.
Continue reading ‘Antonio Gaudí Immortalized on Criterion DVD’