Brain Pickings

ComplexCity: Visualizing the Hidden Patterns of Urbanity

Warholian city maps, or what a Parisian lover has to do with urban infrastructure.

Cities are living organisms. And their veins — the interconnected streets and walkways and alleys — are what keep the city’s vitality in flux. Each city has a different “circulatory system,” a different flow of its livelihood, a unique pattern that holds its cultural DNA.

In ComplexCity, Korean artist Lee Jang Sub explores the concealed aesthetic formed by the infrastructure of the city and its evolution across time.

Although the project started in the artist’s hometown of Seoul, he has since dissected the street patterns of other global cultural epicenters.

Something intangible about the shape and color of each pattern seems to capture an incredibly authentic piece of the city’s vibe and uniqueness — the rose bushes of Florence, the black lace on the stocking of a Parisian lover, the aristocratic iciness of winter in Moscow.

The ComplexCity patterns are available as wall prints and absolutely stunning lighting, made from backlit Korean rice paper — a fitting metaphor for the delicate natural texture of the city.

via Coudal

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Artist Spotlight: Stephan Zirwes Aerial Photography

Soccer field species, abstracting nature, and why you aren’t nearly as big as you think.

We’re aware we don’t go easy on superlatives here. But German photographer Stephan Zirwes is of the most deserving kind — words like incredible, phenomenal and fantastic are all but an understatement of his unlike-anything-else aerial magic.

One series, fields, explores the diverse “species” of soccer fields.

Leisure takes a look at the landscape of our free time.

Industry puts into perspective the vast scale of our man-made environment through geometric images that are aesthetically stunning, but somehow unsettling at the same time.

In construction, Zirwes takes a birds-eye look at the making of said man-made scale.

Leisure II presents a curious intersection of the above series — the unusual places people choose as oases of relaxation and recreation. If you look very closely at each image, you’ll find someone sprawling on a beach towel amidst the industrial clutter.

But perhaps our favorite series of his is titled snow — it abstracts nature with such simplicity and beauty that each image is more akin to a textured art canvas than a photograph.

There’s something incredibly humbling about seeing ourselves, from 10,000 feet, as the tiny figurines on a miniature set of life — a potent antidote to our grandeur-obsessed culture.

For the full Stephan Zirwes experience, we recommend fullscreen immersion.

via VSL

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Behind the Scenes of Project N.A.S.A.

From Jamaica to L.A., by way of the underground.

Five years in the making, the N.A.S.A. project — which stands for North America South America — made waves last year as one of the biggest creative collaborations between iconic “underground” artists across music, art, film and more.

One of N.A.S.A.’s most high-profile manifestations was the video for the track Money, featuring David Byrne, Chuck D, Ras Congo, Seu Jorge, and Z-Trip, directed by Syd Garon and Paul Griswold, and with artwork by none other than the now-iconic Shepard Fairey.

Today, we go behind the scenes, with background on the N.A.S.A. project and the unprecedented but excellent idea of pairing up music artists with animators.

N.A.S.A.’s first album, The Spirit of Apollo, is an equally impressive string of unlikely but brilliant collaborations, including Karen O, Method Man, Santogold, M.I.A., The Cool Kids, and many, many more – grab it now.