Repurposed Art: The Second Life of Cardboard

The alter egos of discarded cardboard, what Edvard Munch has to do with recycling, and the only violin Itzhak Perlman can’t play.

Today, we’re looking at a ubiquitous and often overlooked material — cardboard — and fresh ways of breathing new life into it beyond the obvious call for recycling. Because reusing is great, but repurposing into something that makes a bigger cultural contribution, well, that’s immeasurably better.

MARK LANGAN CORRUGATED ART

Most of us see corrugated paper as a shameful piece of packaging waste, begging to be recycled — if we pay attention to it in the first place, that is. But for artist Mark Langan, it is the proverbial canvas for a truly unique kind of art.

Mark makes Corrugated Art — a celebration of “the unique properties of a highly visible manufactured product” by creatively repurposing it into fully recyclable artwork.

Mark’s commercial work includes a number of corporate logos. Some, of course, are more appropriate than others — Packaging Company of America is a no-brainer, but we fail to see how the sustainability message fits with the bottled water industry, easily among the world’s least sustainable.

We’re big fans of repurposing here — both physically, as a way to minimize waste, and conceptually, as a challenge to conceive of the ordinary in a an extraordinarily novel way. So go ahead and explore Mark’s work — you’ll never look at cardboard the same way again.

CHRIS GILMOUR SCULPTURE

The work of British artist Chris Gilmour isn’t merely about giving old materials new life — it’s about provoking amazement and surprise and a new understanding of everyday reality.

Gilmour makes life-sized sculptures made out of packaging cardboard. But as immaculate as his craftsmanship is, his art transcends the realm of craft — it’s a commentary on the process of deconstruction and construction, an aesthetic and conceptual narrative about the routines of daily life, an exploration of the often thin line between reality and unreality.

Gilmour’s work has progressed from objects that capture the emotion and memory of first-hand experiences — a bicycle, a typewriter, a piano — to pieces of broader cultural context.

Explore Chris Gilmour‘s work and process — his sculptures are a true testament to art’s transformative power in both material and mind, inspiring new ways of thinking through new ways of doing.

CARDBOARD DESIGN

Simply-named American company Cardboard Design offers all kinds of cardboard-made castles, forts, rockets, playhouses, dollhouses, teepees, dens, chairs and pods — play-therapy for kids being nursed on the sustainable lifestyle from birth. Great already. But beyond the they also have something called liquid cardboard — a line of products that move freely from one shape to another.

Each item is an absolute chameleon, with the capacity to transform into anything from a vase to a bowl to a candle holder to a stress toy — creative clay to be molded solely by your imagination.

We also love Cardboard Design‘s “Cardboard Speaks” guerrilla campaign — a quirky effort aimed at making passers-by question the mundane material and toy with the prospect of its second life.

Here’s to looking at the ordinary and envisioning the extraordinary — even if it’s “mere” cardboard we’re looking at.

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Similarities: Because It’s All Been Done

What Einstein has to do with copyright, where indie bands get their concert posters, and why there’s no such thing as creativity.

“Everything’s been done.”

Or so goes the adage drilled into every budding art director from the start. Now, we have proof, thanks to Similarities — a Flickr set that pits pairs of similar images against each other, exposing their striking aesthetic and conceptual similarity.

Substantiating Einstein’s bold contention that “the secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources,” Similarities takes pairs of cultural artifacts, often separated by decades, and exposes anything from well-meaning homages to blatant rip-offs to the unfortunate overlaps of equally twisted minds.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that Similarities isn’t out to point the finger at the potential (and often clear) theft of ideas — rather, it’s there to shed light on the creative process, to illustrate something we very much believe here at Brain Pickings: That creativity is simply the sum total of your mental resources, the catalog of ideas you’ve accumulated over the years by being alive and alert and attentive to the outside world.

So when you explore Similarities, challenge yourself to question the subconscious influences and stealthy inspiration that creep into your own creative output. What you find may surprise you.

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TEDify: Ideas Worth Connecting

Connecting the cultural dots one 65-second audio-visual experiment at a time.

There’s no secret we’re huge TED fans over here. Today, we’re excited to announce a pet project of our very own, paying tribute to TED — TEDify.org, an audio-visual experiment connecting the dots between TED talks to make those bigger social and cultural points.

The first episode deals with the relationship between three of today’s most culturally relevant issues: The role of design, the idea of sustainability, and our collective capacity for change.

So if you’re a fellow TED aficionado, or in the very least fascinated by the world of brilliant ideas — which, by way of being here in the first place, you most likely are — see what all the fuss is about.

And if you find the project the least bit compelling, please do pass it along — stumble it, re-tweet this, send smoke signals — and leave a comment on TEDify. We’ll very much appreciate it.

TEDify.org

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