This is colossal!

This is the most interesting and entertaining site I’ve come across in quite a while - thisiscolossal.com. Colossal presents art that is very close to my liking: modern, colorful, high tech, quirky, fun, beautiful. There’s just a lot of great stuff, day after day.

Colossal is the project of Christopher Jobson – based in Chicago. This is how he presents the site himself:

”I like to describe Colossal as a blog that explores the intersection of art, design, and physical craft. I enjoy artwork that is tactile, physical and non-digital in nature, especially sculptural work and installations that use impossible numbers of components, or sequences in a process. During the course of a week you’ll find roughly 30 posts on photography, design, animation, painting, installation art, architecture, drawing and street art. I share things that I feel are accessible to everyone, requiring little explanation or theory, so in that sense, I hope people not involved directly in the arts can also find this site engaging”.

Nature's design is dynamic

A couple of thoughts on biomimetics and on using nature as inspiration for design.

Usually, it’s about things, finished objects whose beautiful shape or super-smart functionality and construction was copied or inspired by nature. Velcro, shark skin swimsuits, adhesives based on Gecko feet…

But we rarely see design that mimics the dynamics in nature. The ability to adjust, to grow and evolve, to move, to heal, to disintegrate and compost. These would be interesting properties in our objects and systems.

Just noticed that the Club of Amsterdam is doing a workshop on “Social biomimicry”; that is, the ability of systems in nature to self organize swarms and flocking behavior, typically without central leadership.

It’s on February 23^rd. – I wish I could go.