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Real Life Mowgli: Girl Who Grew Up in the African Wildlife

May 8th, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

Riding a five-ton elephant, whom she called ‘my brother’, chilling with a cheetah or hugging a giant bullfrog as if it were a Teddy bear. The childhood of a French girl Tippi Degre sounds more like a newer version of Mowgli, rather than something real. A white child, she was born in Namibia to French wildlife photographer parents, and grew up in Africa. Tippi spent her whole childhood playing with wild animals including lion cubs, a mongoose, a snake, a cheetah, baby zebra, giraffes and crocodiles.

The little girl saw nothing unusual about her company: “I don’t have friends here. Because I never see children. So the animals are my friends,” she once said.

Tippi is now 23 years old, and the only child to wildlife photographer parents Sylvie Robert and Alain Degre, who published her photos in a book called Tippi of Africa. “It was magical to be able to be free in this nature with this child. She was a very lucky little girl – she was born and raised until the age of 10 totally in the wild.” said Sylvie.

Website: tippi.org, Book: Tippi of Africa

Real Life Mowgli: Girl Who Grew Up in the African Wildlife originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 8, 2013.

Tags: Africa, African wildlife, Alain Degre, Animals, boredpanda, into the wild, Latest Posts, mowgli, photography, real life mowgli, Sylvie Robert, Tippi Degre, wild animals, wildlife photography

Created Equal: Photographer Explores Social Inequality in America

May 7th, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

Detroit-born photographer Mark Laita questions what it is in life that puts people, who were born equal, to follow completely different paths. His album Created Equa l is a a study of social and cultural clashes, as well as the influence of different background, schooling and upbringing. All diptychs in the book compare two people, who have some kind of a connection that ends up being the biggest contrast between them: for example, out-laws are put next to policemen, school drop-outs next to college graduates, and Amish teens are paired with punk teenagers.

Created Equal, Mark’s first non-commercial work, took him 8 years to complete and was published in 2010. “I photograph what I love about my country, which is the American. By that I mean the individual who is shaped from more than 200 years of liberty and independence mixed with all the successes and failures that America has experienced in its short life. So here is a collection of these creatures. Tragic and wonderful, great and ordinary, they stand proud and ready for scrutiny,” says Mark. Discover what “the American” is to this photographer!

Website: marklaita.net, Book: Created Equal

1. Company President / Janitor

2. Fitness Model / Heart Surgery Patient

3. Marine / War Veteran

4. Baptist Minister / Ku Klux Klan

5. Homeless Man / Real Estate Developer

6. Lingerie Model / Woman in Girdle

7. Gang Member / Mafioso

8. Astronaut / Alien Abductee

9. French Chef / Short Order Cook

10. Amish Teenagers / Punk Teenagers

See the rest of Created Equal: Photographer Explores Social Inequality in America

Tags: boredpanda, contrasts, Created Equal, diptychs, inequality, Latest Posts, Mark Laita, photography, portraits, social clashes, social differences

People’s Faces Recreated From the DNA Found In Chewing Gums and Cigarette Butts

May 6th, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

This may sound like a science fiction story, but American artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg recreates people’s faces from the DNA she finds on various objects tossed away in the streets. For Heather, an old chewing gum or a cigarette butt has the potential of turning into a 3D portrait of someone who used it and didn’t bother to look for a trash bin.

Heather extracts the DNA and studies certain regions of the genome that differs for every person. She then sends the results to a lab and gets back what are basically text files filled with sequences of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs, the nucleotides that compose DNA. Then Heather feeds this information into a custom computer program she wrote to parameterize a 3D model of a face to represent them. “For example gender, ancestry, eye color, hair color, freckles, lighter or darker skin, and certain facial features like nose width and distance between eyes are some of the features I am in the process of studying.” says the artist.

“How accurate are the portraits?” you may ask. Heather says “they will have similar traits and ancestry, but might look more like a possible cousin than a spitting image of the person themselves. The research on facial morphology is still in very early stages.”

Website: deweyhagborg.com, via: thisiscolossal

Sample 6

January 6, 2013 at 12:25pm; Wilson ave. and Stanhope St. Brooklyn, NY; MtDNA Haplogroup: D1 (Native American, South American); SRY Gene: present; Gender: Male; HERC2 Gene: AA; Eye Color: Brown

Sample 2

January 6, 2013 qt 12:15pm; 1381 Myrtle ave. Brooklyn, NY; MtDNA Haplogroup: H2a2a1 (Eastern European); SRY Gene: present; Gender: Male; HERC2 Gene: AA; Eye Color: Brown

Sample 4

Myrtle ave. and Himrod St. Brooklyn, NY; MtDNA Haplogroup: T2b (European); SRY Gene: absent; Gender: Female; HERC2 Gene: AA; Eye Color: Brown

Sample 7

33 Flatbush Ave. Brooklyn, NYMtDNA; Haplogroup: L1b (West African, African American); SRY Gene: present; Gender: Male; HERC2 Gene: AA; Eye Color: Brown

Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg With a Genetically Derived Self-Portrait

People’s Faces Recreated From the DNA Found In Chewing Gums and Cigarette Butts originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 6, 2013.

Tags: 3d portraits, boredpanda, DNA, DNA portraits, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Latest Posts, Science, Stranger Visions

High Speed Photographs of Liquids Tossed in Mid-Air by Manon Wethly

May 6th, 2013 by Ieva | No Comments | Filed in Design

Belgium-based photographer Manon Wethly creates the kind of art that only lives in her photographs: she tosses different containers with various liquids up in the air and captures the beautiful shapes they create. Calling her project the Flying Stuff, Manon already spilt a good deal of coffee, wine, juice, milk and other liquids in order to freeze their matter-of-seconds beauty and elegance. Besides, she’s mostly been doing it with her iPhone!

Manon is is driven by the thrill of not knowing what the final result will turn out to be: ”It is absolutely fascinating to see what kind of shape an object or liquid gets when it is ‘flying’. Clicking at exact the right second most often brings the most spectacular and surprising results. Most of them are shot with iPhone but I started to practise with bigger guns too,” she says. You’d probably want to clear the area when Manon is doing one of her photoshoots!

Website: instagram.com/manonwethly, via: junk-culture

High Speed Photographs of Liquids Tossed in Mid-Air by Manon Wethly originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 6, 2013.

Tags: boredpanda, drinks, Flying Stuff, high speed photography, Latest Posts, liquids, Manon Wethly, photography

This Week’s Top 5 User Submitted Stories #30

May 4th, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

If you have a story that’s interesting to more people than you and your mother – share it with everyone else! The best stories will be featured on BoredPanda.com home page and will have a chance to cure 10,000 people from boredom everyday.

This Week’s Top 5 User Submitted Stories #30 originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 4, 2013.

Tags: boredpanda, boredpanda.org, no-ads, Pandas Against Boredom, user submissions

Churchtanks: Sculptures of Churches Turned Into Tanks

May 3rd, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

Religion and war have always been mixing and closely related throughout history. Missouri-born artist Kris Kuksi took notice of this connection, repeating itself throughout history, and decided to unveil it in his Churchtanks sculpture series. By creating the juxtaposition between the classical world and the modern war gear, Kuksi transforms churches into tanks, blending the two structures smoothly and seamlessly.

As explained in his statement, creation of the sculptures is a “process that requires countless hours to assemble, collect, manipulate, cut, and re-shape thousands of individual parts, finally uniting them into an orchestral-like seamless cohesion that defines the historical rise and fall of civilization and envisions the possible future(s) of humanity.” Churchtanks thus represent the ability of art to fascinate and at the same time to raise awareness. Tell us your impressions in the comments!

Website: Kris Kuksi via: laughingsquid, booooooom

Churchtanks: Sculptures of Churches Turned Into Tanks originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 3, 2013.

Tags: Art, boredpanda, church sculptures, church tanks, churches, Churchtanks, house of worship, Kris Kuksi, Latest Posts, religion, Sculpting, Sculptures, tanks

World’s Largest Rubber Duck Comes to Hong Kong

May 2nd, 2013 by Ieva | No Comments | Filed in Design

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman goes big – so big, that it’s practically impossible to miss his artistic statements. His latest work is a 46 feet tall and 55 feet long inflatable rubber duck, which today arrived to Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and will stay there till June 9. Boldly called the Rubber Duck, this floating sculpture is described by Florentijn as a “very positive artistic statement that immediately connects people to their childhood”.

The world’s largest Rubber Duck has already been drawing the attention of the locals while being inflated in the shipyard in Tsing Yi. Even though this is the first time this floating sculpture has visited Hong Kong, it has already been to cities like m Auckland, Osaka, Sao Paolo and Sydney. As said in the official statement, “the Rubber Duck knows no frontiers, it doesn’t discriminate people and doesn’t have a political connotation.The friendly, floating Rubber Duck has healing properties: it can relieve mondial tensions as well as define them. The rubber duck is soft, friendly and suitable for all ages!”

This duck is a very typical example of Florentijn’s style, as he says he is usually inspired by ordinary every-day objects, such as paper boats or mass-produced toy figures. Besides, he never settles for less than “humour, sensation and maximum impact”, and the Rubber Duck has got to be the best illustration of that!

Website: apple.florentijnhofman.nl (via: mymodernmet)

World’s Largest Rubber Duck Comes to Hong Kong originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 2, 2013.

Tags: Art, biggest rubber duck, boredpanda, Florentijn Hofman, full-page, giant rubber duck, hong kong, installation, largest rubber duck, Latest Posts, rubber duck, Victoria Harbour, Weird

4 Sisters Take Their Photo Every Year For 36 Years

May 1st, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

Back 1975, American photographer Nicholas Nixon once took a photo of his wife Bebe and her three sisters, and they came up with an idea to make it an annual tradition. Since then, the Brown sisters took a photo every year till 2010. To make the series more coherent, the four sisters – Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie – always posed in the same order.

The series resulted as a time lapse of 36 years. The youngest of the sisters, Mimi, was only 15 in the first photograph, and the oldest one – Bebe – was 61 in the last one. Back when Nixon started taking the portraits, the Brown sisters were 15 to 25 years old. Even though the portraits may not be stunning from the artistic point of view, but they do touch your heart. Seeing how seasons, fashion and haircuts change throughout the series, one thing remains the same, and it’s the strong family bond the the four women share.

The series, titled The Brown Sisters, were even exhibited National Gallery of Art and the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and two complete sets were sold at the New York’s photography auctions. Nixon himself was at the time a professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art. This time laps even out-does the five friends, who’d take the same photo for 30 years, starting 1982. Well, what are you waiting for – start yours today!

Book: The Brown Sisters (via: 22words)

UPDATE: Unfortunately, photographer’s representative requested to remove the pictures. Luckily, you can find them in the archives of New York’s Museum of Modern art, Fraenkel Gallery or do a Google search. The Brown Sisters by Nicholas Nixon book is also available on Amazon.

4 Sisters Take Their Photo Every Year For 36 Years originally appeared on Bored Panda on May 1, 2013.

Tags: ageing, aging, Bebe Brown, before and after, boredpanda, family, family portraits, friendship, full-page, Heather Brown, Laurie Brown, Mimi Brown, Nicholas Nixon, now-and-then, photography, The Brown sisters, then and now, time, time-lapse

18 Brilliant Photo Manipulations by Erik Johansson

April 30th, 2013 by Tomas | No Comments | Filed in Design

We first wrote about Erik Johansson, a Swedish photographer and retoucher, 4 years ago, when he was still a computer engineering student. Even back them, despite lack of professional training in photography, his wildly creative photo manipulations would be a stand-out example of retouching.

Erik’s work has a two-fold effect: on the one hand, it’s completely unbelievable and reality-defying, while on the other hand the high-skilled retouching makes it look almost real. The photographer first develops an idea in his head before he sets out to make the pictures; he even models in some of them himself – yes, that’s the blond guy, distorting his face with his own fist!

Erik says he has been drawing for as long as he can remember – maybe influenced by his painter grandmother – but his first digital camera at the age of 15 opened up a whole new world for the guy: “Being used to drawing it felt quite strange to be done after capturing a photo, it wasn’t the process of creating something in the same way.” He picked up his interest for retouching while studying, and today is a prolific artist, working on both commissions and personal projects. Let his fantasy worlds absorb you!

Website: erikjohanssonphoto.com

Expecting Winter

Electric Guitar

Cut & Fold

Set Them Free

Groundbreaking

Arms Break, Vases Don’t

Fishy Island

Snow Cover

Face vs. Fist

Roadworker’s Coffee Break

Go Your Own Road

Vertical Turn Self-Actualization

Kaffeslump

Big Laundry Day

Stryktålig A Painting Too Real

Order Print

18 Brilliant Photo Manipulations by Erik Johansson originally appeared on Bored Panda on April 30, 2013.

Tags: Art, boredpanda, digital art, erik johansson, full-page, Latest Posts, photo manipulation, photo manipulations, photography, photoshop, photoshopping, retouching, surreal

16 Awesome Food Art Ideas

April 29th, 2013 by Lina | No Comments | Filed in Design

Every one who’s ever tried feeding a baby knows how important it is to make the food look nice and funny – especially if it’s broccoli or porridge… This is because the looks of your food constitutes a great part of the overall pleasure of eating. But if you manage to turn your noodles into Chewbacca, or can make a plate of Angry bird sandwiches, hardly anyone could say no to that!

To get your creative juices flowing, we made a list of 16 creative food art examples. Some of you will recognize the works of Hong Yi, the young Malaysian artist did an awesome 31 day food project where she was creating one beautiful piece of food art each day. However, you don’t have to be a professional artist to do this.

If you don’t know where to start, you came to the right place – these should leave you hungry enough to start cooking right away!

1. Chewbacca Noodles

Image credits: disposableaardvarksinc.blogspot.com

2. Hot Dog Mummies

food-art-31

food-art-31-2

Image credits: seakettle.com

3. Sleeping Rice Bear

Image credits: unknown

4. Eggregation

Image credits: scalvert

5. Hot “Dogs”

Image credits: taste-of-japan.blogspot.com

See the rest of 16 Awesome Food Art Ideas

Tags: Art, boredpanda, food, food art, food ideas, Latest Posts, Other