- todd hido
- sara hobbs
- mused
- artcoup
- city shrinker
- cowscapes
- a plat venture
- postcard polaroid
- flickrvision
- deleted images

previously on web zen:
- photo zen 2006 pt. 2
- photo zen 2006 pt. 1

Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

John Gaeta, the Oscar-winning special effects guru behind The Matrix trilogy and the forthcoming Speed Racer film, just told me about one of his favorite online hangouts: VRMAG. It's an online magazine about virtual reality in all its forms including, as John describes it, "interactive photography and explorable documentary art." Prematurely hyped during the cyberdelic 90s hysteria, virtual reality has actually progressed in amazing ways as an art form. VRMAG isn't just a technical publication for folks in the biz like Gaeta, but it's also an online gallery for some stunning VR experiences. The new issue features a look inside the closed zone of Chernobyl, Red Square, Mayan ruins, a pill's eye-view from a medicine bottle, the scene inside a washing machine, and many more articles and experiences. (Image above from Aldo Hoeben's "To Be In A Bubble Party At Sziget 2007.") Here's what John Gaeta says about VR MAG:

I have been inspired especially in the last couple years by the effort the magazine is making and have referenced many articles while making Speed Racer...which will be a nearly 100% GREEN SCREEN movie (like 300 and Sin City on crack) with many virtual sets created with HD QTVR locations...something that many VRMAG contributors are converging toward. I also think there is a new entertainment medium under way which will be manifested through some of the experiments reported by them.

Link (Thanks John Battelle for the intro!)

eBoy, the art collective that designed the Boing Boing logo, has created several styles of beautiful giftwrap, which you can purchase from the eBoy site. Link

This guy is asking you to send him pennies minted in 1968. He will add it to his collection of other 1968 pennies and put you name on the contributors' list. The current total is 9,887 pennies.

Won't you please help him in this worthy endeavor?

The 1968 penny collection began on September 27th, 1999 with just a single 1968 penny, and over the years it has steadily grown both in size and the number of contributors.

The goal of this website is to keep the collection growing indefinitely by soliciting 1968 pennies from as many people as possible. This is a group effort.

Everybody who contributes pennies to the 1968 penny collection will be featured on this website.

Quality and condition of pennies is unimportant, as all certifiable 1968 pennies (whether uncirculated & shiny, or well-worn & grimy) are accepted and added to the collection equally.

All pennies are 100% 1968 guaranteed, and this collection is never to be cashed in, as its value as a collector's item is greater than its monetary value.

Of the 4,858,503,583 pennies minted in 1968, an untold number have been forever lost to history, which is why it is important to save the remaining 1968 pennies NOW while they are still relatively easy to find. If every American donated just one 1968 penny, the collection would number in the hundreds of millions.

Link

Drawn! ran Meomi's fabulous designs for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots. They just need to add a 'frop pipe in that Yeti's mouth and all will be good.

Leave it to Canada to have a cryptozoological beastie like a sasquatch as its Olympic mascot. Earlier today Vancouver 2010 unveiled their Olympic and Paralympic mascots: Quatchi the Sasquatch, Miga the Sea Bear, and Sumi the Thunderbird.

Link (Thanks, Scott!)

Turkish-born artist Pinar Yolacan, who is based in Brooklyn, is best known for her portraits of ladies wearing clothes fashioned from meat parts (tripe, guts, assorted offal). She has a new show opening today at New York's Rivington Arms gallery. Snip from a Style.com feature:

This time around, the women are Afro-Brazilian, dressed in the style of the Portuguese colonizers, and the organ in question is the placenta of cows. That sounds repulsive, but like Yolacan's earlier photographs, these have a strange and haunting beauty.

She explains why meat is her medium in the Style.com interview...

How, exactly, do you make clothes from meat?

I make the clothes the morning of the shoot, so the meat doesn't rot. In Bahia, I froze it beforehand, so it wouldn't get smelly, because it's really hot. It's quite domestic, really—I have to buy meat, clean up, sew. For this series, I got the fabrics in local markets, and the meat, too. I try to accentuate each woman's skin tone and expression with the clothes; I take Polaroids of them when I first meet them, then I work from those.

Link. (thanks, Susannah Breslin)

Jason Hackenwerth creates massive surreal balloon sculptures that can take more than a week to complete. This bizarre organism was blown and twisted for a gala last year at the New Museum New York. Link to Jason Hackenwerth site, Link to photos of a Hackenwerth installation at a wedding party (Thanks, Carlo Longino!)

A friend sent this video of Maurício Ricardo cleverly drawing people and animals by starting out with naked body parts. Link

Cartoonist Johnny Ryan has an art exhibition this Friday, November 30 at Secret Headquarters.

HORRORSHOW features almost FIFTY brand new paintings inspired by a variety of whacked-out horror, cult and exploitation films. Malo Cantina will be providing a margarita bar, and we'll have movie theater-style treats like popcorn and candy on hand too. Hope to see you at the opening!

Shown here: one of the awesome "Baseball Furies" gang members from The Warriors. These guys never spoke a word throughout the entire movie. Link