Through the lovely blog Today and Tomorrow, I stumbled upon these French art-pranksters, prank-artists, guerrilla-dudes called  Encastrable (loose translation: built-in, I think).

This French duo (Antoine Lejolivet and Paul Souviron) uses street-art-type techniques and applies them to the über-dull world of DIY shops and supermarkets. Just using items that are on the shelves and without permission, they create these ephemeral installations that turn the supermarket into an artistic space. Nice. Funny. Critical.

Also, for some reason that reminds me of a Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder ) quote I read this morning: “Creativity is a renewable source.”
It’s a lovely day.

More inventive stuff with square boxes.
To finish off the week some pure eye-candy, by animation duo Ubik.
Nothing more. Just to sooth your souls. 
It’s a stunning animation made for Motionographer’s recent F5 showcase festival.

I like street art. Bumping into cool, beautiful, silly interventions always makes me smile. The fact that someone uses the world around us as a canvas just, you know, is great.
Mmmm, feels like it’s hangover Friday today.

Anyway, this one would definitely make me stop if I saw it. German artist Jan Vormann uses Lego blocks to fill up cracks and holes in walls. Dispatchwork, he calls it.
He’s done it in Italy and Israel before, but his latest contructions are set in Berlin. 

Photo by Kathleen Waak

Here’s a cute little idea.
Finnish animation studio Anima Boutique have developed a series of episodes called The Guys. They get people to send in their home videos, which they re-interpret, import their animated characters (The Guys) into the scenes and re-publish on their website. 
They’re all short, they’re all silly, so they all have potential to become your daily 10 seconds of nonsense.  On your mobile of course .

David Lynch embraces the internet yet again. On June 1 the director/artist will launch Interview Project,  a website that will release a series of 3-5 minute portraits of people that his crews met on a 20,000 mile road-trip round America. 
Watch the trailer and Lynch’s own little Lynch-style plug on the Interview Project website. Entertainment Weekly also has a preview of the first episode.

Would have been great if Lynch himself had interviewed all these people; the extraordinary meets the ordinary meets the extraordinary. Still, this looks like a nice piece of human content being dripfed into our digital brains over the course of a year.

Here’s a great idea that breathes new life into the struggling format of the tv commercial. Get your audience to make it.
Not some competition where you ask people to create the whole film. That has been done before and generally only appeals to the more hardcore creatives. But get the public to submit small bits and pieces, so everyone can easily participate and the result is a collaborative effort. 

Belgian mobile provider Proximus are making a stop-motion tv commercial based on photos that people have uploaded. Not just any pictures; people get clear guidelines. Currently they’re running an animated storyboard as a tv ad, pointing people to a website where they can upload their pictures to match specific frames of the storyboard.

Genius! Lots of fun! Immediate result for the people who participate! A very well executed website. Very little brand pushing going on there. 
And if they succeed, they’ll get the world record for most locations/actors/directors in a tv spot.

I was checking it over the weekend and people have already gone out of their way to shoot great stills. Check out the scene where people ‘fly’ around the little park. Someone had some fun with that. 

The only thing I’m missing is some form of identifying the names/locations of the people that are submitting. And maybe leave comments. That would have turned it even more into a social event.

Following on from the last post, here’s more French creativity in the video field:  a hilarious animation/music video called ‘Le Café’.
Made by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou. 
Music by Oldelaf.  

Time for that afternoon coffee.

Via @philtidy.

Check out this range of ‘brunch equipment’, made by London-based Dutch designer Ivo Vos. Neuroses have never been so much fun. 
The site has some other interesting design explorations too.  

Via Ryan Yeah.

Original approach to the crunch of all crunches.
Avant-garde composer Johannes Kreidler created an audio piece using data from the decline of the stock markets.
And the growth of the porn industry. 
Makes you smile on a Friday morning.

Aaron Koblin was part of the team that made that Radiohead-video-without-cameras and these are some amazing visualisations from US flights paths that he made. Check out the animation here.
Can we have that hanging on the wall please, with live updates, as a living painting?
In any case, another great Koblin example of technology meeting art. 

By the way: suggested by @bbhlabs, a rather inspiring bunch. Because yes, I got on Twitter (@leftrightcentre). When friends start sending you emails, saying “I wouldn’t have to email you this link, if you were on Twitter”, you know it’s beginning to make sense.
So far, so fun. I’m enjoying it and do think I’ll start finding it useful.