Category Archives: Art/Craft

‘Girl With a Pearl Earring’ – Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s most-recognised artwork – was recently subjected to two years of detailed research which, while failing to shed light on the identity of the subject, has revealed all manner of hidden detail including eyelashes (only visible under a microscope) and the fact that the grey background is actually a green curtain.

The surface condition of the painting (which has been subject to multiple restorations over the years) was studied by researchers Emilien Leonhardt and Vincent Sabatier, of Hirox Europe using a custom-mounted microscope.

The resulting 10 billion pixel panoramic scan – a gigantic stitch of 9,100 individual microscopic photographs, is available here in 2D and 3D for your perusal.

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Finnish origami artist Juho Könkkölä spends around fifty hours scoring and folding a single 95cm² sheet of Wenzhou rice paper before he even begins sculpting the otherwise unbroken, uncut surface.

Using a combination of wet and dry origami techniques, he creates (among many other things) 28cm tall samurai warriors complete with plated armour, traditional helmet, and swords. Sez he:

There are several hundreds of steps to fold it from the square and there are probably thousands of individual folds

He talks more about his process here.

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‘Tabby Tyrant’: a new assemblage of myriad found items by ’postindustrialism Roccoco master’ Kris Kuksi (you may recall his extraordinary tank-mounted cathedral).

The Kansas-based artist  describes the themes of his sprawling, metallised friezes as:

…historical narratives, biblical subjects, animal worship, architecture, symbolic views on commerce and development, as well as human psychology and behaviour.

He talks more about his process here.

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The incoherent, unsettling but strangely familiar works of an AI programme ‘schooled’ in the street art style of Banksy. To wit

GANksy was born into the cloud in September 2020, then underwent a strenuous A.I. training regime using hundreds of street art photos for thousands of iterations to become the fully-formed artist we see today. All of GANksy’s works are original creations derived from its understanding of shape, form and texture. GANksy wants to be put into a robot body so it can spray-paint the entire planet.

Explore further, become confused and angered, buy prints, etc. here.

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