I’m not going to claim to understand the process by which French duo Lucie & Simon captured these images of cities like Paris, Bejing, and New York without people (save for a single figure). It involves using a “neutral density filter that allows for extra-long exposures, which removes moving objects like people and cars.” How that works or what a “neutral density filter” is, I really cannot say, however, the images produced speak for themselves (and are of much higher resolution on their site.)

I lived in New York for a short time, years ago, and the effect of seeing it this empty is really stunning. The only time it ever came close to this when I was there was early in the morning, on my walk to work at 5:30 or so, and even then, it depended on the neighborhood I was walking through at the time and there were always a few cars. It’s eerie to see it looking so quiet.

A breathtaking combination of time lapse and 3D optical illusion by California-based multimedia artist Jeff Frost:

“Over 40,000 high resolution still images were shot on Canon DSLR cameras for this film. I roamed the deserts of California and Utah looking for abandoned structures in the same manner that my Grandpa, Alfred, explored the Four Corners area looking for ancient Native American dwellings. This film is dedicated to him.”

Via Amosborne / io9.

“Canon 60d, Canon digital rebel, Canon 5dII, shot as slow as 1 shot every 15 seconds and as fast as 6.5fps frames per second. Canon 90mm Tilt shift lens and a 17-35mm lens. Mumford Stepper Table and Time-machine for motion control.” (Via Ariana Osborne, thanks!)

This epic twenty-minute tilt shift video was shot at the gargantuan Burning Man festival earlier this year by James Cole, with additional motion-controlled time-lapse by Jason Phipps and Byron Mason. It’s a particularly vibrant window through which to observe the surreal bustle of Black Rock City. Whether you’re pro or anti-dubstep/techno, the accompanying music, provided by Elite Force and the DISTRIKT , feels wompingly apt. Fantastic editing.

Best viewed full screen!

Previously on Coilhouse:

• Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Tilt Shift
• The Tiny Tales of Slinkachu

Photo by Fred Kroh

Numen / For Use are an art and design collective who create organic, web-like structures from adhesive tape. Their temporary installations are large and stable enough for several adults to crawl through, and the effect is not unlike being trapped in a giant spider’s web.

After climbing up a step ladder, you find yourself suspended in a series of glistening caverns, the frosted plastic obscuring your view of the outside world.

Photo by Fred Kroh.

Their latest project, Tape Melbourne, took eight days to complete, with three artists and fifteen volunteers working nine hours every day. The exhibit used thirty kilometers of tape to build, with more tape to repair and fix the structure on a nightly basis.

The Numen / For Use website contains more examples of their work, including images and videos of the construction process. You can explore their newest installation at Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia for a few more days; from now through September 24th, 2011.

Photo courtesy of Federation Square

More photos of the installation after the jump. (Editor’s note: This is our cherished intern Connie Chen’s first blog post for Coilhouse. Thank you, Connie!)

Some stunning images by photographer Catherine Hyland from her China Series and Wonderland. Located outside Bejing, Wonderland was designed to be the largest theme park in Asia. Construction began in 1998, but was halted because its developers and the local farmers could not come to an agreement on the proposed 120 acres of land required to fulfill such a grandiose vision. What’s left is one of those seemingly post apocalyptic landscapes that photograph so well.

Her other photographs from China are equally as impressive, featuring stark, urban lanscapes. The images of giant, towering apartment blocks and crowded alleys, cast in the perpetual daylight of a vast metropolis, have an otherworldly quality to them. You can see more from both series after the jump.

When I was a child, I had an ongoing and masochistic addiction to scale models. That is to say, that while I enjoyed miniatures, mostly of the military variety, I mainly enjoyed them in the idealized, finished versions in my head. I did not, however, take much joy in the harsh, time intensive reality of constructing a 1/48th scale German Tiger tank — a reality fraught with frustration and toxic substances. It was a truly volatile combination, I assure you, and usually resulted in my shaking with impotent rage over a pile of badly painted plastic, it’s surfaces ravaged by the effects of Testors Model Cement.

Despite a complete lack of ability (which I have learned to accept) I still find myself fascinated with diminutive, scale reproductions of places and objects. Randy Hage does not work in the area of war that so preoccupied the violent imagination of my youth, but his work is astounding. Focusing on New York City storefronts he recreates everything from the signage and shutters to the graffiti that adorns their facades and various bits of detritus inside and out. The level of detail here requires a patience that I never possessed or, no doubt, ever will.

WARNING: prolonged viewing of John Waller (aka zPRIME)’s “Industrial Decay” photo series may give you a raging Doom Chub.

Rawr.

Waller’s entire Flickr stream is rusty and scrumptious. He also apparently has an extensive personal website launching sometime this month.

Le grand digérant (Digesting the great)  No. 4, 102 x 162 x 15

“Giai-Miniet is what’d you get if Kafka had designed Barbie dreamhouses.” (via)

Dreamhouses?  Perhaps more like maisons de cauchemars.   Marc Giai-Miniet‘s painstakingly detailed, mixed-media shadow-box installations are  reminiscent of  a vaguely ominous, fading nightmare; a slumbering visitation to a childhood home,  dilapidated and abandoned,  darkened corridors permeated with a surreal atmosphere of dusty déjà-vu.

Ominous,  fantastical, and yet on some level that barely registers  – these ‘boxes’ are familiar and comforting in a way unique to those corners in which we have previously peeked and will explore once more when we are slumbering and our subconscious holds sway.  Again and again we will wind through our own personal, chaotic and connected dreamhouses –  and M. Giai-Miniet appears to know  this full well.

Born in 1946 in Trappes, France, Marc Giai-Miniet studied at the l’Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, a distinguished national school of Fine Arts in Paris, France. He is currently the Secretary of the Salon de Mai, a gallery founded in Paris with the purpose of encouraging and exhibiting younger abstract artists.

Marc Giai-Miniet, photo by Sylvie Giai-Miniet

According to Giai-Miniet (though run through Google translator) :

“The ‘boxes’ have appeared relatively late in my work as a painter, as a natural and necessary, and have become an inseparable part, a double play. Reminiscent of my teenage desire to do theater, and perhaps even the deepest yet my memories of childhood games pitched battles between miniature electric trains and installed under the table in the family dining room.  These “boxes”, from their manufacture in the years 92 – 93, repeated the themes of my paintings: the brainwashing scene, visit the mummies, stirring transfusions and various larvae.  Small characters were cardboard cut out of the ballet and existential irony of my painting.  Over work, buildings are becoming increasingly large, the characters have disappeared and books, whole libraries have taken place in conjunction with laboratories, storage rooms, waiting or interrogation cells, stairs, corridors, furnaces, sewers or outbound docks … I understand that the books burned, and figured, were painful metaphor of human life, both mind and matter and inexorably doomed to their fate. . For not only the books can be burned but sometimes transmitted through knowledge, they we “burn”, we transform, we accompany or lead us astray … in a vision became ‘existential.’ ”

Grande Boîte Blanche, 130 x 130 x 11

Flickr user turezure recently snapped this menacing picture of the Humax Pavilion in Shibuya. Doesn’t it look like it’s just sitting there, biding its time, waiting to bust a move, Megatron-style?

The Pavilion was designed in 1991 by Hiroyuki Wakabayashi, who also designed the Nankai 50000 train series, seen above. The design theme for the train was Outdated Future, and indeed, there is a suspicious resemblance to the 1978  Cylon Centurian model.Wakabayashi’s other works include the breathtaking Uji Station and Maruto Bldg. No.17 in Kyoto. [via Battling Pink Robots]

Anybody remember this breathless 2007 Coilhouse post about Dutch kinetic artist Theo Jansen and his awe-inspiring Strandbeests? Eeee! So incredible.

Animaris Geneticus Parvus

Jansen’s kinetic creatures have evolved quite a bit since then, and as of this month, the wonderful 3D printing company Shapeways has made a small version of Animaris Geneticus Parvus, available for purchase through their site.

These wee baby Beests, born from one of Jansen’s original behemoth windwalker designs, are “printed already assembled and [work] right after birth from the machine! No other production method can do this!” (Is 3D printing technology trippy, or what?) Apparently there are more Beests in development as well.

Watch and squee: