tuning slide

Painting in time

onur — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:20:51 +0000

Aysen and I painting the interior window pane in Aysen’s studio. The unpleasant burgundy/brown color was bothering Aysen since she moved in, and finally we got a chance to cover it with white. Took some time-lapse photos of us masking, painting, then finally removing the mask over the course of three days.

Check out the HD version at Vimeo, with information on the equipment used:
Whitening: A time-lapse experiment.

Book stack

onur — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:41:36 +0000

Here’s what I am currently reading. I know it is a bit trendy to post a photo of a book stack, but I have yet to find an easier and better way. So here we go.

Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk
The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
ZAG by Marty Neumeier
Special Assignments by Boris Akunin

I’m hoping to read a lot this summer, so I will post more soon. Stay tuned.

My UT loop

onur — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:29:58 +0000

I’ve always been a big fan of the Uniqlo website and its creators. Their latest marketing tool is called UTLOOP, an audio-visual loop mixer. Here’s my loop.

Love constellations

onur — Sun, 11 May 2008 17:35:32 +0000

My wife has quite a number of moles on her body, and I have always been amazed by the shapes of these little clusters of benign color cell growth. I wanted to share some of my favorite “constellations”. (more…)

Norwegian coincidence

onur — Fri, 02 May 2008 03:02:30 +0000

I was listening to Grieg’s Ase’s Death from Peer Gynt Suite #1 when I stumbled upon these amazing photos from fisherman/photographer Corey Arnold. It was a beautiful experience looking at his fishing photos from Norway and Bering sea with this Norwegian classic playing in the background, almost as if these two pieces of artwork are actually meant to be experienced together. I believed once again, that nothing is a coincidence.

The site is designed by JD Hooge.

Swiss goodness

onur — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 07:23:12 +0000

You gotta love Swiss design. What could be a better example of Swiss typography than these little goodies from Swiss Airlines? I really enjoyed the graphic design aspect of this flight.

Dog day afternoon

onur — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:27:23 +0000

I was driving north this weekend for a day trip when I came across this sled dog race in Tamworth, NH. I spent about half an hour watching the activities, and even though I enjoyed the race itself, seeing how the dogs were handled behind the scenes was a bit disheartening. Without further comments, below are some of my visual observations.

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History in the making

onur — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:35:14 +0000

Just wanted to share my reaction regarding John Maeda’s recent appointment as president of RISD. I believe we are witnessing a historical turning point in art and design. Not exactly in the form of an artifact as the catalyst – such as the Sistine’s ceiling, or Duchamp’s “Fountain” – or a memorable public act, such as Beuys’ “How to explain pictures to a dead hare”. But I think this agreement simply marks the beginning of a transition to a new, progressive era in creative thinking; the results of which we have yet to see. And John Maeda has the will, knowledge, experience, energy, and vision to see it through.

In his “Notes from a director’s laboratory”, Sergei Eisenstein once said:

The most important thing is to have the vision. The next is to grasp and hold it. In this there is no difference whether you are writing a film-script, pondering the plan of the production as a whole, or thinking out a solution for some particular detail.

You must see and feel what you are thinking about. You must see and grasp it. You must hold and fix it in your memory and senses.

And you must do it at once.

Good luck John Maeda. And godspeed.

Boston photos

onur — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:12:08 +0000

I was in Boston a few days ago and took some photos on the streets. One of my resolutions for 2008 is to take more photos and post on the blog. So here we go…

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Soma cube

onur — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:00:38 +0000

One evening a couple of weeks ago, I was glancing through the shelves at an A.C. Moore store when I came across some wooden cubes of various sizes in the craft department. They immediately reminded me of an article I read about 17-18 years ago in a science magazine, about a wooden puzzle. At the end of the article there were instructions to build one from scratch, but you needed a certain number of wood blocks, cut precisely into cubes. For years this little project had occupied a corner of my mind, without ever becoming a reality. But here I was, looking at these nicely cut pieces of wood, and I knew I was closer to building my own “Soma cube” than ever. Of course I didn’t even know that it’s called a Soma cube then. At least not until the next day. (more…)