Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life landing point

Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life museum is fashioned after Van Gogh’s painting, “Cafe Terrace at Night”

Virtual Van Gogh

The Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life museum offers much of what you’d expect in a real life museum—with a touch of Second Life (SL) surrealism.

The museum exhibits 70 virtual works by Vincent Van Gogh with descriptions and historical facts about the Dutch Post-Impressionist. Befittingly, each of the 20 rooms housing the exhibit is set in perpetual twilight and the outer grounds of the museum feature overlook balconies, fountains, and garden terraces abutting a reflective and restful sea.

Unlike real life museums, this SL version includes teleportation, 3-D tours and experiential paintings that visitors can virtually “step into” to peruse selected works.

Worth the Teleport

If you like something you see, reproductions are for sale at the museum store, including virtual floral arrangements. You can even take home a reproduction of Van Gogh’s famed Starry Night for a reasonable L$35 (35 Linden dollars) the equivalent of about 12 US cents.

Appreciating Culture Clash

A confluence of culture, The Virtual Starry Night - Vincent’s Second Life museum is a metaphor for today’s brand marketer—an emergent culture where old and new collide in ever-changing venues of communication.

Visit the museum.

[ via: malburns ]

A Typography Primer

If you like things spelled out for you, you’ll enjoy Typography, a visual primer that defines the genre and explores the high points of all things typographic in under 2 minutes (1:47).

The short, with narration befitting a 1950’s educational film, was created by Vancouver Film School (VFS) students Ryan Uhrich and Marcos Ceravolo through the VFS 3D Animation & Visual Effects program.

Campy, but good.

[via: Debbie Millman]

Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses

An Impression Posted

New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art brings us Cézanne’s Astonishing Apples, the latest microsite addition to the Explore and Learn section of the Museum’s website.

A primer on the works and life of 19th century French Post-Impressionist Master Paul Cézanne, the site features an immersive look at Cézanne’s painting, “Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses.”

Suitable for students of any age, several disarming diversions invite site visitors to linger, have fun and learn more about Cézanne, painting, and the world of art while doing so.

Framing Obstacles Positively

A key object of The Metropolitan Museum of Art may be to dispel the cultural misconception that fine art is an arcane endeavor enjoyed and understood by only an elite few. It’s a good lesson for any brand—accentuate the positive and look for new audiences and approaches to overcome any perceived obstacles.

Beautiful Jewelry.
Right Out of a Magazine.
Literally.

Meticulously crafted by HIV-positive Kenyan’s in Imani Workshops, the beads in this necklace are made of tightly wound strips of recycled magazines. Because of its beautiful, brilliant colors, the periodical of choice for the beads is Oprah’s “O” Magazine.

Often, the stigma of HIV precludes employment, and therefore income; however, as part of an overall program of nutrition, support and treatment provided by the Indiana University School of Medicine and the IU-Kenya Partnership, the creation and sale of these beads provides income and hope to those afflicted with HIV/AIDS.

Old magazines giving sick people hope and a new chance at life.

Wouldn’t Oprah be proud?

Image: Illig

Chewing on Hibernation

Susanna Hertrich, Design Interactions MA student at London’s Royal College of Art, thinks the natural aging process can be staved off through hibernation. So, she began to explore products and technologies human hibernators might need and came up with the Chrono Shredder.

From Susanna’s site:

“The Chrono_Shredder is a device that makes past time tangible. It is a hybrid between calendar, clock and waste-producing automaton. It has no on/off-button, thus it is unstoppable, just like time. It features the 365 days of the year represented on a paper-roll. The paper-roll is led through a hacked paper-shredder, which is programmed to use exactly 24 hours to shred one ‘day’.”

Eschewing Hibernation

Although we’re not quite ready to build a den, it would be neat to chew up our Brainstorm sessions with a wall-mounted, Wonka-esque Chrono_Shredder. If only it recycled its output.

Read more about Susanna’s musings here.