sandbox

NASA has announced the winners of its assembled in-situ Centennial Challenge competition to design and deliver advanced three-dimensional printed habitats for the Red Planet’s first colonists. The top honour goes to team Zopherus (we were team Marsha, one of the honourable-mentions, pictured above) whose construction concept strikes us as rather like the propagation cycle of a virus, with a lander scouting out an optimal print-area on the Martian surface and then deploying rovers to retrieve building materials to form a host of connected, modular units. Learn more and see conceptual demonstrations of the winner and runners-up at the link above, these picks being the second phase of a multi-year contest that commenced with exploring the technical viability of working with natural building materials (more here) in an arid and alien environment.

foley artists

Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals directs our attention to the archives of Open Culture (with a nice preamble, segue worth indulging too) from earlier this year announcing that the BBC will make its library of sound effects available to all and can be downloaded, should one find a clever ringtone.
The collection is comprised of over sixteen thousands effects and audio samples that have been used and reused over the decades, and the network was motivated to share its library at the bidding of an organisation that cares for the elderly with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in hopes that the familiar noises might trigger memories and strengthen new associations. Check out the archive for yourself here and let us know some of your resonant favourites.

das kleine fade gehirngefühl

We appreciated the distinct privilege of tagging along on Hyperallergic’s sojourn to the Outsider Art locus of Austria, the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic on the outskirts of Vienna, known for its dedicated art therapy programme.
Unlike the Prinzhorn collection in Heidelberg that was began in the 1920s and hidden from the Nazis to prevent confiscation and destruction as degenerate art, the residents at Gugging were not encouraged to find creative outlets until the late 1950s when Doctor Leo Navratil (*1921 - † 2006) invited people under his care to express their feelings and state of mind through painting, emerging from the institute’s dark past during Nazi occupation which saw some of the most barbaric experimentation on patients. Having discovered many talented individuals within his empanelment, Navratil showcased artists in Viennese museums and galleries and went on to establish a permanent gallery and education centre on the campus in 1981 called Haus der Künstler. A separate pilgrimage, a visit to Gugging by Brian Eno and David Bowie informed the collaborators’ production strategy for the 1995 concept album 1. Outside. Read more about the artists and the institution at the link up top.

my beautiful laundrette

Our thanks to Plain Magazine for acquainting us with the portfolio of photographer Joshua Blackburn and his current obsession with the idiosyncrasies and common features of the estimated three hundred laundromats of London. Learn more about Coin-Op London and see a growing gallery at the links above.