We recently came across a great example of blackout poetry, poems made by blacking out words in an existing piece of writing, to forge a poem or song with what’s left. Tasha S. tried her hand and “saw a love story between a ghost and a mortal”. Tasha’s “first crack” made us realize that blackout…
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Desire to Inspire’s recent 20+ photo post about an apartment made out of wooden crates — from makeshift walls and a kitchen island base, to night stands, a coffee table, and a bathroom vanity— made us think TOO MUCH!. This is one over-the-top crate obsession. Although living in that crate-filled apartment would drive us crazy,…
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(Video link here.) Fashion designer Rick Owen’s blew fashionistas away with his rad fashion show in Paris recently, where models were real-girl step dancers. They brought fierce energy and Africa-rooted moves to the usual fashion show venue. They also showed that Owens’ designs work just fine on all sorts of bodies, breaking the usual svelt…
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As committed to many projects and life paths as we are, we periodically come to a stop. We can’t take one step more, and really want to avoid our obligations, be irresponsible, and…wander.
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Leslie Koch, director of the Trust for Governors Island, a magical 172 acre island/public art space in New York Harbor, is one of the most brilliant innovators we know. Somehow, she now only ‘gets’ great ideas, she makes them happen on a really large scale, as witnessed by her extraordinary transformation of the former island…
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Last August, we went to The Hole Gallery’s Summer Reading show in the Bowery, a group exhibition and transformation of the galleries into a giant art book reading room. The Hole’s spacious rooms were lined with shelves to hold over 5,000 books, with comfortable and very cool looking chairs to lounge about on. Interspersed were some…
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We’ve long been fans of Princeton Architectural Press, a seriously intelligent publisher of books about architecture, design and….life. The Press specializes in content that defies easy categorization (like us). So we are thrilled that it has become Improvised Life’s first sponsor, of October’s posts. Its 1000+ titles surprise, inspire, and inform about the visual world;…
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(Video link here.) The Museum of Four in the Morning is a crowd-sourced collection of ‘four in the morning’ references from art, culture and elsewhere. It got me thinking about ways people handle being up at that hour of the night/morning that seems somehow like the farthest point on the clock: the quiestest, most alone time, when…
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Another bit of brilliance from Swiss artist Not Vital found in the New York Time’s recent T Magazine Style Issue: In his studio in Sent, Vital place images high on the wall stacked vertically. It occurs to us this could be a good trick to make lowish ceilings look higher. We’re going to file it in…
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Swiss artist Not Vital devised a very strange, er, hair sculpture, an inspired wighat much better than the trying-to-look-like-a-full-head-o-hair-but-definitely-ain’t matted ‘rugs’ we see on occasion.
Why not toupee sculptures?
We are smitten with the Origma Hut, custom-designed and built by by Gary Warner and Philip Sticklen in Sydney, Australia. We admire it not so much for the way it looks but for the thinking and materials that went into it. The description posted on Architizer is potent and to-the-point (our favorite bits bold-faced): Origma Hut is…
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We love the posters and photographs afixed to her ceiling with a staple gun.
The question is: what view do you want to look at when you lie in bed?
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Improvised Life’s new redesign is quite a SHIFT from the old vertically-scrolling one. If you’re a long-time reader and you find yourself looking for the old way of doing things, we certainly understand. We did the same thing when starting to think about a redesign. In the early mockup we did (bottom), you’ll see it’s STILL…
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(Video link here.) This cool little video will open your eyes to the treasures that lie hidden inside the mobile phone you hold in your hand daily, especially precious metals, which are a limited resource. What’s In My Stuff? is an interdisciplinary research project which brings together scientists and artists to explore public awareness of the rare and…
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For a while now, we’ve been researching companies that make custom and ready-made wall murals, because a wall-size image seems like a great way to expand an odd room. Case in point: Swedish stylist/designer Jimmy Schönning’s transformation of a tiny nook of a bedroom with a calm distant see. Perfect.
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Artist Harry Roseman’s makes draped and folded plywood sculptures. They turn art for its own sake, and shows us a whole other realm of possibility for this uniquitous material.
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Yes, you ARE at Improvised Life. We’ve changed our look but not our mission. The comfortable old site, lovingly-created only 4 years ago, had become too small a container for all our ideas, and too difficult to read on the many devices people use these days. That’s how fast things change! So we redesigned it…
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Yes, you ARE at Improvised Life. We’ve changed our look but not our mission. The comfortable old site, lovingly-created only 4 years ago, had become too small a container for all our ideas, and too difficult to read on the many devices people use these days. That’s how fast things change! So we redesigned it…
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We posted an ad in Craigslist looking for an assistant and found the most amazing people doing very cool things —blogs, tumblrs, writing, artworks — just…because… At Vanessa’s A City That Endures tumblr, we stumbled on the work of photographer Michael Wolf. He documents the random detritus of the man-made world and the beauty and order that underlie the…
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A few days ago, we heard the great Linda Ellerbee speak about her long, ever-surprising career in journalism, and her life. We have her voice saying “And so it goes” in our heads STILL from the great news show, Weekend. For the past 21 years, so she’s been hosting Nick News, a news show for kids that is…
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