Oddity Central |
- Artist Creates Incredible Portraits Out of Thousands of Tiny Colored Paper Dots
- Mine Shaft Restaurant Takes Dining to a New Low
- Hot Tub Cinema – Probably the Most Relaxing Movie Experience Ever
| Artist Creates Incredible Portraits Out of Thousands of Tiny Colored Paper Dots Posted: 12 Sep 2012 04:36 AM PDT
I love it when artists go to great lengths to create extraordinary art. Case in point, Nikki Douthwaite, a young British artist who uses tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of tiny paper dots to assemble incredibly detailed artworks. Nikki Douthwaite is a master of dot art. She uses colored dots produced by a hole punch, and painstakingly sticks them, one by one, on a canvas layered with double-sided sticky tape, with a pair of tweezers. Can you imagine spending up to 12 hours at a time arranging thousands of colored dots to create just one of these amazing works of art? It requires mountains of patience, but for Nikki every piece is a labor of love. Inspired by the pointillism work of 19th century French painter Georges-Pierre Seurat, she came up with the unusual technique during her Interactive Arts degree at MMU. Seurat created images using dots of coloured paint, which the human eye blends from a distance, but Douthwaite developed her own unique technique, by replacing the paint dots with tiny bits of paper. The dedicated artist, from Timperley, Cheshire, has suffered repetitive strain injuries in her arm, hand and shoulder after spending hundreds of hours sticking hundreds of thousands of paper dots, but has never considered giving up on her art. 38-year-old Nikki, who holds a Guinness World Record for the largest number of dots ever used in a picture, says “My goal is to create two experiences for the viewer. The first is a close up experience of either thousands of tiny, mixed up colored dots. The second experience is the far away view, the viewers' eyes and brain mix the dots and colors together, revealing the image as a whole." And that’s what’s most fascinating thing about her unique dot art; looking from a far some of her portraits seem black and white, but as you approach them you can clearly see the thousands of colored dots Nikki Douthwaite used to achieve the perfect effect. She prefers to work at night, and can take up to eight days just to punch all the holes necessary to begin a piece. Some of Nikki’s most famous pieces include a portrait of British Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, for which she spent 12 weeks painstakingly placing 250,000 paper dots on canvas, and a giant mosaic made from a record 587,000 colored paper bits.
Artist Creates Incredible Portraits Out of Thousands of Tiny Colored Paper Dots was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Mine Shaft Restaurant Takes Dining to a New Low Posted: 12 Sep 2012 02:56 AM PDT
Ina bid to turn the idea of pop-up restaurants on its head, an award-winning Finish chef has opened a unique eaterie in an old mine shaft, 80 meters underground. Obviously, it’s called a “pop-down” restaurant. “‘Pop-down’ is such a unique idea that I just had to do it,” chef Timo Linnamaki said on Monday, before his first clients descended to the bottom of the mine shaft in the town of Lohja, Finland. ”It’s great working down here because you are totally cut off from the world, so nothing distracts from the cooking.” The idea of preparing food so far below ground was all part of being close to the earth, but the talented cook admits this is by far the weirdest place he has ever prepared his dishes and that it would be very difficult to find something on par. The 115-year-old mine chosen as the location for this unique pop-down restaurant goes down to a depth of 380 meters where limestone is still mined, for the chemical industry. But that didn’t seem to scare off customers, as the 64-seat restaurant is already fully booked until September 29, when the crazy underground cooking experiment ends. Photo © Reuters Blue lights cast eerie shadows on the ceiling and walls of the temporary mine shaft restaurant, but none of the guests seem to mind. After all, they paid for exactly this kind of atmosphere, and they’re being treated to fine cuisine, including salted salmon, veal tenderloin snails cooked in Pernod, and apple crumble. A four-course meal, plus drinks and transportation down to the mine and back up will set you back €128 ($160), but everyone seems happy to fork out the cash for such a unique experience. Photo © Reuters Pop-up restaurants around the world give chefs the chance to experiment without fear of going bankrupt, and the same goes for Linnamaki, whose restaurant Muru – “crumb” in Finnish – won this year’s gourmet title in Finland only two years after it opened, says this experience has really inspired him to take on new challenges.
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| Hot Tub Cinema – Probably the Most Relaxing Movie Experience Ever Posted: 12 Sep 2012 02:01 AM PDT
For the past year, young movie buffs in London have been flocking to one of the most unique film-watching venues in the world. The Hot Tub Cinema combines hot tubs with good movies and a London rooftop location to offer probably the most relaxing film-watching experience on Earth. ‘We wanted to watch a movie, we wanted to use the hot tub, and we just thought why don’t we project it out the kitchen window onto a bed sheet on the washing line and see what the results will be, and that was how it was born,’ Asher Charman, one of the brains behind the project, told Reuters. ‘About a year ago we thought you know what, it’s about time, we’ve over grown our garden here, we’ve got three or four tubs, it’s time to take the step up and here we are now.’ So they got a movie projector, a screen and the Hot Tub Cinema was born. Quite a simple idea but one that really appealed to young movie-goers looking for something different. Now every time a rooftop movie-watching session takes place, the 12 hot tubs are always occupied. Clients have to pay a minimum of £22 ($35) for a chance to watch a good movie in their underwear, but there are three different types of hot tubs available, depending on budget. There’s the “cosy” tub, where up to eight people cram in side by side, the “spacious” that accommodate no more than six people, and a few tubs available only for group rentals, and priced at £200 ($320). Regardless of whichever one you go for, you’re still treated to a great movie and London’s spectacular skyline, so satisfaction is guaranteed. Before they start taking their clothes off and plunge into the 40 degrees Celsius hot water, movie buffs are treated to a glass of champagne and an unforgettable London sunset, just to get them in the mood. Once they’re in the hot tubs and the movie starts, the real fun begins: people start cracking jokes, bikini-clad girls start dancing in the middle of the tubs, water fights ensue, and occasionally there’s even a hot tub relay, where the craziest of guests start jumping from tub to tub. And long after the movie credits roll, the party goes on. It’s definitely not your ordinary cinema experience. Some people choose to rent a whole hot tub with their friends, but many don’t mind sharing the small place with total strangers. Sure their feet meet quite a lot in such tiny tubs, but that’s just one of the things that make the Hot Tub Cinema more interesting. Its popularity is unquestionable, as the place is sold out at every event and the number of attendants has doubled since the first screening. All through September, the Hot Tub Cinema will host events at the Netil360 rooftop space, in London’s Hackney borough. The number of tickets is limited, so if you want to go, you’d better act fast.
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