I’m a car park geek

Whether it’s a good thing or not I love the architecture of car parks (there are many in Birmingham) to the extent that I once thought about doing some work based around these fantastic spaces.

Someone beat me to it

God bless the maiden voyage of the booth

So we built a photo booth.

In the age of social web usage through the likes of Facebook and Flickr, we decided that creating a physical space to socialise, communicate and express oneself seemed a fitting way to demonstrate the connection of the real life with the digital.

We built a very DIY looking photo booth which masked our highly innovative user interface. People were able to throw together an outfit from our prop bin outside, choose a background via the interface/croma key wizardry, and pose for their very own passport strip. To complete the experience the customer was then able to tag the strip with their name and add a short message before the printing out using our new splamfy printer installed in the side of the booth.

There were two copies of the photo strip, one for the person to take away with them, the other for them to stick on the booth itself. At the same time the image was automatically uploaded to here

Whether it be the thirst of the general public to express themselves or a national obsession with photo booths, the project was a huge success. With over 360 photos taken printed and uploaded and a booth covered in photo strips, the exhibit surpassed all our expectations.

The festival was great, albeit cold, stressful and tiring. Special love going out to Clusta, Small Japanese Soldier, Heavy Object, Jasper Goodhall, 383 Project, McFaul Ltd, Second Home, Si Scott, Stereograhic, Bryan Loke, Steven and Jesson Yip (too many links to add)

Photobooth and expo on flickr here

Photobooth website is here

The making of the Photobooth

Sam points at something inside the Booth.

I paint the Chroma-Key back wall

Sam and Paul make light work of the construction and decoration accordingly.

More about plus here

Desire Path

Desire Path: A term in landscape architecture used to describe a path that isn’t designed but rather is worn casually away by people finding the shortest distance between two points.

Brilliant. More here

What the hell is this?

It would appear it’s the work of Olafur Eliasson and architect Kjetil Thorsen. I got to see it from the outside but was unfortunately too late to be allowed inside. It looks great. Eliasson was behind the amazing Weather Project at the Tate Modern in 2003. To see more go to the Serpentine Gallery or better still check out Olafur here or Snøhetta here.

The Serpentine is showing a Matthew Barney exhibition of pieces from his Drawing Restraint series – resistance training whilst making art. Here’s the trailer to the full length film Drawing Restraint 9 that features as part of the exhibition. I have yet to see this in full.