Parallel Worlds

PARALLEL ISSUE 03 WORLDS 1 WELCOME TO PARALLEL Creativity is an addiction. So powerful that there is no cure for it – we hope. “More, more, more” says our brain while adrenaline pulses through our veins. We feel elated, we feel invincible, we feel happy. With Parallel Worlds we bring you what makes our heart beat faster – what we create and what we would have loved to create – in a whirlwind of amazing stories by some of the greatest writers we know. WORLDS Every day we celebrate creativity, friendship, inspiration and the simple act of being meaningful. If any one of these pieces or stories can engage you to think different or create something on your own, you will have brought that extra smile to our already sunny day. Maximilian Büsser 40 72 130 44 54 96 86 CHAPTERS ANIMAL KINGDOM WHEN MACHINES WERE P. 5 BEAUTIFUL BREAKING THE RULES P. 10 5 P. 21 BACK TO CHILDHOOD ON THE ROAD P. 123 P. 39 TEN YEARS OF MB&F DEFYING GRAVITY P. 14 0 P. 6 3 M.A.D.GALLERY OUT OF THIS WORLD P. 142 P. 89 120 22 4 5 ANIMAL KINGDOM P. 6 P. 18 LOVE BUGS THE SENSATIONAL MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY OF NICKY BAY P. 12 MAN, MANTIS, AND MACHINE P. 19 OR THROUGH ALIEN EYES FROM SIMPLE INSECTS TO BUZZING P. 14 INTERNET SENSATIONS ARACHNOPHOBIA JEEPERS CREEPERS 6 ANIMAL KINGDOM 7 LOVE BUGS In “Mechanical Entomology,” M.A.D.Gallery’s first themed exhibition, four artists pay homage to the unexpected beauty of creepy, crawly critters. For more information, Written by Victoria Gomelsky please visit Watch and jewellery writer for the madgallery.net International New York Times 8 ANIMAL KINGDOM 9 Top Upon seeing a spider or bug, most before turning his attention to min- Christopher Conte people have a universal reaction : iature biomechanical studies that Duellona White bronze euuuwww. For the four artists whose sprung from his love of robotics. 15 x 12 x 4 cm work appears in M.A.D.Gallery’s new “One of the things guys inter- Bottom “Mechanical Entomology” exhibition, ested in robotics draw inspiration Christopher Locke however, the opposite is true. from is the insect world,” Conte says. Scissor Spiders S “Bugs are awesome !” says Chris “Their miniaturization, the fact that 13 x 10 x 6 cm Locke, an Austin, Texas-based artist they navigate all sorts of terrain : who fashions spiders out of scissors they walk up walls, they fly.” confiscated at airports. “They’re lit- The “Duellona” cast bronze tle tanks that run around and survive insect sculptures that Conte con- off of what we don’t want anymore. tributed to the exhibition feature Look at them up close – they’re really articulated legs, hooked antenna, elegant.” nonfunctional watch movements The grace and ingenuity of the tucked inside belly-like cavities, and anthropod world is a running theme riveted exoskeletons engraved by of the exhibition, which lives at the master firearms engraver Michael intersection between natural his- Dubber. tory, metalsmithing, and, of course, “A lot of people have misnamed mechanics. them spiders,” Conte says. “They’re Take Christopher Conte’s more robotic insects. They’re in a arresting creations. The Long Island, world of their own.” N.Y.-based sculptor spent 16 years You could say the same thing working in the prosthetics industry about Gaby Wormann’s “Mechani- ANIMAL KINGDOM 11 From left to right and top to bottom Paul Swan Topen : Single sprung rice paper Gaby Wormann : Callipogon tertius, Lycosa tarentula, Dynastes hercules, Goliathus ex The artistry and effort required to transform some of the world’s most repulsive critters into objects of beauty is not to be underestimated. cal Creatures,” or “MeCre.” Preoccu- it just happened. It was like the scis- pied with “humanity’s uninhibited sors said to me, ‘I’m a spider’.” intervention in complex biological That same sense of inevitability systems,” the German artist – who permeates the work of Scottish prod- counts the writings of Franz Kafka uct designer Paul Swan Topen. “One and the paintings of Swiss surrealist of my earliest memories is digging H. R. Giger as major influences – set with a spade in the back garden and out to develop a new hybrid life form coming across a chrysalis,” he says. combining organic insect parts with “I was fascinated that this was going mechanical elements. The enhanced to turn into a butterfly.” legs of Wormann’s Lycosa tarantula, Born into a family of artists and for example, transform the spider professional tinkerers, Topen was into a bionic arachnid, while a large- equally beguiled by “an old grand- winged rhinoceros beetle endowed father clock that my father used to with mechanical gears looks like a wind up every night,” he says. “It had tiny, fearsome cyber-bug. butterfly keys, like all traditional Insects are “a marvel of crea- clocks. And as a young child, I was tion,” she says. “To modify their bod- fascinated.” ies is an artistic challenge.” About eight years ago, Topen The artistry and effort required bought an antique frame that to transform some of the world’s enclosed a butterfly specimen and most repulsive critters into objects of decided to unite his childhood inter- beauty is not to be underestimated. ests. His “Clockwork Butterflies” pair Locke, for example, describes the real (deceased) butterflies with cogs, moment when he realized what the wheels, and bridges derived from 30-pound box of scissors he’d stum- antique watch movements, resulting bled upon in 2007 would become. in pieces that are nothing short of “For about a week, I had scissors on transcendent. the brain,” he says. “Then one morn- “The wings are so delicate,” ing, I started welding and breaking Topen says, “if you breathe on them, and mutilating the scissors and then they’ll blow away.” 12 ANIMAL KINGDOM 13 MAN, MANTIS, AND MACHINE OR THROUGH ALIEN EYES Written by Ian Skellern Technical Editor of QuillAndPad.com “Despite their minute brains, mantises are sophisticated visual hunters, which can capture prey with terrifying efficiency. We can learn a lot by study- ing how they perceive the world,” says Dr. Jenny Read, a professor of vision science at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University. Read leads a team in stereo depth perception research. Aided by the world’s smallest 3D glasses, Read’s team transforms the praying mantis from an insignificant insect to the fascinating subject of an experiment designed to ultimately find a way to transfer the three-dimensional recognition abilities of a praying mantis to ultra-modern robots and computers. Never has science looked so much like science fiction. The alien-like eyes of the praying mantis view the world in stereopsis – a word that describes three-dimensional structure gleaned through visual information obtained by two eyes with normal binocular vision. While this might sound just like the way that human eyes process optical information, it differs because of the divergent positions of the creature’s eyes. Its depth perception is therefore much different to ours. Read’s research received a £1 million grant to analyse and compute how mantises see in three dimensions. The research is accomplished by attaching a pair of the world’s tiniest 3D glasses to the mantis’ head, using beeswax to keep the “spectacles” in place. The mantis is then put in front of computer- generated animated images on a three-dimensional display screen. By observing how praying mantises make errors in judgement with regard to the depth of the objects projected on the screen – in the same way that movie-goers are fooled into believing that 3D movies are more “realistic” than 2D films – the researchers can deduce a number of things about what and how the mantises are seeing. Photography : If, for example, a glasses-wearing insect lunges at an object on the screen, Vivek Nityananda it’s entirely possible that its three-dimensional perception is similar to that For more information, of a human being. This research has the potential to lead to novel approaches please visit in implementing 3D recognition and depth perception in computer vision and jennyreadresearch.com robotics. 14 ANIMAL KINGDOM 15 JEEPERS CREEPERS A one-of-a-kind clock crawls out Written by Wong Kee Soon Managing Editor of the woodwork. of Manifesto Magazine There was a period of time – probably just yesterday – when Dubbed Arachnophobia – the fear of spi- MB&F’s Arachnophobia looks more welcom- clocks looked like things you buy because you don’t love ders – this limited edition table and wall clock ing and highly Instagrammable, though the your walls, desk, fireplace mantel or wherever else you plan is everything your wildest imagination has warning label-sounding moniker suggests oth- to plant them on. That is because most still come in a variety yet come to terms with as possible in clock- erwise. The solid and brass body, beautifully of boring, sorry round shapes that appear to audition for a work. Once again, it’s not your fault. Birthed by plated in a black palladium or 18K yellow gold second career as a pizza pan or Frisbee. If not, we were left MB&F’s mastermind and full-time hypebeast finish, flaunts a three-part mechanical torso as with the option of a dusty ol’ grandfather clock, which one Maximilian Büsser for his brand’s decade-old the heart of its operation. The head is where the might actually need to inherit the title or be age-appropriate resistance to traditional horology, Arachnopho- exposed regulating system resides, gears mov- to be called a rightful owner of such designs.

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