Hasta La Ideas

That there is the Klein Bottle, first conceived of in 1882 by German mathematician Felix Klein. Klein’s “non-orientable surface,” as it’s called in the math community, is like a Möbius strip in that you cannot distinguish inside from outside; follow it with your eyes and you’ll see one turns into the other, which makes me very, very uncomfortable.

I’m told that the Klein Bottle is, in essence, two Möbius strips connected together. I’d like to start sketching that to work out how it goes together, but I can’t because I’m too stupid.

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Love ’em or hate ’em, the Miami Heat prevailed over the San Antonio Spurs to take their second straight NBA Championship last night. The seven-game series is already being hailed as an instant classic as the remarkably even matchup made for a thoroughly entertaining clash between Gregg Popovich’s squad of longtime contenders and Eric Spoelstra’s dominant team, who had the best record in the regular season.

Over on our sister portfolio site Coroflot, London-based illustrator Alexis Marcou recently posted a series of wall graphics for New York City’s House of Hoops, a basketball-centric Nike outpost in Harlem—just in time for last night’s victory. In addition to Lebron James (pictured here, obviously), the series includes his Heat teammate Dwyane Wade, as well as perennial All-Stars Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Amar’e Stoudemire and more (though the Spurs stars Tim Duncan and Tony Parker are conspicuously absent)—check out the rest here.

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This week’s selections, ranging from skyscrapers to sneakers, would be fairly unremarkable if it weren’t for their creators’ ambitious, inventive, and sometimes downright strange off-label use of materials.

Take Sabrina Gschwandtner‘s quilts, for example. The New York–based artist builds her blankets from the film archive, sewing 16-millimeter strips into familiar folk-art patterns. The project gets bonus points for being cleverly self-referential. Along with films she took herself and others that the artist painted, scratched, and bleached, Gschwandtner used old educational reels from the Fashion Institute of Technology—so, recently she’s sewn movies on the subject of fabric into her fabric. Gschwandtner’s work will be on display at the Philadelphia Art Alliance through August 18.

Film quilt images courtesy the artist and LMAKprojects, New York

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The summer solstice is the official start of summer and the longest day of the year. It’s also a time to get together with friends and family for food, drinks and—in the higher reaches of the northern hemisphere—bask in the midnight sun. Nobody…

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It could be argued that it doesn’t matter what, or who, is in any room if the lighting isn’t right. The following pieces—seen among the other wares at Design Miami/Basel—emit, warp or interact with light in exotic ways. Each piece embeds functionality…

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