Intro: Skeletons are for lovers

This most recent April 4, as with every April 4, it was my wife’s birthday. In honour of this well-anticipated annual occasion, I purchased for my wife the only gift that any truly loving husband should really even consider buying for his wife: I bought her a life-size skeleton.

His name is Bucky, and he is 5’6” and weighs about 20 pounds. He can move his jaw, his scalp is removable, and he comes with three removable teeth. Every bone is numbered, and the numbers match an accompanying visual key the names the parts. He came in a box from Florida, only two weeks after I purchased him (new) off eBay.

Why would I get my wife a skeleton? Because she’s a geek, that’s why (and I love that). Kendra has a Biology degree, and is endlessly fascinated with the study of anatomy, is currently taking an anatomy class at Mt. Royal, and is in the process of applying for her Master’s of Physiotherapy at UBC. So a skeleton is, like, the most perfect gift ever. I’m happy to say that she loved it.

Anyway, it’s been a while since I last purchased something online, and it occurred to me that there have been some amazingly cool products I’ve come across lately that I think everybody should know about.

Appropriate Reappropriation: Five Sweet New Creative Products

It might be obvious by now that I love the art of reappropriation: taking an item that was meant as one thing, and turning into something else. This might involve turning an old pair of stepladders into a bookshelf, turning an old rotary telephone into a Skype-compatible phone, or any given do-it-yourself project suggested by ReadyMade magazine. I love this kind of stuff, and I’ve got a few reasons for this:

• I love the creativity that goes into making these things. It’s so much more original and provocative than picking up another Orgel table lamp from IKEA.
• It’s practical art. I think that one thing that artists excel at is using surprising juxtapositions to illustrate truth. Consider Dick Detzner’s “Corporate Sacrilege” paintings, which are a series of paintings substituting advertising icons for religious ones. While this isn’t quite the same as, say, turning a bathtub into a couch, it’s doing a similar thing: taking two familiar items and turning them into something interesting and new.
• Lastly, it’s fun, creative and cheap. I shamelessly love all three of those things.

So here are a few things I’ve discovered lately that do an inspiring job taking item X, fusing it with item Y, and creating Item AWESOME.

1. Introducing the couch tub!

BC-based interdisciplinary design company flavour design has created a brilliant furniture hybrid by converting an antique bathtub into a modern sofa. Four to six feet in length, this piece will set you back about $4800.

Check it out in its native context: “Savon” tub couch on flavour design

2. Put your money where you music was

If you’ve got an old Kenny G cassette whose vibrant casing makes you smile, but whose audio content makes you want to spit into a your own tape deck, consider this alternative: chop the tape in half, and make yourself a wallet! If you don’t want to do it yourself, you could buy it from design boom, another creative shop that makes sweet practical art of unexpected items.

Check it out in its native context: The Cassette Wallet on design boom

3. Memory grows on trees

These amazing devices are old news, but their coolness has not declined. Previously featured on our graphic design blog, Elbowruminations, these creative memory sticks are made out of real sticks from a real forest. A startling fusion of digital and authentic analog, I love the idea of bringing real wood into computer products. Yes, they’re real, and yes, you can buy them.

Check them out in their native context: Wooden Memory Sticks on oooms

4. Floppy disks are the new jewel cases

A bit of self-promotion going on here: Back in the spring of 2006, I used obsolete 5 ¼ inch floppy disks to package and sell my album. After burning and labeling the CDs, I used old floppy disks as jewel cases. I originally got the idea from ReadyMade magazine, and adapted it for my own use. Here’s how I did it:

• Scrounged through thrift stores and tech departments for old floppy disks.
• Sliced open the top of each floppy disk with a Swiss Army Knife, and sliced off the foldover lip of the floppy as well.
• Removed the data disc from the floppy, which was like some kind of CD-sized, floppy record. The insides of these floppies are already nicely padded, and are the perfect shape to hold a CD.
• Bought address labels and CD labels from Staples, Designed labels in Adobe Illustrator, affixed them to the floppy and the CD, and created a separate paper tracklist to slip in the “case” with the disc.

These albums are all sold out (I only made about 60), but you can still listen to and download some of my music for free over on my music page.

5. Telling the time

While not exactly a reappropriation type thing, this is still a cool product. Russian hero Artemy Lebedev is the king of breakthrough industrial design. My favourite project of his is the Verbarius electronic clock. It WRITES the time for you, using words, not numbers, in your choice of five different languages. The sleek black rectangle with the tinted glass face is a gorgeous new timekeeping device. Released in February 2007, this clock retails at $183.12 US.

Check it out in its native context: Verbarius at Art Levedev’s studio