Hyperrealistic Oil Paintings Explore What We Hide and Share

Since the introduction of social media, there has been more New York-based artist Tigran Tsitoghdzyan explores this phenomenon in his ongoing series of hyperrealistic portraits, titled Mirror. Rendered in a limited grayscale color palette, these paintings depict different women covering their faces with their hands. Except, rather than hiding their features, we are able to see through their hands.

Tsitoghdzyan was inspired to embark on this series after seeing the rise of selfies among young people, particularly younger women. The filters became so popular that many girls can't imagine posting a selfie unfiltered, he tells My Modern Met. The cellphone cameras even have algorithms and recognize the selfie through a filter on your face. The young generation doesn't like camera pictures anymore as they are so used to seeing themselves through their phone.

This idea of what people filtered and embellished on their faces led Tsitoghdzyan to Mirror. Each of these black and white paintings focuses on the head of an individual, which has been blown up to an extremely large scale of at least 7 feet, and sometimes bigger. Using traditional techniques, Tsitoghdzyan portrays each figure in an idealized wayhiding the texture of their skin, and enhancing their makeup where necessary so they seem naturally perfect. Covering the face with your hands is the most natural movement we do to hide anything since our childhood, but I still wanted to see the faces throughquestioning what we hide and what we share, he explains.

Scroll down to see more of Tsitoghdzyan's paintings and keep up to date with his latest projects by following the artist on Instagram.

New York-based artist Tigran Tsitoghdzyan creates hyperrealistic portraits.

How to Easily Multiply Your Indoor Jungle by Propagating Your Existing Plants

Photo: MarianaMes/Depositphotos
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Once you have a plant or two, it's tempting to want to cultivate an entire indoor jungle. But you dont need to go back to the plant store to do so. You can propagate your existing plants and multiply what you already have. Plant propagation is an easy DIY project for a beginning plant parent and can reproduce a variety of plants without much trouble.

But first, what is plant propagation? Its the process of reproducing flora from a single-plant parent. There are multiple ways to do it. Here, we'll go over which approach is the easiest for beginners, the steps to take, and the stations you can set up in your home to make propagation work for you.

Before you know it, youll have many plant babies ready to grow into mature flora.

Photo: Nanihta/Depositphotos

Why should you propagate your plants?

Plant propagation is the act of reproducing a plant from a single parent. Its the best way to get more plants without having to buy additional flora for your home. And by pruning plants in this way, your current plant population will refrain from being too ov...

All images Andrew McCarthy and Jason Guenzel, shared with permission

Astrophotographers Andrew McCarthy (previously) and Jason Guenzel recently teamed up to create a staggering look at the sun that showcases the textured, fiery details of its atmosphere. Comprised of more than 90,000 individual images, Fusion of Helios showcases the usually invisible solar corona, the outermost layer that tends to be hidden by the suns powerful glare. To get a scientifically plausible look at it, we used NASAs SOHO data as a reference to geometrically transform Jasons 2017 eclipse photo to match the features, McCarthy shares. The result is a blend of science and art, and my favorite piece of work Ive been a part of.

Jets of plasma known as spicules appear like wispy fibers cloaking the suns surface, while a tall column shoots from the upper right. This solar eruption, which McCarthy likens to a tornado, stretches the same height as 14 planet Earths as it rapidly swirls and sheds balls of plasma the size of the moon.

Check out a video of the twister-like phenomenon on Instagram, and find prints of Fusion of Helios in both McCarthys and Guenzels shops. (via...

In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century there lived a mechanically inclined polymath named Badi al-Zaman Abu-l-Izz Ibn Ismail Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari, whom we might prefer simply to call Al-Jazari. A resident of Diyar-Bakir, in modern-day Turkey, he was employed as a court engineer, and indeed, proved to be the finest engineer for which a Mesopotamian ruler of that era could hope. He worked out a variety of functional camshafts, crankshafts, pumps, fountains, and clocks, not to mention his more ambitious designs, including a host of humanoid automata meant to handle tasks like serving beverages and even playing music.

Lying between the practical and the fanciful are such Al-Jazarian inventions as the perpetual flute, a diagram of which you can see at the site of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Involving two adjacent tanks, each with a plug attached to a chain, the setup would work when the pipe on an axle with a bowl fills with water from a channel at the upper right and tips so that water flows into one tank. The air in the tank is thus forced through a pipe attached to a jar that plays a flute until the tank is filled. Then the pipe tilts to fill the other tank with water, causing the other flute to play. Like a pre-modern Rube Goldberg, Al-Jazari created mechanical concepts that are better seen than explained, and you&...

In his novel The Man Without Qualities (1930/42), Robert Musil wrote, Unfortunately, nothing is so hard to achieve as a literary representation of a man thinking, because the outcome no longer has

Njabala: Holding Space is the second iteration of the annual exhibition program for the Njabala Foundation, which was launched in 2021 by Ugandan curator Martha Kazungu as a means to increase visibility

Pulp Fiction will likely hold up generations from now, but the resonance of its title may already be lost to history. Pulp magazines, or the pulps, as they were called, once held special significance for lovers of adventure stories, detective and science fiction, and horror and fantasy. Acquiring the name from the cheap paper on which they were printed, pulp magazines might be said, in large part, to have shaped the pop culture of our contemporary world, publishing respected authors like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and many an unknown newcomer, some of whom became household names (in certain houses), like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip K. Dick.

Beginning in the late 19th century, the pulps opened up the publishing space that became flooded with comic books and popular novels like those of Stephen King and Michael Crichton in the latter half of the twentieth century.

To let it go, or not to let it go

That is the question

And this guy wants to know if hes wrong for not letting his parents forget what they accused his brother of.

Lets see what went down and if this kid is taking things too far.

AITA for refusing to let it go after my parents falsely accused my brother of stealing from their house?

I have an older half-brother Rory (we share the same dad), I live with my mum and step dad. Rory comes to see me regularly and we usually go out together. Im 15, Rory is 24 and I have two step sisters (11 and 9).

A few months ago some valuable items were stolen from our house. Some jewellery, my step dads expensive watches and some cash. They immediately accused Rory of doing it and banned me from seeing him or talking to him. I defended Rory and I was grounded as a result.

The accusation was false because that day Rory picked me up outside and never came in but they didnt believe me and accused me of lying to protect him. The police had no reason to believe it was my brother and they didnt even consider him a suspect.

About two weeks ago the thief was found out as he did the same thing at a relatives house and they had security cameras and eventually confessed to stealing from us as well. It obviously was not Rory. It was my step dads nephew who had somehow copied his key without him noticing and used it to break in when nobody was home.

Im angry about all of this and I asked them to apologise to both me and Rory for their false accusations which my mum said shes happy to do but my step dad said no and told me I just have to learn to move on. Later that day I reminded him to be extra careful about his keys when he visits his relati...

For many couples, seeing those two little lines that mean a baby is on the way is one of the happiest moments of their lives. They find out together, or the soon-to-be mom cant wait to find the cutest/best way to let her partner know.

For others, though, its not happy or exciting news, and telling the other person is something that causes anxiety or even fear.

OP is engaged, and when she found out she was pregnant, she wasnt happy about it. She suspected her partner wouldnt be, either, and his sister (her best friend) agreed.

I decided to keep my pregnancy to myself because I dont know what Im going to do about it and I knew my fianc wasnt going to be happy with the news.

My future sister-in-law/best friend is the only other person who knew as I only took the test at her suggestion and at her house.

She also agreed that her brother was unlikely to be happy about it but she felt like I should tell him immediately anyway.

Still, the best friend thought her brother deserved to know, and gave OP a certain amount of time to relay the news.

We kept arguing over it because I told her I needed time to process it and she felt like I was making excuses to avoid telling him. In the end, she told him herself while we were having dinner with their family. He was so upset he confronted me in front of everybody so now they all know and everybody is upset with me for keeping it from him.

His sister kept trying to reach out and apologise after it happened but I was ignoring her as her only excuse was that he was her brother so she couldnt keep it from him and that she gave me 3 weeks to tell him myself.

When she didnt, OPs friend told her brother and all h*$l broke loose.

The last time she called me I was so upset that I answered and...

Few things are sexier than an art heist. This fact, and my natural fondness for parodies of the contemporary art world, made the plot of Inside (2023) sound practically mouthwatering: In Vasilis Katsoupiss directorial debut, Willem Dafoe stars as Nemo, a thief whose plan to rob the collection of a multimillionaire backfires spectacularly when he finds himself trapped in an empty Manhattan penthouse. The film seemed poised to deliver on its tacit promise of unmasking the cruel emptiness of beautiful objects, and I was prepared to devour it like an expensive, truffle-laced canap at a VIP-only museum opening. Instead, I found myself cringing at Insides tragically forced attempt to capture white-cube gallery ennui a failure of imagination that haunts so much media premised on romanticized perceptions of visual arts mystique.

The film begins with Nemo recalling his response when he was asked, as a child, which three things he would salvage from a fire: his cat, his sketchbook, and an AC/DC album. My cat died,...

In 1646, Joo Mina, an enslaved sugar plantation worker from West Africa in what was then Portuguese Brazil, fled to Dutch Brazil, where the Dutch West India Company interrogated him to try to get intelligence that would give them leverage over Portugal. Joo was just one of many people enslaved during this time of global conflict between these world powers. 

He also happens to share my last name not by choice but by force, and we never learn his birth name. Joo Mina is a cousin not by blood or marriage but by colonization. And while I am not aware of slavery in my specific Filipino ancestry, Spaniards practiced it across the archipelago. Im aware of the way that people of many different cultures in what we now call the Global South were swept up into various forms of slavery, forced...

SANTA FE, N. Mex. The New Mexico sun pours through big arched windows at Shiprock Santa Fe, illuminating Navajo weavings, some of which date back to the early 19th century, others made by living artists. The gallery carries a renowned collection of textiles and jewelry, representing the deep connection to creating that exists in Din culture. 

At the helm of Shiprock Santa Fe is curator and owner Jed Foutz. He grew up in Shiprock, New Mexico, on the Navajo reservation where his family owned trading posts for five generations, starting around 1870. 

Shiprock Santa Fe is really reflective of where Im from, Foutz told Hyperallergic. The curation is very spontaneous; its a constant refinement. We have to be moved and feel a connection and some beauty. If you have respect and love for the items, it naturally creates something around it. Hopefully, it tells a story. 

Before Foutz started Shiprock Santa Fe in 2005, he worked with artists, helping to get their works into galleries and shops. When I was wholesaling, my job was you make it and I will find a place for it. His role as a facilitator is something that influences the ethos at Shiprock Santa Fe, which aims to help artists become independent rather than keeping them tied to the gallery. Some of the contemporary artists that Shiprock currently works with include ceramicist...

Flemish painter Quinten Massyss The Ugly...

The iconic Japanese woodblock print The Great Wave (18301832) broke records at auction when it sold for nearly $2.8 million on Tuesday, March 21. Christies had originally set the price estimate between $500,000 and $700,000. The prints final selling price was higher than that of any previously auctioned Hokusai piece.

Created by master engraver Katsushika Hokusai and formally titled Under the Wave off Kanagawa, the print Christies auctioned was one of the highest-quality versions in circulation not already acquired by a museum. This early impression featured sharp lines in the rolling waves and clear demarcations between the sky and cloud formations.

The recent record-breaking auction of The Great Wave print is of a rare and very early impression of the print, and of one of the best impressions of this print in existence, Jacqueline...

No one wants to be seen as pretentiousexcept maybe people who are pretentious on purpose, which is a whole other post.

If youre a normal person who wants to appear friendly and down-to-earth, thereby making friends and not annoying people, here are 18 actions youll want to avoid.

18. Just twice.

My cousin who rolls every r on a word that she says in Spanish, like burrito, but not other words with two Rs.

Shes been to Puerto Rico twice.

17. No, I dont.

Asks the question Do you know who I am? Hate those f**kin a$$holes.

No I dont, and you dont know me either.

16. Or its gross.

When someone says, You must not have a sophisticated palate if you dont like a food that person likes.

15. Skeevy for sure.

Having someone take a picture of you giving money to the homeless.

14. That grand intersection.

Luxury clothing with the brands logo all over it.

That glorious place where pretentious and trashy intersect.

13. Name dropping.

They keep claiming they know so and so famous and wealthy people.

12. This seems very specific.

Intentionally including the words Business Class part of your ticket in your strategically staged photo at the airport.

Table shot with wine glass and ticket showing. Oh I LOVE this wine!

11. Both of these.

Disrespecting people who work in professions you deem to be easy or in the service industry.

Counterpoint:...

Theres no one secret to happiness, and theres no life thats happy front to back, either. Its impossible at least if you live one thats long enough to be satisfying.

That said, there are some people who reach middle age and are happier than others, so whats their secret?

If youre curious, these 15 people can tell you whats worked for them!

15. The only ones you get.

Take care of your teeth. This is the only set youre ever going to have and you dont want to neglect them and mess them up like I did. Ive got crap tons of fillings which dont last forever and need replacement. A filling isnt as good as the real thing and filled teeth can break, requiring crowns. I have two and it sucks.

Brush and floss thoroughly every single day without exception. Hell, get an electric toothbrush. See the dentist regularly. Ditch the sugary drinks.

14. A book of poems.

Dont fall for the trap that your life needs to be one long narrative that you should be building. Life is best when its a bunch of happy moments that just happen to be connected.

Dont try to make your life into a novel, make it a book of poems.

13. You can always turn around.

I was a raging alcoholic in my twenties and thought I would never recover from it. I never found a real job using my first degree or my masters. Part of it was because I was always drunk, part of it was the job market at the time.

I went back to school in my thirties and found something I like a whole lot more. Now, Im married, nearly ten years sober, and have a great job.

My point is, if you end up on the wrong path or don...

Wood and Resin Coffee Tables Look Like Koi Ponds Come to Life

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Visiting a koi pond is often a tranquil experience. While you may think that this requires venturing outdoors to experience it, EpoxyMiniStore captures the beauty of these elaborate water gardens in their exquisite epoxy resin furniture. The Vietnam-based maker produces a range of unique coffee tables that combine wood with resin to mimic the appearance of koi pond habitats.

From afar, it's easy to mistake these handmade pieces for real life. The resin is molded in such a way that it easily resembles water, whether it is still, rippling, or cascading down a small waterfall. Each of the koi is painted by hand in hyperrealistic detail which makes it seem as though a real fish is swimming underneath. As a result, the clear part of the coffee table looks like it contains the typical things you would find in a koi pond, while the wood is often manipulated to mimic natural rock formations.

All of EpoxyMiniStore's creations are a striking sight, easily fooling the eye into thinking that the water and fish are actually moving on the coffee table. When incorporated into the home, they surely bring some of the quiet beauty of nature to the indoors. And while most of these unique coffee tables come from EpoxyMiniStore's own creative vision, however, they also work with clients to produce custom-made furniture.

You can find available epoxy resin coffee tables via EpoxyMiniStore's Etsy shop.

Vietnam-based maker EpoxyMiniStore creates exquisite coffee tables that look like real koi fish ponds.

Interactive Exhibition Celebrates Spring With Shape-Shifting Graphics of Beautiful Blooms

Springtime in Japan is known for spectacular cherry blossoms. While these are visible in real life between March and April, art collective teamLab creates annual immersive exhibitions that capture the beauty of these delicate pink flowers through amazing digital graphics. Hosted at teamLab Forest Fukuoka, this year's experience promises even more visual wonders with the addition of holographic animals.

As you move through the different rooms of the museum, you encounter a variety of images featuring blooms and creatures. When you touch the walls or approach these computer-generated animations, the elements changeflowers bloom, disperse, and more. No matter where your attention turns to in the museum, you will find that the graphics are constantly changing. The sakura installation belongs to the museum's larger exhibit, titled Shifting Valley, Living Creatures of Flowers, Symbiotic Livesa Whoe year per Year.

For 2023, teamLab has also incorporated life-size animal animations, which take form on March 24 (a couple of weeks into the exhibit). Kangaroos, giraffes, flamingos, and leopards can be seen traversing the ever-changing digital landscape, and you'll even be able to use your smartphones to capture these colorful visuals. Like the flowers, these animals do not keep still and will move or change according to how the audience interacts with the space.

Adults can purchase tickets for the exhibition for 1,600 yen ($12) during the week, and 1,800 yen (about $13.35) during weekends.

Art collective teamLab presents its new exhibition at celebrating spring.

Dandelion-Like Fairy Robots Can Help Fill the Gap of Declining Pollinator Populations

Photo: Jianfeng Yang/Tampere University

The declining populations of pollinators across the globe are of great concern. As the backbone of fertilization and an important foundation of the ecosystem, scientists have come up with incredible solutions to preserve their lives. In Europe, bus stops have become pollinator pit stops. In Japan, tiny water shrines serve as bee respites. But what if pollinator populations are declining too much? A team of scientists from Tampere University in Finland has a possible solution.

The university's Light Robots is a group focused on robots that respond to light and are also lightweight. It honed in on stimuli-responsive polymers. Group leader and Academy Research Fellow Hao Zeng states, The development of stimuli-responsive polymers has brought about a wealth of material-related opportunities for next-generation small-scale, wirelessly controlled soft-bodied robots. He goes on to say that these special polymers have been used to make tiny robots walk, swim, and jump, but none have successfully used them to make robots flyuntil now.

Zeng and Jianfeng Yang have created a new dandelion-inspired design for their project called FAIRY, or Flying Aero-robots based on Light Responsive Materials Assembly. This polymer-assembly robot can fly by wind and is controlled by light. Superior to its natural counterparts, this artificial seed is equipped with a soft actuator, explains Zeng. The actuator is made of light-responsive liquid crystalline elastomer, which induces opening or closing actions of the bristles upon...

Sometimes, you just gotta call people out in life

And sometimes, those people happen to be your dad and your stepdad

Yikes!

That sure doesnt sound good!

But lets get all the facts before we jump to conclusions, okay?

Dive in below!

AITA for calling out my dad and stepdad?

I (16f) have a twin brother (Cody).

I do cheer and Cody does sports. We do these activities because we enjoy them but Cody also puts in a lot of effort because hes constantly seeking approval from our dad AND step dad.

The two dont care for each other, but are somehow the best of friends when it comes to Codys sports.

He does like 5 different ones because our dad likes hockey and lacrosse while our step dad prefers football and basketball-they both enjoy baseball. If he ever dares to quit a single one, one of them will throw a riot or accuse him of playing favourites.

Its so dumb. Sometimes Codys schedules clash or get so overwhelming to the point where hell lay on his bedroom floor for hours and dissociate. Its been like this since he was like 10.

My mom and step mom think its just men being men and that boys enjoy sports so Cody probably doesnt care but like theres a limit to everything right?

We were having a celebratory lunch for our older sister before she leaves for college and both sides were there. The lunch ended at 2pm and our sister asked if we wanted to go the mall. I said yes and Cody was CLEARLY going to say yes but our dad said he had baseball practice.

Cody tried asking if he could sit out one day since he hasnt missed a single practice of anything in his life but our step dad joined our dads practice makes perfect speech and backed out. They then tried using ME as an example.

Oh Ashleys never missed a day of practice...

Now, this is pretty wild!

Thousands of people have been watching a continuously streaming AI-generated episode of Seinfeld on Twitch since December 2022 and the dialogue is being created using ChatGPT. The show is called Nothing, Forever and it vaguely resembles the classic TV show but the dialogue is not the same.

Skyler Hartle, one of the shows creators, said that the show started off as a surreal art project, but generative media and generative AI just kind of took off in a crazy way over the past couple of years.

the Seinfeld AI is becoming self-aware this is not a drill pic.twitter.com/H1zPO9Cnqa

Al Sikkan (@AlsikkanTV) February 2, 2023

Hartle also said, As generative media gets better, we have this notion that at any point, youre gonna be able to turn on the future equivalent of Netflix and watch a show perpetually, nonstop as much as you want. You dont just have seven seasons of a show, you have seven hundred, or infinite seasons of a show that has fresh content whenever you want it.

The show has been a big hit and people have been tweeting all kinds of updates about it.

I WAS WATCHING THE INFINITE AI GENERATED SEINFELD STREAM AND WHAT THE FUCK LMAO...

People all grow up in different environments and households, with all kinds of parents. When two people decide to get married, part of that merging of lives means navigating each others birth families.

This womans father-in-law has very traditional ideas of what roles men and women will play in the household, and typically, she and her husband dont really rock the boat too much if they can help it.

My husband and I (both 26) recently hosted a family dinner to announce our pregnancy, its important to add that my husband doesnt have a close relationship with his father, but we keep him around because he still has 3 minor siblings that we love and care for.

My FIL is the type of person that still thinks women should serve men at dining times (like, he has to be served first because hes the breadwinner and shit like that), we usually dont care since we mostly ignore them, however this time my family was present and we consider he f**ked around and found out.

At a recent family dinner, though, things came to a head because OP served her own father, who was injured, but told her father in law he could make his own plate.

My dad is my favorite person in the world, my mom died when I was little and my dad took care of my older sister and I, theyre the only family I have left, at dinner, both my husband and I cooked things we knew both of our families would like, the first issue started when my FIL tried to sit at one of the heads of the table and my husband said no, he sad at one and I sat at the other, me with my father and sister to either side and him with his brothers, so m FIL was kinda in the middle and didnt like it.

The second problem and the cause of all of this is that everyone was kinda serving themselves, however my dad has a damaged nerve on his right hand and he stru...

We are lichens on a grand scale.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe, the great naturalist John Muir wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century. We forget that nature itself is one vast miracle transcending the reality of night and nothingness, the great naturalist Loren Eiseley wrote a century later as he considered the meaning of life. We forget that each one of us in his personal life repeats that miracle.

Because of this delicate interconnectedness of life across time, space, and being, any littlest fragment of the universe can become a lens on the miraculous whole. Sometimes, it is the humblest life-forms that best intimate the majesty of life itself.

Take, for instance, lichens.

We all know theres no simple or cheap way to change your life, but that doesnt stop us from wishing there was. I meanwho wouldnt love that, right?

Well, buckle up, because these 16 people swear your life can actually change even if its only a little bit for less than $100.

16. It might work for you.

A decent light wake up alarm clock. Completely changed my mornings.

Dont think I could ever go back to using my phone or a simple alarm clock.

15. You need two.

Two pet ducks. You may be tempted to go for one. But trust me. You need two.

And youll have about $76 left over.

14. A real game-changer.

If you have trouble getting up or functioning in the morning, and like a nice cup of coffee or tea, an electric kettle with a timer can be a real game-changer.

Or just getting an electric kettle if you dont have one.

13. Just one more.

Another monitor. Your productivity will increase dramatically.

12. Much more natural.

Vertical mouse. $20. Saved my wrist using it at work all day.

It looks odd but it feels so much more natural. I even got a bunch of people at my office to buy one after they tried mine.

11. The clean feeling.

A nasal irrigation kit either the electronic pump or simply the squeeze bottles. I started using them both leading up to surgery on my sinuses, and I havent stopped using them since.

It takes some getting used to, but the relief and clean feeling is amazing.

10. Best decision ever.

I got a...