Artist’s statement:

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices. (read on)

First spotted via Who Killed Bambi.

About Bob Staake:

Bob Staake (born September 26, 1957 in Los Angeles, California) is an American illustrator, cartoonist, children’s book author, and designer. He lives and works in Chatham, Massachusetts on the elbow of Cape Cod. (wikipedia)

I first came to know Bob Staake through this video, were he demonstrates how he uses a subtraction process in Photoshop 3.0 to create his illustration. Visit his official website (and discover a lot more about his art).

Previously on Skandalon : Barry Blitt, British Petroleum

Fotoglif: “Welder Raymond Vanwinkle of Magnolia, Texas, works on the BP Pollution Containment Chamber” May 3rd, 2010, REUTERS/Sean Gardner

“Welder Raymond Vanwinkle of Magnolia, Texas, works on the BP Pollution Containment Chamber at Wild Well Control, Inc. in Port Fourchon, Louisiana May 3, 2010. Energy giant BP Plc, its reputation battered by a catastrophic oil spill threatening the U.S. Gulf shore, said on Monday it was working to stem the gushing undersea leak and promised to pay for the cleanup and compensation claims. BP is working on to try to seal the ruptured well with an undersea containment system that would capture the leaking oil and channel it to a tanker on the surface.”

“First introduced in cockpit heads up displays, head / eye tracking enables content to be presented as though it were naturally part of the participants surroundings and is quite an effective technique for increasing cognitive immersion.  Projecting onto translucent surfaces enables a mixed reality experience where both the natural environment and the digital content appear in the same space.  This technique will soon be deployed on a wide basis, as your cell phone / mobile device will be able to track itself in any environment giving it the ability to deliver mixed reality content.”

About OOOii: “The LIVE ENVIRONMENT is our response to a paradigm shift that is expanding the role of the creative desinger to explore and embrace new interaction models as the primary driving force in realizing the mutualism of consumer and content. This reengineering towards natural experience in an immersive venue is transforming the industry in ways that many are calling a revolution in visual communication. […] Drawing on the tools, techniques and experience developed while designing some of the most memorable immersive visual effects sequences for Hollywood feature films, the developers at OOOii have implemented the open interface framework in order to bring these technologies to the live environment.” (Read more).