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Tobias Megerle asked woodcarvers from Mumbai who use traditional forms to try their hands at making skateboards. He explained:
“The very first time I drove past I was magically attracted to the carved wooden objects in Mahim, all the open workshops, the woodcarvers sitting on the floor with their traditional tools, working on their items, the whole atmosphere,” says Megerle.
“As an artist I wa driven to do something with these woodcarvers and their work. I visited the workshops several times to study their craft and always thought to myself: ‘Wonderful, but a bit dowdy, a bit frumpy.’ All the nice ornamented chairs, divan beds, frames and what else I know not… some in the typical colonial style.
“After a series of thoughts I hit upon the object to be combined with the traditional woodwork — the good old skateboard. In Mumbai — though almost completely unknown — the skateboard is, in many places, more than just a piece of sports equipment. It’s an entire lifestyle that’s created around it, a unique music style, special clothes, whole skater-parks.
You can see eight more photos of the results at the link. An exhibition of the skateboards opens tomorrow at The Loft, a gallery in Mumbai.
Link via NotCot | Gallery Website | Photo: The Loft
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Well, no. Although it does look like NASA is improvising in the light of a thriftier budget. What’s actually happening is that engineers put a model lander on modified skateboards to move it around during testing:
The lander prototype was placed on modified skateboards and a customized track system as a low-cost solution to control movement during final testing of the prototype’s sensors, onboard computer, and thrusters. The functional test focused on ensuring that all system components work seamlessly to sense, communicate, and command the lander’s movements.[...]
The lander prototype will aid NASA’s development of a new generation of small, smart, versatile landers for airless bodies such as the moon and asteroids. The lander’s design is based on cutting-edge technology, which allows precision landing in high-risk, but high-priority areas, enabling NASA to achieve scientific and exploration goals in previously unexplored locations.
Seattle-based artist Charles Wing Krafft made this skateboard out of porcelain. It’s full-sized, so you could presumably ride it. Krafft has made other unusual subjects out of porcelain, such as guns and grenades.
Link and Gallery via Dude Craft | Photo: Viacomet
deviantART user Nansei made this sculpture, entitled “Let’s Go Surfing Instead”, of a skate park on a skateboard, and then placed it in a skate park for photographing. The scene includes miniature graffiti.
Link via Dude Craft
V8 Supercars, an Australian car racing organization, built a somewhat oversized skateboard powered by a 630-horsepower V8 engine. They made it to honor skateboarding master Tony Hawk, who will be in Sydney from Dec. 3-5 to attend a race. The skateboard will be on public display with Hawk during that time.
Link via Ace of Spades HQ
Industrial designers Mike Simonian and Pieter Schouten made this skateboard in order to add the flexibility of snowboarding movements to skateboarding:
The Flowlab Skateboard allows you to surf without waves and ride without snow. Years of experimentation resulted in the geometry that allows a device with no moving parts to simulate the fluid motion of snowboarding or surfing on land. The arced axles let you carve to 45 degree angles with no resistance and fluid transitions edge-to-edge.
You can view a technical drawing of the design at the link.
Link via DVICE | Photo: Mike & Maaike
…is about the size of a small bus. It was built by Joe Ciaglia of California Skateparks, and in this video, he and his friends decided to take it for a ride at Camp Woodard, Pennsylvania.
via Geekologie | Previously: World’s Largest Skateboard Ramp
Artist Doug McKee of Bellingham, Washington, makes elaborate carved skateboards. He’s particularly found of animal forms, such as the above octopus, which was carved from cedar.
He has a non-embeddable video demonstrating his craft. Look in the lower-right part of the linked page.
Link via Make | Page with Video
This ad for Freebord skateboards has skateboarders flying down the streets of San Francisco in the dark to connect glowing Tetris shapes. I have to wonder where the awesome outtakes are!-via Digg
