The new site is here! It has so much more to offer, and you can finally leave comments! This site will remain and serve as our archives up to this point. There are a TON of archived posts to look at.

Hit the image to see, and don’t forget to update your bookmarks!

A campaign by Lopez Murphy for president of Argentina... Regardless of Murphy’s true intentions (of which I know nothing about), I wish our elections had such cool commercials. With all the money our candidates have, their commercials still end up looking like they were made at the local high school video production room.

My first Halfbakery idea: “The Cell Phone Specific Middle Finger”

I propose the union of two famous hand signs. The universal sign for “phone” using the thumb and pinky extension, with the addition of the middle finger. This would inform the recipient of this signal that you are not pleased with them specifically due to their inappropriate use of their cell phone. So next time someone pulls out in front of you while “chatting it up”, give them the “Phone Finger”.

My idea was recieved reletively well and recieved positive votes.



(picture ironically taken with my -253.2 Weenie Pixel Cell Phone Camera)

[link to submission]

Springtime in Denmark brings flocks of more than a million European starlings (sturnus vulgaris) gathering from all corners to form a “hive mind” in the incredible formations shown above. This phenomenon is called Black Sun.

[see more pics...]

This site is devoted to the creation of “half baked” ideas and the over-discussion of these ideas. One of my favorites was the “Evil Laugh Activated Bathroom”. The sinks, hand driers, and toilets only respond to an evil cackle. Good stuff.



[http://www.halfbakery.com]

I think by now, everyone and their pets have seen the Julian Beever chalk drawings. Here are some simpler, but still interesting pics of some work in a subway.



[http://haha.nu/creative/perspective-art-at-a-subway]

Alan Becker answered the question of what would happen if a flash character came to life and battled the creator. This thing is great. Especially if you have ever used Flash.



[http://visiblepulse.com/lj/606/animator-vs-animation.swf]

I love driving through little towns that still have town squares full of old oak trees and lined with shops and old buildings. I really dig it when these old building have fading, peeling painted ads on the outside walls. I like to stop and take pictures of them when I can, as small testament to the artists who used to do that type of advertising by hand.

Check out the link for loads of galleries of fading ads from towns and cities all over the country.

From the looks of things Coke was advertising on just about any flat surface. Good to see some things haven’t changed.



More Vanishing Ads
[Source - The Museum of Online Museums]

Bradford Hansen-Smith creates these geometric sculptures without ANY cutting. More importantly, he has discovered a use for those crappy paper plates. If you have ever seen a Chinet commercial, you know those thin ones will have you wearing your baked beans and macaroni salad.



www.wholemovement.com

With their super-exaggerated features and rich colors, Sorren’s characters have such a creepy quality to them. There are quite a few things to look at on his site. Worth a look.



See his work

This is just a link to a page full of great pics of insects. If bugs were this big, they would rule the world and we would be their slaves. They would rule with an iron fist.


check 'em out.

You have got to check out this online gallery of all the sound effects used in the old Bat-Man TV series. If you’re a fan of 60’s-70’s type styles, or a fan of the occasional onomatopoeia you will get a kick out of this.

Be warned, the site is in Spanish so I have no idea what it says, but if you click on the links at the top of the page you can track which sounds appeared in each episode as well as which sounds got used the most throughout the series. Kapow seems to be the most popular.

See the link below the pics for more.






BOFF! KAPOW! LINK!!
[source= The Museum of Online Museums Annex - http://www.coudal.com/archive.php?cat=cat_moom]

Höller has some awesome installations... this is his upside down mushroom room.



http://www.airdeparis.com/holler.htm

this site has tons of images of painted walls... these are from Barcelona. we don’t have nearly enough street art here in the states.







http://www.oddwall.com

I’ve posted something from Ze Frank’s site before (make your own kaleidoscope), but I found something else on his site that I thought was pretty cool.

It’s called the Scribbler.

According to Ze “it’s a generative illustration toy.” What that means, is that you create a simple drawing and the scribbler takes over and scribbles over it to create a new random piece of art. Take a look at the images below.

#1 was my original sketch. #2 was about 15 seconds into the process. #3 was a couple of minutes later. #4 was about 30 minutes later. As you can see, it just keeps going. The cool part is that you can change almost everything about the scribble. You can change the colors, the line thickness, the line transparency and the overall “scribbly-ness” of it. You should check it out at the link below, and when you’re done with your scribble, submit it to the Scribbler gallery







Click here to Scribble

If you have ever used Photoshop or Illustrator, this will make your jaw drop.




This is a digital painting of a Chicago scene unveiled at Photoshop World in Miami on March 22, 2006.
It is a panorama of the Damen Station on the Blue Line of the Chicago Transit Authority.
Adobe Illustrator was used for generating the majority of the basic shapes as well as all the buildings in the Chicago skyline.
The rest was created in Photoshop.

• The image size is 40 inches by 120 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 1.7 Gigabytes.
• It took eleven months (close to 2,000 hours) to create.
• The painting is comprised of close to fifty individual Photoshop files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 15,000 layers.
• Over 500 alpha channels were used for various effects.
• Over 250,000 paths make up the multitude of shapes throughout the scene.

Here is a detail of the train in the background:




http://www.bertmonroy.com

This is another piece by Wes Modes. His site’s description:

“The sacred melted telephone was discovered in a burnt-out bar in a little town in Indiana. When the shrine is plugged in, pressing the red button on the front makes an electric current arc between the two top metal rods. When it is connected to a phone line, the current arcs when the phone rings.”

This guy might be my favorite assemblage artist. His “Strange Mechina Series” is full of these strange, interactive machines. I am going to post 'em every now and then, but check out his site if you like.





link

“The images are meant to feel clinical and detached, with a diagrammatic quality that arises from his desire to see things more clearly. Compartmentalized and remote, they comment on the isolating impact of technology and our culture of consumption.” (joshkeyes.net)








http://www.joshkeyes.net/biography.htm
[source= MoCo Loco]

DNA 11 creates abstract art from a sample of your DNA. Each custom piece is as original, and special as you are. Plus, it will only set you back $900.





http://www.gnr8.biz/product_info.php?products_id=112

I don’t know about you guys, but I enjoy walking around barefooted as often as possible. On the beach or in the woods, it’s just so awesome (barring poison ivy, which seems to have some kind of vendetta against me) to be able to literally feel the ground with your feet.

Maybe I’m a hillbilly or something or some kind of hippie-in-denial, but I don’t like wearing shoes. I never have, and probably never will, but my job has a mandatory “closed-toed shoes” policy, due to all the machinery in our production area. These babies might be just the thing, and at only $70 a pop, can any of us afford to NOT get a pair....or 4?

Click the link below to check them out.



Vibram Fivefingers........shouldn’t it be Fivetoes?

[source= www.crainium.net]

This interactive tool is intended to give an idea of the devastating blast effects of ground-level, shallow subsurface, and low-altitude nuclear weapon detonations.




*Try it out!*

High definition aerial maps of selected U.S. cities have been provided. The size of the bomb can be chosen by selecting the weapon’s yield, as measured in kilotons (KT) or megatons (MT) of TNT equivalent. There is also the option of having the bomb delivered using an automobile at ground level or using an aircraft flying at an altitude that produces the widest area of destruction.

[source: digg.com]

Check this out. This guy creates these cool little pieces of art using black acrylic paint squeezed out of an Elmer’s glue bottle, and leaves them in random places all over Philadelphia.




I love how much variation he gets in the line weights using this technique.




If you go to his site, you’ll also see artwork created using foam brushes (like the color pieces above), pens, pencils, markers, paintbrushes, pastels and even the computer. Don‚Äôt miss his tattoo flash either, he‚Äôs got some great Polynesian style pieces in there as well. Check out the link below for more.

The Artwork of Todd Marrone

kinda cool... see the shark?








link

This guy is amazing. How he has the patience to do this is just completely beyond me. I’ve tried stacking cards before and it is nowhere near as easy as he makes it sound, but I bet he probably doesn’t use 10 year old, dog-eared pinochle cards either. Maybe that has something to do with it.

See the link below for more.





HOW HIGH DO THESE CARDS GO?

[source= www.crainium.net]

This guy’s photography is awesome. He has also done a ton of commercial work which can be viewed on his site as well.



http://www.ptoledano.com/hope_01.html
[source= BoingBoing.net]