Calling all curious minds—scientists, anthropologists, relentless tourists: Saturday, April 9th, is International Obscura Day, the day to "explore hidden treasures in your hometown," or so says Atlas Obscura, a website dedicated to public curiosities and esoterica. If you're the kind of person who appreciates public oddities every day of the year, tomorrow is icing on the cake. Celebrate Obscura Day in one of hundreds of locales—from Los Angeles to Sydney, from Berlin to Manila.
Go out and find a bag of Qualatex Balloons from your local party suplier or party store. Qualatex is the "Very Best Balloons" you can get and they tend to be easiest to work with.Buy a quality hand pump that you can use to blow up the balloons. A quality pump should run anywhere from $3 - $7 for a basic dual action hand pump. It may not be easy to find a quality one in a party store, but I'm sure they'll have something that will work. Anything is better than nothing when it comes to having a ...
There are currently two camps on the internet. The first camp—those who are slurping up as much Charlie Sheen tiger blood as possible (hence Sheen's newly bagged Guinness Book of World Records status for most Twitter followers)— drastically prevails. The second camp—those who would rather not hear poor Charlie's ravings—is, however, much smaller. If you fall into the latter camp, Greg Leuch of F.A.T. has a solution for you. Leuch—who is also responsible for the Justin Bieber Mention Blocker—h...
When children's book author Aaron Zenz took his family to see the highly acclaimed Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, his 10-year-old daughter Gracie was immediately inspired to become a street artist. Aaron quickly explained that "while the art was fun and the story was great, vandalism isn’t a good thing" so the family was challenged to come up with an appropriately stealthy public art project that didn't entail defacing public property. So, what do you get when you cross an in...
When the much buzzed Facebook profile page redesign was released back in December, French artist and co-director of ad agency La Bande Originale Alexandre Oudin came up with an innovative way to maximize the visual possibilities of the page. His clever "hack" created a ripple effect of copycats across the web.
A Parisian street artist anonymously known as JR—his pervasive works feature massive photographs of poor urban residents plastered across the cityscape—was awarded the 2011 TED prize some months ago.
the converterhave you ever wanted a voutube video or song from youtube on your ipod but either cannot find it or don't have money to pay? well we can help. copy the youtube video's url and go to this link and click your country. it should take you to the next page and pop up some annoying adds. exit out of those and click audio converter for sound or video converter for video. we will assume for this guide that you want a song, but the same principal applies to video. click on audio converter...
Once there was Spin the Bottle. Then there was the embarrassing adult version of Spin the Bottle—on Wii. And then there was artist Hye Yeon Nam, who decided to skip all pretenses and go straight for the spit-swapping, no foreplay necessary. Hye Yeon Nam devised a method for controlling a bowling video game by French kissing. It works like this: "One person has a magnet on his/her tongue and the other person wears the headset. While they kiss, the person who has the magnet on his/her tongue, c...
Meet Newstweek, a hidden device engineered to hack news items being read at public WiFi hotspots (cafes, libraries, airports, etc.). Both nefarious and tech-saavy, the ingenious mechanism wasn't fathered by a group of web hackers, but rather a pair of Berlin artists, Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev. The duo are interested in exploiting the "trustworthiness" of big media outlets in order to demonstrate the vulnerability of relying on just a few dominant networks.
Famed artist and photographer Laurie Simmons boasts an impressive career spanning over three decades. She's shown at some of the world's top art institutions and galleries, and appeared on art world popular PBS television series Art 21. She also happens to be the the proud mother of promising young filmmaker Lena Dunham, the 24-year-old director of last year's indie hit Tiny Furniture.
I would like to quote a paragraph from The Power of Art by Susan Anderson, Nancy Walch, and Kate Becker. You will find the link to the PDF online booklet for more information at the bottom.
See a burning building? Hold all calls to the fire department. Canadian artist Isabelle Hayeur fools passerbyers with her installation, "Fire with Fire", an artwork that creates the illusion of a fire-swept four-story heritage building in the downtown eastside of Vancouver. "The Downtown Eastside is the oldest neighbourhood in Vancouver; it is also the most run-down. This historic area is infamous for being plagued by social problems due to poverty. Before falling prey to serious urban decay,...
Know the saying, "The inmates are running the asylum"? Well, if the inmates actually were running the asylum, we imagine the asylum might look something like this!
We know it's fun to break stuff, but Santa sure isn't going to be as good to Michael Tompert next year. The San Francisco digital imaging and CGI artist destroyed a whole slew of brand-new Apple gadgets as a statement on "our relationship with fetish, fashion, freedom, and bondage."
Thanks to Microsoft’s XBOX 360 motion-detecting system, Kinect, the world is becoming a play place for sci-fi style virtual reality. One of the latest hacks demonstrates the next best thing to regular old air guitar... virtual reality air guitar: Artist Chris O'Shea explains how it works:
Love this Rubik's Cube stamp with movable type Chinese characters by Shaun Chung. Chung laser-etched the characters from wood, and then adhered them to a regular Rubik's Cube to create verses from a traditional Chinese text.
If you're not familiar with the animations of Jan Švankmajer, you're in for quite a trip. The Czech artist and filmmaker is known for his metaphorical, captivatingly surreal stop-motion and claymation films, and is God to many (including talents such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay).
HI everyone, its time for HALLOWEEN COSTUMES! This i my second tutorial and I am so excited about this once because I get to dress up as my FAVORITE Dinsey Princess. EVERYONE MUST LOVE Disney characters, and halloween is a prefect time to dress up as your favorites. I am so excited to see your comments about this video. Snow White is so dear to me, because beyone her pefrect skin and physical beauty she has a stron inner character and a perfect most humble princess ever. She is so feminine, e...
You know those tubes that siphon money in banks? It's called the pneumatic tube system, and thanks to some clever con artists, it's now a rather large flaw in the banking system.
Shot with a Nokia N8 cell phone equipped with a 50x CellScope microscope, Dot is the world’s smallest stop motion animated film. Created by the makers of the Wallace & Gromit series, the figures were made with a 3D printer, each hand-painted with the aid of a microscope. Watch as the heroine hops from scene to scene, Mario style: Via PopSci:
While digital samplers have their merits, they're predictable in a way that can cause them to sound stiff or sterile. The solution? A return to the analog, tape-based samplers of yesteryear, which, with their inherent mechanical noise and euphonic distortions, offer a more musical take on the sampling process.
Nylon Magazine recreates world renown makeup artist Topolino's dangerous thorn manicure. (Topolino was a wiz who has worked with the likes of Alexander McQueen, among other fashion stars).
When viewing Toronto based artist Evan Penny's work, Ron Mueck immediately comes to mind. The clear similarities include a representation which is completely photo-realistic, a playfulness with scale, and the mutually shared background in Hollywood SFX.
Elvis died a painful death in 1977. But his spirit lives on in the oddest of places.
Sounds like an odd bragging right, but hold your horses, artist Hannes Langeder's handmade Porsche is pretty damn interesting.
The game has undergone many transitions over the years, since its days as LEXIKO (1931) to its briefness as CRISS CROSS WORDS to its current and amalgamated, renowned brand of SCRABBLE. There has been many editions of the word board game along that historic metamorphosis, and SCRABBLE has even given in to pop culture, sports memorabilia, and fanaticism.
The Illusion Contest of the Year recently announced their top ten finalists, and the overwhelming crowd and jury favorite is Impossible Motion: Magnet-like Slopes by Koukichi Sugihara of the Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences in Japan.
Paul Lung requires nothing but a 0.5 mm technical graphite pencil, plus one sheet of A2 paper to create a nearly perfectly hand drawn facsimile of a photograph. The 38-year-old graphic designer of Hong Kong spends up to 60 hours on each labor intensive drawing.
Star Trek legend William Shatner is apparently a man of many talents. Actor, recording artist, author, and baker!
New Mexico native Amelia Coulter grew up amongst the rich creative community and natural beauty of Santa Fe. After attending SUNY Purchase as a sculpture major, Amelia settled in Brooklyn and decided to merge her love of patterns, architecture and design with her passion for food. Thus SUGARBUILT was born. Amelia seeks out the best ingredients available to create wonderful and unusual recipes. Starting with the basics of a tasty sugar cookie dough and royal icing, she transforms the classic c...
Whoever said crime doesn't pay? Norway's luxury Halden prison may very well be nicer than your home.
What else is there to say about Search & Destroy other than it is the greatest punk fanzine to have ever lived?
Wow, hair school gets crazy-awesome at CuldeSac and Studio Marisol. How do I enroll? "In cooperation with Vitra Design Museum and the Centre Georges Pompidou, C.I.R.E.C.A. (Centre International de Recherche et d'Education Culturelle et Agricole) has been putting on an international summer academy at Domaine de Boisbuchet since 1996.
Kirsten Dunst is turning Japanese in short skirts and thigh highs. The art world crashes Hollywood in this video piece starring Dunst, directed by McG and produced by world renown Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
Leave it to the Swedes to come up with this incredibly novel idea (a country that seems to constantly produce culture that sits at the pinnacle of hipness- in terms of design, fashion, and music).
Audiophiles should know Pandora has an option to increase its sound quality. Change one simple setting and you'll enhance your experience with high fidelity audio. Even if you're not an audiophile, who wouldn't want the best possible sound?
While IKEA will employ ARKit to help you see how that new couch looks in your living room, Redbubble wants to show you throw pillows that match.
Christmas music makes the holiday season just that much more enjoyable. And the folks over at Google must be feeling the holiday spirt since they are making Michael Bublé's Christmas album free for a limited time. The Grammy Award winning artist debuted his Christmas album in 2011, and it went on to top the Billboard charts and snag a nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
Apple's latest update, iOS 7.1, has flooded to iPhones and iPads across the world. Despite the buzz across the web covering most of its newest features, we found one nice little enhancement that has been overlooked.
