By David Ponce

Etsy seller paints these awesome Zelda fire renderings. They’re stretched cotton on wood and come in sizes 24×24 and 20×20. You can ask for custom sizes for an additional cost, although the standard-sized ones will set you back a lovely $150. Shipped anywhere… for a fee.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By David Ponce

It’s more of an art piece and a statement than an actual product, but the OneSense headphones from Joe Doucet are striking enough to be worth a mention. The serve not only as a music-listening instrument, but they cover the eyes as well in an attempt to completely isolate you from the outside world. The spikes you see are meant to be a message to anyone passing by to leave you alone.

“One Sense not only obscures environmental sight and sound from encroaching on the wearer, but utilises the color red and a display of spikes, drawn from nature’s symbols for warning and defence, to alert others not to intrude.”

It’s a statement on the state of our society, where we are constantly bombarded by the technology we ironically seek out ourselves, but from which we end up needing respite. Of course, you don’t really need a fancy red, spiked set of headphones to accomplish this. A DIY version of the OneSense would involve simple earbuds, an eye band and a clown costume. People will leave you alone, believe us.

If you want to see the headphones for yourself however, they’ll be on display at MeetMyProject in Milan from April 17th to the 21st, 2012.

[ Joe Doucet ] VIA [ MoCoLoCo ]

By David Ponce

Todd Johnson has been making ShockFossils for a while now but we just came across his work and are impressed beyond words. They are acrylic pieces with fractal designs that were created using a particle accelerator. Todd takes blocks of acrylic and brings them to an industrial accelerator facility where he rents time on the machine. He loads them into the machine and charges them with multiple millions of volts of electricity. When they come out, the blocks are charged, chock full of electrons which are released with a small blow of a hammer. And when that hammer hits, holy hell is it amazing!

The trapped charge is then carefully released by applying mechanical shock with a sharp insulated tool, and the electrons escape with a bright flash and loud pop. As the charges leave the plastic, they gather into channels following fractal branching rules just like river deltas, plants, and capillaries.

You can literally see the fractals spreading, with visible electric sparks propagating inside the material. It’s fascinating to watch.

We believe Todd sells these, though we can’t figure out how much he charges. And yes, we do realize that this is not a newly discovered phenomenon.

[ ShockFossils On devantART ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By David Ponce

If you’ve ever strayed into the household section of a bookstore, you might have seen those little zen gardens with the rake and the sand and the claims to inner peace and all that jive. The Zen Table you see above is centered around a similar concepts, but adds a fair bit of technology that simply makes it awesome instead of kitschy. See, it contains special sculpting sand, a robotic arm and a sculpting tip. This enables the device to create stunning images in the sand. What’s best is you decide what these images are. You can load the table with any bitmap and specialized software will convert this into a sculpting file. You’re then free to watch as the magic happens. If you watch the below video, you can see how this could be a crowd pleaser.

By the same token, if you’re buying this, you’re probably going to want to put it in the sort of the establishment that has crowds to begin with as it’s quite pricey. There’s a small-ish desktop version which comes as a kit or pre-assembled. This is $500 or $750 respectively. But the real coffee table… adds a zero to these figures, although it comes assembled in both cases. The $7,499 version might have been a Kickstarter only affair with special perks for early backers. Still, at $5,000, we see this in the waiting area of a fancy restaurant rather than someone’s living room.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By David Ponce

Back in the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg asked artist David Choe to paint the interiors of their offices. Instead of cash, Zuckerberg offered stock options which Choe wisely accepted. Fast forward a few years and Facebook is filing for an IPO which analysts say could value the company at $50billion. If Choe then chooses to cash in his options, he will net around $200million. Yeah, a fifth of a Billion dollars!

Choe is a very talented artist and we’re happy he’s about to get that kind of payday. Unlike Apple’s Ronald Wayne who sold his 10% of the company for $800, Choe was wise enough to keep his stock until now. Watch the below video where he and Zuckerberg interact on a mural he’s working on.

[ David Choe ] VIA [ Slashgear ]

By David Ponce

The people of Lyon, France, recently got to experience a high-tech treat. Carol Martin and Thibaut Berbezier from company CT Light Concept created an interactive installation that projects the image of a giant pinball machine onto the face of a theater, the Celestins. The setup uses 3D mapping tech and conforms to the contours and reliefs of the theater, turning these into various bumpers and ramps. What’s even better is that the whole display is playable, with the controls in the hands of people in the crowd. Yes, even sound effects are included.

Dubbed the “Urban Flipper”, the project was part of the city’s yearly lights festival.

Video after the break.

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By David Ponce

Luke Jerram is an artist and he decided to create a 3D sculpture of sorts based off of the seismograph of Japan’s devastating March 2011 earthquake. Measuring 11 inches long, the sculpture is simply 9 minutes of seismographic data rotated 360 degrees in a 3D modelling program, and then printed with a rapid prototyping machine. It is going to be presented at the

Jerwood Space in London for a show called Terra. Exploring how data is read and can be represented and interpreted, the artwork is one of a series of data visualization sculptures Jerram has recently created.

“Next month Jerram will be artist in residence at the Museum of Glass in Washington where he hopes to create this work as a limited edition in glass.” If you think you might want one, you let Luke know you’re interested by sending him an email: luke at lukejerram dot com.

[ Luke's Page ] VIA [ PC World ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Most people’s fascination with paper craft ends at pterodactyls or ninja stars in grade school. Not Jonathan Brand. After restoring three vintage cars with his father, he decided to build his own from scratch. A 1969 Ford Mustang to be exact. But instead of steel or fiberglass or all the other ingredients that usually go into building a car, Jonathan’s making his from paper. Using 3D software he’s able to flatten out a model of the car into printable sections that can then be painstakingly folded and glued together.

And when I saw every component of the car, I mean every, single, component. From sparkplugs no bigger than your finger, to the doors complete with handles and window rolls. The tires and the rims are even separate components, with perfect attention being paid to even the tread. It’s a monumental undertaking for a piece of art, and if you happen to live in New York you’ll be lucky enough to see it in person. The exhibit, entitled ‘One Piece At A Time’, will be on display from September 20th to October 29th at the Hosfelt Gallery.

[ Jonathan Brand - One Piece At A Time ] VIA [ Colossal ]

By David Ponce

I wish there really was much more to say than what’s in the title… but really there isn’t. This is what passes as art these days. You know what they say: all the talented artists are busy making money for one commercial interest or another (games, ads, etc.). What’s left are people with crappy ideas, too much money and stickers that say “Art”, begging to be put on whatever they think makes a statement. This particular exhibit is a 1TB hard drive that is on display at the Art 404 gallery, on a pedestal, with an accompanying PDF listing everything that’s in it. Books, “124GB of copyrighted music, fonts, Adobe software, various game system ROMs, and more.”

I’m not going to bother to point out that the value of what’s in most people’s hard drives probably exceeds that amount, but… well… you get my point.

[ "Product" page ] VIA [ Geekologie ]