Man Etches Name In Sand, Visible From Space

   Gross opulence or a severe case of vanity it may be, but it's hard not to be impressed by this huge piece of graffiti. Or is it mega-landscaping? Or a new waterway? Frankly, it could be any of the above.

   Measuring 1,000 meters high, and two miles wide, the name "HAMAD" has been etched into the island of Al Futaisi just off the coast of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The letters are dug so deep that they form an artificial waterway when filled with seawater and it is so large that it can be easily spotted by satellite -- this landmark will be around for some time to come. So, who is Hamad? That would be the 63 year-old billionaire Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan.

   As a member of the ruling family of the oil-rich nation, Hamad is used to living it large. He built a pyramid to house 200 of his personal cars. He also built the world's largest truck, large enough to build four bedrooms in the cabin. Oh yes, and he has a motor home shaped like the Earth, exactly one-millionth the size... of the Earth.

   Out of interest, you can see "HAMAD" yourself by typing the coordinates "24.3442, 54.3255" into Google Earth or Google Maps.

Shake the Dust

Here is some inspiration for the day. Anis Mojgani really makes you think about the human nature in his poetic lyrics on the stage.

Shake the dust from Anis Mojgani on Vimeo.

Resonance - Abstract Geometry & Audio

   Resonance is the vision of SR Partners - a collaborative project with over 30 independent visual and audio designers / studios. The aim was to explore the relationship between geometry and audio in unique ways.

   Animators and Audio Designers were paired up at the beginning of the project and were given the guidelines to create a piece between 12 and 20 seconds and in HD quality, the rest was up to them.

   Basically this is eleven minutes of pure abstract awesomeness put into one video for your enjoyment. For best results please view in full screen HD and with volume up.

RESONANCE from Resonance on Vimeo.

10 Cameras + 1 Tesla Coil = 70 Megapixel Bullet Time Lightning.

Image via Wikipedia

This was one of the more challenging projects that Rob Flickenger had to do and it took him a while. He had to build a physical mount to hold all of the cameras, wire them together to a repurposed PC power supply, recompile CHDK to eliminate as many unnecessary camera keystrokes as possible, write some scripts to facilitate taking and retrieving the photos, then shoot the actual photos without accidentally frying the whole rig. And, of course, build and operate the Tesla coil itself, edit together the stills, and compile the whole thing into a possibly entertaining video.

reson8 from Rob Flickenger on Vimeo.

via: HackerFriendly

Mr. Freeman

Here is an awesome motivational video to start off the weekend. It's an animation done in Russian with subtitles at the bottom. Make sure to view it the second time to get the full meaning of the author's message. So go out there and commit something outside of your comfort zone. "JUST DO IT" "The Most Important - It's Not A Game!"

Inception, the movie in 60 seconds

An entertaining idea has been born on the YouTube - 60 second videos that try to depict full length movies in only one minute. YouTube user DISS2011 has compiled a big collection of these 1 minute movies over at his channel.

Here is the short 1 minute video for "Inception":

Money Art

Some people might call this government property defacement, other might call this an art form. I'm pretty sure many people have seen some amazing drawings that alter paper currency into an art. Be it with a slight reference to X-Men, Tron, Star Trek or Avatar all of them are awesome. But wait, this is not what this post is going to be about. An artist by the name of Dan Tague creates a different kind of money art. Unlike many money-artistes, he folds currency to align the letters on the bills so that they spell out some intriguing messages and other common sayings. The Following exhibition of this unique art form is titled: "Live Free or Die"

Manhattan in Motion

Here is yet another timelapse video of New York City from Midnrelic, the creator of the 

Awesome Timelapse of New York City. This video was filmed from the top of high-rise hotel rooms in Manhattan from March to April this year. Enjoy these stunning time-lapse segments of this magnificent city.

Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

3-D Street Art

Art is all around us in today's society, but this type of art is literally below our feet right on the boardwalks of various streets. The video below is a collection of various street art that from a certain view give the impression of being real 3-D painting.

via: YouTube

Also head on past the break for a video of how one such art piece is created.

TRI▲NGLE

Onur Senturk studied traditional painting and figure drawing followed by a traditional animation degree as his BFA. He took part in several international and national collaborative exhibitions with works in both print and time-based media. He designed and animated “Triangle ” which is awarded twice by Vimeo as best motion graphics. TRI▲NGLE is a video work done for the book 'Black Material' which showcases Robert Knoke's artwork.

TRI▲NGLE from Onur Senturk on Vimeo.

Galactic Timelapse

Here is a great time-lapse video of the sky at night. The beautiful imagery is set to an awesome music from the movie Bladerunner by Vangelis - "Rachael's Song". Enjoy!
Also check out another beautiful timelapse video of NYC.

via: YouTube

Symmetry & Words

   Everynone is a filmmaking team based in New York. Two of their many works that are awe inspiring and very creative are: "Symmetry" and "WORDS".

   In our daily lives we see symmetry in almost everything around us. This video shows us the symmetry of difference. This can be seen in simple objects such as fries & ketchup, peanut butter & jelly, day & night, fire& ice; or in a more complex human way by means of social interactions between: a police officer & criminal, men & women, newborn & elderly, laughter & crying, birth & death.

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

Hardest World Languages

   Lets face it in our vastly interconnected world which is mostly caused by globalization, nowadays many people know more than one language. This can be very beneficial because one can easily communicate with others when they are abroad and can pretty much find their way around that new city easily. I, myself know three languages, in which I can fluently converse; they would be: English, Ukrainian and Russian.

   If anyone is interested in learning a new language for themselves, there is a vast amount of free tutorials, videos and lessons on the internet. One great resource is book2 - a website with hundreds of free mp3s that let you learn a new language anywhere you are ("The 100 lessons help you to quickly learn and use a foreign language in various situations").

   This leads to my next point - I wanted to find out what languages would be the hardest to learn from an English speaking perspective. My search led me to this great pictograph:

cncntrc, an artistic monthly archive

cncntrc is a tumbler page that caught my attention while browsing for some cool images on the internet. It contains pictures, short videos, animated images as well as short eloquent quotes. The biggest factor that made me bookmark this page is the sheer quantity of very emotive and picturesque art that is archived chronologically by each month. The very minimalistic layout and the pure quality of the artwork posted there is majestic. This blog is a sure keeper in my bookmarks, so if you like my previous art-related posts you will definitely love cncntrc.

Here is just the tip of the iceberg of the amount of art that can be found over at the said blog:

Music Painting

This very creative video was made to support the initiative to stop global warming. As the artist draws the notes on the music sheet they come to life and you can hear the pleasant music. The second theme that goes on behind the musical notes is the interplay between the nature and our human involvement on this planet (i.e. buildings, cars, cranes). Enjoy the beautiful art, calming music and an important message at the end of the video.

via: YouTube

Grant Wallace Artwork

Man as Ego: his 6 Bodies

Grant Wallace was born on February 10, 1867, in Hopkins, Missouri, the son of a judge. His education included a B.S. from Western College in Shenandoah, Iowa, in 1889, and art classes from the Art Students League of New York.

He worked as an artist and reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, an editorial and feature writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and a war correspondent for the Evening Bulletin in Japan and China. He wrote short stories and screen plays, including for two black and white silent movies: the story for A Blowout at Santa Banana (1914), and the scenario for the movie The Fuel of Life (1917). He also lectured on the occult.

After World War I, Wallace built a small cabin in the forest near Carmel, California, which he used as a laboratory for experimenting with telepathy, which he sometimes referred to as "mental radio." He made hundreds of drawings, charts, diagrams, and writings, attempting to reveal the patterns of life, including reincarnation, communication with intelligent life on other planets, and with dead spirits. He wrote about messages from the dead, from ancient Greeks, ancient Egyptians,Vikings, and Atlanteans, to more recent dead, such as Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, and transcribed messages from and drew pictures of extraterrestrial life, especially from the Pleiades star cluster.

He died August 12, 1954, in Berkeley, California. His works were recovered from his cabin after his death, and some of his art and diagrams were included in The End is Near!, Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium and Utopia.

via: WikiPedia

His artistic approach to unraveling the mysteries of the world is very science-based, as if his graphs and charts were done to represent some kind of scientific research. Many of his works integrate the universe, human body and other dimensional qualities of existence such as ego, id, et al. Wallace also made a lot of side citations and notes all over his work, hinting at a secretive formulas and ciphers. Very fascinating work, I can almost say that his artwork is a precursor to Paul Laffoley Artwork that I've posted some time ago. Check out more of this interesting artwork after the break.

Movie Barcodes

TRON (1982)

This is a really interesting idea of representing movies in a totally different way! MovieBarcode is a tumbler page who's creators have reduced motion picture movies to a simple color graphs. That is, the frames from each given movie have been compressed into one large picture, sort of like a bar-code. Every movie has a certain hue, tone, color and depth to it and this project tries to organize this information into one graphical interface.
Check out few more of my favorite movie barcodes after the break:

Interactive display window.

Here is something new from the advertisement world - an interactive video montage in a store display window. The video reacts according to the movement of the by-passers; it is basically a virtual "street-wear" model.

And no, this is not an April fools joke, welcome to the 21st century folks.

via: Marcus Wallander on Vimeo.

Iconic Images of our century, but with a little twist.

Here are some of the most memorable pictures of past 100 years, but there is a little something else added to them. Watch the amazing video to find out yourself:

via: YouTube

Light painting the WiFi signals

Have you ever wondered how would WiFi signal strength map look like?
Well here is an artistic depiction of just that.

"This project explores the invisible terrain of WiFi networks in urban spaces by light painting signal strength in long-exposure photographs. A four-metre long measuring rod with 80 points of light reveals cross-sections through WiFi networks using a photographic technique called light-painting."

via: Timo on Vimeo.