Stare off into the distance, watch Heavenside appear….

Photo taken by Derek Olson, link via David Forbes.

Augmented Sculpture by GROSSE8 & LICHTFRONT / Passagen 2010 from Lichtfront on Vimeo.

augmented sculpture is an art installation that combines three-dimensional sculpture and 2-D projections by lichtfront and grosse8. the project was recently presented at imm cologne 2010 where viewers could see the piece in action. the project consists of an abstract geometric form that is spiky and jagged all over. the sculpture itself is white making it the perfect canvas for colourful light projections. an array of digital projectors is beamed onto the form in accordance to the specific shape of the sculpture. the projection can illuminate each facet of the form individually making the sculpture appear to be illuminating from within.

Via designboom.com.

If you love futuristic musical madness, then these bizarre charts and mathematically-transformed pieces of sheet music from artist Marco Fusinato will delight you. Think of them as the abstract underpinnings for a movie like Darren Aronofsky’s Pi.

Fusinato brings together avant garde music and art in his work, creating imagery that looks like the results of a mad scientist’s musings on how sound functions. In this series of drawings, called Mass Black Implosion, he’s transformed scores for avant garde works into suggestions for what he calls “free noise,” by changing the order of the notes and suggesting new relationships between them. Basically he’s suggested a way to make something abstract even more abstract. In the process, he’s created charts that are gorgeously strange.

Link via io9.com, which contains a gallery of more fantastic images.

From ~EvidencE~’s photostream.

A skatepark light angel, created by photographer Ben Matthews, via environmentalgraffiti.

From suspiciousminds’ flickr stream, who went through three plans to get the shot:

Meet Château des Anges. A post-mediaeval castle that was once surrounded by an immense park. It belonged to a very noble family of counts. It just had everything: a grapevine, vast orchards, fountains, stables, arable lands for crops and livestock, woods, a lake. Ownership changed quite often and the castle wasn’t maintained as it should be. The last owner left the place in 1970. It is untouched ever since.
…..

Plan C
Waiting. For a harsh winter. And ice. I waited 8 months to explore this baby. On one of the coldest winter mornings NeQo and me set off. It was -10°C. There wasn’t a single soul for miles. Just us, this decayed castle, and Mister Winter.
The lake was frozen solid and we didn’t have any difficulties wading through the thorned bush. We arrived at the castle. The backdoor of the terrace was open. Of course it was open. What was the owner thinking? Some schmuck would cross the water - or even better - cross the ice in the event of winter?

And there we were. Setting foot in an untouched place that’s been decaying since the seventies. Forsaken. Since long. But captured in our minds. For ever more.

Core77 contributor Ben Hopson (he wrote the “Kinetic Design and the Animation of Products” piece last March) collaborated with entrepreneur Glen Liberman of Kinekt Design to design a series of kinetic jewelry pieces, and the Gear Ring is the first to be realized. Made from high quality matte stainless steel, this ring is currently available here in a limited number of sizes.

Link and video via core77.com.

A video of the 70+ images that were submitted was created:

Link via medgadget.com. Photos of all the top thirty winners can be found here, but I liked this one the best.

tokyo based designer mac funamizu wondered what would happen if we rethought how coins were designed with an infographic perspective. funamizu remarks on the merits and drawbacks of round coins. while he acknowledges their benefits he wanted to see if they could be redesigned in a way that was more universally understood. this would benefit travelers and people not accustomed to a specific currency. the idea barrows from the world of graphic design, giving each coin an infographic form that corresponds to pie charts. a one dollar coin is a circle, while a two dollar coin is two. the smaller increments are segments of the circle or perforated to show what percentage they represents. while this idea wouldn’t work very well in things like vending machines, it makes you think about alternative ways we could design money.

Link via designboom.com, photos from petitinvention.

San Bernadino was hit hard by the economic slump and subprime mortgage fiasco, so many of its properties have been left vacant. This gave the skating community the chance to mark their turf on an abundance of abandoned swimming pools – echoing the era when Alba and others took their hardcore style to the pools following the 1970s drought in Southern California.

The invitation to paint ‘Ridiculous’ was put out by MTV, but if that makes this sound more commercial than it perhaps should, remember that the guys who found it could, in theory, have been arrested for this stunt. And look no further than D*Face’s skull designs, hundreds of which litter the pool basin, to see that this is a graphic artist doing what comes naturally to him – and an artist who loves skating.

Link, photo and video via environmentalgraffiti.com.

Via ~EvidencE~’s photostream.

Via rabbitz_man’s photostream.

From suspiciousminds’ photostream, who went through a trial to get the photos:

This unknown power plant had been visited in the past by some of the old explorers, dating back to 2005 and 2006. At that time it was rather easy to access the plant, but very few actually risked it. The decayed part situated just next to the active part made it a very though one…

The year 2007. Chances are you’ve never heard of Electro Magnetic Pulse, but the boys in blue had. A 24/7 security patrol was put on site, with the aid of a handful of live camera’s. There’s even a camera on top of the building, just in case some lunatic parachutes his way up there. The complete area was fenced with razor wire top to bottom and the occasional landmine was put in place. Ok, kiddin’ about that landmine.

Summer of 2008. Everyone who tried that place over the past two years got caught by security. I don’t know what we were on to, but in some crazy mood we decided to give this one a go.

Click through the photo link for the rest of the story….

Via EXurban’s photostream.

One of many, via we-make-money-not-art.com.

Persona. Ritual Masks and Contemporary Art features 180 ritual masks brought side by side with contemporary works by African artists or African diaspora members, which explore the question of identity, self-respect and representation of the Other.

Dead cassettes find new life:

The artist, Brian Demter says:

“Technology grows and mutates much like life or nature,” Dettmer has said about the connections between plastic and human bones in an interview with Time Out. “Old forms die as new forms are born. In one way, cassette tapes and other media have become outdated technology and the remaining materials have become remnants or shells that used to contain a living material.”

Link and photos via environmentalgraffiti.com.

Gorgeous book, featuring prints from thirty-seven photographers from around the world, including ~EvidenceE~.

Ordering info here.

Missed Vol 1?

• IDN 01: The Industrial Decay Network

24,000 color LED, plus a couple of ipod batteries guarantees you’ll stand out in the crowd:

Special effects typically are a feature of the runaway show — not the dresses themselves. The Galaxy Dress, on the other hand, is one spectacular special effect — the most dramatic evolution in 21st-century fashion.

24000 full color LEDs, measuring a mere 2 by 2 mm in size, were used to create this mesmerizing dress. The circuitry itself is hand embroidered on a layer of silk in a fashion that permits it to stretch, allowing the LED bedazzled fabric to drape with fluidity over the body.

To fuel the LED fabric, a few iPOD batteries illuminate the silhouette for 30 minutes to an hour.

Additional layers of silk chiffon diffuse the light, giving the gown a colorful jellyfish-like transparency .

When the digital patterns fade and the silhouette grows dark, more than 4000 hand-applied Swarovski crystals add sparkle and glitter to the gown.

Take a look at the dress in action:

Link and video from Syuzi at fashioningtech.com. Besides a very pretty pattern to display, a person could run a personalized message or potentially sell advertising space.

Gorgeous animation about a viral infection:

NPR’s Robert Krulwich sat down with David Bolinsky of XVIVO, a firm that makes amazing animations for medicine and life sciences, to explain to the general public how viruses infect cells and reproduce themselves. For demonstration they used animation XVIVO produced for Zirus, a company developing novel methods to fight pathogenic viruses.

Link via medgadget.

Photo via e_monk’s photostream.