Cooper Griggs

“It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”

- Hugh Laurie

Over the last three months photographer Thomas Herbrich snapped some 100,000 individual photographs of smoke, looking for unexpected anamalies and fortuitous coincidences where familiar shapes emerged. It’s fascinating to see how the brain tries to create order out of chaos, just like looking up at the clouds, suddenly familiar patterns seem to stand out: faces, hands, or scrolls of paper. After carefully sifting through each image Herbrich selected 20 final shots for this series, aptly titled, Smoke. These are a few of our favorites, but you can see the rest here.

Update: Apparently the psychological phenomenon of seeing images or recognizing patterns in random images/data is called pareidolia. Thanks, Sam!

One of six astronauts currently on board the International Space Station, geophysicist Alexander Gerst spends much of his free time staring out the window as the world zooms by 205 miles below, camera in-hand. Since arriving at the ISS in June of this year Gerst has taken tons of photographs that document hurricanes, floods, dust storms, and oil fields.

One of his favorite things to shoot are the shadows cast by clouds, something that appears surprisingly dramatic from space. Dense cloud formations can create long shadows that stretch for thousands of miles across the Earth’s surface as they eventually disappear into a black horizon. You can see new photos from Gerst daily on Twitter. (via Stellar)

Photo by roaming-the-planet

Photo by roaming-the-planet

Photos by roaming-the-planet

First a Boeing 747, and now an industrial complex on a Vancover island; it seems no canvas is too large for Brazilian graffiti artists Os Gemeos who were invited to the Vancouver Biennale to turn six multi-story silos on Granville Island into their trademark ‘Giants.’ The murals on the 70-foot towers are now the largest paintings ever attempted by the pair, an astounding feat considering Os Gemeos completely donated a month of their time to create the non-profit art project. An Indiegogo fundraising campaign to recoup costs associated with painting the silos has been extremely successful. You can see more over on Arrested Motion.

This slick commercial for Japanese high-speed optical internet service au Hikari has a pretty novel take on the Rube Goldberg Machine. Each sequence in the device is powered (or otherwise set in motion) by a single beam of light sent through magnifying glasses and mirrors to burn strings, pop balloons, and melt bits of ice. Even if you’re Rube Goldberg’d out lately, this is worth a watch. (via The Kid Should See This)

Hu Shaoming is a young Chinese sculptor and graduate of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. With a deft mastery of metal he creates intricate sculptures that are surreal and dreamlike, but also somewhat cautionary. As part of his city series Shaoming created a mechanical seahorse that appears submerged in water. The exposed top of its head is burdened by a beautiful, metallic civilization, creating a fascinating and treacherous balance between man and nature.

In a different series on time Shaoming appropriates artifacts of industrial civilization like old cameras and telephones. Effectively destroying the mechanism, he disassembles them and then rebuilds them but with a zipper that offers glimpses into what makes them tick. You can see more of his work over on the Chinese portfolio site Jue.so. (via Steampunk Tendencies)

German artist Evelyn Bracklow of La Philie has created an entire new collection of ant-covered porcelain dishes and tableware since we first shared her work here early this year. Many of the new pieces are part of a unique partnership between the artist, Rijks Museum in the Netherlands, and Etsy. The pieces are hand-painted in Bracklow’s studio, signed, numbered and fired to 160 degrees. As unsettling as having insects permanently invading your dinnerware is, I can’t help but be enchanted by how perfectly crafted they are. You can see more of Bracklow’s recent work here.

Artist Chris Wood works with colored glass to create colorful, prism-like mazes and mandalas of light installed vertically on walls. Her most common material is dichroic (meaning ‘two color’) glass, a material invented by NASA in the 1950s that has a special optical coating meant to reflect certain wavelengths of light while letting others through. At some angles the glass appears completely reflective, somewhat like a mirror of gold. Wood has constructed a number of different glass, mirror, and other light installations which have been carefully documented on her website. (via My Modern Met)

Give it Up is a new track released yesterday by Israeli musician and composer Kutiman. The song was created entirely using vocal and instrument tracks lifted from 23 different YouTube videos of mostly amateur musicians, credited here. If you liked this, you’ll be happy to learn this is just the first track off his upcoming album Thru You Too which the artist says will be comprised entirely of unrelated YouTube videos.

In other composing-music-with-videos news, Andrew Huang created a version of the 80s hit 99 Red Balloons… using only red balloons. Included here for your listening pleasure.

(via Adam Savage)

yeule:

Kill Bill (2003)

O-ren Ishii

dir. Quentin Tarantino

that911:

Source: StanceWorks

bashum:

P4/5C Nurburgring | Flickr

sickpage:

Michael Salisbury

aviel:

Nature in his Proud