Jason Mecier is a mosaic portrait artist.  He uses all kinds of materials–including beans, food, and yarn–to recreate famous artwork and come up with his own machinations.  What grabbed my eye was his work with recycled electronic junk.  As you can see in the Conan O’Brien portrait above, Mecier used electronic circuit boards, cell phones, remote controls, and various cables to reimagine the “I’m with Coco” portrait as made famous by Mike Mitchell.  I’ve posted a handful of creative electronic junk collages in the gallery below, but be sure to check out Mecier’s vast gallery of artwork at his personal website.  Neat stuff.

[Via Gizmodo; 1800recycling; JasonMecier]

What starts out as a nice animation that “explores how advances in open-source synthetic biology allow a young man to grow his very own action hero” quickly becomes something bizarrely disturbing during the final moments.  Watch Tom Judd’s animated short “Bruce” and see for yourself.

[Via @kpereira]

Something Left, Something Taken.  By Max Porter & Ru Kuwahata.

This beautifully designed animated short is a “dark comedy” that follows “a vacationing couple’s encounter with a man they believe to be the Zodiac Killer.”  It’s funny, engaging, suspenseful, and smart.  What’s the phrase again?  Oh right–sit back, relax, and enjoy.

[Via @kpereira]

BIG BANG BIG BOOM: an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life … and how it could probably end.

Produced by Blu.

This ten minute spectacle captures the birth of life on Earth, the slow but eventual rise to human species, and ends with an interesting twist on how everything might unravel.  How is something so intricate as wall-painted animation made, you ask?  The magic of stop-motion does the trick.  Street artist Blu would paint a sequence of images on a surface, take a picture of said images with a digital camera, paint new images onto the same (or new) surface, take pictures of those, and repeat.  After all the painting and photography was complete, he took the entire collection of images, laid them out side-by-side, and transformed it into a film.  Yes, this is an extremely tedious process; Blu admits this video took “months of work and hundreds [of] buckets of paint”.  The end result is nothing short of exquisite.

[Via NewScientist]

Man as Industrial Palace, by Henning Lederer.

Really, you’ve got to watch this animated application based on the “Man as Industrial Palace” poster originally made by Fritz Kahn in 1926.  If only this video was around when I took biology class, studying would’ve been so much more interactive and fun.

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box, by SuperBien.

Sit back, relax, and become enlightened by this transformative light show.

[Via Gizmodo]

Russian art collective Electroboutique has gone ahead and created this impressive, Tatlin’s Tower-inspired constructivist iPhone monument.  Says the builders:

A giant distorted iPhone 3G, shaped as Tatlin’s Monument to the 3d International. Tatlin’s work is considered one of the avant-garde icons, whereas iPhone is a bright techno-consumerist icon of today. Back in the 20′s of the last centuries avant-garde artists have invented design as a way to bring art into people’s homes. During the 20′s century designers were gradually taking artistic ideas and implementing them into product design. Today we see companies claiming their products are art objects themselves; art has to re-define its role in the society again. The Monument to 3G links together the beginning and the current state of nearly a century of art-to-design dialogue and follows the strategy of re-claiming the designers’ ideas back into art.

[Via Gizmodo; Electroboutique]

A bunch of dudes collectively known as Cake Group decided to recreate the album cover from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon atop Primrose Hill, in Regent’s Park, London using lasers, neons, and a smoke machine.  Pretty slick, huh?  Look after to break to see how they did it.

[Via Gizmodo; TheDailyWhat; Cake] (Click here for more…)

Connected, by Kasey McMahon.

Connected is a life-size self portrait sculpture created by artist Kasey McMahon.  It’s made entirely of CAT5 ethernet cables and other kinds of wire wrapped around a steel frame.  This modern piece of art is thought-provoking, isn’t it?  What do you think is the artist’s intent with it?  A splintered identity wrapped in digital culture, perhaps.  See the sculpture from different perspectives in the gallery below.

[Via AtypicalArt; Gizmodo]

…this is what a bunch of the characters would look like.  Lost saturday morning cartoon spinoff, can I get a hell yeah!

[Via io9]

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Feeling Are Facts, designed by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Chinese architect Ma Yansong.

“Feeling Are Facts” is an art exhibition located at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing.  Eliasson and Yansong created a disorienting environment inside an art gallery using artifically produced colored fog, a lowering ceiling, and a sloping floor.  Walking through this exhibit must be challenging and exciting as it forces you to question and reinvent new modes of perception.

[Via DesignBoom; Gizmodo]

Graffiti Stop Motion, by the “Broken Fingaz Crew” from Israel.

Watch art come alive.

Graphic designer Laz Marquez has recreated the movie posters of four popular Hitchcock movies using his own imagination and input from designers Saul Bass and cinematographer Robert Burks.  They really came out great; he managed to capture the original essense of each movie injected with modern aesthetics.  Marquez on his Hitchcock poster design series:

“Since I’ve started this project, I’ve had such an amazing time taking each piece of cinematic history and re-imagining it on my own terms. It’s been spontaneous, challenging and overall fulfilling. In addition, it’s been amazing to put some of the process in the hands of my followers and see what they’ve wanted the project to evolve into. Overall, I couldn’t be happier!”

Check out larger images of each poster (The Birds, Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho) in the gallery below.

[Via Slashfilm; LazMarquez]

“Paper Surgery,” by Stephen J. Shanabrook.

Check out the gallery below for more mind-melting imagery.

[Via stephenshanabrook; KanyeBlog]

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Buzz Lightyear, designed by Raoni Nery.

Bizarre, I know.  Guess I’ll just use this as an opportunity to remind you that Toy Story 3 opens June 18.

[Via RaoniNery; Gizmodo]

These impressive robot sculptures are designed by artist Michael Rivamonte.  The majority of them stand three feet tall, are made from materials like steel, clay, and wood, and much detail is given to each body structure.  Rivamonte is a collector of antique and vintage objects and he uses them to create his robots.  As you can see from the gallery of photos, they are composed of random mechanical parts like old movie cameras, tube radios, hair dryers, binoculars, staplers, and drive-in movie speaker boxes.  Exposed wiring adds to the mechanical aesthetic.

[Via Gizmodo; DinosaursandRobots]

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TheHead.  Characters/Art/Composition by Matias Vigliano.  Traditional Animation by Dante Zaballa.  Sound Design by Ariel Gandolfo.

Watch this hand-drawn animated short called TheHead.  The colors pop and the music is a ton of fun.

[Via Vimeo; Likecool]

This is the Digital Graffiti Wall at the Olympic Village.  Watch artist Chairman Ting do his thing on Tangible Interaction’s eight-foot tall touch-based digital wall.

[Via Gawker; Vimeo]

Particle, designed by artist Alex Posada, is a kinetic sculpture that “responds to its environment translating movements into color and sound.”  The sculpture is composed of a stand that’s mounted with several rings sprinkled in LED lights.  The lights rotate around a central axis when it senses nearby motion.  What’s so interesting is that “its movements cannot be predetermined” since its rotations occur randomly depending upon a passersby’s influence upon it.  A surround sound system is synchronized with the flashing LED lights.  Strange and bizzare, but I like it.  Additional images below and a video of it in action after the break.

[Via DesignBoom; Gizmodo]

(Click here for more…)

Designed by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle.

Kinda looks like the floating mountains from Avatar, dontcha think?  Peek after the break for another look.

[Via KanyeBlog]

(Click here for more…)

Look closely.  Can’t figure it out?  Jump after the break for the reveal.

(Click here for more…)

LED Wall.  Designed by Langarita–Navarro Arquitectos.  Located in Madrid, Spain.

This LED wall at the Medialab-Prado in central Madrid is an interactive façade made of 35, 000 LED lights that can display both still images and video.  It was commissioned by the Madrid Town Council “to develop social interaction and to offer a new digital landmark for their city which is often so closely guarded from development.”  It serves as a display for city information and “psychedelic” art.  Images below, video after the break.

[Via KanyeBlog]

(Click here for more…)

Philip Bloom, the same photographer who took us to Skywalker Ranch, now journeys us to Prague using a pre-production Canon 1D Mark IV.  Sweet baby Jesus these images are breathtaking.  Please do yourself a favor and sit back relax, and enjoy the tranquility and crispness of a cold winter’s night in Prague.

[Via Gizmodo]

Weddesigner Depot has posted 60 images of Earth taken by Landsat7 satillites in space.  ”Various combinations of the eight Landsat 7 spectral bands were selected to create [these] vivid RGB composites.”  These images are beautiful and really put into perspective how expansive and breathtaking our planet truly is.  Enjoy some more satellite compositions in the gallery below, and head over to Webdesigner Depot to see the rest.

[Via Gizmodo; Webdesigner Depot]