Onelargeprawn
Norwegian photographer, Terje Sorgjerd, used every night of the week he spent in Kirkenes and Pas National Park to hunt down and capture images of the wonderful Aurora Borealis.
He endured biting temperatures of -25 °C, shooting from sunset to sunrise, and used around 22,000 photographs to create a time-lapse video of the captivating phenomenon. It is truly amazing, see The Aurora below.
[via Asylum]
Headed up by composer/video producer John Boswell, the Symphony of Science is a musical project that aims to teach the fundamentals of science through an interesting channel – that of music.
Video clips featuring renowned scientists such as Robert Winston, Bill Nye, and Carl Sagan are combined with the goodness of Auto-Tune to create rather unique and illuminating science music videos. This educational series saw its ninth episode just released and it waxes lyrical about the very centre of our nervous system. Check out Ode to the Brain below.
And hit the jump to find more songs of science.
In the Done in 60 Seconds competition hosted by Jameson and Empire Magazine, entrants are tasked with remaking a movie within the confines of a minute. As his entry into the competition, artist Wolfgang Matzl chose to re-tell the dreamy story of Inception using a collection of 19th century-styled paper cutouts. Have a look at his fantastic stop-motion animation below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaDLuBaT4ho
[via The Daily What]
Danzig Baldayev worked in a Leningrad prison for 33 years and managed to get an insight into the criminal world that even the KGB took interest in his work. During his time an an ethnographer, he illustrated enough criminal tattoos to fill three books. The volumes entitled Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia contained accompanying photographs from Sergei Vasiliev.
In prisons the world over, tattoos are a form of “language”, often telling other inmates the violent history of the wearer, and it was no different in Russian prisons. The tattoos that Baldayev and Vasiliev encountered were cloaked in hidden meanings and very smybolic to the wearer, a curriculum vitae if you will. These tattoos had to be earned the hard way, and a criminal without a tattoo had no status in prison, while anyone bearing a tattoo that they didn’t work for had it forcibly removed. Here’s a list of some Russian prison tattoos and what they meant:
Have a look at some of Vasiliev’s Russian prison tattoo photographs after the jump.
If you liked the beautiful time-lapse videos by Tom Lowe and Dan Eckert, chances are you’ll enjoy the works of Eric Billman. Using a custom rig he built, Billman also shoots his time-lapse videos of the rugged mountains and scenery in southern Utah. Have a look at his wonderful piece, Southwest Timelapse, below.
See Billman’s Southwest Timelapse photos on Flickr.
[via The Awesomer]
When it comes to the world of racing, you have the simulation fanatics, the burnout fiends, those with the need for speed. And then there are the MotorStormers. These mental thrill-seeking junkies were first spotted on the vertigo-inducing mountains of Monument Valley, and then running amok on the sun-kissed shores of a lush Pacific island. And now in their latest excursion, the crew travel to wholly new playground, a city on the verge of collapse. Earthquakes are the heralds of the coming apocalypse and for normal people that is a massive inconvenience but for the MotorStormers, the hair-brained idea to have them racing in, around, and through these disastrous events is an inspired one; to them, the end of the world couldn’t have come sooner. Join me as I suit up, strap in, and put foot in MotorStorm: Apocalypse. My race to survival continues after the jump.
How do you replicate the success of the most popular handheld console since the beginning of time? With the current revolution in mobile gaming, is there still a place for a dedicated handheld games console? And how do you manage to create something innovative enough to, once again, attract instant, unabashed curiosity and interest from both core and casual gamers alike? No doubt these and many other questions were asked, dissected, and pondered over by Nintendo on the road to formulating a concept for the eventual successor the Nintendo DS. The answer to those deliberations will soon be lining shelves here in South Africa and contains Nintendo’s response to the aforementioned questions, which is quite simply, stereoscopic 3D…without the need to sport a pair of aesthetically poorly designed, over-priced glasses. There is of course much more to it than that, but without a doubt, the wow-factor here is rooted firmly in the realm of the 3rd dimension.
I’ve been privileged to attend the Nintendo 3DS pre-launch event on Thursday at Montecasino courtesy of Onelargeprawn and the Core Group, where I’ve been able to finally get my hands on one of the most anticipated pieces of tech that doesn’t have the word “Apple” plastered over it. I’ve since done my utmost to try and separate my impressions of the device from the rather loud (and decidedly impressive) pomp and circumstance that accompanied the event, but subsequently found that my impressions have remained largely unchanged. In short, I want the 3DS and I want it now. Read my thoughts after the jump.
Oh my, maths can indeed be pretty. As an architect and programmer, Michael Hansmeyer uses mathematics a great deal in his life, saying that however complex a task may be, there is an algorithm that can describe it. And through CAD applications and various digital fabrication processes, algorithms can not only be visualized but they can be built. And this is what Hansmeyer did. He created a model of a Greek column and then applied an algorithm to it to enhance the details.
Hansmeyer’s intricately detailed model contained several million faces which standard 3D printers can’t handle so he resorted to a manual, pain-staking method of making his subdivided columns a reality.
The result is a 3D model with between 8 and 16 million faces, but 3D printers can only handle half a million, so Hansmeyer needed an alternative solution to transform his creations from virtual to physical reality. He sliced the column into 2700 pieces and used a laser cutter to create each slice from 1mm-thick cardboard, then reconstructed the column by layering the slices together with a solid wooden core. The whole process only cost $1500 and took about 15 hours, with three laser cutters working in parallel.
Have a look at his incredible cardboard sculptures that he built after the jump.
Alexandre Farto (also known as Vhils) is a Portuguese street artist based in London. He uses an interesting etching technique where he secretes explosives beneath the surface of a wall and the detonation process results in his murals taking shape. This collaboration video with Portuguese hip-hop band Orelha Negra shows Farto’s explosive art. Check it below.
Farto also uses less destructive methods to creates his pieces. He scratches and chips away at the plaster on the walls of dilapidated buildings. Those murals are part of his Scratching the Surface series. Have a look at some of them after the jump.
Zombies are everywhere. When they’re not roaming the countrysides of 19th-century England, they all up in your favourite movies and video games. Their latest assault comes in the form of the game, Dead Island, which has wowed netizens with its most incredibly cinematic trailer (more on that later). That trailer has come to the attention of musician Dan Bull who gives us a double tap of zombie goodness by mashing the sounds and mechanics of Dead Island with the visuals of classic zombie comedy, Shaun of the Dead. Check out Shaun of the Dead Island below.
If you’ve missed out on the Dead Island news thus far our writer NiteFenix has written a little preview. See that after the jump.