Category: Weirdness

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Arty Weirdness

A Brain-Powered Steampunk Mouse

You don’t see this every day. Actually it seems that creating Steampunk mice is not all together rare, but this is certainly the first time I have seen an exposed brain being incorporated with the brass, gears, and wood that make the Steampunk aesthetic what it is.

Deciding that “every self-respecting Victorian Scientist needs a brain in a jar”, hardware designer Peter Balch set about with some mad science, cannibalizing the innards of a standard optical mouse, and using other bits and bobs to give life to his new creation. Have a look at his brain-powered Steampunk mouse after the jump.

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Cautionary Tales Weirdness

McDonald’s Double Fail Feast

Today is a good day for food fail, and it seems we’ve found a special at McDonald’s in Cape Town. Some people are cackling about it while others are feeling sick to their stomachs.

Popular South African blogger, Christopher Graham Mills of imod.co.za isn’t normally a patron of McDonald’s but yesterday evening, events forced him to purchase a burger at the branch in Kenilworth. To his surprise, he found what looks like a garden-variety snail tucked away in his burger box. We can imagine he exclaimed “Nee Fok!” before taking a photo of it and uploading it to Twitpic.

Comments on Mills’ blog are that of horror, sympathy (for both him and the snail), and a lack of surprise. Twitter user Shy_Mogwai seemed to think there might have been a mixup with the order:

The order was McEscargot, with garlic sauce, and a chicken burger on the side.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, in Long Street, someone making their opinion about McDonald’s known by making some minor alterations to a rather large advertising billboard. It’s succinct and does get the point across.

Have you had any interesting experiences at McDonald’s? Do let us know.

[via ChristopherM | Don’t Party]

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Arty Weirdness

Scott Campbell’s Money Skull

Aside from his tattoo work, Scott Campbell is also famous for laser-cutting wonderfully designs into stacks of U.S. one dollar bills. He called that series, One Dollar Art. In this latest exhibition, Noblesse Oblige, Campbell shows off another of his laser-cut designs. Sourcing uncut sheets of one dollar bills worth $11,000 Campbell carves an intricate 3D skull out of the two-foot cube of money. Have a look at his money skull after the jump.

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Arty Entertainment Featured Gaming News Movies Weirdness

Sundance Film Festival 11 – Video Games In The Spotlight

It’s that time of the year again. What time you ask? The time of year when aspiring film makers get together at one of North America’s great indie scene movie festivals, the annual Sundance Film Festival to be more precise. Hosted in Salt Lake City, Utah, it’s every hopeful movie-maker’s dream to succeed at this event. Many of today’s biggest Hollywood film makers had their humble beginnings at this prestigious festival, amongst which are Steven Soderbergh and Quinton Tarantino. Some of the movies which gained fame at this festival are The Blair Witch Project, Little Miss Sunshine, Reservoir Dogs, SAW, and Napoleon Dynamite.

From 20 to 31 January 2011 we saw some truly inspiring work come from this popular movie outing, but for the purpose of this article we will look at a topic which is close to our hearts – video games. Yes, the 2011 Sundance Film Festival boasted with quite a few video game-themed projects and even a panel where members of the press (and public) could interact with the writers of such games as Alan Wake and Uncharted.

So it would seem that video games are really in focus for independent film makers. We have collected a trio of video game short films to show what talent we can expect from the future film-makers of Hollywood. Have a look at them after the jump.

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Cautionary Tales Mindlessness Video Clips Weirdness

1950s Housewife on Acid

Do you remember Acid Trip, a US experiment in the early 50s where an artist was given a dose of LSD and asked to draw a subject. The artist goes from being focussed on the task at hand to trying to climb into the activity box that contains his crayons, to moving about the confines of this room for hours on end. His reaction to the substance is seen in the nine drawings he produced. If you missed them, see here.

In this related TV program, also from the 1950s, a housewife of stable mind volunteered to ingest the same drug the artist did, LSD-25 (lysergic acid diethylamide). After the initial interview, the voice-over explains the dosage, and we fast-forward to three hours later. The woman experiences a moment of clarity, saying she has never yet seen or felt a thing of such infinite beauty. Take a look at the archival footage below.

[via The Huffington Post]

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Entertainment Gaming News Video Clips Weirdness

Dot Dot Dot

In 2009, a flash games called Super PSTW Action RPG was released on the popular entertainment portal, Newgrounds. This rather crudely animated piece solely used the space bar for interaction. Some people especially liked that, others did not. Axman13 was one of those people and summoned all of this fury into writing a review wrought with so many errors that the Grammar Police would have issued him a life sentence for his crimes.

…

i reley dont wan to say this, but i have to now.
this game is so esey. i mean, all you do is hit the spacebar. thats it! how is this an RPG anyway? you cant contrail anything but what it says on the screen! what if i didnt want to buy the potion? what apout quests? all you can upgrade is stranth? there is no way you can lose to the boss at the end! this game is crap! its not even an RPG at all! i mean look at it! in what way is this supposed to be an RPG if you can do quests and stuff? all you do is press one butten the entier time! explain to me! the athore coments al totol lies! is it supposed to be stick dudes? i dont even know how this damn game got the daily 3rd prize, or a rating of 4.26!
pepole think this review is worthles.
go ahead! say it! i dont care! im just trying to make a point here!
blam this piece of crap!!!!

P.S the only reson im giving this a 1 is beacuase the voices where pretty good. but thats it!

Rather than deride axman13 on his poor sentence formation, a fellow Newgrounds user by the name of D-Mac-Double created a DRAMATIC voice track for Axman13’s words. And almost a year later, another Newgrounds user, RicePirate, has created an epic typographical version of the narration of the badly-written review. It’s called Dot Dot Dot, check it out below or see the high quality version at Newgrounds.

[via Boing Boing]

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Arty Awesomeness Movies Weirdness

Samurai Star Wars!

In his series “Samurai Wars” artist Steve Bialik imagines some of the classic Star Wars character as if they existed in 17th century Fuedal Japan. The character portraits are reportedly in the style of ukiyo-e, a genre of woodblock prints, of which the most famous that I know of is The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai (although he created his masterpiece in the mid 1800s).

Bialik imagines Han Solo as a deadly samurai and his acquaintance Chewie looks suspiciously like an ouni, which according to Japanese folklore is a an extremely hairy mountain hag with a mouth that goes from ear to ear. Leia takes the guise of a beautiful geisha and Obi Wan is a sage, lightsaber-wielding monk. Have a look at his Samurai Wars series after the cut.

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Animal Kingdom Arty Video Clips Weirdness

The Story of Life, Told With Fingers

In this rather interesting short film, freelance animator Cyriak (real name) takes us through the evolution of life here on Earth using the medium of walking fingers. Yes, you read right. Now watch in amazement below.

No fingering jokes, please.

[via Buzzfeed]

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Awesomeness Movies Video Clips Weirdness

Get Away From Her, You 010000100100100101010100!

OK, you got me, you clever reader you. The title isn’t complete. It’s meant to be 0100001001001001010101000100001101001000 but what is a couple of ones and zeros between friends? Being that you’re so clever you have also deduced that the clip you are about to see mashes the climactic scene from Aliens together with the aesthetics of TRON. It’s as awesome as it sounds. Check it out below.

This mashup was created by VFX dude Benni Diez from Germany for an annual film marathon, the Butt-Numb-A-Thon hosted by Harry Knowles the founder of Ain’t it Cool News. It was picked as winning entry by Knowles earlier this week.

Have a look at some of the other TRON-ified entries after the jump.

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Awesomeness Featured Movies Video Clips Weirdness

Neill Blomkamp Mystery Teaser

Awesome District 9 director Neill Blomkamp seems to have secreted a mysterious trailer into the latest iPad issue of Wired Magazine. We may not have an iPad but thankfully we have the Internet, and while the the teaser is not so secret anymore, the happenings in the clip are certainly inexplicable to us. In the 1-minute teaser, shaky handicam footage shows two lads coming upon a hideous dead alien creature that seems to have been discarded along the side of a dirt road. The thing has a stamp on it perhaps like a grading system one would use for edible meat. Check out the creepy teaser below.

Could this be the teaser to his latest film? We fokken hope so.

[via 10and5]