Instead of appearing in person to accept a Webby Award for Person of the Year, camera-shy street artist Banksy submitted this acceptance video to be played at the ceremony of their 18th annual awards. The UK-based artist's video humorously describes his artist residency in New York City in 2013, which "became less an art show than a citywide, full-contact game of hide and seek."
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Iranian artist Hossein Zare uses Photoshop as his medium in these alluring photographs that are reminiscent of iconic French surrealist painter René Magritte. More of Zare's work can be seen on Facebook and at his 500px site.
Images Credit: Hossein Zare.
Via: Laughing Squid
These photos would be perfect models for monsters in those 1950s horror movies. The ones in which some small, ugly thing in nature, in a freak accident, becomes incomprehensibly huge and after mankind, hellbent on destruction and large meals.
The photos are actually part of an impressive project by Marcus DeSieno, a native of Albany, New York presently obtaining his MFA in Studio Art from the University of South Florida, Tampa. His project is concerned with the history of science and exploration in relation to the history of photography.
These shots were taken using a scanning electron microscope and subsequently exposed to dry-plate gelatin ferrotype plates. This method blends old and new photographic technology, another objective stated in DeSieno's project description: studying that photo-technological evolution. The final, archival prints are done large to give these parasites their due close-up, Mr. DeMille.
Images Credit: Marcus DeSieno
Via: Beautiful Decay
A series of before-and-after images captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveal the largest fresh-impact crater ever documented in our solar system. Researchers think the impact that made the crater happened in the spring of 2012, when it first appeared in NASA images taken of Mars. Experts surmise that the impact followed an explosion in the sky when an asteroid entered Mars' atmosphere.
In this video made by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter explains in full the sighting, before and after image comparison and documentation of the new crater.
Via IFL Science.
In this video made by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Deputy Project Scientist Leslie Tamppari with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter explains in full the sighting, before and after image comparison and documentation of the new crater.
Via IFL Science.
Behind the art brand Blule is a French illustrator and designer living in Sydney, Australia named Clementine, who has worked as a designer for Fila, L'Oréal and other famous brands. Clementine refers to Blule as "my brand for everything illustration... It's kind of my superhero mask."
And here she paints her superheroes, in lush, fluid, watercolor forms, which takes away exactly none of their badassery:
The beatiful city of Sydney, Australia will be shining bright tonight through the ninth of June during the Vivid Sydney event. This grand festival is free to the public. From their website,
"Vivid Sydney is a unique annual event of light, music and ideas, featuring many of the world’s most important creative industry forums, a mesmerising free public exhibition of outdoor lighting sculptures and installations, a cutting-edge contemporary music program and the spectacular illumination of Sydney’s iconic architecture including the sails of Sydney Opera House. Vivid Sydney is where art, technology and commerce intersect."
The event promises performances of the latest music in numerous genres as well as multiple large-scale lighting installations. Read more at the Vivid Sydney website or their Facebook page. Via Colossal.
Images Credit: Vivid Sydney.
An industry was born out of the R.M.S. Titanic's collision with a 500,000-ton iceberg, which famously ripped the holes in the hull of the ship that were her downfall. After the Titanic tragedy in 1912, a group of North American and European nations established the International Ice Patrol (IIP) to prevent such incidents. The IIP utilizes data collected from satellites, radar and airplanes to furnish critical information to the maritime community regarding the location of icebergs and safe detours clear of them.
IIP information is vital to an industry of ice management contractors who are hired by oil companies to keep watch over their oil rig platforms. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 icebergs a year — massive portions of Greenland glaciers — ride with the current into the North Atlantic, where they become potential dangers to oil installations off Newfoundland's coast. The ice management contractors keep a close eye on bergs in the general vicinity of oil rig structures. When an iceberg is identified as an immediate threat, it is then towed out of the area by the contractors, using specialized anchor handling tug supply vessels.
These contractors use towropes eight inches in diameter and up to 1/4 mile long to tow the immense icebergs. The towrope is attached to a buoy and the tug vessel circles the iceberg, while care is taken to keep a distance of 650 feet or so from the berg. Once the roping is complete, the rope is then attached to a tow cable. Between 1/2 and 3/4 of a mile of space is kept between the vessel and the iceberg to avoid a catastrophe if the iceberg flips over during the operation. If an iceberg flips during towing, it can slice through the boat, as well as cause rough seas due to the waves generated after it falls. Towing an iceberg can take up to 72 hours, as the boat needs in the neighborhood of ten hours to reach a speed of just one nautical mile (6076 feet) per hour.
Learn more and see additional pictures at Amusing Planet.
Image credit: Randy Olson
Rhode Island's Roger Williams Park Zoo joyously welcomed the birth of a Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo in October, 2013. Named Holly, the joey is one of only three births of this exceedingly rare species in the U.S. last year.
Coincidentally, Holly's mama was found to be expecting after the Roger Williams Park Zoo had announced plans to build a new tree kangaroo enclosure. With the news of the impending birth, construction was postponed. Zoo Executive Director Jeremy Goodman, DVM, explained,
“The first six months after birth is a critical time for both mother and baby. For this reason, we have put construction of the new exhibit on hold until late June 2014.”
Opening of the new exhibit is planned for early fall.
Tree Kangaroos are an endangered species. Matschie’s Tree Kangaroos typically live in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea. Experts estimate that there are fewer than 2,500 tree kangaroos left in the world, due to habitat loss from logging and mining, as well as hunting of the species. There are 53 tree kangaroos living in U.S. zoos at present.
Read more and see a video of Holly and her mother at Zooborns.
Film buff Tony Zhou has pieced together an interesting study of one-shot takes in film; Steven Spielberg's use of the "oner" in particular. Zhou explains Spielberg's handling of this technique in the larger context of other legendary directors who have employed it, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Martin Scorsese. Zhou further breaks down his Spielberg clips into two related videos, one called "The Spielberg Oner: Eight Lengthy Examples" and the other presenting "twelve quick examples." See them both at Zhou's Vimeo channel or at his Tumblr site Every Frame a Painting. Via Laughing Squid.
In this video by the Washington Post, dancers from The Washington Ballet are filmed as they execute their most difficult dance moves, which the dancers explain in voiceover. The viewer is shown the moves in slow motion, which is a great way to better illustrate the impressive athletic feats that ballet dancers perform regularly.
Via Laughing Squid.
Back in 2011, Miss Cellania first introduced Neatorama readers to the Beagle Freedom Project. The nonprofit organization in Valley Village, California rescues beagles used in experiments in research laboratories and gives them a chance to escape their grim life permanently locked inside laboratory cages. A spokesperson for the rescue organization explained that beagles are often bred for research due to the friendly, adaptable nature of the breed.
This video shows nine beagles rescued from a Nevada research laboratory who have never been outdoors, seen the sun or smelled fresh air. As they are released into a large, grassy back yard, their initial trepidation soon turns to jubilance in this uplifting footage.
Learn more about the Beagle Freedom Project at their website.
An old newspaper clipping left inside the front cover of a library book.
Andrew Stauffer is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Virginia, as well as the Director of the University's NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) program. NINES peer reviews and digitizes books from 1770-1920, as well as creates software tools to facilitate research and critical analysis of the material.
Stauffer's NINES program also sponsors a crowd-sourced, web-based project called Book Traces. This fascinating project asks participants to collect and document instances of library books in wide circulation published before 1923 that have writing in the margins or ephemera inserted. From the Book Traces website,
"Thousands of old library books bear fascinating traces of the past. Readers wrote in their books, and left notes, pictures, letters, flowers, locks of hair, and other things between their pages. We need your help identifying them because many are in danger of being discarded as libraries go digital. Books printed between 1820 and 1923 are at particular risk. Help us prove the value of maintaining rich print collections in our libraries."
Learn more about Book Traces and see additional images of submissions to the project at their website.
Images Credit: Booktraces.org.
Paper doll clothes in antebellum fashions left in between book pages.
A copy of Alice in Wonderland published in 1910 with a child's essay on Blue Jays written on the inside cover.
Many artists use coffee as a way to grab a lift after long hours of work. Boston-based artist Jake Fried uses coffee as a media to apply to his canvas, along with white-out, gouache and ink. Once Fried draws a basic image, he adds layer upon layer of media, creating a piece that moves and evolves, as in the video seen here. His work has been called "spiritual," "psychedelic" and "bewildering," among other adjectives. I'd say it is all of that and more. See more of Fried's work on his Facebook page, Vimeo channel, and YouTube channel, as well as at his website. Via Colossal.
Flickr user Ron Brinkmann built a cube using six square mirrors with the reflective sides facing inward. To capture the view inside the cube, he placed a camera inside with its timer set to shoot. The resulting photographs are beautiful 'infinite" reflections, one of which (third one down) reminds me of The Matrix. See more of Brinkmann's photos at his Flickr page. Via Viral Nova.
Images Credit: Ron Brinkmann
Who knew that old, warped turntable in the basement could double as a treadmill for your rodent friends? At least that's how the Division of Labor advertising agency used a turntable in their campaign for live entertainment company Live Nation (although the video runs a disclaimer stating that the rodents were trained and viewers should not try the stunt at home). Kick back and enjoy as rodents/video stars Sergio, Chunk, Lloyd, Harry and Herzog do all the work, running, dancing and scratching like pros in this Vimeo Staff Pick. Via Laughing Squid.
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