Playing-Card Model Of The Venetian Macau
“The American card-stacking master has just beaten his own previous world record, by completing a model of the Venetian Macau hotel and casino, made completely out of playing cards.
Brian Berg, the man behind the famous key-card hotel, spent 44 days working on the amazing model, using a total of 218,792 playing cards. The fragile piece of architecture, which is now on display in the heart of Macau’s Cotai Strip, was Berg’s most challenging project yet.
The playing card model of the Venetian Macau weighs an impressive 272 Kg, is 35 feet long and 10 feet tall. The most impressive thing about Brian Berg’s masterpiece is it contains no glue of tape.”
Read more at Oddity Central (thanks, Jason)
Artist travels world fixing crumbling monuments with Lego
“Jan Vormann, 26, has taken his project from its humble beginnings at an art fair in Rome and brightened up thousands of people’s days with his brightly coloured plastic version of Polyfilla. From the old quarter of Tel Aviv in Israel to the grand Bryant Park of New York, Mr Vormann has acted either independently or with the city’s permission to leave a little part of his childhood behind.
Estimating to have used upwards of 1,000 of the little Danish building blocks, Mr Vormann enlists the help of passers-by intrigued by his careful placing of the Lego bricks. “I like to think of my work as a Repair Manifesto,” said the Berlin-based installation artist. “My work draws attention to the smallest parts of our cities that are falling apart because of the brightness of the Lego. “It draws people’s attention through the coloured blocks and makes them aware that this wall or statue or construction is not complete anymore, for whatever reason. “In the case of my latest project in New York which I completed in early March, I simply wanted to help the Mayor Bloomberg brighten up the great city.”"
Read more at The Telegraph
The Biggest Crop Circle Ever: The Reality Show
“Almost 60 acres. 530 x 450 meters in size. Created in an evening of August, 2009, at the province of Zeeland, Netherlands, it’s the biggest “crop circle” ever created. And with a twist.
Everything was recorded in video, as this was definitely a very human creation. To be more exact, a creation of 60 humans captured in its process from concept to realization by the cameras of the reality TV show “Try Before You Die”.
The culprits are the members of XL D-Sign team, which has been creating fantastic formations for more than ten years – many of which are promoted as “mysterious” to this day. This latest one, the biggest one to date, was properly named project Atlas, and aimed not only to break the size record but also depict “a message of both the beauty and vulnerability of man”.
The gigantic formation can be interpreted in several ways, from the metamorphosis of a butterfly, to the Vitruvian Man, to Mothman and perhaps even chakras. All part of a human symbology, with a human message, created by humans to humans, surpassing in size every crop circle ever created.”
Read more at Forgetomori (thanks, DG)
Da Vinci’s Huge Horse Statue Proven Feasible
“‘Il Cavallo,’ the huge equine statue Leonardo Da Vinci never got to make, wasn’t plagued by technical problems as was widely believed, a new multidisciplinary research has revealed.
On the contrary, Da Vinci’s plan for the largest equestrian statue in the world was a perfectly feasible project which, if completed, would have probably been his greatest legacy, more than ”The Last Supper” or any other work.
Commissioned in 1482 by Lodovico Sforza, duke of Milan, in honor of his father Francesco, the massive bronze horse took Leonardo 17 years of research, but was never completed.
Indeed, when the full-scale clay model was finally ready to be cast in a single operation in 1499, all the needed bronze was used to make cannons for an imminent war against the King of France.
The molds were lost and the clay model was reduced to rubble by the invading French soldiers.
Although Leonardo never stopped mourning the ‘horse-that-never-was,’ engineers have always believed the daring plan to make the largest single-pouring cast ever would have failed because of technical problems.”
Read more at Discovery News (thanks, ReliegiousMarie)
Brain development infographic winner
Click image to enlarge
This cartoon by Dwayne Godwin, a professor of neurobiology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Jorge Cham, the former researcher and cartoonist who created PhD Comics, has won first place in the informational graphics category of the 2009 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.
Via Neurophilosophy
John Bramblitt – the blind painter
Most artists would be upset if their vision started to go. John Bramblitt was the opposite – he saw it as a challenge and used art as an outlet for his feelings. He paints with his fingers and feels the shapes using “slick paint” – a medium that dries very quickly so he can feel the shapes.
His art is truly incredible, the images are powerful and striking and considering his condition looking at them is quite moving. This small documentary is featured on his site along with his artwork – do check it out.
Makeup Girl Is A Living, Breathing Painting
“Looks like a real nice late 19th century painting, doesn’t it? But in reality, it’s a real girl wearing body-paint, and standing against a painted background.
‘Makeup Girl‘ is a very clever advertisement spotted, and photographed by Peter Kun Frary, in front of a MAC cosmetics shop, in Hawaii. The girl is a really well painted model, posing against a painted background. Now, you might think she’s naked, but she is wearing strips of cloth in all the right places.”
Read more at Oddity Central (thanks, Eliza)
Volcano Chaser Braves Eruptions For Stunning Pictures
“Most people would think themselves unlucky if they passed a volcano as it erupted, but this counts as a good day at the office for one photographer.
Martin Rietze is part of a select group of volcano-chasers who seek out the exploding phenomena, and braves huge electric storms and boiling lava to get the perfect shots.
The 45-year-old travels around the world’s volcano hotspots, from Costa Rica to Italy, in his pursuit of Earth’s greatest fiery spectacle.”
Read more at the Daily Mail (thanks, KirstyJ)
New Telescope Captures Dazzling Image of Orion Nebula
“You’ve undoubtedly seen the smudge of the Orion Nebula hanging just below his belt thousands of times, but the most beautiful image yet of the celestial body was just released Wednesday.
The European Southern Observatory’s new VISTA telescope’s enormous field of view allows it to image the entire nebula at once. It’s been designed to capture near-infrared light. The longer wavelengths of light in that part of the spectrum allow rays to pass through dusty space without being scattering.
The Orion Nebula is located about 1,350 light-years from Earth. The cloud of gas and dust is a nursery for young stars. The red blobs in the features near the center of the image are young, growing stars that are hidden by dust in visible light.
VISTA was just placed into service late last year, so we can expect many more beautiful near-infrared images as it conducts its survey of the sky.”
Read more at Wired (Thanks SonOfSam)
Software photo-doctor fixes up bad photos
“It may seem crude to reduce aesthetics to number crunching, but software can now manipulate an amateur’s photographs to make them more pleasing to the eye.
Algorithms score a photo’s aesthetics using simple composition rules widely used to guide budding photographers. The image is then automatically cropped, or parts of it moved and resized, to boost its score.
Developed by Daniel Cohen-Or and Lior Wolf at Tel-Aviv University, Israel, with colleagues at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, the software identifies the key features of an image based on their colour and shape. The positioning of those elements is used to judge a photo, then tweaked to improve it, says Wolf (see video).”
Read more at New Scientist
