Love this: Hero, Miguel Endara’s portrait of his father composed entirely out of 3.2 million ink dots.

Tom Banwell’s steampunk gas masks are awesome:

Christoph Niemann turns in a great New Yorker cover.

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're Going to Miss Almost Everything: "The vast majority of the world's books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It's just numbers." -- Sounds depressing, but if found it liberating. A favorite.

I love this: The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything:

That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.

It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

Recent book sculptures I like: The Book Sphere and the works of The Book Surgeon.

I know I’ve linked to this before, but Ben Heine keeps adding to his Pencil vs. Camera series, and the results always catch my eye. For example:

Wow, I really like Robert Wechsler’s work. For example:

If that’s not enough to warrant a clickthrough, consider this description of another project:

The steam holes of a working iron were re machined to mirror the iconic aura of the Virgin of Guadalupe. When cloth is scorched by the iron an image of the Virgin appears in the burn. The text on the T-shirts (everything is coming up roses) accompanies the burns and refers to the Virgin of Guadelupe’s first appearance when she caused roses to grown on a barren hillside for the lone peasant Juan Diego.

(via dude craft)

Vi Hart’s Mathematical Doodling videos are fantastic, I’m not sure which one is my favorite. Maybe Snakes and Graphs:

(via waxy)

You may think, “no way I’m watching a 16-minute woodworking video”, but you’d be wrong. “Mike Jarvi badassedly constructs his signature one-piece, the Jarvi Bench“. One piece! Watched it twice!

I can’t even begin to imagine how much work went into creating Big Bang Big Boom, and incredible piece of large-scale stop-motion animation.

Wow, I’m pretty sure if I owned an iPad it wouldn’t be able to do this.

I dig these Lego patches for old buildings:

I love Ben Heine’s Pencil vs. Camera photos:

The 50 U.S. states as a heart. The 50 U.S states as a skull. They should get together and make a t-shirt with one on the front and the other on the back.

Wow, that is a deep, deep uncanny valley.

Before you click through, how many years, dollars, and spiders to you think it would take to make an 11’ x 4’ woven tapestry? Here’s a sample:

That gold is the natural color of the golden orb-weaving spider’s silk (Nephila genus). Currently on display at the American Museum of Natural History. (via kottke)

Behold the Mandelbulb, a dazzling stab at a 3D Mandelbrot (I will take the author’s word for it that this isn’t quite the real deal):

Check out some of the variations you can get by tweaking the formula. You can buy a print via deviantART.

Artist Zimoun does sound sculptures. My favorite is this one, featuring wood worms:

Check the video to hear the effect. He also has up a longer video featuring his other pieces. (via josh spear)

There is a man standing in this picture, not behind anything, hidden only by the paint he has applied to himself:

Here’s more of Liu Bolin’s work. (via tmn)

Proving that it’s about the artist, not the tools, Jorge Colombo “painted” the 6/1 cover of The New Yorker on his iPhone.

Tweenbots are Kacie Kinzer’s little robots that roll in a straight line and rely on the kindness of strangers to get from point A to point B in the city. Nice.

Wow, I love this:

It’s a relief print of an actual tree trunk by artist Bryan Nash Gill. $4,000 is way out of my price range, but I can admire from afar. (via swissmiss)

You can ask Matt Held to paint your Facebook portrait photo:

With the development of social networking sites, I’ve developed an interest in how people take simple or complex snapshots of themselves, post them to their page as a representation of who they are and what they want people to see. It is an interesting form of control and, in a way, self-preservation. However, there is a strong likelihood that many people who don’t know you will see this photo representation and make passing judgments as to who you may or may not be, much in the same way we make passing judgments on people we see in our neighborhoods every day.

Take a collection of these portraits and put them into the context of a gallery space or like setting, and you see a community of individuals- their likeness elevated and memorialized like the original commissioners of portrait painting; the rich and powerful – displayed as a portrait’s original intent: expression of an individuals’ character and moral quality.

To apply simply join the I’ll have my Facebook portrait painted by Matt Held Facebook group. (via andrew sullivan)

Hollywood gone and screwed up your sense of what constitutes normal body image? Naked People to the rescue. Click a clothed person and watch the clothes fade away. NSFW, obviously, although also not at all titillating. (via josh spear)

I watched the demo of Sumo Paint on YouTube and thought, “wow, that’s a pretty cool paint program, I wonder how much it costs?” So I visited their site to check it out, and… wow, it’s a free Flash application that runs in the browser, and you can save your paintings locally or to their community space! Impressive. (via core77)

Interesting article in Wired on MDM, a prop shop artists employ to turn their ideas into reality. I had no idea artists might outsource to such a high degree! I guess it seems obvious in hindsight, when you consider pieces that require heavy-duty engineering and safety considerations like Jericho:

Sometimes Schofield gets assignments that seem to defy the laws of physics. Two years ago, artist Anselm Kiefer set out to erect Jericho in the courtyard of the Royal Academy. A pair of towers would be built from concrete slabs balanced on top of each other with no supports or fasteners—and the public would be allowed to step inside the chambers at the base of each stack. Schofield worked with a structural engineer to calculate the ideal weight and pitch of the slabs, then arranged motion-sensitive lasers around the perimeter of the courtyard to detect any movement that might presage a collapse.

He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died. 6,697 of 'em. I love projects like this.

Chris Jordan's fantastic exhibit, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait. I'd love to see that in person.

@MAKE: Superficielle (forest mirrors). Very cool effect, although I imagine you have to break out the windex (and lots of it) pretty regularly.

• Lewis Black on candy corn.
• MAKE: Gum Sculpture
• I don't know which struck me more, that the writer's of St. Elsewhere royally screwed their fans in the season finale (wow, now I'm REALLY glad I didn't watch that show), or that, by extension, 282 TV shows take place inside the imagination of an autistic child.

Amazing what you can do with index cards and a sharp knife. Scroll down for the time lapse video too. Funny to watch the Cheez-its in that one.

Three very good reads:

• Barry Ross: The Holy Grail in Speed Training.
• Mark Sisson: The Role of Lean Muscle Mass and Organ Reserve in Aging.
• Sister Corita Kent: Immaculate Heart College Art Department Rules (really).

I have nothing to add to what Jason Kottke says in this post. I can't stop watching it either. Not sure what that says about me. Read, watch, enjoy (?).

Daily Monster gets into the holiday spirit with its Christmas Eve and Christmas Day monsters.

I'm sorry this exhibit didn't roll through town when Vicky and I were living in DC: Floating Mountains, Singing Clouds by Mei-ling Hom. « via bookofjoe »