Here is Bounce Bounce, the stop-motion animation for the song “Bounce Bounce” by Hilary Hahn and Hauschka from their album Silfra:

Under the Sea is a Sketchbook film about stop-motion animator Hayley Morris who animated Bounce Bounce above. The film, directed and edited by Danny Gregory and co-directed by Tommy Kane, captures her creative process as “she makes drawings and critters for her latest stop-motion animated film titled Bounce Bounce.” :

Many people know conceptual artist John Baldessari as “the guy who puts dots on people’s faces.” But did you know that he is 6’7″ and that his wifi password is 123456789B? This short documentary tells you all you need to know about Baldessari, crammed into 6 minutes, with gravelly narration by Tom Waits. The film was commissioned by LACMA in 2011 for their “Art + Film Gala” honoring Baldessari and Clint Eastwood, and was directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman.

If you enjoy seeing a complicated theory or idea boiled down to its essence, you'll appreciate this new set of posters by London based designer Genis Carreras. In fact, it should come as no surprise that Carreras claims to love "minimalism and Swiss style" especially after seeing this. Here he takes complex philosophical theories, like existentialism and utilitarianism, and whittles them down to basic shapes. Great!

Genis Carreras' website

Seeds are tricky things. On one hand, we have the whole Omnivore’s Dilemma argument, that industrialized and genetically engineered food is probably bad. And on the other, we have strains of vegetables that can grow four times as much produce on the same plot of land as their heirloom counterparts--a successful, man-dictated genetics that we’ve actually been fueling for millennia. After all, we wouldn’t have the heirloom seeds of today if our grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather hadn’t saved the seeds from the sweetest watermelons or the most drought-resistant cantaloupes.

I don’t know that any of us can honestly assess the repercussions of our actions, but I do know one thing: This National Geographic infographic by John Tomanio is staggering. Using the metaphor of a tree, it charts the loss of U.S. seed variety from 1903 to 1983. And what you see is that we’ve lost about 93% of our unique seed strands behind some of the most popular produce. (Clever details: Where the root system should be strong, Tomanio has rendered a tree that looks like it could tip right out of the ground.)

In 1903, we had almost 500 varieties of lettuce. By 1983, we had just 36. Radishes, peas, and beets have fared no better. In fact, the most steadfast of the crops has been the tomato, which, probably due to the popularity of strange and tasty heirloom varieties, only lost about 80% of its seed diversity. It’s a shame to lose so many intricacies of nature’s tastiest gifts. But more worryingly, monocultures strip the land of nutrients: Where you once had self-sustaining harvest cycles, you get farm land denuded of nutrients that then needs copious chemical fertilizers to grow more food. And the crops themselves become vulnerable to plant diseases.

Still, a lot has changed in the public consciousness since 1983. Farmers markets aren’t just for hippies anymore--they’re lifestyle statements for everyone from young foodies to soccer moms. And as long as this trend stays alive, so too will many of the heirloom seed strands we have remaining.

[Image: NixPhotography/Shutterstock]

Patterned by Nature was commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for the newly built Nature Research Center in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The artwork, a collaboration between Hypersonic Engineering & Design, Plebian Design, and Sosolimited, celebrates our abstraction of nature's infinite complexity into patterns through the scientific process, and through our perceptions. It brings to light the similarity of patterns in our universe, across all scales of space and time.

10 feet wide and 90 feet in length, this sculptural ribbon winds through the five story atrium of the museum and is made of 3,600 tiles of LCD glass. It runs on roughly 75 watts, less power than a laptop computer. Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.

The content cycles through twenty programs, ranging from clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes. The animations were created through a combination of algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena and compositing of actual footage.

An eight channel soundtrack accompanies the animations on the ribbon, giving visitors clues to the identity of the pixelated movements. In addition, two screens show high resolution imagery and text revealing the content on the ribbon at any moment.

Patterned by Nature

This would have made art history that much more interesting!  Created by DDB Brazil for the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) Art School. I’m a bit partial to the Dalí myself.

I Love Animals by Jim Benton

Join the adventure.

With very difficult avalanche conditions occurring throughout the world this season, C.A.R.C.A. is looking to expand its operations.  The proven success of our program has led to a heavy demand for our services throughout the globe and we are working very hard meet that demand. Therefore C.A.R.C.A. has initiated a Level 1 Avy-Cat program to as the world’s first certification program for cats to be trained in advanced feline based search and rescue techniques.  The goal of this program is to ensure the high level of effectiveness and professionalism established by C.A.R.C.A. is consistent while providing the greatest level of safety for outdoor enthusiasts.

For all cat and handler teams interested in joining our team, please fill out the attached information and email it to info@carca.ca.

CARCA application (MS Word)

(The form info is also available on the Applications page)

EssayTyper is a program that writes your essays for you. Just type in the subject, hit the green button and then start pushing random keys on the keyboard, because this baby does all the thinkin’ for you…you’ll just look really smart as you clack away on your keys.

I mean, it won’t guarantee that you won’t fail or that you won’t get expelled for cheating…but…you know, what the hell. Just play around on it for fun anyway.

(This post written with EssayWriter)

I’ve been a fan of Simon Walker’s type design for quite a while now.

View high resolution

Space is nuts. This is moon dust under a microscope. 

The crater near top left, being only a few thousandths of an inch across, was probably made by a meteoroid only a tenth of a thousandth of an inch in diameter. On the Earth, such micrometeoroids would be slowed to negligible speeds by our atmosphere, and simply float to the surface. But the absence of a lunar atmosphere allows them to hit the surface at tens of thousands of miles per hour.

(Source: cseligman.com)

via blog.sirmitchell.com