Animation Music

A Hard-Hitting, Toy-Mincing, Stop-Motion Music Video for Delta Heavy

This new stop-motion music video for Delta Heavy is pretty incredible. Watch as a cavalcade of classic boardgames from your childhood meet an untimely demise, all for the sake of dubstep. Warning: dubstep, a genre of music my ears are still trying to play nice with. Directed by Ian Robertson.

Art

The Sculptures of Ron Ulicny

If there’s a theme on Colossal that appears more often than any other, it’s artwork involving ordinary objects and materials that are repurposed or reconfigured to create new, unexpected things. Portland sculptor Ron Ulicny has made a living for himself creating just such artworks. From high heel roller skates to a sink spewing Scrabble letters, his art objects frequently require a double take and often leave you with a smile, be it in humor or wonder. Above are five of my favorite sculptures by Ulicny, but you can see much more on his website. Also read a recent interview on Hi-Fructose, follow him on Facebook, or see a number of available works at Spoke Art.

Design Food

Piñata Anatomy

This made me smile hugely. Piñata Anatomy by Minneapolis-based Carmichael Lynch of Carmichael Collective. (via laughing squid)

Music

Light Hearted Kites

There are two extraordinarily beautiful things happening in this iPhone video by Patrick Colpron. The first is an impressive six-sail kite designed and flown by Steve Polansky, and second is the heart-achingly wonderful song Lighthouse by Patrick Watson. What a perfect moment in time, sort of an impromptu video poem.

Design

The Augmented Reality Sandbox

While I truly appreciate the need for any kid to get dirty in a sandbox or let their imagination run wild in a field of mud puddles (something I was doing myself only an hour ago), I love to see how technology like a Kinect 3D camera can create new interactive environments and games. Case in point this new augmented reality sandbox designed by Oliver Kreylos out of U.C. Davis that projects a real-time colored topographic map complete with contour lines onto the surface of the sand while you manipulate it. The system even allows you to pour virtual water on your creation and interact with it in real time. It’s not hard to imagine switching the entire system to volcano mode, or using the projection in some sort of three dimensional toy battlefield. Gah!

According to Krelos’ YouTube page, the project was funded by the National Science Foundation with the hopes of installing these systems as exhibits at science museums like the Lawrence Hall of Science or the Tahoe Environmental Research Center. See another demo of this 21st century sandbox here. (via reddit)

Art Design

Stitched Portrait Project by Evelin Kasikov

Master of embroidery Evelin Kasikov recently began a new project involving cross stitched portraits. Using an identical grid, each image is created using a mix of geometric stitching styles and thread of varying color and thickness that results in these beautifully pixelated faces. See the before photos and other process shots over on her Portrait Project page where she’s posting a new work each week. (via the jealous curator)