By David Ponce

If you’ve ever strayed into the household section of a bookstore, you might have seen those little zen gardens with the rake and the sand and the claims to inner peace and all that jive. The Zen Table you see above is centered around a similar concepts, but adds a fair bit of technology that simply makes it awesome instead of kitschy. See, it contains special sculpting sand, a robotic arm and a sculpting tip. This enables the device to create stunning images in the sand. What’s best is you decide what these images are. You can load the table with any bitmap and specialized software will convert this into a sculpting file. You’re then free to watch as the magic happens. If you watch the below video, you can see how this could be a crowd pleaser.

By the same token, if you’re buying this, you’re probably going to want to put it in the sort of the establishment that has crowds to begin with as it’s quite pricey. There’s a small-ish desktop version which comes as a kit or pre-assembled. This is $500 or $750 respectively. But the real coffee table… adds a zero to these figures, although it comes assembled in both cases. The $7,499 version might have been a Kickstarter only affair with special perks for early backers. Still, at $5,000, we see this in the waiting area of a fancy restaurant rather than someone’s living room.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By David Ponce

Back in the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg asked artist David Choe to paint the interiors of their offices. Instead of cash, Zuckerberg offered stock options which Choe wisely accepted. Fast forward a few years and Facebook is filing for an IPO which analysts say could value the company at $50billion. If Choe then chooses to cash in his options, he will net around $200million. Yeah, a fifth of a Billion dollars!

Choe is a very talented artist and we’re happy he’s about to get that kind of payday. Unlike Apple’s Ronald Wayne who sold his 10% of the company for $800, Choe was wise enough to keep his stock until now. Watch the below video where he and Zuckerberg interact on a mural he’s working on.

[ David Choe ] VIA [ Slashgear ]

By David Ponce

The people of Lyon, France, recently got to experience a high-tech treat. Carol Martin and Thibaut Berbezier from company CT Light Concept created an interactive installation that projects the image of a giant pinball machine onto the face of a theater, the Celestins. The setup uses 3D mapping tech and conforms to the contours and reliefs of the theater, turning these into various bumpers and ramps. What’s even better is that the whole display is playable, with the controls in the hands of people in the crowd. Yes, even sound effects are included.

Dubbed the “Urban Flipper”, the project was part of the city’s yearly lights festival.

Video after the break.

VIA [ LaughingSquid ]

By David Ponce

Luke Jerram is an artist and he decided to create a 3D sculpture of sorts based off of the seismograph of Japan’s devastating March 2011 earthquake. Measuring 11 inches long, the sculpture is simply 9 minutes of seismographic data rotated 360 degrees in a 3D modelling program, and then printed with a rapid prototyping machine. It is going to be presented at the

Jerwood Space in London for a show called Terra. Exploring how data is read and can be represented and interpreted, the artwork is one of a series of data visualization sculptures Jerram has recently created.

“Next month Jerram will be artist in residence at the Museum of Glass in Washington where he hopes to create this work as a limited edition in glass.” If you think you might want one, you let Luke know you’re interested by sending him an email: luke at lukejerram dot com.

[ Luke's Page ] VIA [ PC World ]

Most people’s fascination with paper craft ends at pterodactyls or ninja stars in grade school. Not Jonathan Brand. After restoring three vintage cars with his father, he decided to build his own from scratch. A 1969 Ford Mustang to be exact. But instead of steel or fiberglass or all the other ingredients that usually go into building a car, Jonathan’s making his from paper. Using 3D software he’s able to flatten out a model of the car into printable sections that can then be painstakingly folded and glued together.

And when I saw every component of the car, I mean every, single, component. From sparkplugs no bigger than your finger, to the doors complete with handles and window rolls. The tires and the rims are even separate components, with perfect attention being paid to even the tread. It’s a monumental undertaking for a piece of art, and if you happen to live in New York you’ll be lucky enough to see it in person. The exhibit, entitled ‘One Piece At A Time’, will be on display from September 20th to October 29th at the Hosfelt Gallery.

[ Jonathan Brand - One Piece At A Time ] VIA [ Colossal ]

By David Ponce

I wish there really was much more to say than what’s in the title… but really there isn’t. This is what passes as art these days. You know what they say: all the talented artists are busy making money for one commercial interest or another (games, ads, etc.). What’s left are people with crappy ideas, too much money and stickers that say “Art”, begging to be put on whatever they think makes a statement. This particular exhibit is a 1TB hard drive that is on display at the Art 404 gallery, on a pedestal, with an accompanying PDF listing everything that’s in it. Books, “124GB of copyrighted music, fonts, Adobe software, various game system ROMs, and more.”

I’m not going to bother to point out that the value of what’s in most people’s hard drives probably exceeds that amount, but… well… you get my point.

[ "Product" page ] VIA [ Geekologie ]

While it’s probably been replaced by the internet as the most common procrastination tool at work, I still think that Solitaire, at least the version included with Windows over the years, has to be the most played video game of all time. In fact, unless you’re completely incapable of stacking cards, everyone who sees this post will probably instantly recognize where this art piece drew its inspiration. It was created by a design duo known as Skrekkøgle who, for whatever reason, decided that the mesmerizing falling cards animation when you win a game would make for a great 3D sculpture. And from the looks of it, they were right.

The piece was made from over 1,000 cards which were printed and pasted onto black foam boards and then taped together. To really recreate the effect though, they had to do a lot of planning and strategically cut certain arcs of cards where they intersected with others. Calculating the logistics almost seems like it’s worthwhile recreating the whole thing in a 3D animation package first, though I’m not exactly sure what approach they took. Sadly, given the work that went into its creation it looks like it’s a one-off piece. So if you want your own, you better get started cutting out little foam boards.

[ Skrekkøgle - Solitaire Win ] VIA [ Fazed ]

They may not end up in the Louvre, or other prestigious art galleries. Nor will the Pope ever commission Apple’s graphic designers to cover the ceiling of the Vatican’s chapels with them. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who look at the iPhone’s home screen, and all of the included app icons, as a genuine piece of art. For them, a European-based company called iPhone Paintings lets you hang larger versions of those very same icons on the walls of your home or office.

There are 2 sets of 16 icons available. A hand-painted version which will you set you back $499 and a cheaper, digitally printed collection which is $275 instead. Both sets come on 20cm x 20cm sized canvases, and can probably be re-arranged without having to hold your finger on the wall until they all start wiggling. (But that would be cool if they did!)

[ iPhone App Icon Paintings ] VIA [ The Gadgeteer ]

You never have to be ashamed of your dirty kitchen tea towels again with these artistically inspired alternatives from World Wide Fred, available sometime this Fall. They come in a pack of 3 and each towel features a paint-by-number stenciled still life or landscape painting. But instead of paint, you’re supposed to stain the towel with various foodstuffs. On each towel there’s a legend letting you know which food each number refers to, from blueberry jam to lemon meringue to pestos and wines. And like any paint-by-number canvas, you’re of course free to experiment and paint as you wish. But if the results don’t turn out ‘van Gogh’ enough for you, you can try again next week after they come out of the wash.

[ Stain By Number Tea Towels ]

Instead of poking, pulling and adjusting a 3D character in your CG software using a mouse or stylus. The QUMA (pronounced Cooma), from Japanese company SoftEther, works kind of like those 3D wooden mannequins that artists often pose when sketching the human body. Except that the QUMA connects to your PC over USB, and the majority of the puppets’ joints feature sensors that not only detect when they’ve been moved and adjusted, but also translate those movements to the character in your 3D software.

For stop-motion artists who are used to manipulating a physical character it’s probably a great way to transition to the virtual CG world. And even for experienced CG artists it seems like a very quick way to rough in a specific pose or gesture on a character. Pricing and availability info for QUMA has yet to be announced, though SoftEther does have an SDK available for 3D software companies wanting to ensure their particular package is compatible. (You may just want to write those plugins yourself SoftEther.)

[ QUMA Motion Capture Puppet ] VIA [ TechCrunch ]