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Cory Doctorow at 4:00 pm • 
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Here's a mesmerizing gallery of "Fabrege Fractals" created by Tom Beddard, whose site also features a 2011 video of Fabrege-inspired fractal landscapes that must be seen to be believed. They're all made with Fractal Lab, a WebGL-based renderer Beddard created.
Fabergé Fractals by Tom Beddard, using his WebGL-based fractal engine, Fractal Lab. (via Colossal)
Cory Doctorow at 12:19 pm • •
You'll have seen the pictures of a giant rubber duck floating down the world's iconic waterways, from the Thames to Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong -- it's Florentijn Hofman's brainchild. What you may not have seen is what the duck looks like after it's been deflated, and that's even better -- a kind of puddle of duck, which has a Beatrix Potter-y ring to it until you see it and then it has nothing at all about it that suggests Ms Potter's works.
florentijn hofman's giant rubber duck: the aftermath (via Making Light)
Cory Doctorow at 9:56 pm • •
"Quaestus" is the latest assemblage from sculptor Jud Turner. He sez,
“Quaestus” is a latin word meaning “gain or profit extracted from work”, a concept darkly represented in my latest sculpture: 5 tiny employees are trapped in an endless task inside a gigantic machine, toiling to keep up with the conveyor belts they are walking on. Each work station has a 2 digit counter which seems to be keeping some kind of score. If the employees don't keep up with the machine, they will fall off the ends of their conveyor belts and be fed to the machine.. The employees actually power this machine, but are unaware and unable to stop moving forward for fear of falling behind.
It's an amazing piece. Click through for hi-rez and details.
Cory Doctorow at 8:00 pm • •
Here's a beautiful gallery of publicity shots of the Canberra Skywhale, a lighter-than-air sculpture created by Patricia Piccinini to celebrate the centenary of the capital city of Australia. The Skywhale is a fanciful, breast-studded creature from a contrafactual alternate history:
"My question is what if evolution went a different way and instead of going back into the sea, from which they came originally, they went into the air and we evolved a nature that could fly instead of swim. In fact coming from a place like Canberra where it's a planned city that's really tried to integrate and blend in with the natural environment, it makes a lot of sense to make this sort of huge, gigantic, but artificial and natural-looking creature".[8]
David Pescovitz at 1:58 pm • •
Japanese designer toy firm Medicom worked with Herman Makkink to recreate an edition of his iconic sculpture "The Rocking Machine," famously seen in the film A Clockwork Orange. It's almost three feet long and more than a foot wide. You can have one one of your very own for $1600 or so. "The Rocking Machine" (via Death Waltz Recording Company)
David Pescovitz at 11:11 am • •
German sculptor Martin Bässler carved this lovely merman from a sperm whale tooth. (via Propnomicon)
Cory Doctorow at 6:45 am • •
A group of engineering students (with no stated manufacturing experience -- caveat emptor) are kickstarting a series of cute assemble-it-yourself junkbots called "D.Bug"s. You get a kit full of electronic components, instructions for soldering them into cute robots, and a display box for your complete project. They're on the pricey side ($35 for the cheapest), especially since they don't come with the tools you need to assemble them, but they're a cute and potentially fun entree to soldering and working with electronic components.
To assemble the kit, you solder together electronic components to form the body parts of the D.Bug. Easy to assemble!Easy to assemble!
The manual includes step-by-step photo instructions, the background story for each D.Bug, a guide to identifying electronic parts, a tutorial for soldering, a harvesting guide for where to find the best parts, and insider tips on how to make your D.Bug look awesome.
D.Bug Model Kits - Art hacked from electronics (Thanks, Sophie!)
Cory Doctorow at 11:00 am • •
Jason McKittrick sez,
On sale for 24 hours only! After the dreadful events that occurred in the backwater town of Dunwich, Massachusetts further inquiry was launched by professors at Miskatonic University. Searching the charred ruins of the old Whateley home, a badly damaged but still intact wooden lock box was found among the rubble. This box contained a hideous metal sculpture, seemingly ancient occult documents and a small cypher-encoded notebook with the name 'Wilbur Whateley' scrawled on the cover.With the help of Prof. Henry Armitage, the notebook was deciphered and it was revealed that the metal sculpture was an idol of Yog-Sothoth, a multidimensional being that had been worshiped by the Whateley family for generations. Several metallurgical tests of the idol yielded no definitive answer as to what material it had been fashioned from and led scientists to conclude that the origin of the material to be non-terrestrial.
The Idol of Yog-Sothoth is hand cast in solid resin and individually signed and numbered by artist Jason McKittrick: Measures 5" x 3", $50+shipping.
THE IDOL OF YOG-SOTHOTH (Thanks, Jason!)
Cory Doctorow at 7:43 am • •
I'm very taken with Klaus Weber's 2011 sculpture Veggieanatomy, which includes real vegetables in its makeup.
Veggieanatomy, 2011 (via Neatorama)
Cory Doctorow at 2:56 pm • •
Shapeways user Maundy created the Steampunk Geared Cube, a magnificent geared confection that came out of the 3D printed fully assembled!
The cube contains a total of 28 gears, all of which turn from manually rotating only one (though the designer notes that rotating two gears results in a smoother motion). The outermost gear on each side has handles for easy rotation, and each is linked to its adjacent gear in an interlocking pattern. Once one gear is spun, the others correspondingly spin along.
In addition to the fascinating pattern and mechanics, the cube has a tray in the middle for holding various small objects. The product also comes with a stand and a lockable lid, which is placed on top of the cube and can be locked and unlocked by rotating the gears.
Cory Doctorow at 8:34 am • •
This spectacular C3PO junkbot assemblage was made by junk artist Gabriel Dishaw, and sells for $800. Worth every penny, too. Mr Dishaw's got plenty of other wonderful pieces for sale, too.
C3PO "Woody" (via Neatorama)
David Pescovitz at 11:27 am • •
Sayaka Ganz creates marvelous animal sculptures from plastic crap she picks up at thrift stores. "Sayaka Ganz: Reclaimed Creations" (via Juxtapoz)
David Pescovitz at 9:48 am • •
BB pal Karen Marcelo photographed this magnificent living tree sculpture in Ubud, Bali. More beautiful photos in Karen's Flickr stream, k0re.
