Awesome Art & Design

Similar to the incredible opening for Contact, Electromagnetic Leak is an infographic that plots out the distance our TV shows have traveled through space, with major stars as signposts.

We’ve seen public projection art before, but Tetragram for Enlargement is easily our favorite–this because (or in spite) of being projected onto the normally busy walls of a castle.

Folded over the course of four years, Wataru Itou’s A Castle On The Ocean is a papercraft spectacle; it’s on display at Uminohotaru, a service area which is itself situated on the ocean.

Neill Cameron’s A-Z of Awesomeness isn’t false advertising: it’s a purely awesome adventure in alliteration, with a new geeky drawing every day for each letter of the alphabet.

Hung as a painting in Admiral Adama’s quarters, First Cylon War was painted by BSG assistant art director Ken Rabehl and mixes medieval elements with a massive robotic onslaught.

Similar to RobotsAndMonster.org, Len Peralta of Monster by Mail will draw you a customized monster; supply the name and he’ll send you a 4×6 sketch along with making-of video.

Don’t let Damien Hirst and BANKSY have all the fun–IARTISTLONDON is selling DIY kits that let you recreate over-hyped, uber-pricey contemporary art pieces on the cheap.

Quite possibly the coolest gamer poster ever, Edge magazine subscribers will get this video game poster; we see everything from Pac-Man and Katamari to Street Fighter and Doom.

Oh, how far we’ve come: Kyle Bean’s Mobile Evolution is a 21st century take on Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls, progressing from the classic brick phone to today’s iPhone.

We feel very late 1990s posting about an animated gif, but It Never Stops is like every Rube Goldberg machine combined into a pixelated contraption of colossal proportions.

It’s already outdated, but Rob Matthews’ Wikipedia Book is a 5,000 page tome that includes Wikipedia’s 2,500+ featured articles; we’re gonna bet that editing is disabled on this one.

The poster itself doesn’t cost a million bucks, but is a print of the same site that made its 21-year old creator, Alex Tew very rich in 2005 and subsequently made all of us feel very dumb.

What started out as a simple drawing exercise for LiveJournal blogger davario has snowballed into over 500 submissions; the mission: Draw Yourself as a Teenager, pimples and all.

Forget about quantum physics and string theory: this Grand Unification of Cutlery diagram shows that the Spork is only one piece of a much larger puzzle, with Knorks, Spifes and Splayds.

As if dug up by a future archaeologist, Christopher Locke’s Modern Fossils casts game controllers, floppies and other gadgets in concrete; he even gives them a species name in Latin.

We’ve always been a fan of art-a-day blogs, but Andy Helm’s Dude-A-Day really appeals to us with caricatures of famous fictional male characters from movies, TV and comics.

It makes our heads hurt thinking about it, but the video helps explain how Clock Clock works; it’s basically an array of analog clocks whose hands combine to show digital time.

Made with Lego Mindstorms NXT and hung from three pulleys, Nils Volker’s Drawing Robot is more artistic than technical: it tracks visitor’s eye movements to create dot paintings.

We’re a big fan of Matt W. Moore’s geometric art, but we’re even bigger fans now with his “Thus Far” lecture at OFFF: it shows his early days as a graffiti/mural artist up to his B/W series.

Turning a building into a light show is not a novel idea, but Projekt PIWO 3 is among the best; they do everything from Tetris to Michael Jackson in the one hour show above.

The lord of all things Mac gets a typographical makeover with this Steve Jobs portrait by Dylan Roscover; it’s based on Apple’s “Crazy Ones” ads and uses common Apple fonts.

Named after masters of splatter Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Oscar G. Torres’ Jackoon robot actually uses a camera that lets it paint a predetermined image.

On display at the 2009 Maker Faire from 5/30-5/31, Charlie Bucket’s Fluid Sculpture is as mesmerizing as it is a bit grotesque; it’s a mixture of mineral oil, water and dye. Thanks, K!