Awesome Art & Design

On display at the BMW Welt conference hall in Munich, this undulating kinetic sculpture is composed of 714 steel balls suspended on strings; it gets wild about 50 seconds in.

Situated in Terminal 5 of London’s Heathrow Airport, Cloud is a kinetic sculpture with 4,638 flip dots. They’re so mesmerizing that folks are liable to miss their flights.

It’s over a year old but we’re still digging this motion graphics reel by The Ronin. It’s a motion graphics and design studio based in England, founded in May 2000 by Rob Chiu.

Dizel&Sate mixes graphic urban and photorealistic art to stunning effect; they sell everything from limited edition posters and t-shirts to jaw-dropping wallprints (sold by the square meter).

Using nothing more than cardboard and glue, Chris Gilmour creates life-size replicas of familiar objects. We’re amazed at the complexity of some of his pieces, including the trike (above).

It looks like a primitive Borg Cube, but we’re sure the Citizen Cube won’t be doing any assimilating: it’s the work of artist Brenda Guyton, who creates sculptures from found computer parts.

Available at Vladstudio.com, Planet Earth Inversed is one of those wallpapers that has you poring over the creative details. The neutral color scheme is easy on the eyes, too.

Scott Wade takes one-of-a-kind art to extremes with his dirty car art, which he brushes onto dusty car windows. To get the dirt to stick, he rubs almond oil onto the windows. His latest gallery is here.

Springfield Punx is a pet project of artist Dean Fraser; he does an amazing job creating Simpsons styled versions of popular superheroes and celebs. Our fave: The Dark Knight‘s Joker.

We have dreams (nightmares?) like Eboy’s Tokyo Pixel Poster, which makes this a must-buy. Sure, the giant robots are cool, but I bet you didn’t see the naked chicks on rockets.

Just in case you haven’t had a chance to catch the 2008 Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing: Boston.com has a fantastic collection of photographs here.

We generally think of smoke as the byproduct of some other process, but these photographs highlight the seemingly chaotic wisps and curls. The result is intimate, artistic, and awe-inspiring.

Boomboxes have been called many things, from ghetto blasters to jam boxes. We can’t help but feel a bit nostalgic as we view the photos in Lyle Owerko’s Boombox Project.

It’s tough not to like Christian Lorenz’s sci-fi and fantasy-themed art. The scenes are imaginative, colorful, and often thought provoking. Gallery Nucleus carries several of his prints.

Jeremy Mayer makes complex sculptures out of typewriter parts; the human figures in particular are anatomically correct (within reason). No soldering, welding or gluing; it’s all cold assembly.

Concept Ships is stuffed to the brim with spaceship and experimental aircraft art. Be warned: if you have even the slightest interest in future tech, you’ll easily waste hours here.