Artist Patricia Piccinini has created a hot air balloon she's christened The Skywhale, in honour of the centenary of the founding of Canberra:

Artist Patricia Piccinini says her inspiration came from the wonder of nature.

"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," she said. [...]

Me, I think it looks pretty great. It's partly that goofy grin it has, and partly the sheer incongruity of glancing up and seeing something this strange go by:

[Via MetaFilter]

Also on an astronomical topic (sort of), Dark Flight: Meteorwrongs by Ryan Thompson…

Within one of the most well-known collections of meteorites in the world, at the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University, is a collection of rocks of mistaken identity. Once identified by professional and amateur meteorite hunters as meteorites, they were later proven to be of terrestrial origin. 'Dark Flight: Meteorwrongs' is a series of photographs of 21 of these false positives. They range in size from just a few inches to more than one foot in diameter and they all have one thing in common–they are not meteorites. The collection stands as a testament to the evolution of the science of meteoritics and to the limits of human knowledge.

[Via Pruned]

David Byrne's account of a recent visit to the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania included an interesting account of the way the museum supplies information about the collection to visitors:

There are no wall labels. None. One is provided with an iPod touch on entry that, via a kind of Mona GPS, can tell where you are. You then tap on a thumbnail of a piece if you want to know more about the art in front of you. "Know more" is divided into various subcategories. Ideas is a sentence or two about the work beyond who made it. Artwank, is, as you might expect, some scholarly essay on the piece or the artist – the symbol for this category is a cock and balls. The Gonzo button usually led to a more personal reaction to the piece from [NOMA founder David Walsh] or Elizabeth Mead, who helped in collecting a lot of the stuff. It might be a poem, an amusing anecdote or something that seems almost completely off topic – like trouble with a boyfriend. Lastly there is Media, which often consists of a casual audio interview with the artist, but sometimes could be something else entirely. [...] If you offer up your email address, the thing will track your visit via GPS and then send you a link to a website showing you what you saw. Here's mine:

You can also find out from this site what you missed – I think I saw most of it.

I think that if I'd travelled all the way back to the UK only to be told by MONA's web site/app that I'd missed out on some exhibit that would have made my visit then I'd be less than thrilled. Best not use that feature unless you're in a position to make a quick return visit, I think.

Other than that, it sounds like a neat app.

Artist Jim Kazanjian produced a series of photographs of imaginary houses, carefully assembled by matching up snippets of images of real houses to make something much weirder.

There are definitely untold stories behind those houses. Perhaps best left untold in some cases.

[Via Colossal, via MetaFilter]

A tribute to the ZX Spectrum and the albums of Kate Bush:

(In fairness, I should note that the copy above is at 50% of the size of the original, which serves to mask some of the rough edges. Follow the link to see the album covers in all their pixillated, colour-clashing glory.)

Nice work. It's surprising how nicely some of them turned out.

The Sensual World and 50 Words for Snow benefit from being essentially black and white images in the first place, so the dithering doesn't fall foul of the limitations of the Spectrum's graphics display,¹ but some of the more colourful later albums like Aerial and Director's Cut look pretty damned fine all things considered. The run of albums from Lionheart to Hounds of Love is another matter entirely…

One last thought: we should all be eternally grateful that the creator of these tribute images didn't accompany them with reproductions of Kate's music created using a Spectrum's sound chip.

[Via MetaFilter]

1. Basically, in graphics mode the 256×192 pixel screen was divided into 8×8 pixel blocks, each of which was limited to a single foreground and background colour. Chunky, but more than made up for by the sheer amount of computer you got for your £175 if you went for the version with a massive 48KB – yes, that's Kilobytes, not Megabytes – of RAM. Those were the days. ↩

Posters of Six Women Who Changed Science. And The World.

For Ada Lovelace Day.

[Via kottke.org]

Water Light Graffiti by Antonin Fourneau.

[Via Flowing Data]

If The Doctor had always been female.

[Via The Medium is Not Enough TV blog]

Some of kelseymichele's designs for gowns inspired by The Avengers are gorgeous. The Thor one is particularly stunning.

[Via io9, via Alyssa Rosenberg]

Frank Frazetta's illustrations for 'The Lord of the Rings' are – and it really is the only appropriate description – awesome.

A light show projects actual sails onto the sails of the Sydney Opera House.

I'll grant you that the part where the 'sails' appear to collapse is spectacular (as are the bits with the dancers), but I liked it best when the sails seemed to have unfurled, and were fluttering in the breeze as if the opera house was making sail. I think they should keep that portion of the light show up permanently.

Dain Fagerholm's Stereographic Drawings are strikingly colourful and more than a bit hypnotic. Especially this guy…

[Via BERG Blog]

Kim Pimmel's video Light Drive is positively hypnotic, especially when viewed in full screen mode.¹

Pimmel also made Compressed 02, which I linked to a few months ago.

[Via swiss miss]

1. The soundtrack, drawn from Daft Punk's score for TRON: Legacy, helps a lot. ↩

Your daily dose of beauty: Jacob Sutton's L.E.D. Surfer.¹

[Via Kottke.org]

1. I predict that we'll see at least one TV advert aping this film's visual style within 3 months. ↩

The best street art of 2011.

I particularly liked this, this, this and this.

[Via The Null Device]

Doctor Whoville. Too cute for words.

[Via pie ninja, commenting at MetaFilter]

Ted Sabarese's photographs match fish to people. Every bit as odd as it sounds.

[Via kottke.org]

Photographer Irina Werning's Back to the Future 2.¹

My favourites in this collection: Christoph 1990 & 2011, Puna 2003 & 2011, and Carli 1990 & 2011.

[Via Waxy.org]

1. Previously. ↩

Greg Leyh's The Lightning Foundry Kickstarter project proposal:

The Lightning Foundry is a project to re-create super-long discharge effects normally found only in lightning. Two 10-story Tesla Coil towers will fill an area the size of a football field with lightning-like discharges hundreds of feet in length. If we trigger super-long discharge effects the arcs could strike considerably further.

That's Two Ten Storey Tesla Coil Towers! How can I not throw US$10 his way?

[Via jwz]

Christoph Niemann: My attempt at live-illustrating the New York City Marathon.