Sand drawing table
Tuan Nguyen has replicated the multi-thousand dollar art versions of a sand drawing table using a raspberry pi and a Vittsjö table from Ikea.
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Breakfast
Breakfast is a art design company that makes a lot of interactive and kinetic art pieces. Many utilize split-flap, flip-discs, and other moving elements to make their creations. They recently started their Billion Dollar Arcade series that re-creates old video games with gold-foil lined flip-discs to create the playfield.
Check out some of their works on their studio YouTube channel.
3D printed infinity mirror box
Martin Etzl generated this intricate model and placed it inside of a cube with one-way mirrors.
Physical Pong
Daniel Perdomo started a project to re-create the classic Atari’s arcade PONG game – but in physical form. It uses mechanical paddles and a magnetic floating bit.
I recently got to play with one of the ones created via their successful kickstarter and it was awesome fun. I would love to own one, but it’s unclear if they’re still making them. They were also a cool few thousand dollars when they were selling them.
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Flight instruments as art
SkyArt has a collection of unique and interesting avionics controls, dials, and readouts that you can buy and use as a cool desktop curios. They even have furniture and large art pieces that you can buy.
Survival Research Laboratories
Before Battlebots, in the 80’s, there was a group called Survival Research Laboratories (wiki). I remember seeing a video clip of them back in the 80’s on an episode of Ripley’s Believe It or Not hosted by Jack Palance (long before YouTube kids). It showed clips of frightening, dangerous machines that destroyed and ambled around with the most disturbing movements.
The mechanical creations made horrendously loud noises, shot things, exploded, emitted huge flame plumes, electricity, and projectiles. They played disturbing music with screams and dialog from horror movies. The machines had huge metal arms, gears, and blades that smashed and sliced everything as they destroyed each other and everything in their paths.
It was kind of like watching the mechanical version of death metal – or Einstürzende Neubauten. None of it looked safe for the bystanders. Many onlookers appeared to be genuinely afraid. Injuries to the crew and bystanders did occur.
This group was (and is) called Survival Research Laboratories – a mechanical performance art group. They have a YouTube channel and still seem to be doing shows.
Here’s a pseudo-documentary about the group:
Turns out – they’re not gone. I just recently saw this video from Greg E. Leyh at Lightning on Demand who resurrected his old Plasma Cannon.
Lord of the Rings as done by Ghibli – for $250
Likely inspired by the many people on X who have for the past few days used ChatGPT to render famous photos and memes in the style of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli films, PJ Ace said he spent $250 in Kling credits and in 9 hours had re-created the Fellowship of the Rings trailer.
AI is dramatically changing the creative landscape.
Conjuring a bike from thin air
Filmmaker and avid cyclist Quek Shio wowed the internet in 2023 when he shared his bike-building process in a smoothly edited video. Now he’s back with a new bicycle and a new video. Watch him conjure, duplicate, and put together parts out of thin air.
Phone Marble Machine
Finally – a phone case that is really interesting!
See other interesting creations on the KARAKURI (Japanese mechanical art) YouTube channel.
