Match Sprint is a form of track bicycle racing in which the competitors move very slowly and even stop completely in order to gain a tactical advantage over their rivals (video). Because of the aerodynamic concept of drafting, the lead cyclist must expend more energy than the trailing cyclist, so the competitors try to avoid taking the lead until the last possible moment.

via Now I Know

video via Smithers MINNEAPOLIS

LINX is a simple construction toy consisting of modular connectors that work with ordinary drinking straws. LINX creator Patrick Martinez is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

LINX were created because I wanted a construction game that was cheap, flexible and light. With LINX you can build everything from ambitious room-sized structures to intricate table-top sculptures, all using LINX connectors and standard drinking straws.

“Know Your Rights” is a musical animation about photographers’ rights by open-collaborative production company hitRECord, featuring music by The Gregory Brothers (of Auto-Tune the News) and actor/hitRECord director Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The animation was created in collaboration with the ACLU—see the ACLU site on photographers’ rights for more information.

via Wired

Cinemagram by Factyle is a new app that converts short iPhone videos into animated photo GIFs known as cinemagraphs.

Create a stunning hybrid between photo and video. Animate small portions of your photo to create a magical image that’s part-photo and part-video. Apply vintage / cross processing filters, and share your masterful creation.

via TechCrunch

photo via Cinemagram

At the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo, a two person Papier-mâché rhinoceros costume rampaged out of its pen and trampled zookeepers until it was tranquilized. The rhino was part of the yearly safety drill at Tokyo area zoos. Last year, the nearby Tama Zoo was menaced by a man in a tiger mascot costume.

via The Telegraph

“A Muppet Wicker Man” by British artist Paul O’Connell is a Muppet comic version of the cult British horror film The Wicker Man (1973).

via Dangerous Minds

Greek artist Petros Vrellis created this beautiful interactive animated version of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (video). The interactive work is powered by openFrameworks, an open source coding toolkit for creatives.

via Colossal & Creative Applications Network

For his “American Revolution Revolution” series, artist Shawn Huckins paints 18th century-style portraits with Internet slang superimposed on them (see the tweets and texts galleries).

via Hi-Fructose

Alan Moore, author of the V for Vendetta series, discusses the origins of the iconic Guy Fawkes mask and its role in the Anonymous movement in this BBC opinion piece.

Without wishing to overstate my case, everything in the observable universe definitely has its origins in Northamptonshire, and the adoption of the V for Vendetta mask as a multipurpose icon by the emerging global protest movements is no exception.

photo by Vincent Diamante

On Wednesday, San Francisco-based independent video game company Double Fine launched a $400,000 Kickstarter project to fund development of a retro point & click adventure video game. The Kickstarter project will also fund a documentary film team from 2 Player Productions. The filmmakers will document the entire game making process as it happens (for the exclusive enjoyment of project supporters).

The project reached its fundraising goal in a record 8 hours, and surpassed $1 million dollars in less than 24 hours. It missed being the first million dollar Kickstarter by just four hours though—The Elevation Dock, which we wrote about earlier this week, gained that distinction on Thursday afternoon. But the Double Fine project has now surpassed the Elevation Dock and is now the largest Kickstarter yet ($1,384,438 as of this writing). The folks over at Kickstarter watched all of this unfold with understandable excitement.

Over a six-to-eight month period, a small team under Tim Schafer’s supervision will develop Double Fine’s next game, a classic point-and-click adventure. Where it goes from there will unfold in real time for all the backers to see.

2 Player Productions will be documenting the creative process and releasing monthly video updates exclusively to the Kickstarter backers. This documentary series will strive to make the viewer as much a part of the process as possible by showing a game grow from start to finish, with all the passion, humor, and heartbreak that happens along the way.

via BetaBeat

The Yanquing Ice Festival, a Beijing ice sculpture exhibition that features an enormous ice city, is celebrated each year as part of the Chinese Lantern Festival (see this Daily Mail article for more photos).

via Archie McPhee’s Geyser of Awesome

photos via Getty Images

Hanksy, the street artist who creates Tom Hanks-themed parodies of Banksy street art, was recently interviewed by EA Hanks of The Awl who happens to be Tom Hanks’ daughter. We’ve written previously about Hanksy’s work.

EA: Regarding your work, Tom Hanks sends the message, “I don’t know who Hanksy is, but I enjoy his (her?) comments via the semi-chaos of artistic expression.” Do you know if Banksy knows as well?

Hanksy: There has been word, from mouths that have some credentials to back it up, that he has seen the work, is following it, and completely encourages it.

photo by madeleine

Artist Brock Davis used cauliflowers to recreate three famous explosions from history: The Hindenburg disaster, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and the Challenger disaster.

via Brock Davis

In this microscopic video by University of Cambridge researchers, a killer T cell from the immune system attacks a cancer cell.

Cells of the immune system protect the body against pathogens. If cells in our bodies are infected by viruses, or become cancerous, then killer cells of the immune system identify and destroy the affected cells. Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or cancerous cells, without destroying healthy cells surrounding them.

via io9

Spanish artist Eduardo Relero creates wonderfully imaginative 3D illusion street art. His work is a modern example of the trompe l’oeil optical illusion art technique.

via Hi-Fructose

Earlier this week, BBC public affairs program Panorama focused on the issue of Internet bullying in the episode “Hunting the Internet Bullies.” As part of the program, journalist Declan Lawn tracked down and confronted Internet troll Nimrod Severen, whose real name is Darren Burton. Nimrod Severen has gained notoriety by posting inflammatory and racist comments on social network tribute pages for people who have died.

via The Next Web

The video “Future Hipsters” imagines how aging hipsters might reminisce about the good old days of the Internet in the year 2062. It’s a companion to the Future Hipsters tumblr, both of which are a promotion by Entrinsic for Social Media Week (February 13-17).

via Neatorama

“Fire Drawings” are fire art pieces in which elaborate designs are scorched into wood. The designs are etched into the wood panels, the etchings are filled with flammable paint, and then the paint is allowed to slowly burn (video). “Fire Drawings” are by London-based design company Studio Glithero.

The protagonist in the Fire Drawings is a flame. It travels through time over a path of flammable screen-printed paint, multiplying or merging together, drawing, leaving a decorative charcoal trace as it goes along.

via Have You Seen This

Banksy’s Coming For Dinner is a 2009 film in which Banksy attends a celebrity dinner hosted by Joan Collins (of Dynasty fame). The film was in fact an elaborate hoax conceived of and directed by Ivan Massow.

Experience the clash of celebrity, as Hollywood royalty Joan Collins and husband Percy meet Banksy, the most famous living artist in the world. Banksy’s Coming for Dinner is a film within a film and questions the very nature of ‘reality’ at every level.

via The World’s Best Ever

At the White House Science Fair, 8th grader Joey demonstrated his homebuilt air cannon for President Obama by launching a marshmallow across the State Dining Room. As the student pumped air into the cannon, the president joked “the Secret Service isn’t happy about this.” Then the president took a turn pumping air into the cannon.

via Gizmodo

photo via Reuters

“Kodachrome 2010″ by Xander Robin is a short documentary about Kodak’s iconic Kodachrome color film, and Dwayne’s Photo, the last film lab to develop it. When it was introduced in 1935, it was the first commercially successful color film. The last Kodachrome film was produced in 2009, and Dwayne’s Photo stopped processing the film in 2010.

via PetaPixel

Canadian artist Maskull Lasserre carves beautifully macabre anatomical sculptures out of wood, books, instruments, and other found materials.

via Hi-Fructose & Inspire Me Now

“Countries & Colour” by artist Jerod Gibson is delightful series of country-specific abstract illustrations. The illustrations are for sale in a variety of formats.

Irene Gallo over at Tor.com has posted a wonderful roundup of sci-fi and fantasy illustrations that are inspired by classic works of art.

image 1 by Luke Radl, image 2 by John Mattos, image 3 by Paolo Rivera, image 4 by Tristan Elwell, image 5 by Michael Whelan

Wordpharmacy is a poetry box set in which each part of speech (nouns, verbs, etc.) is represented by a box designed to look like medication packaging. Each box contains an instructional poem “guiding the reader’s ingestion of the given word group.” Wordpharmacy was written by poet Morten Søndergaard and designer Christian Ramsø, both of Denmark. To celebrate the project’s launch, publisher Broken Dimanche Press has converted their Berlin office into a pharmacy storefront. Individual word boxes and the full box set are available for purchase.

via Design You Trust

photo 1 via Wordpharmacy, photo 2 via Bloggokin.it