The Online Gallery Playset is a fun new way to curate the Internet with a DIY miniature papercraft gallery (video). The playset was created by Aram Bartholl of Free Art & Technology.

via Free Art & Technology

The Internet Defense League is a network dedicated to spreading the alarm whenever the Internet is threatened by bad laws or monopolies. League members (including Laughing Squid) will receive alerts whenever an Internet threat is identified. Members will have the option of posting alert banners, calls to action, and other interventions on their websites. By broadcasting through member sites, the league will be able to spread the alarm quickly and widely. The Internet Defense League was created by Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian and Fight for the Future. For more info on the league see this article on Forbes.

Salt Made From Tears is a line of flavored salts that supposedly are made from human tears. The salts are sold by Hoxton Street Monster Supplies in London. The store is part of the Ministry of Stories, a children’s writing center. Salt Made From Tears was developed by Studio Weave, Halen Môn, and We Made This.

The salt is collected from humans experiencing a range of emotions, and in various situations. You can pick up salt made from: tears of sorrow, tears shed while sneezing, tears shed while chopping onions, tears of laughter, and tears of anger. Each has a distinctly different flavour – salt made from tears of sorrow has a delicate lavender flavour, perfect for seasoning limbs and organs.

via Super Punch

And We Were Young is an upcoming animated documentary by Andy Smetanka about American involvement in one of the final battles of World War I (trailer). The documentary will feature first person accounts of the costly Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918, and will be animated with paper cutouts and silhouettes on 8mm film. Smetanka is raising funds for the project on Kickstarter.

Thanks to Richard for the tip.

“No Globes” is a snow globe containing a model coal power plant. When shaken, coal dust-like particles cloud the globe. The globe was created in 2009 by UK-based Dorothy Collective to highlight environmental concerns about coal power.

via Colossal & Play

At Maker Faire Bay Area 2012, Adam Savage presented a wonderful talk on “Why We Make.”

Adam tells a great story about his Indiana Jones hat, how he got started building his obsessions, and why makers should embrace the things that they have no choice but to make.

via Boing Boing

Ketchup flows out of a bottle with remarkable ease in this demonstration of LiquiGlide, a food safe super non-stick coating by researchers at the MIT Varanasi Research Group.

via Co.Exist

Artist Bruno Walpoth creates stunningly life-like figure sculptures out of wood.

via Hi-Fructose

“Love Seat” by British artist James Hopkins is a clever installation of four chairs that together form the word “love.” We recently wrote about Hopkins’ wonderful skull bookshelves.

In addition to his work as an electronic musician, Moby is also an amateur architecture photographer. He posts his photos on the Tumblr Moby Los Angeles Architecture Blog. He recently spoke about his architecture hobby to Jessica Bennett of Tumblr.

via Tumblr Storyboard

photo by Moby

“Toy Car” is a beautiful wind-up car sculpture made of stainless steel and bronze. Netherlands-based artist Wouter Scheublin created the car as a limited edition that appears to be sold out. He is now selling nylon 3D printed versions—amazingly, the cars are printed as-is, with no assembly required.

via MAKE

Facebook Camera is a new iPhone app that streamlines the browsing and sharing of Facebook photos. Users can edit and share their own photos as well as browse the latest photos from their friends.

Share your photos in a snap with Facebook Camera. Post a bunch of photos to Facebook at once, and see what friends are up to with a feed of nothing but their photos.

– Post multiple photos from your camera roll at a time
– Crop and apply filters to give your photos a new look
– Scroll down a single feed of all your friends’ photos
– Tag your friends, add photo captions and say where you are
– See photos from the different apps your friends use

“Thrown to the Wind” by Chinese artist Wang Zhiyuan is a 36 foot tall tornado-like sculpture made of plastic garbage.

via Job’s Wife & My Modern Metropolis

Matt Derrick of travel site Punk Nomad recently went for a ride on a Rail Rider—essentially a go kart for railroad tracks (video). The ride took place on an abandoned stretch of track near the Salton Sea in Southern California.

via Jalopnik

Yesterday British stuntman Gary Connery became the first person to successfully land in a wing suit without using a parachute (video). Connery jumped out of a helicopter at an altitude of 2,400 feet and dropped for 40 seconds before landing in a massive “runway” of cardboard boxes laid out for him in the English countryside. He was unharmed.

via The New York Times

video via ITN News, photo by Eddie Keogh/Reuters

“Division” by Dutch artist Johan Rijpma is a beautiful experimental film in which a sheet of paper is torn into pieces, the pieces are reassembled and a photograph is taken, and then the photograph is torn into pieces, reassembled, photographed, and so on.

Thanks to Johan Rijpma for the tip!

Invisible is an upcoming exhibition of invisible art works—from blank canvases to bare pedestals. The exhibition includes work by Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, and Yves Klein. Invisible opens June 12 at the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre in London.

Invisible Art will bring together works from the past half century that explore ideas related to the invisible and the hidden, including work by some of the most important artists of our time as well as younger artists who have expanded on their legacy.

via The Telegraph & Boing Boing

image: 1000 Hours of Staring by Tom Friedman via MoMA

“Measuring the Universe” is a fascinating animation that explains some of the ingenious ways scientists measure the universe. It is part of the ongoing exhibition Measuring the Universe: from the transit of Venus to the edge of the cosmos, on display at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the UK. The exhibition ends September 2, 2012.

via Geeks are Sexy

“The Master’s Voice” is a wonderfully bizarre short film by Guilherme Marcondes about two ghostly inhabitants of M., a futuristic island city that is populated by ghosts. The film is a teaser for Marcondes’ upcoming film project on M. Island.

via Who Killed Bambi & Magnolius Machine Factory

Bill Hammack explains the intricacies of a smartphone accelerometer—the device that determines the orientation of the phone (video).

via Gizmodo

photo by Makenai

photo by Blake Maloof

Jeri Ellsworth created this awesome Commodore 64 bass guitar for last weekend’s Maker Faire Bay Area. Ellsworth explains how she made the guitar and how it works in this MAKE:Live video recorded at Maker Faire. (skip ahead about 40 seconds to the start of the interview).

via Waxy.org

Two billboards that read “Don’t mess with the Internet” recently cropped up in Texas in the congressional district of Representative Lamar S. Smith, the sponsor of the defeated SOPA bill. Erik Martin of Reddit and Holmes Wilson of Fight for the Future conceived of the idea. The billboards were paid for by a Crowdtilt campaign in just two days. Billboard designer Breadpig is pre-selling “Don’t mess with the Internet” T-shirts.

via Breadpig

photo via Fight for the Future

Parking Douche is an Android app for reporting badly parked cars in Moscow (video). Users photograph offending cars and upload them to the Parking Douche database. The cars are then featured in banner ads on Moscow-based online newspaper (and Parking Douche developer) The Village. No word yet on whether the app will be expanded to other cities and countries.

Back in 2007 we wrote about a similar project: the website You Park Like An Asshole.

via The Atlantic Cities

In the portrait series “Foam Sculptures,” Dutch photographer Suzanne Jongmans adorns her subjects in packing foam costumes and creates wonderful portraits of them in a style reminiscent of 17th century Dutch Golden Age portraiture. We recently wrote about another painting-themed portrait series: Airplane Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.

via PetaPixel & Beautiful/Decay

South Korean artist Lee Jung uses glowing letters to create haunting text art installations.

via Booooooom & Colossal