Animator Diana Gradinaru of the Royal Institution quite elegantly illustrated a lecture on consciousness by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy. du Sautoy explains a dream he had, then examined how it could so real even though his body wasn’t conscious. This led to a further examination of how consciousness can be now measured and quantified, although…
Musical Horse Plays a Mean Piano With His Mouth
In January 2016, a beautiful rescued horse named Murphy gave into his musical urges, sidled up to the electric piano and plunked out a few high notes with his mouth before sweeping his magnificent nose across the keyboard. Murphy wound up playing an unintentional but rather funky eclectic jazz tune. Murphy was rescued from the…
Why a Butt-Trumpet Playing Man and Other Unusual Images Appeared in Margins of Medieval Manuscripts
In an enlightening TED-Ed lesson written by Michelle Brown and animated by Wow-How Studios, narrator Adrian Dannatt explains how unusual illustrations, such as a man playing a butt-trumpet, came to be so prevalent in so many of the illuminated manuscripts of medieval times. As it turns out, these deliberately obtuse drawings were meant to be…
A Bright Red Fiat Coupe Cut Horizontally in Half Is Transformed Into a Working Mobile Chip Shop
Artist Benedetto Bufalino, who is known for his incredible transformative installations, took a bright red Fiat Coupe and cut it horizontally into two pieces. The artist then, quite remarkably, put a working chip shop in between the two halves of the car. The vehicle, cut red Fiat, is literally chiseled in 2 in the horizontal…
CarLens, A Smartphone App That Uses AI Machine Learning to Instantly Identify Different Cars on the Street
CarLens is a very clever app that connects with a smartphone camera that uses AI machine learning and augmented reality to instantly identify the different cars. This is particularly handy for those who enjoy figuring out the make and model of autos they see on the street. As Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover points out,…
The Unassuming Alabama Artist Who Hand Forges Authentic Swords and Props For Film and Television
Great Big Story visited with the very talented yet unassuming Kenneth Spivey of Fire and Brimstone Forge in Vestavia Hills, Alabama who learned how to forge swords and all of the closely related crafts associated with blacksmithing so that he could realize his dream of being a propmaster for film and television. The idea dawned…
Backwards Crawling CG Man Disintegrates In the Wind
CG artist fx_mania created an absolutely amazing animation depicting a supine man crawling back from a strong incoming gust of wind. As he makes his way backward, pieces of his body break off and disintegrate into the wind until there’s nothing left of him at all. Street wind experiment vol 2.0 Here’s volume 1.0. While…
How the Wikitongues Project Actively Seeks to Save Endangered Languages From Complete Extinction
Mariano Carranza of Great Big Story accompanied Wikitongues founder Daniel Bögre Udell around different New York City neighborhoods to record speakers of various languages that need rescue complete extinction. While Urdell is based in New York, the project itself stretches around the world with hundreds of volunteers who are helping to revive the languages of…