A German artist had a brilliant idea to make art more accessible across his country by offering mini art in vending machines.

35-year-old Lars Kaiser said he came up with the idea so that he could provide art lovers the chance to purchase work around the clock from these refurbished cigarette vending machines.

He has installed about 100 of the uniquely decorated art vending machines in public buildings, bars and on exterior walls throughout Germany. The refurbished vending machines once sold cigarettes, chewing gum or condoms in the 1960s and 1970s.

“We wanted to get art into places that don’t have anything to do with art so that it would become a part of everyday life,” Kaiser told Reuters.

The one-off sculptures, collages and paintings fit into small boxes which the machines sell. They have been created by about 140 professional artists. The vending machines are also pieces of art themselves in a wide array of colors and styles.

“The artists are very creative,” he said. “The boxes contain every kind of art you find in a larger format elsewhere.”

Kaiser said the machines did not allow customers to select work by particular artists so that they would be exposed to something new.

“We want it to be a surprise so you’re forced to experience the work of an artist you might not normally pick,” he said.

The boxes just cost $2.78 each, making the endeavor not a financially-gaining one for the artists involved, but giving you the chance to get to know your local German artists better.

Singapore Scotts Tower is one of the scariest and at the same time good looking buildings in the world that will be built in Singapore in the near future. It was designed by OMA – Office for Metropolitan Architecture – and its numbers are pretty notable:

• 153 meter tall
• 68 apartments
• 20,000m² of built floor area
• 36-storey residential high-rise

Besides the numbers it is the design that will certainly amaze a lot of people, it gives the sensation that each of the 4 towers are floating on the air, while in the end they are just “connected” to one main central core. Can you imagine the panoramic views that apartment owners will enjoy?

Ole Scheeren, who is participating in the project and is a partner of OMA, comments:

The design vertically redistributes the floor area in four alternating towers to create a skyscraper in which architectural and urbanistic concerns merge with mechanisms that create added value. The architecture, in this sense, goes beyond form and generates symbiotic qualities.

[Via: Neatorama and OhGizmo]

This kick-ass Audi car concept code named R-Zèro was made on France at the International School of Design. The concept includes plans for an electric motor with high-tech lithium-ion batteries weighting 1200Kg to pump the 4 engines, and that’s all the worthy information available.

Kudos to Franck Levivier, Rémi Marchand and Pierre-Olivier Wagner for designing the Audi R-Zèro.

[Via: TechFresh]

[tags]audi, r-zero, concept, france, design[/tags]

Forget those boring old wall clocks or the annoying chiming of a mantel clock

The Time Fusion Clock is not an ordinary clock, the metal body and numbers plus the positioning it takes, it will make someone “wow” for sure, or not…

It measures 6 feet (1,80m) and has an original way of displaying the time with the numbers not lined up. Besides presenting the minutes and hours, it also has a pointer for the seconds and works with 1AA battery.

Available at DrGadget for £39.99 (close to $74)

Well, at least you gotta admit that the shape of Time Fusion is original, and would probably look good in your living room.

[tags]time, fusion, clock[/tags]

Microwaving a CD for 10 seconds reveals the concentric circle pattern of the CD surface, which is otherwise undetected by the naked eye.

The CD experience represents one of the exemplars presented at the Art Of Science Gallery – a competition held by Princeton University which intends to show the ways in which science and engineering inform art and vise versa.

The galleries:

Art of Science 2006
Art of Science 2005

[tags]art of science, cd, microwave magic[/tags]

ASCII-WM is a service that provides a different way to watch World Cup 2006 games. What way is that? ASCII – a character encoding based on the English alphabet.

Not the most convenient way of watching a soccer game because you won’t understand what is going on (just see the image and prove me wrong) but it is an original and unique idea.

Perfect description of what ASCII-WM offers:

The best, most ridiculous, most redundant graphical implementation of ASCII!

You have to connect via telnet… + instructions

[Image and story via: Lampada Azul]

[tags]world cup, live, ascii[/tags]

By making use of the HTML tags structure of a website, an application (java applet) named websitegraphs can create a “graphic” like the one you’re seeing on the image.

Each HTML tag has a specific color and thats what make some graphs so colorful in particular cases (see other samples), the example I used belongs to Yahoo.

I tried to create one graph for Gadgetizer, but for some unknown reason it didn’t work out.

Websites as Graphs – try it yourself ;P

The author of this application – Sala from Switzerland – has an interesting project at OneThousandPaitings – check it out.

[Via: B2OB]

[tags]website graphs, yahoo, onethousandpaitings, sala, aharef[/tags]

Cafe Au Led – made in Japan

With the form of a coffee cup and using LED lamps to create light, the Cafu Au LED designed by Ryuichi Abe will look good on your living room, bed room, toilet, anywhere.

It is cordless, rechargeable, lasts 11 hours with a single charge and made with glass & steel.
On top of all this features, it looks good. What more could you want?

No info about the price, but if you understand Japanese visit DayByDay because there is more info there.

[Via: TreeHugger]

[tags]led lamp, design, cafu au led[/tags]

If you’re into customizing your MacBook Pro to have style and be different from the rest, the place you need to visit is Color-Ware – industry leader in altering the color of existing products.

The one on the image is using the blaze color, but there + 25 available colors to chose from.

[Via: CoolGizmo]

[tags]apple, macbook pro, mac[/tags]

The super-hot-brazilian-model Gisele Bundchen has recently posed for Apple to represent their computer line, this campaign was announced on her official website.

Rumors:

• All the MacBooks got overheated
• The Banana photo is from the Apple set (not!)
• Sales are suppose to grow 200% after the photos being unveiled to the public and Mac fans

Actually, the only information on her website is that she posed for Apple. No photos, no dates, no details, nothing.

+ Gisele Bundchen Photos

+ Gisele Bundchen info at wikipedia

[Via: vitor azevedo; Source: DiárioDigital]

[tags]gisele bundchen, apple, mac[/tags]