British artist Bruce Murno made use of hundreds of thousands of CDs to fulfill a childhood fantasy and create a real CD sea.

Named CDSea (original, I know) the adventurous art project was set up on Long Knoll field, near Kilmington. To realizes his dream, the famous artist appealed to the general public, through the UK press and BBC radio, and asked everyone to send him any unwanted CDs they may have lying around. He received a massive response, and thousands of CDs began arriving from as far as California or Brazil.

Last weekend, the natural ‘canvas” at Long Knoll field was mowed and the time consuming task of arranging every CD by hand, got under way. With the help of 140 friends and colleagues from the art world, Murno created his inland sea out of 600,000 old CDs.

CDSea is just the first of a series of self-funded art installations made from discarded and recyclable materials, and will be available for public view over the next two months. Aftre that, all CDs will be sent at a recycling plant.

If yo happen to be in the area, don’t miss the chance to see the mirror-like CDSea reflect the sunshine and moonlight.

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With the eyes of the entire world on the Football World Cup, in South Africa, local authorities from Changsha, China had to come up with something better, yet related to current events.

And what’s better than football? Mud football, played by barely dressed gorgeous models, of course. So they set up a small football pitch, filled it with mud, brought in  models from various Chinese cities, and got the Beauty Mud Cup 2010 under way. In the photos below, teams from Hunan and Hubei go head to head, in one of the first matches of the competition. I don’t know the score, and neither do most of the male spectators who resumed to roars and cheers every time any of the girls kicked the ball through the mud.

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It may not look like it, but this weird-looking limousine is actually a Mercedes. Well, make that two Mercedes-Benze 300TD, and it can be yours for the modest price of $950,000.

That’s right folks, this ‘beautiful’ art-car, made of two welded Mercedez-Benz,containing parts from over 40 different cars is on sale for under $1 million. It’s even more unbelievable considering this limo has won the title of best art-car, at the Houston Art Car event, twice (2007 and 2009).

This alien-looking vehicle is the work of Antti Rahko, an art-car enthusiast who spent 10 years of his life welding two Cars into a 10-seater limousine, and decorated it with 86 lights and 36 mirrors. With that much visibility, you practically can’t crash this car.

I can understand Mr. Rahko worked hard on this art-car, but placing a $950,000 price tag on it seems just a bit ridiculous. Right now the bid on eBay is at $10,000, and he’ll probably need inflation to move a bit faster, if he wants to get the asking price in his lifetime.

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Just because it sank almost 100 years ago, doesn’t mean you can’t visit the famous Titanic. One of the best way to do it is to travel to the Titanic Museum, in rural Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

The world’s largest museum attraction, this 50% scale replica of the Titanic is actually just the front bow of the famous ship. Located in Pigeon Forge, this new tourist attraction cost $24 million and took over one year to build. But it has plans of attracting around 1 million visitors a year.

Unlike its sister museum, in Branson, Missouri, The Titanic of Pigeon Forge is not a Hollywood style museum, it’s an interactive experience that features all the tragic elements of the Titanic story. As soon as they enter the museum, visitors are offered a boarding pass with the name of one of the original passengers, and are greeted by in-character stewards and ship officers, always ready to offer information about the ship. There is even a section where visitors can sink there hand in a tank of -2 degrees Celsius cold water, the temperature the water was when the Titanic sank.

The Titanic Museum of Pigeon Forge also has a replica of the beautiful White Star liners Grand Staircase, as well as 400 artefacts from the original Titanic, including a life vest, and a tooth, recovered from survivors.

Even though the Titanic didn’t make it to America, it continues to fascinate its inhabitants, and the owners of the Titanic Museum hope this will make their investment profitable.

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The printed press may be dying, but Tucson based artist Nick Georgiou has found a way of breathing new life into old newspapers.

Nick’s art is inspired by the death of the printed world, economic crisis, and political and environmental uncertainty. He states “Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. Whatever we used to read off paper, we’re now reading off digital screens. Our way of interacting with text is changing. My work is not only about the decline of the printed word in today’s society but its rebirth as art.”

Nick Georgiou uses old newspapers, collected by him or donated by others, tears them into folds and stitches them into various creatures. His works have been exhibited in various shows and galleries, bot in the US and abroad.

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A giant Nokia mobile phone has appeared in one of the biggest squares in Cluj, Romania, as part of the Planet Report Environmental and Film Festival.

Cluj is probably the most beautiful city in Romania, and I’m glad I finally get the chance to mention it in one of my posts. The first edition of the Planet Report Environmental and Film Festival aims to point out today’s environmental issues, and get the public and local authorities to take them more seriously.

As part of this eco-festival, local artists were asked to create various artworks out of waste. The most popular piece, so far, was a giant Nokia mobile phone, make of dozens of recycled mobiles, old keyboards and other computer parts.

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When he’s not too busy chasing evil villains like the Joker, and keeping Gotham safe, the Dark Knight likes to relax by playing a little golf. And he has the coolest golf cart you’ve ever seen!

I know that we’d all like to believe, but in reality, this is just the work of a passionate fan of the Dark Knight, who actually works at the Warner Bros movie studios. When Tim G fist spotted this Tumbler-themed golf cart, he blogged about it saying it belongs to Christopher Nolan, the director behind the two latest Batman films, but it turns out that isn’t the case.

Even so, you have to admit this Batman hardcore fan did a terrific job, transforming a common golf cart (used as transportation around movie studios) into a mini version of the Tumbler. It may not be bulletproof, and full of high-tech gadgets, but who really cares about those things, anyway.

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Painter Chris Trueman, from Claremont, California, has created a unique painting by using 200,000 dead ants instead of paint.

The painting Chris calls “Self Portrait With a Gun” actually features his younger brother, dressed as a cowboy, holding his dad’s rifle. From afar this unusual artwork looks more like an old yellowed photo, but as you approach it, you realize it’s actually something completely different – a painting made of ants.

To the artist, this bizarre ant painting represents how humans learn about things abstractly, only to have their impressions changed as they get closer to them. But actually completing his masterpiece wasn’t the simplest task, mostly because he hated killing the creatures he perceives to be ” right on the line of what I consider intelligent life.” When he first began the project, he decided to catch the ants himself, but the ants in San Francisco, where he was living at the time, were too small. So he decided to order them online, from a guy who was breeding and selling them as food for lizards.

First he ordered just 1,000 ants, because he didn’t know how many he would need for the right density, but then he started ordering 40,000. They came in peanut-butter jars, and seeing them moving around in there, it was hard for Chris to make a decision. He couldn’t release them, because they weren’t native to that area, and they could start biting people. So he decided to kill the ants himself. It wasn’t easy, and he even took a 1-year-break, but decided to complete his ant masterpiece,  because he didn’t want the first batch to have died in vain.

Some of the ants dried up and were torn to pieces, so Chris Trueman used them in the large parts of the painting, where details weren’t important, saving the full-sized ants for the detailed parts. he would handle them with tweezers, placing them on the Plexiglass canvas and coat them in a painting resin called galkyd.

Chris Trueman‘s ant painting is on display, at an art gallery in San Diego, and is priced at $35,000.

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The World’s first International Humanoid Robots Olympic Games kicked off on June 21, in China’s Harbin’s Institute of Technology.

Two years after hosting a memorable edition of the human Olympic Games, China becomes the first country to host an Olympics dedicated to humanoid robots. Nineteen teams, from China, United States, Japan, South Korea or Germany have brought their best robots to compete in this historic three-day event.

To enter the competition, robots had to be less than 60 cm long, and have a human shape, with a head, two arms and two legs. Just like in the real Olympic Games, the sporty robots had to compete in multiple challenges, 24 to be exact, ranging from boxing, to weight-lifting, dancing, or sprint. But there are also some unusual domestic events, like cleaning or medical care.

The sprinting contest took place on the first day, with the winner running a distance of five meters in 20 seconds flat. Not bad for a small robot, I think. Check out the video at the bottom, to see these little guys sweating silicone at the Robot Olympic Games.

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I remember reading an article on Environmental Graffiti, a few months ago, about the thorniest trees on Earth. The photos were really impressive, considering I had no idea such trees even existed, but I felt there wasn’t really enough information about these amazing species of trees. So I took it upon myself to do some research and came up with seven bad-ass trees you couldn’t even hope to climb without some serious protective gear.

Silk Floss Tree (Ceiba Speciosa)

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Terry Prouty has been fascinated with wasps, ever since he was a little boy, growing up in Louisiana. Now he’s all grown up and is the owner of possibly the most impressive wasp nest collection in the world.

Mister Prouty now lives in Oklahoma, but his passion for wasps is just as strong as when he was just a boy. The self-entitled ‘Hornetboy’ is an advocate of wasps, and he says people are not as educated on wasps as they should be. Many of them just watch horror movies that give wasps a bad name, and they’re too scared to actually learn something about them.

The general opinion about wasps hasn’t stopped Terry Prouty from constantly studying these insects for the last 25 years, and putting together an impressive collection of nests from all around the world. He started his latest collection in 2000, and has since acquired impressive wasp nests which he proudly displays in his home. Most of them were bought online, for prices ranging from $10 to $200.

Check out Hornetboy’s entire collection on his Flickr stream.

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Deep in the forest of Parikkala, in the easternmost part of Finland, lies one of the craziest tourist attractions on the face of the planet – the sculpture park of Veijo Rönkkönen.

Regarded by most as the most important ensemble of contemporary folk art in Finland, the sculpture park of Veijo Rönkkönen is a lot to take in, the first time you visit. Finding yourself surrounded by hundreds of creepy statues, grinning at you with their real human teeth, is enough to spook you into turning back as soon as you set foot in the park.

Veijo Rönkkönen, a former paper mill worker, completed his first sculpture in 1961, and now his yard, and the path leading to it, are filled with over 450 statues, 200 of which are self portraits of the artist in Yoga positions he has mastered so far. The statues have loudspeakers hidden inside them, and the sound effects add to the eeriness of this place.

Although he has had the chance to exhibit and even sell his artworks, in auctions, Veijo Rönkkönen has never agreed to showcase his art. Every time he was asked to showcase his work, the near-hermit always replied he needed to discuss it with the statues first. Sadly, they never agreed to travel.

The sculpture park of Veijo Rönkkönen is free to visit, if you dare, but the artist insists every visitor sign his logbook, before they leave. Read More »

A fan of the Candyland board game, ever since she was 3 three years old, Facebook user Kan-Dee Corner worked meticulously to transform her garden into a real life version of the famous game board.

As a child, Kan-Dee Corner always dreamed about her very own magical Candyland, and now that she’s all grown up, she decided she can make her own magic, and began building a real life version of the board game, in her garden. She started in summer of last year, took a break for the winter, and resumed the building process this spring.

Using parts of three versions of the Candyland game boards, and adding her own themes, Kan-Dee Corner created 17 micro gardens, each with its own theme, color and smell. She did most of the work herself, but her neighbors were very supportive as wel, and one of them even created that nice little shed.

Check out photos of the building process below:

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Around 1,500 people showed up at the Bottle Inn pub, in Marshwood, Dorset, to see 61 contestants compete in the 2010 edition of the annual Nettle Eating World Championships.

The history of this bizarre eating competition can be traced back to the mid 1980s, when local farmers started the ‘Longest Stinging Nettle’ competition, to see who could grow the longest stem of nettles. Things went along just fine, until 1989, when Alex Williams presented a 15ft 6inches-long nettle, and claimed that if anyone could find a stem longer than his, he would it, As luck would have it, an American actually found a 16ft-long nettle, and Mr. Williams kept his word. From there on in, the competition evolved into the competitive eating challenge we now know as the Nettle Eating World Championships.

On June 19th, competitors were each served two-feet-long stinging nettle stalks, from which they had to pluck and eat the leaves. After an hour of eating, the bare stalks were measured and contestants who ate the most nettles, named winners.

In the men’s competition, first time participant Sam Cunningham managed to eat a whopping 74ft of stinging nettles, and claimed the title of king of the 2010 Nettle Eating World Championships. In the women’s contest, Laura Revell managed to consume 40ft of nettle, and win the title of champion.

Photos by REUTERS/Chris Helgren via Daylife

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Using his old Lada Samara Diva as an art medium, artist Nikola Nikolov has built a 2 meter-tall statue, named The Transformer.

The Transformer was created to symbolize the relationship between man and machine. The artist cut up his old Lada Samara Diva into pieces, which he later sculpted and welded together in the shape of a robot. The sculpture’s unusual position denotes the robot is at the moment between knowing what he was and what he has become.

The Transformer sculpture is 2 meters high, 80 meters wide and weight 90 kg.

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