Unless you live in Detroit, you might not have heard about the Ice House Project, but it has really been the talk of the town for the last couple of weeks.

Architect Matthew Radune and photographer Gregory Holm, both living in New York, decided it would be a great idea to create an ice-covered home as an art installation. The idea came to Matthew when he laid eyes on a photograph of a house wrapped in a frozen waterfall.

And what better place for their artistic endeavor than Detroit, a city full of abandoned and foreclosed houses. They managed to convince Michigan Land Bank to let them borrow the abandoned house at 3926 McClellan. The building was scheduled for demolition, but Radune and Holm got it into a program that deconstructs and recycles materials. They also agreed to pay back taxes on a foreclosed house, so a single mother and her family could have a home. This was their gift to Detroit for allowing them to go on with their project.

Day and night the two watched over the house, constantly and stubbornly fighting Mother Nature, who alternated cold days with sunny ones that almost melted their Ice House. The whole thing cost around $15,000, most of which was raised through a donations website. This included the project licenses, the city water and hiring the police to cordon off the street for a few hours. The rest was just watching water ice-up and making shore passers by didn’t injure themselves on the ice.

On Saturday, Gregory Holm finally got the photo he wanted from the Detroit Ice House project, and they’ve stopped spraying it with water. But you can still admire it for a few days, until the sun melts it.

via

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Two workers of Travancore Cocotuft Ltd. have spent months creating the world’s longest doormat hand-woven from coconut coir.

The giant mat is just 1.2 meters wide and 30 mm thick, but has a length of 101.6 meters and weighs 999 kg. Impressive numbers, but the most impressive thing about this mat is that it was handmade by just two workers. They spent 111 man days, over a period of 4 months, inserting 4,70,000 coir tufts between alternate wefts of coir yarn.

Although Guinness Book of Records is already considering declaring it the world’s longest hand-woven doormat, it serves a higher purpose. Cocotuft Chief Executive Officer P. Mahadevan says it was created to emphasize the miserable conditions of workers in the coir industry, who are paid much less than the minimum wage fixed by the Indian Government.

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That’s an old saying, or at least it should be, because it often happens you find yourself with a nice, big chicken and no way to cook it.

I don’t know if the guy who came up with this didn’t have a grill at hand or if he simply doesn’t like barbecue. But then again, who doesn’t like barbecue? Anyway, it turns out all you need to cook a delicious chicken, is  an empty can of cooking oil, some wood and a match. So there you have it, next time you find yourself outdoors, in the mood for roasted chicken, you can improvise your own oven.

These pics should so be on Instructables!

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23-year-old Mui-Ling Teh enjoys folding miniature origami creations and talking up close photos of them to tell a story. More information about her work is available at her online gallery where she sells cards, calendars and more items of her work. She also sells additional items at her Zazzle Store.

In February 2010, she was featured in a number of UK publications. However much of the published information and images were not as Mui-Ling had supplied. You can read the true story in her words ‘here’

Photos copyright of Mui-Ling Teh

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt (1736-1783) was German-Austrian painter and sculptor most known for his series of canonical grimaces sculptures.

Messerschmidt’s character heads were inspired by the mysterious condition that forced the artist to leave the Vienna Academy of Arts. The undiagnosed digestive illness that caused Messerschmidt so much pain is today believed to have been Crohn’s disease. At one point, he came up with a series of pinches he would apply to his right lower rib. in order to take his mind off the pain.

Looking in the mirror while he was applying his pinches, and seeing his facial expressions, Messerschmidt decided to immortalize his pain in a series of sculptures. Thus, in 1781 Franz Xaver Messerschmidt started working on his famous character heads, using himself as a model.

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This is probably what happens when a nation is completely uneducated about world history. That’s the only way I can explain young Thais organizing Nazi parties and sticking swastikas on their scooters.

I found some photos of this Nazi scooter, taken in Thailand, and started looking a little deeper into this bizarre issue. That’s when I came across more pics of Thai youth wearing Nazi symbols and marching like the armies of the Third Reich.

Really, how weird is that? A people that Hitler would have most definitely wiped out if given the chance, now idolizes him and organizes Nazi parades and proudly sticks Nazi symbols on scooters. The only excuse I can think of is they don’t know what the Nazi doctrine was really about, if that can really be called an excuse.

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Using LowLow mature cheese, British food artist Prudence Staite has created a series of cheesy celebrity portraits and sculptures.

Ms. Staite has been working with food for some time now. She is actually behind the pizza celebrity pizza portraits we featured her a while back. This time, the medium of her artistic talent was LowLow cheese. After working with chocolate, jelly beans and chocolate, the food-artist found low fat cheese is ideal for sculpting.

The cheese art of Prudence Staite hint at how cheesy some aspects of celebrity culture really are. “Dita von Cheese”, “Chedda Cole” and “Low-bama” have been chosen as most representative for these modern times.

The cheesy art of Prudence Staite are on display at Kings Road Gallery in Chelsea, London.

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To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its most popular bookcase, the BILLY, IKEA placed 30 bookshelves on Bondi Beach, in Sydney.

This festive event took place on February 2nd, and attracted a large number of bookworms, eager to check-out the books the shelves contained. Visitors had the chance to trade one of their old books for an old one from the Bondi Beach bookcase, or make a small donation for the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation.

The 30 BILLY bookshelves were only held in place for their birthday.

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No, it’s not the Cold War all over again, it’s just the Russian way of celebrating Slava Polunin’s Snow Show.

Every year, after a heavy snowfall, Moscow becomes the home of around 100 snowmen, part of an advertising installation. This time, the army of snowmen showed up in central Moscow, but every year is pops-up in a different part of the city, in order to keep everyone guessing.

The snowmen are part of an advertising campaign to promote an annual performance by famous Russian clowns. As you can imagine, locals love snowmen and lose no opportunity to have their pictures with them.

Photos by GETTYIMAGES via Daylife

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Michael Paul Smith is an expert model builder who uses his talent to recreate different instances of the town he grew up in. Once again, I’d like to point out from the beginning that these photos are not “photoshopped”.

I know, they look so real, but I assure you they are only miniature models made of “of Gator board, styrene plastic, Sintra [ a light flexible plastic that can be carved, and painted ] plus numerous found objects; such as jewelery pieces, finishing washers and printed material”. They are just 1/24th scale, but by lining them up with the right environment, Michael Paul Smith managed to achieve a “legit” Photoshop effect.

Take a look and be amazed.

Flickr via Digg

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A scroll featuring drawings of 2010 tigers was presented during the Shanghai Expo and is a serious candidate for the Guinness record for the scroll with the largest number of tigers.

Chinese artist Xiao Yanqing, known as the best tiger drawer in all of China, has created this impressive scroll for the upcoming Chinese New Year, known as the Year of the Tiger. His impressive achievement is now being considered for inclusion in the Guinness Book of record. Standing at over 200 meters in length, Xiao Yanqing’s tiger scroll is also one of the longest scrolls in the world.

via ImagineChina

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No, it’s not a typewriting robot, it’s an artistic sculpture made by Jeremy Mayer, out of 50 different typewriter parts.

Inspired by friend Brent Clifford’s paintings of female robots in sexy poses, Mayer decided to take some vintage typewriters apart and reassemble its parts as a the sexy Nude IV aka Delilah. The name comes both from the story of Samson and Delilah and from the women who posed for the artwork, Delilah Brown.

The sexy typewriter robot took Jeremy Mayer 1,400 hours to make, during the past year and it’s now on display at various museums, including Ripley’s  Believe It or Not and Nevada Museum of Art, in Reno. Sexy Delilah can be yours for the modest price of $20,000. Come on guys, it’s art and it’s sexy!

via GizmoWatch

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Every year, the Big Sandy Shoot draws in hundreds of shooter from all over the world, for what is known as the “largest shoot”.

The Big Sandy Shoot is a bi-annual event, held in the western desert of Arizona, where you can shoot your heart out for three straight days. Featuring a 1500 foot firing line, 1200 yard maximum range, over 1000 reactive targets and aerial targets, this is one shooting exhibition you don’t want to miss, if you’re into this stuff.

Machine-guns, gatling guns, bazookas, and pretty much every other type of weapon ever invented can be found at the Big Sandy Shoot. Shooters have to fork out $230 ($200 if reserved in advance) to participate and spectators just $25. Both have to sign a release waiver stating they enter the shooting range at their own risk.

The average 3.5 million rounds fired at the Big Sandy Shoot certify it as the world’s biggest shooting event. I can’t say that impresses me much and regarding the safety, seeing women and kids handling deadly equipment isn’t very reassuring.

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Rear Gear has your pet’s butt covered, literally…

I have to admit when I first saw photos of the Rear Gear in action, I had one of those now-I’ve-seen-everything moments. But seeing it was sold out on Etsy, I started realizing its usefulness, sort of. I can see why some owners would want to cover their animals’ butt holes, and keep Mr. Brown-Eye out of sight.

Rear Gear is a simple, hand-made device that attaches to the pet’s tail and completely covers its unattractive backside with something pretty like a smiley face, a flower, a heart, cupcake and many more. It’s genius and it’s about to make a brilliant entrepreneur from Portland very rich.

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Oddly enough, setting a man on fire isn’t necessarily a bad thing, on the contrary, it’s actually considered curative.

Although I wasn’t able to learn much about this strange medical procedure, fire treatment is apparently very popular during the winter months, in Chinese traditional hospitals. People believe this will keep them safe from illnesses like the flu and common cold.

The piece of cloth is sprinkled with flammable substance, probably alcohol,then set on fire and put-out with another cloth. It isn’t painful at all, and according to a video I found on Youtube, fire treatment is also a great way to lose weight.