Sci-fi and sexy, the latest Nerdcore calendar has got everyone impatient for 2009 to start. Fleshbot reports:

"...those Nerdcore kids have gone and upped the ante with this gorgeous pic of Justine Joli, bare naked and in the arms of a robot."

This is definitely on my Xmas list - what better than to find a dozen femme fatales under the fur tree?

Called the Zero Energy Media Wall, this glass structure has embedded photovoltaic cells that operate off of solar energy.

"Rather than placing them uniformly, the cells are arranged in changing densities which allows for more natural light to reach the interior, as well as converting excessive solar radiation into energy thus increasing the building's performance."

Similar to the Skipped Over Sunday series of posts, "Links from last week" aims to give some love to the slightly less stale stories from the previous week.

• Sticky stuff: Velcro lamp shades and space dividers


• Robotic RFID recliner tags along for when you get tired


• Vibrating mascara sadly lacks bluedildonics technology [via]

Otherwise overlooked as trash, this street artist utilizes leftover plastic bags to create inflatable animals. By using ventilation grates, the plastic bag animals are tied down and remain deflated until air begins to flow through. The result is an incredibly creative approach to an inflatable street sculpture. Joshua Allen Harris (the artist) sent the Wooster Collective video of the installation that can be viewed here and here.

While art cars dominate the streets, art sleds are now dominating the slopes. Crafted after an X-Wing Fighter, this art sled attempts to cut through the snowy hills of Minneapolis. Each year, the city is host to an art sled rally at Powderhorn Park. Potentially equipped with four laser canons, the X-Wing Fighter art sled would be sure to render the wooly mammoth and whale competition defenseless.

Drink Away The Art is an installation by Hannes Broecker that explores taste buds. Each individual piece is filled with a colored liquid and attached with a faucet. The gallery welcomes people to pour a glass for the tasting, subsequently affecting the art.

Dubbed Street Wars, this new form of street graffiti uses glow sticks and creative mods on street signage. Known for "playful reappropriation of urban elements in public settings", SpY was the force behind the project. The creator's site is currently down (as of 4am PT), but will hopefully be back up to provide more details.

Analog graffiti may be on its way out, as a new street artist does digital to make their message. Known as "The Decapitator", the artist takes advertisements and obviously enough, decapitates the main characters that appear in them. With no words and subtle changes, this graffiti style is more along the lines of last year's Broken Link as opposed to the infamous and much-hated "The Splasher". Thankfully, "The Decapitator" keeps to his digital stance by maintaining a Flickr account.

Vertically engineered, an interactive project called "Electric MoOns" produces a massive 10x10 3D physical display. The display uses 100 white balloons in a dark room to create the illusion. From Make:, "When music is played, the balloons synchronize their movements and their interiors are illuminated by dimmable super-bright LEDs". A screen-based UI allows for a user to tweak the movement and lighting of each balloon.

Conceptual in form and function, a hard drive proposed by Degroenebanaan would visualize your data storage in an artsy way. Called the IVY, the gizmo focuses on manipulability and customization. Depending on the amount of data stored, the OLED screen can change from being completely blank to saturated with a Mondrian-like design

Corporate Adam & Eve by Adelle Lutz leaves little to the imagination. In fact, this latest fashion may be a good reminder as to why some things are better left under wraps.

"B-SIDE", reverse street sign graffiti by Andrea Acosta.

Deliciously deadly, David Lynch has partnered up with designer Christian Louboutin to create a frightening set of five fetish-worthy footwear. The "Fetish" line is to be on display until tomorrow in Paris at Galerie du Passage.

"Louboutin says of the collaboration, "The models wore these unwearable shoes with natural grace. Their very white skin, very dark eyes and bright mouths melded with Lynch's aesthetics…As is his habit, David Lynch made it into a décor populated with shadows.""

Lucky for Prada, Lynch won't take his passion for haute couture heels beyond this limited edition.

Elsewhere: Tracking fetishes on Twitter

Documenting dynamically, Graffiti Archaeology is a site that traces street art over time.

"The core of the project is a timelapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. Most of the photos were taken in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles over a timespan from the late 1990's to the present."

The site is currently welcoming submissions and has also set up a Flickr group for more 'fiti viewing fun. [via]

Previously: The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

Everyone loves doing data. Now in life-size, you can truly carry out your lust for line graphs. EMF Displacement (pictured left) is a 10'x12' sculpture of the electromagnetic field generated by a FPL substation. Other projects that construct everything from flight paths to GPS drawings can be seen here. Sadly, there's no glory holes in these graphs.

[via]

The latest geek lust line art on Xkcd explores the silly but true tales of the interweb. The webcomic covers "romance, sarcasm, math, and language", the perfect four topics for guilty geek pleasure. As the illustration depicts, IRC back channels are no place for vulnerable nerd babes. Best to always have a raygun ready at bedside just in case some fanboy tracks down more than your IP. Previously, Doctorow posted other gems from the comic collection.

As if straight out of Stargate, the latest trend in fashion is transforming. This Spring/Summer 2007 collection actively alters on its own. Hussein Chalayan, the British/Turkish designer responsible for the fad, is no stranger to this kind of style. Earlier, Chalayan created the descriptively named Convertible Skirt/Table. Unfortunately, the clothing doesn't make any cool Transformers sounds as it changes. But, as an anonymous SWBU reader points out, "any dress that dynamically shortens is a good thing".

[via]

Hugh Macleod of Gapingvoid was lovely as always this past week in London and dedicated a cartoon to Shake Well Before Use! Tomorrow's agenda for Shake Well Before Use: TechCrunch40. More to come!

Clothesline Display, a project that recently popped up in Austria, uses both a delightful and yet delicate technique to create large lines of text. With 250 boxer shorts used to "type" out the text, it's not surprising that it felt a bit breezy between some legs. The wind reportedly over-pixelated the underpants more at times, but was an overall success. The brains behind the boxers showcased the sight between two buildings at Ars Electronica. Shake Well Before Use was not in attendance to Ars Electronica, however, did just buy tickets for the follow-up conference, called Arse Elektronika (if the spelling didn't tip you off, it's about sex and technology) in San Francisco.

Taking and giving information from surrounding ecosystems, an installation creates awareness among users of their immediate environment. Called HouseSwarming, the "environment-sensing device" was created for an Art Center presentation. Designed by Jenna Didier, Oliver Hess and Marcos Lutyens, their site for the display explains how it works:

"During the day, the “swarm” of green ambiguous forms, both biomorphic and geometric, accentuates the South Campus’s main entry. At twilight, the swarm comes to life, telling visitors and passersby about the current air quality around the building. Electronic sensors perceive air contaminants – such as tobacco, benzene, carbon monoxide, even perfume – and separately inform the outside and inside swarms, which sets off signals. These signals are interpreted as changes to the natural rhythm that the network has established based on the number and distribution of nodes connected to the cable net. Flashing cells on the exterior faÁade indicate air quality inside the building. Conversely, pulsating effects in the interior entry inform visitors about the outside air quality."

[via]

Pressure-sensitive and ready to play, an interactive ball responds to crowd participation. Called the Zygote, these inflated spheres contain LEDs that react to touch. Each time the ball is played with, the graphics change, creating a "shared experience". While watching a massive ball change colors across a crowd may only keep the attention span of the heavily induced, there seems to be potential in how the object stays connected:

"Each ball also can act as both an input and an output device by being networked to a central computer. This allows for more complex interaction, as the crowd can modify the graphics on a screen, make the balls light up in unison, or even affect the music."

[via]

We have a serious shortage of strippers due to randy robots. Or at least that's what one artist believes. Vance DeGeneres (related to Ellen) is an artist with a thing for naked women and robots. Painted in oil, his paintings warn of stripping down for the metal machines. DeGeneres' "It's Because I'm a Robot, Isn't It..." piece is reminiscent of the popular Threadless "She Doesn't Even Realize" tee. From robot robbery to poker, who knew robots could be so crafty?

"The Dining Room", by Richard Jackson.

[via]

Playing in pixels on the streets of Italy, Nintendo launched a new marketing effort for the Wii. Equipped with office supplies and a bit of spunk, classic characters were cut and pasted in post-it note form. Link, Mario, and Donkey Kong made the list, though somehow Duck Hunt got the chump. Kotaku elaborates:

"These aren't regular Post-It Notes, mind you, as they're adorned with custom "Wii'll Not Forget" advertising on the back, which not only delivers the Wii elevator pitch, but also probably inspires current Wii owners to compulsively purchase Virtual Console titles."

Previously: Pixelated walflowers and interactive post-it notes.

A project originating from Burningman 2006 caught the eyes of Phil Torrone recently. Playaflies is a kinetic study in glowing orbs. By using LEDs embedded within wired up ping pong balls, the experiment captures some beautiful somewhat abstract motions. At night, the ping-orbs were placed on bicycles to outline a mimicking motion of the riders. The official site for Playaflies outlines a DIY version, in case you want to recreate some of the Burningman magic back at home.

Your new iPhone so cute you want to just squeeze it to death? Save your strength with a hand-knitted version of your beloved buy. With #6 needles and a little nourishment, an iPhone fanboy's mother created an actual size yarn replica of the insatiably shiny device. The hand-knitted iPhone may not keep your thighs as warm as a Macbook, but you'll at least be able to cuddle up to it on those lonely "no messages" nights.

[via]

Experimentally interactive, Blubber Bots are sci-fi-esque helium-filled robots that seek out interaction from light, humans, other Blubber Bots, and cell phone signals. Humming through open air, the bots operate in a networked habitat. The balloon-like creatures also feature an interactive voice recognition system as a way of increasing human/bot connectivity. The video is a little on the long side, but definitely has intriguing interactions.

[via]

Falling asleep while fragging no longer has to be uncomfortable. To avoid the NES face impressions in the morning, Blythe Church has sewn together a series of stuffed Nintendo consoles, controllers, cartridges and even an NES Zapper. Minus the "wires", these may make for great "baby's first" stuffed toy. In lieu of missing teddy bear eyes everywhere, the emerging generation would have M-I-A controller buttons and stained Super Mario cartridges.

Maybe not as decadent as a devil food Decepticon, an Autobot angel cake is equally as impressive. Not made in the stereotypical dark basement, the bot baking was made by a married couple. Andrew and Jessica spent $85 and 22 hours creating the Optimus Prime cake. Andrew gives you a 3d video of the palatable 'Prime complete with midi-esque music, while Jessica offers out the 22 hour Optimus instructions. It would be even more impressive if the cake transformed, or perhaps if someone created an Optimus Prime pie (if only so we could use the utterly cringe-worthy play on "more than meets the pie" -- sorry, couldn't resist!).

Seduced by not-so-subtle suggestions, an artist typesets signs into sculptures. David Kramer saturates himself with the overindulgence of pop culture, despite an underlying skepticism. It's this constant negotiation that generates a need to create. In his own words:

"I love the excessiveness of cultural iconography and yet I totally mistrust it. I am easily seduced by the sexiness of the simplest marketing strategy and hate myself for being so easy."

[via]

Trend Hunter recently rounded up their Top 20 Graffiti Innovations. Paired down to the top five "techie" tag trends here, it's apparent that geek goodness has penetrated the paint.

1. Geek Graffiti - vintage video games in pixelated paint
2. LED Throwies - ferromagnetic surfaces + rare-earth magnets
3. Dot Matrix Graffiti Bike - interweb connected and sidewalk suitable
4. Pixel Roller - paint-by-pixels
5. Automated Graffiti Robot - "a tele-operated field programable robot which employs a custom built array of spray cans to write linear text messages on the ground at a rate of 15 kilometers per hour."

Parallel to a horror version of "while you were out", playing a pink prank is sure to get your friend pissed in the most polite way. Equipped with 2135 SEK ($310 USD) of pink wrapping paper and six hours to kill, five friends set out to create a cuteness overload. The end result was an artsy apartment installation. Unwrapping poorly taped presents never seemed less surprising.

[via]

Frustrated by Google Maps lag and insufficient auto-replies to email requests, a man created the Google Carpet in hopes that satellites would be more responsive than the auto-reply robots. The carpet served as a temporary marker for the 150th anniversary exhibition for the Royal College of Art.

Taking pixels more personally, designers Mike and Maaike have pinched Google for famous jewelry images. Pixelating the images to their peak, they're then transferred to leather. Google Image Search may be rewarding for inspiration, but any subsequent lines of 72 ppi only need to go so far as Bejeweled or Supermario.

Not getting any action? You can always play pretend. A flirty and fashionable new set of pillows and couches can help give the illusion of and left out lingerie and messy spills. Created by the Sid Lee Collection, the set is titled Sit! by Sid. Heavy on both graphics and typographics, it's sure to give your home some much needed excitement, as everyone knows you certainly aren't getting any.

[via]

Motorized pink bunny slippers and an all-electric cupcake. Adorably delicious.

"Dandelight is a battery-powered LED delicately adorned with a phosphorus-bronze stem and dandelion seeds. It looks exactly like an illuminated fuzzy dandelion that stays alive thanks to "batteryfood.""

[via]

Virtual breathes vitality back into art. Based out of Italy, OrganisMuseum is a three dimensional art gallery online that allows users to "walk" through a gallery and focus on pieces of artwork. Like any other museum, it features exhibitions of work spanning periods of time. Supposedly the first of its kind, don't be surprised if virtual art galleries become more popular over time as artists attempt to build up their global microbrands. At the very least, no avatar is required for access.

Drawn out and documented, Opera has created the Ev-Wii-where Challenge that tasks Nintendo fans to take found-art-esque photos of the word Wii. With the obligatory cheesy contest name, it's no surprise that the challenge asks for the photos to be from public places, making sure to call you out as the advertising whore you are to passersby. The Ev-Wii-where Challenge is to celebrate the final Wii Opera browser, due to come out sometime in April.

"Everywhere you turn, there's a commercial or store display. Every magazine cover is plastered with Wii news. Every store is trying to get you to trade in for Wii games. Every website's got a Wii news story almost daily. Wii is more than a success, it is a cultural phenomenon. Wii is everywhere. Well... almost. Let's have a little fun with the general public!"

Is the contest Wiilly cute, or has the Wii worn out its consumer-generated welcome by now?

Proposing to join the real world with the "www" to create a psycho-geographic experience, Ideas On Air wants to rename streets with Net-Art web addresses. Equipped with paper and glue, the high-tech experiment would paste street plates with web addresses.

"It’d be better to cover the streets (maybe, comfortably by the taxi) with a pc equipped of wireless device to watch the websites. Anyway, you’d also walk on the streets watching at the Net-Art web address and subsequently to see the relative websites."

Kids love their mashups [ Nike: The Second Coming - via]

Experimenting with analog [ Roy Block - via ]

Tell kids to stick their heads in it [ Plastic Bag Chandelier - via ]

Sure you can take it, but can you dish it out? [ Dishmaker - via ]

[Sidenote: A guest blogger may be on the way for the remainder of this week, so stay tuned]

Apparently feeling a Freudian void of hoarding her own morning wood, Julia Harrison decided to carve a niche out for herself:

"I look for the stories being quietly told by human bodies: a child's pout, a furrowed brow, a flash of cleavage, a clenched fist, a fading bruise. Our bodies express and illustrate our desires, needs, and concerns. We are our own ornament; my work draws attention to this relationship. I find wood to be convincingly fleshy and a pleasure to wear."

The connection between hard surfaces and "fleshy pleasures" may be an easy one to understand, but Harrison's artwork definitely remains a bit off kilter. With sculpted buns and expressive lips, artists perhaps do sometimes have too much time on their hands. Though erotically appealing, definitely wear some splinter protection before taking them out for a test drive.

[via]

Seemingly a literal translation of the ghost in the shell, the latest look at LA Fashion week is haunting haute couture. Joseph Domingo's latest collection for Fall 2007 took artistic license with the concept of expression-less models.

"He taped the models eyes shut with nude masks so that they looked like they didn't have any eyes. It's still unclear to me if the models's eyes were actually closed, but I think everyone was just waiting for one of them to veer off the runway right into the audience."

While claiming a fashion is for the visually-impaired is typically taken as an insult, Domingo welcomes it. Whether insightful or an eyesore, the spectacle certainly grabbed more than just the audience's eyes.

Editing erections and filtering flesh, the Scrambled series blurs the lines between focal points and fetishes. Shifting seduction, an experimental series examines orgasmic obstruction. Digitally destructing pornographic pixels, the series aims to exploit artifacts and errors. Perhaps to be more accurately titled Fuck That Noise, the visual "feedback" fixates the viewer, similar to a insatiably solved Rubik's Cube.

"For the Scrambled series, using video footage downloaded from Internet, we exploit the artifacts, errors, blurs inherent to heavy digital compression and incomplete files. Dozens of snapshots are generated. Here, the creative process in itself rely on selecting the right images: identifiable as pornographic, but somehow deactivated."

[via]

Popping carries a certain anticipation with it. Whether it be bubble wrap or your first girlfriend, the anticipation is often times more pleasurable than the release. Claiming to be equally as addictive as bubble wrap, a San Francisco boutique has crafted chocolate bubble wrap. While it may not pose as a swallowing hazard to children, of-age oral sensations should always be under close supervision. The DeLessio market and bakery opens wide with a variety of chocolate mixtures for the tasting. Unfortunately, it looks as if they don't ship their products nationally. What would be more delicious than a chocolate bubble-wrapped package at your door?

An old favorite of mine: The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

Neatorama does its duty in pointing to something truly 'neat'. An interactive gaming table combines arcadia with a tangible tablet. Like a Wii for Pong (or perhaps Ping Pong for Wii), the Pong Table uses embedded LED lights along with touchpads to create the experience. When turned off, the 2500 LEDs are unnoticeable, leaving the table ready for dinner. In addition to the Pong Table, Moritz Waldemeyer created the Roulette Table for gamers who gamble, as well as the Corian Mirror which reflects a pixelated image of the onlooker in real time with 1000 LEDs.

Students create Super Mario snowman [BoingBoing]

Frag fabric: crochet Pitfall! and Atari [Craftzine]

Leftover game over [BoingBoing]

iPhone: gaming on the go. On second thought, we'd prefer you stay in your basement [Gadget Lab]

You can run, but you can't hide behind your avatar [Engadget]

Continuing the interweb snickering for those in-the-know, Sean Hubbard adds to the existing 'web' of common experiences. As seen last month in various image-stricken pockets of New York, the broken-image icon is now making a debut on stamps, or at least that's the hope. Inspired by the urbanscaping, Hubbard went DIY, creating stickers for the icon and eventually moving them to his mail. It's a shame that this comes after Valentine's Day, as I'm sure this could've generated a few VDay 2.0 e-cards between fellow interwebers.

[via]

While many articles are reporting calorie chaos for Wii-fans, one user hopes to rain on everyone's parade. Offering calorie consumption, the chocolate Wii controller helps re-gain those precious calories you may have lost. Following suit with so many other geek-sweets, the white (wiite?) chocolate remotes were made from the original packing. After a few tiring sessions of Warioware, what better to quench your thirst than a man-handled sweaty chunk of chocolate? Though, your roommate may want to know how a lump of chocolate broke their tv.

Sneaux shoes, known for the few tv spots featuring Jackass's Steve-O, has created a new spot for their reel. Cutting through all the film-of-me-skateboarding crap that has existed for decades, the stop-motion spectacle is called "Human Skateboard" for obvious reasons. The video was directed by PES, a self-proclaimed "twisted film" site. This might not be what Microsoft was intending when they launched their "people ready" campaign last year, but it certainly makes for a better ad than they've yet to make.

Amsterdam (the same area as reported earlier this week as allowing naked exercising) is paying tribute to prostitutes everywhere in the only way they know how: a massive erection. Reportedly, the home of the Red Light District is erecting a statue for the town whore, sans proverbial sidenotes. Mariska Majoor, well known (though, not best known) for starting a center for prostitution ten years ago had requested the statue.

"The statue represents a self-assured woman, her hands on her hips, looking sideways towards the sky, and standing on a doorstep, ANP said. The precise place where the statue will be laid ... have not yet been announced".

It's always quaint when the AF press gets to use the puns they've been waiting on for years.

While the importance of being well educated in history is typically so we can learn from our mistakes, one museum is encouraging its visitors to repeat the past. The German Neanderthal Museum in Mettman recently opened its doors to pay tribute to 100,000 Years of Sex. The display includes ancient phalluses, the world's oldest condom (pictured), "raunchy" engravings, and stripped down Neanderthals. The exhibition also aims to discuss the different positions moral issues held over time, such as marriage, homosexuality, and pedophilia. Realizing the purely educational purposes of the exhibit, the museum is also accepting contributions, in the form of one-night-stands reproduction:

"Just to make sure humanity continues to propagate itself for the next 100,000 years, the museum offers "singles tours" around the exhibition as part of its program -- complete with complementary glass of red wine to help lower those inhibitions and let the erotica on offer take its course."

[via]

In case you missed it on Make:, Agenda Inc., Engadget, Boing Boing, Pop Candy, Consumerist, or AdPulp, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (a highly recommended acquired taste of a cartoon) started a viral/guerilla campaign that truly climaxed yesterday. With 10 different locations over the past few weeks, the LED art of one of the characters flipping the bird required a bit of wiring around bridges and other structures. Bostonians, apparently having no sense of humor nor pop culture context, took it as a bomb threat however, and closed down major lines of traffic while they attempted to "detonate" the cartoon.

AdPulp claims that the agency behind the guerilla project, Interference Inc., are idiots - also pointing that their website has been pulled offline. Maybe so in their case, especially given the yellow-bellied-website-hiding, but overall I disagree. This has to be up there in one of the most successful viral campaigns around - perhaps on accident. Just think, if there was no bomb scare, would this be viral? If someone on the news didn't mention the Make: blog as a potential lead, would it have as much spread? During my time at VML, I've been involved in numerous pitches that specifically required a "budget for bail" due to what we were proposing. Even without budget, we've been given the go ahead for taking time off work in case of getting arrested. Hopefully Interference Inc. will grow some balls and realize that no matter how much negative publicity they get, they achieved viral success, which is a lot more than most others can claim.

Update:
AdRants commenters are going Chicken Little on this.

Update 2: You can now bid on a piece of advertising history

Update 3: The chumps (yes, to the disappointment of many, they're total chumps) hold a press conference - video on YouTube here

Korea is home to one of the most filthiest parks in the world. This is definitely not somplace to bring the little ones to play. You may not be washing up dirty jeans afterwards, but you might need to put your mind on spin cycle after visiting. The Love Land Sex Park features sexual sculptures from around the country created by starving-for-sex artists. Reportedly, the park serves as an attraction for honeymooners, though you have to ask if Korea is premarital-friendly, given the sights.

In rare nooks and cranies inbetween the advertising clusterfuck that is urbanism, there exist tranquil moments of image decay. Distraught and broken hearted over the interruption of their otherwise culture polluted street sides, two ephemeral artists have done a bit of cut'n'paste action from online to offline. Broken Link takes the familiar broken image icon to a physical setting. Smirks of passersby alert to those who partake in this inside joke known as the interweb.