The World’s Longest GIF Will End in the Year 3017

GIFs are usually only a few seconds long, but Finnish artist Juha van Ingen has created one that will run for the next 1,000 years. Or so he hopes, anyway.

Named “As Long As Possible” or “ASLAP”, the world’s longest GIF is a “very optimistic” artwork because it relies on future generations to take responsibility and keep it running until it reaches its end, in the year 3017. Hopefully, someone will still be around then to see the last of the 48,140,288 frames that make up this record-breaking GIF.

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Talented Makeup Artist Takes Facial Optical Illusions to a Whole New Level

31-year-old Mimi Choi, a makeup artist from Vancouver, spends hours turning her face into mind-boggling optical illusions that look photoshopped at first glance.

A former schoolteacher, Choi got into makeup only three years ago, attending classes at Blanche Macdonald, a local beauty school, to learn the basics of the craft. She’s come a long way since then, though, and today she uses her makeup skills to turn her own face into incredible optical illusions.

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Danish Museum Encourages Visitors to Scrath a Beautiful Lamborghini Gallardo to Send Powerful Message

If you’re the kind of person who shrugs at the mere thought of finding the tiniest scratch on their car, these photos are going to hurt, a lot. So if you’re the sensitive type, proceed at your own risk!

Last September, Danish museum ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum invited visitors to scratch a black Lamborghini Gallardo that had been placed on display, as part of the “No Man Is an Island” exhibition. For three weeks, everyone was allowed to leave a destructive mark on the expensive Italian sports car, and even though people were skeptical about the whole thing in the beginning, once they were convinced that there would be no consequences to their vandalism, they really did a number on the poor thing.

ARoS planned to leave the car at the mercy of total strangers for longer than three weeks, but the damage became so extensive during that time that they realized it would eventually go from black to completely white if they allowed the vandalism to go on any longer. They wanted to preserve the messages that had been scratched into the paint job up to that point, so they posted a guard in front of the exhibit and announced that the artwork was now complete and interaction with the car was no longer allowed.

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Indonesian Bakery Creates the World’s Most Elaborate Wedding Cakes

LeNovelle Cake, a family-run bakery in Jakarta, Indonesia, specializes in epic wedding cakes. From fairy-tale castles to glazed cathedrals and pagodas up to 7 meters tall and complete with detailed turrets, pillars and balconies, these guys can turn the most outlandish architectural design into a magnificent cake.

The world-famous bakery was founded in 1993 as a neighborhood cake business selling birthday cakes to friends and family, but it slowly grew and in 2004 it started selling wedding cakes under the LeNovelle Cake brand. Their designs have been getting more complex every year, and today they can have up to 24 people working 12 hours a day for over a month to complete just one of their sugar-coated masterpieces.

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The Knife Angel – A Sculpture Made of 100,000 Knives Confiscated by the Police

In an effort to raise awareness of the growing rate of knife crime throughout the UK, artist Alfie Bradley has spent the last couple of years creating the Knife Angel, a 24-foot-tall sculpture made out of 100,000 knives confiscated by, or surrendered to police stations.

The Iron Throne imagined by George R.R. Martin and showcased on the HBO hit TV show Game of Thrones is supposed to be made out of 1,000 swords surrendered by a king’s enemies. It’s an impressive sight, but it doesn’t even come close to the Knife Angel created at the British Ironworks Centre, in Shropshire, England. For the past two years, artist Alfie Bradley has been literally piecing together the awe-inspiring sculpture out of 100,000 knives confiscated by 41 police stations across the United Kingdom.

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Artist Who Experiences Sounds as Colors Paints Popular Songs

Ever wonder what John Lennon’s “Imagine” looks like? Not the music video, but the song itself. Well, thanks to artist Melissa McCracken, you don’t have to imagine it anymore.

Melissa “suffers” from a condition known as synesthesia, which allows her to experience various things – from sounds to letters and even math formulas – as colors, so whenever she hears music, her mind’s eye sees a symphony of colors and textures. In a desire to capture the way she perceives music and share it with the rest of the world, the Missouri-based artist immortalizes popular songs as vibrant paintings.

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Artist Uses Her Shower Hair to Create Drawing-Like Artworks

Most people let the strands of hair that fall off when their shower just go down the drain, or they throw it in the trash, but Lucy Gafford, a multimedia artist from Alabama, uses it to create detailed works of art right on her bathroom wall.

The self-proclaimed “Shower Hair Master” discovered that her wet hair made a unique, albeit bizarre art medium, three years ago, while showering. She gathered the hair that came off of her head while washing it, and spread it on the bathroom wall, as she usually did. She planned to throw it away after she was done, but this time she noticed that the strands made up a recognizable shape, so she started playing around with the mass of hair and ended up creating a squirrel.

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This Buddha Sculpture Is Made from 20,000 Dead Beetles

Japanese artist Yoneji Inamura spent six years of his life collecting 20,000 beetles of different varieties and using them to create a five-foot sculpture of a popular Buddhist deity.

It’s unclear how and when exactly Inamura started catching and collecting beetles. Some sources claim that it was during his days working for the local railroad, in Itakura, Japan’s Gunma Prefecture, after noticing that the rhinoceros beetle’s horn resembled the fingers of the Buddhist deity, while others say that he was helping local children collect beetles and just became fascinated with them. Living in a rural area of Japan, Inamura was always surrounded by various types of beetles, including rhinoceros beetles, winged jewel beetles, drone beetles, longhorn beetles, just to name a few, and he dedicated most of his free time to catching and adding them to his collection.

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German Artist Manipulates Plant Roots to Grow in Intricate Visually-Striking Patterns

Inspired by Charles and Francis Darwin’s theory on plant intelligence, German artist Diana Scherer managed to successfully coerce the roots of various plants to grow in specific patterns. The results of her work are simply breathtaking.

In his book, The Power of Movements of Plants, Charles Darwin argued that while plants are not capable of moving from the place where they are rooted, their roots don’t just grow passively, but actively observe their surroundings, navigating in search of water and certain chemicals. He also refers to roots as plants’ brain-like organ, suggesting that they are actually a lot more intelligent than most people think.

Based on Darwin’s controversial “root-brain” hypothesis, Amsterdam-based artist Diana Scherer conducted an artistic experiment where she attempted to coerce plant roots to grow in intricate patterns, sometimes becoming interwoven into stunning living carpets.

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Artist Spends Hundreds of Hours Creating Photorealistic Pencil Drawings

Arinze Stanley is a talented young Nigerian artist whose works often leave people scratching their heads and asking themselves if they’re looking at a pencil drawing or a high-definition black and white photograph. Yes, his drawing skills are that good!

Arinze’s interest in art, and drawing in particular, was sparked at a young age, primarily by the fact that he was always surrounded by paper. His family ran a paper company, so he would often kill time by grabbing a piece of paper and trying his hand at drawing. But he only started exploring hyper-realism in 2012, and became a professional artist a year later. He has never taken any professional art classes, and claims that the level of detail he is able to produce is solely the result of years of practice. Looking at his fantastic artworks, it’s safe to say that he has come a long way in very little time.

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Woman with Vitiligo Uses Her Body as a Canvas for Amazing Artworks

Ash Soto was only 12 years old when she was diagnosed with vitiligo, a rare skin condition that causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Dealing with the changes to her appearance and the social stigma associated with vitiligo was tough for a teenage girl, but she ultimately managed to accept her condition and make the best of it. Today, Ash even incorporates the unique patterns on her skin to create beautiful body art that inspire and empower people to embrace that we are all different and that’s what makes us special.

It all started with a small spot Ash saw on her neck one day. It looked like a sun spot, so she didn’t pay much attention to it, until another one appeared a few months later. She went to see a doctor about it with her mother, and was diagnosed with vitiligo, a rare and incurable skin condition. Soto was just 12 at the time, and couldn’t yet understand how much this diagnosis would affect her life.

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Italian Artist Sculpts Bars of Soap into Intricate Artworks

26-year-old Daniele Barresi is a world champion food sculptor with many other titles under his belt, but some of his most impressive creations are actually carved out of soap bars. Just take a look at what he can do with a simple food sculpting knife.

Barresi discovered his talent for sculpting very early in his life. At age 7, he was already carving fruits and vegetables, and his skills improved as he grew and practiced. After completing his compulsory education, he was admitted at an art high-school in Reggio Calabria, but had to drop out for personal reasons. Five years later, his other passion, cooking, led him to the IPSSAR of Villa San Giovanni “Professional Cook Institute”, where he was able to use his artistic talents to graduate with a score of 88/100. It was here that he discovered his talent for sculpting various foods into detailed works of art.

Daniele went on to win several several medals in international food sculpting competitions, and establish himself as one of the most talented food artists in the world. He didn’t stop there, though. In a quest to diversify his artistic portfolio, he searched for various mediums to unleash his skills on, and that’s how he discovered the simple bar of soap.  And while his various food carvings are certainly impressive, I dare say that his soap masterpieces are even better.

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French Performance Artist Seals Himself Inside a Giant Stone for Eight Days

Abraham Poincheval is no stranger to daring performance art, but his latest project is probably the toughest one yet. The French artist will spend eight straight days sealed in a human shaped hole carved out inside a giant boulder. The purpose of this unusual performance – “to find out what the world is”.

On February 22, 2017, 45-year-old Poincheval was sealed in this carved out stone sarcophagus at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo gallery, where he will allegedly spend eight straight days, until March 1st. His temporary prison, a large boulder split in two with just enough room to fit the artist’s body in sitting position, and enough food and water to keep him in good physical condition over his eight days of isolation. His only connection to the outside world is a ventilation duct that keeps him from suffocating in the tight space.

“The purpose is to feel the aging stone inside the rock,” told media reporters. “There is my own breathing, and then the rock which lives, still humid because it was extracted not so long ago from the quarry. So there is that flow, that coming and going, between myself and the stone.”

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Artist Creates Detailed Portrait with 20,000 Sunflower Seeds

Shanghai-based artist Hong “Red” Yi is well known for her use of unconventional materials, and her latest masterpiece – a portrait of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei made with 20,000 meticulously arranged sunflower seeds – is worthy of her reputation.

Inspired by Ai WeiWei’s quote – “the seed is a household object but at the same time it is a revolutionary symbol” – Red sprinkled 20,000 sunflower seeds onto a white canvas and painstakingly arranged them all by hand to recreate Weiwei’s famous portrait with his hands stretching his eyes wide open. Remarkably, she managed to capture his features in great detail, just like she had managed to do with other unusual mediums in the past.

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Artists Manipulate the Way Grass Grows to Create Living Photos

Most people don’t pay any attention to grass and the way it grows, but British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey have always been fascinated by it and have found an ingenious way to incorporate it into their art. By manipulating the way grass grows, they are able to literally print detailed photographs onto a living wall of grass that develops according to how much light it receives.

The two artists start by covering a large canvas with water paste and rubbing germinated seeds all over it. They then cover the windows of their studio turning into a dark room, and making sure that the only light that reaches the canvas is projected through a slide of a negative photograph. They then let photosynthesis run its course, and in a few weeks time the grass-covered canvas grows into a living print of the photograph. The amount of light shining through different parts of the negative determines which parts of the canvas turn out a vibrant green, and which remain yellow and undeveloped, making the details of the image clearly visible from a distance.

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