It sounds like the title of a horror flick, but it’s actually a short video documenting artist Molly Crabapple‘s project, for which she locked herself in a hotel room covered the walls with doodles. Molly started contemplating “what happens when an artist leaves their studio, their cliches, and their comfort zone and draws beyond the limits of their endurance” and she also wanted “to see what tarts and squidbeasts look like frollicking on a massive scale”. So she decided to spend her 28th birthday locked in an East Village room, covering the walls with art. She began by launching a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to help cover the cost of her daring project, including the photographic talents of Steve Prue. In September 2011 she did just what she promised, and spent five days locked in a room making art. Luckily, she wasn’t alone, as she brought along Keith Jenson from Brainwomb to document the experience, and also had a “cast of muses, musicians and miscreants” to keep her company. Read More »

It might look like just an old typewriter, but Washington-based artist Tyree Callahan has actually converted this antique 1937 Underwood Standard typewriter into an art instrument that makes beautiful paintings. Callahan replaced the ink pads of the typewriter with colored paint pads and the letters with color markers, to create a painting machine he calls a Chromatic Typewriter. So instead of creating paintings with brushes, he types them with his unique typewriter. While it would take a while getting used to, and although it will probably never yield the detailed results of a brush, I have no doubt this thing could produce some pretty awesome artworks. After all, artists like Keira Rathbone use conventional typewriters to create exceptional works of art using just letters and symbols. I know it sounds strange, but lets face it, artists have used stranger things to unleash their painting talent (vomit, remote-controlled cars or their lips, just to name a few). Read More »

Pat Vaillancourt is the current record holder for the most web addresses tattooed on his body, with over 10,000 URL’s inked on his back and shoulders. That sounds like a lot, but he’s not stopping until his body is covered by 100,000 website addresses. In 2010, 30-year-old Vaillancourt, from Quebec, Canada, decided he wanted to set a world record of his own, and because he wasn’t an athlete and he couldn’t do extreme stunts, he chose tattooing as the way to leave his mark on the world. “I want to break a Guinness World Record, but more importantly, I want to help others. And this is my way of doing so,” he said back then. People and businesses can pay $35 to have their URL tattooed on Pat’s body and listed on his website, Back2thelight.com, with half the proceeds being donated to help the people of Haiti and Somalia. Vaillancourt says the other half is used to pay for his tattoos and promote the project. If my calculations are correct, he hopes to ultimately raise $3.5 million, including expenses. Read More »

Artist Ian Cook has a unique painting style which involves dipping remote-controlled cars in paint and driving them across the canvas to create colorful contemporary artworks. Nicknamed “Pic-cars-so”, 28-year-old Cook has developed a special painting style known as “Auto Drawing”. He uses various remote-controlled toy cars to spread acrylic paint across the canvas, creating incredibly detailed masterpieces. “I wanted to be an artist from a young age and decided that to be successful I needed something completely unique,” Ian says about his bizarre choice of “brushes”. “I’ve always been mad about anything with wheels and I figured that using cars to paint cars would capture peoples’ imaginations, so I experimented at home by driving some remote control models through paint.” Believe it or not, the idea first came to him after he got a remote-controlled car for Christmas and was told not to get paint on it.

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People have been photocopying their body parts for a while now, and even though it’s still pretty funny, it’s not that impressive at it once was. But what about a portrait of a photocopied face recreated with over 3 million dots, is that impressive enough for ya? Artist Miguel Endara started out with a portrait  of his father’s photocopied face, and somewhere along the way he decided to recreate it with millions of dots made with a variety of Micron pens. he took a piece of paper, drew an outline of his dad’s face with a pencil and started adding dots. As you can imagine, this kind of painstaking work takes a lot of patience, and luckily Miguel managed to keep it together for all the 210 hours it took him to finish his masterpiece. He even made a cool video documenting his amazing effort and posted a high resolution image of the portrait on his website, so you can actually see all of the 3.2 millions of dots he had to use. Read More »

90’s Boy-Band, Hanson, to Launch Their Own Beer, Called “MMMHop” (Contact Music) Pee-Powered Video Games Hit London Pub (The Sun) Man Has 120 Kg Alligator Pet, Says He’s a Gentle Giant (Daily Mail) Exploring the Decaying Chambers of an Abandoned Slaughterhouse (Environmental Graffiti) Ugandan Space Chief Builds Test Craft in Mother’s Muddy Backyard (MSN Photoblog) China Sets Record for World’s Longest Christmas Cake (NDTV) Woman Reveals Cement Cheek Implants Done by Fake Doctor (Huffington Post) 600,000 LEGO Bricks Christmas Tree Built in London (Brothers Brick) 12 Incredible Visions of Earth (Environmental Graffiti) Mom Says World of Warcraft Turned Son into Raging Hunchback (Geekologie)

Although it’s December and the skiing season is officially open, there is no sign of snow in the Tyrol region of Austria. But that’s no reason not to ski, at least not for those brave enough to practice the winter sport on a rock-covered slope. 45 kilometers west of Innsbruck, near the picturesque village of Haiming, skiers have found the perfect place to test out their skiing equipment, even though there’s not one white patch of snow in sight. The brave daredevils climb a rock-covered slope on foot and descend on their skis, leaving a cloud of dust behind them. The rocks aren’t as smooth as snow, and they obviously do a lot of damage to their equipment, but the avid skiers don’t seem to mind, as long as they get to practice their favorite sport. Falling of your skies during a descent on the rocky slope of Haiming isn’t what you’d call a pleasurable experience, that’s why only experienced skiers are advised to try their luck here.

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Argentinian art collective Mondongo creates incredibly detailed portraits by using dripped and molded Plasticine. I can’t imagine how much time they spend getting the skin tones just right. We’ve posted our share of impressive portraits here on OC, made from the most unusual materials (from pancakes and chewing gum to written words), but few more detailed than the masterpieces created by Mondongo. The art collective, which consists of  Juliana Laffitte, Manuel Mendanha and Agustina Picasso, was founded in 1999 and has worked with  a huge variety of materials, from food to plasticine, depending on what best reinforces the concept of the work. Mondongo, which is the name of a traditional Argentinian tripe stew, was chosen precisely becomes the art collective creates its work from a cauldron of ingredients. Read More »

Saimir Stari, one of the world’s most famous mosaic artists, is working on yet another mind-blowing masterpiece, this time using approximately one million coffee beans. The Albanian artist known for creating large-scale art pieces made with the most unusual art mediums (from cork screws and toothpicks to paintbrushes) has recently started work on another massive mosaic, this time mad of coffee beans. Entitled “One World, One Family, One Coffee”, the original mosaic features five characters, each representing a different continent. As you might have guessed, the objective of Strati’s work is to inspire of sense of unit across the world. The patient artist is painstakingly working on his one million coffee beans mosaic in Tirana, Albania, and plans on completing the project on December 12. When finished, his unique artwork will measure 25 square meters and weigh 140 kilograms. As with his other impressive mosaic, Saimir Strati will most likely set a new Guinness record with his coffee bean project.

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They can turn your body into a living masterpiece, but tattoo artists also have the power to make your life hell, every time you look in the mirror. Case in point, Rosie Brovent, who got more than she bargained for when she let her boyfriend tattoo her back. Just to be clear from the start, this really isn’t verified news, since it first appeared on a rather obscure blog, with no link to any established media outlet. Still, I thought it was simply too cool not to feature on OC. Tattoo artist, Ryan L. Fitzjerald and his now ex-girlfriend Rosie Brovent, both residents of a trailer park in Dayton, Ohio, are the main protagonists one of the weirdest/funniest stories I’ve read in a while. Brovent is accusing her ex of tattooing a huge steaming pile of crap with flies buzzing around it, instead of a scene from Narnia. Read More »

Crashed Ferrari Coffee Table (Laughing Squid) Nigeria’s Breakdancing Traffic Warden (YouTube) 10 Incredible Tales of Interspecies Nursing (Environmental Graffiti) Farmer Couple Marry in Cow-Themed Wedding (Metro) 105-Pound Petite Woman Wins Turkey Eating Contest (Third Age) Super-Cold Ice Finger Kills Everything in Its Path (BBC) Cutely Named Classic Chinese Torture Methods (Asia Obscura) Chinese Couple Caught Getting It On in a Coffin (Weird Asia News) Reebok Sets New Record for World’s Larges 3D Street Art (Asylum) 15 Incredible Examples of Early Spirit Photography (Environmental Graffiti)

I don’t know what it is about people and chocolate rooms, but they seem to keep making them and we keep writing about them. This time a shopping mall in Kaliningrad, Russia celebrated its fifth anniversary by commissioning an artist to create a room entirely of chocolate. The idea of building a chocolate room inside Kaliningrad Plaza belonged to Lithuanian ad agency Ad Hunters, who commissioned experienced sculptor Elena Climent to carve it out of 420 kilograms of dark, milk and white chocolate. Measuring around 20 square meters, the delicious-looking room features furniture like a chocolate sofa, table and carpet, as well as chocolate cutlery, candle holders, and flowers. 40% of the room is made of dark chocolate, another 40% is milk chocolate, and the rest is white chocolate. Read More »

Progress in the world of gaming and technology has brought us nothing other than amazement over the years. The latest awesome feat of gaming is beyond awesome as the Tobii EyeAsteroids pushes you to take a different look at gaming, literally. Based on one of the best games in history, Asteroids, the new arcade game features a special controller – your eyes. Using some special sensors and software, the game tracks the motion of your eyes and then interprets it as input commands for the game. The Tobii EyeAsteroids is a game that simply implies you looking at it. There’s no button mashing or jumping up and down to control the game. It seems to be the perfect gaming system to indulge in laziness while safely avoiding carpal tunnel problems. It’s also a definite eye catcher system that can be both weird and addictive at the same time. Read More »

Circus shows have been getting censored, simplified and overall less exciting just about everywhere. Not in India though, that’s the place where the infamous phrase “death defying stunt” lives on through Mauth Ka Kuan, or the Well of Death. Though originally performed all over the world, riding a bike on a vertical wall can now only be seen live in the “Land of contrasts” and it makes visiting the place even more tempting. The stunt is old so you’d imagine India’s bike riders have honed and perfected it to the highest level. Actually, the Well of Death – as the arena is referred to – isn’t just a marketing ploy.Riding on incredibly old bikes that haven’t seen maintenance since they left the factory, the Indian bikers ride with absolutely no safety gear at break neck speeds. The walls on which they ride are vertical and built from salvaged wood.

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For those of you who love Christmas but can’t stand falling needles and cheap plastic, Japanese jeweler Ginza Tanaka has created the ultimate Christmas tree –  made of pure gold and worth a whopping $2 million. After making a 24-karat gold horse for Japan’s newborn prince, and creating another tree worth $850,000, Ginza Tanaka decided to step it up even more and came up with a solid gold Christmas tree for this holiday season. Measuring 2.4 meters high and weighing around 12 kilograms, the luxurious tree is decorated with golden plates and around 60 heart-shaped ornaments, and covered with ribbon. It’s the most expensive thing Ginza Tanaka has ever made, but while I do appreciate the craftsmanship and the effort that went into it, I’m not sure gold is right for such an important symbol. After all, what kind of presents are you supposed to put under such a tree, anyway? Read More »