Hasta La Gadget!

10 years ago, pop artist Brandon Bird found an X-Men coloring & activity book filled with awful sketches at a dollar store. Brandon eventually decided to turn it into a collaborative work with his fellow artist friends. But instead of simply coloring its pages, they each picked a sketch in the book and made original art based on it.

Brandon presented the artworks under the appropriate name X-Mans earlier this month at the Nucleus gallery in L.A. Here are some of the pieces:

As you can see, most of the pieces are lighthearted – Nate Carle’s Fourclops looks like it actually came from the sketchbook – but a couple of them made the best out of the source material, such as Amy Dixon’s Grey’s Anatomy and Erin Pearce’s Magneto Hates Birthdays.  Have your browser wear Cerebro and head to Brandon’s website to see all of X-Mans. Brandon is also selling prints of some of the pieces on his online shop.

[via Archie McPhee]

Robots may be taking our jobs throughout agriculture and industry, but the the duty of defacing architecture is likely to remain in the hands of humans for the immediate future if this semi-autonomous spray-paint drone is any evidence.

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We’ve all seen the famous Dogs Playing Poker paintings. The Doctors Playing Poker version is soooo much better. It is the work of artist SugarHappyJax, who should really write for the show. I would have totally watched this episode.

It shows the 4th, 9th, 10th and 11th Doctors all playing a game of poker with a Cyberman, a Dalek and the Master (Anthony Ainley version). It has a lot of nice details, like Van Gogh’s exploding TARDIS painting, playing cards with K-9 on the back, the fez, even the crack in time.

This painting is well worth the $500(USD) asking price.

Dramatic sunsets are undeniably gorgeous, but they portend something ominous: millions of fine particles polluting the air. Researchers are now studying sunsets painted over the past 500 years to find clues to how our air got dirtier after the Industrial Revolution.

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When it comes to speakers and TVs one of the fashionable things to do is hide them so that when they aren’t in use, you can’t tell speakers or a TV are in the room. We have seen TVs hidden by art on the wall in the past. Now, a company called Soundwall is now offering a speaker that is a work of art.

The speaker is called Soundwall and it hides a high fidelity speaker and amplifier in plain sight. Interestingly, there are no speakers hiding behind the canvas. The surface itself IS the speaker. Specs for the speaker are 40-20,000Hz frequency +/- 1.5dB on the largest size Soundwall, and the it’s powered by either 2x25W RMS or a 2x100W RMS Class-D amp, depending on the size of the artwork. They also include a subwoofer output if you’d like to place one on the floor to improve bass response.

Each Soundwall unit has a Raspberry Pi controller inside that supports AirPlay and UPnP formats for wireless streaming. The Soundwall speakers can play individual tracks when multiple units are installed in one location or they can be set up to all play the same track.

Buyers can choose from a variety of sizes, a gallery of existing art, or even upload their own photos. You can also order one with a blank canvas if you want to create your own painting. Prices range from $949(USD) for the smallest poster size Soundwall to $2499 for the largest 40″ x 60″ unit. Some of the original paintings can increase the price of the speaker as well.