The more I find out about Erik Demaine the more I think he’s some kind of freakishly intelligent super-being from another planet, the kind that simultaneously belittles the rest of us by just doing stuff while also lifting up the dummies because they happen to be human beings too.

Primarily, Demaine is a professor of computer science at MIT, earning his college bachelors degree at 14 — an age when all my personal mental resources went towards figuring out ways to see the neighbor girl change out of her swimsuit. Amazingly, he earned his PhD in computer science and  joined the faculty at MIT at 20 years old, indeed becoming the youngest professor to grace the school’s faculty. So he’s got that going for him.

It turns out that Demaine also a bit of a whiz with paper art. You see, his PhD dissertation was a well-regarded treatise on the rather esoteric field of computational origami. Or as I like to call it, foldy curly paper thingies. But regardless, he’s championing this field and turning it into a genuine artform. Kinda makes you want to eat one of these for dessert, doesn’t it?

Regarding mathematical origami, in 2010 a documentary came out about the process that Demaine also appeared in called Between the Folds. Looks pretty interesting, so pick up a copy and check it out.

I was enamored by his paper creations, many of which are on his website, but I did think it a little strange that a computer science supra-genius can’t design a website that doesn’t looks like it was made by a seven-year-old on a Tandy TRS-80. Makes me want to retract my super-being comment. I don’t claim to know how the genius brain works, but that just seems amateur.

Anyway, check out Demaine’s awesome mathematical origami sculptures, recently on display at Guided By Invoices in Chelsea, New York.

Bonsoir Paris and their Melted Wood Sculptures – French art team makes wood sculptures that looks like dripping hot fudge sauce. Really.

Books Sculptures as Tiny Landscapes – amazing sculptures carved out of dictionaries and other giant tomes.

It would be easy to wax sentimental about the beautiful colors and imprisoned universes inside the droplets that populate the macro photos of the dew drops on dandelions series by Sharon Johnstone. Indeed they are beautiful and indeed you do get lost. The better thing to do would to let the images speak for themselves.

If you want to learn more about her method, find out what equipment she uses and listen to her talk about her process straight from her own mouth.

Nevertheless her dew drop images are captivating. To start a slideshow, click on the first image below.

A new mural located in the alley at Hemlock and Polk St in San Francisco, here bathed in moody shadows, is the newest piece from German street art duo Herakut. In much of their work, Herakut pose a relationship between humans and their animal instincts in a solemn sort of earthtoned ballet. The artists’ MO: youth with the weight of the world seen in their damn painful eyes.

This particular mural, created while the co-ed tag team was in SF for their 941 Geary gallery opening, they managed to deliver one of their most heartbreakingly expressive figures for San Francisco, imprinting its haunting (and furry) image on our wall for however long it lasts.

Herakut tends to revel in these kinds of figures, sad, burdened with some immense weight and so expressive. I like them very much, and not just because both of the members of Herakut are damn good looking.

As a side note, when I showed up to take these photos, one of my good blogger friends Cheri Lucas also was curious enough to bring her camera down — and at the exact same time as me — giving the mural a strange quality of the inevitability of synchronicity.

Want more street art? Take a look at the 10 Times One Street Artist Field Guide.

Or else a post with a ton of the best Banksy pieces.

Paris is bespeckled with les places all over the city, basically wide spaces opening up within dense city blocks where people can gather and sit around and look totally Parisian. One of the most famous is the Place Vendôme – ritzy, filled with designer clothes boutiques and shops with expensive watches in the windows.

Last year it also housed a public installation by french artist Arnaud Lapierre called “Ring” and quickly became one of the best Paris sculptures to be found. A collaboration with AUDI and the 2011 Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain, Ring is a circular structure made up of a series of mirrored cubes placed and polished just so, reflecting the surrounding architecture in surprising ways, giving a new perspective on the timeless plaza and the beautiful flâneurs that stroll it.

The piece overall is 18′ x 13′ in diameter and, if the sun hits it right, may very well transport you to another dimension.

Source: designboom

Giant Jellyfish are Attacking Earth! - rogue sculptures make you think the end is nigh, or else that you’re the fish and someone is netting you.

Raygun Rocketship – Flash Gordon installation down on the San Francisco Embarcadero.

Street artists are notoriously modest folks, typically meaning they don’t much like having their face splashed around on photos, videos, police blotters, or Simpsons episodes. They’re also usually more nocturnal than a garden mole with a bad case of prickly heat. Which makes them sort of mythical, like the unicorn, a really non-high school girl kind of unicorn, letting their work be their PR guy, staying up late so we don’t have to.

If you’re a fan of Invader, the French street artist that festoons city walls with 8-bit Space Invader lovelies all over the world, which I happen to be, then you’ll like this video which gives a shit-ton of insight into his method, ninja installation technique, and creative process without ever revealing his super-secret identity. It stars Invader’s gaunt hooded figure first putting together his tiled plaques then garnishing the tenements and landmarks of Paris with dozens of blocky little invading creatures we’ve come to love, letting the viewer tag along like it’s Take Your Kid to Work Day.

Filmed over the course of “one night” during the Winter of 2011, this movie invites you to hang out for a plastering session with the persona non grata street artist. Totally worth the 13 minutes of your life.

For more on Invader, check out his section in the 10 Times One Street Art Field Guide. What? You haven’t seen the Field Guide? Shame on you.

If you calling me a hipster allowed me to listen to more kick-ass indie rock, I’d say, hand me a fucking PBR and get outta my way, I’m on a mission to raise some horns. Beer in hand, today I’m bringing back the long-interrupted Kickass Song of Day. Rejoice.

Quebecois rock outfit The Besnard Lakes comes in with today’s selection, Devastation. Off their 2007 release, The Besnard Lakes Are the Dark Horse, this wicked song churns out the power chords like an ex-con on a vodka bender, delivering the lyrics “what a fucking pile of shit” like they coined the term. The video below brings scenes of destruction, the kind rising in your veins, finely rendered chaos, entropy, the Horses of the Apocalypse, plain bad luck. Wicked.

Listen to it, perhaps in your car, perhaps in the shower, and belt it out right along with them. Headbang, smash your beer bottles, melt your army men, take the Lord’s name in vain, give the finger to your boss, feel the devastation.

If you have no place to listen, perhaps take advantage of some found iphone deals, get yourself a player, walk around and listen as your fists clench and the rawk invades your body. Do it.

For the full KASOTD series, click here. Or don’t, I really don’t care anymore. Caring is so twenty minutes ago.

Personally, I fawn over maps. Love them. Probably wouldn’t go as far as to wear them on my body, but I can certainly appreciate looking at them in a different way. Lecourt’s artform redefines the intrinsic value of maps, and as the world moves into an era where paper maps are becoming rarer than someone suffering from some weird obsession-compulsion, it turns the tables on the age-old art of cartography, and also how we perceive the old-fashioned paper incarnation of it.

Perhaps map fetishists will have their day after all. Take a look at what Ms. Lecourt has been doing as she equalizes antiquated clothing with soon-to-be antiquated map projections. If you have a sec, go over to her blog and check out what else she’s been doing.

Your Life Online – a cool visualization of the world in which live online.

Traveling the World in Circles, Curves and Color – another way to look at the wonderful world of travel posters.

At your first watch-through you’re taken through a series of stages of befuddlement, first experiencing a sort of “oh yeah” uncertainty, then as it dawns on you how complex the process just might be, the WTF hits. In the end the unusual film technique (essentially elaborate rigging) baffles, defying common logic, making you wish hadn’t had those deep fried chicken wings for lunch and that you knew a little more about cameras.

Callum says, “As far as technique, I make sculptures that are used to create moving images.” Cryptic. But there are hints as to the process on his website if you’re interested.

Either way, this filming technique is industrious. In use since the late 70s when innovative filmmakers like Tony Hill started using it to take filmed images out of context, it caught on in the 80s after U2 used it in a music video.

Camera tricks certainly aren’t new, it’s been mainstay of filmmakers before the advent of CGI, and I really appreciate them still being used to create a sense of significance by modern filmmakers. Plus the editing job in this one is worth the dime itself. Take a look, but be warned, you might want to have a Dramamine on hand just in case.

Visuals created by Callum Cooper. Hat tip going out to Mr. Cooper for turning me on to this high-concept piece.