Digital Technology Allows for a Gorgeous Special Effects on a Budget

C 299,792 km/s is a Kickstarter success story. The team was successfully funded in December 2011. They raised $37,317, double their target, at which point they decided to further their ambitions, ultimately turning to their fans for a second round of funding. All told, the movie was made for only $40,000 — but you wouldn’t know it to look at it.

“Digital technology has made basic filmmaking tools available to everyone, but undertaking a project like this is still considered way outside of the indie filmmaking spectrum,” says Stockmeier. “What we hoped to achieve with combining practical effects and digital equipment is to show that with a little ingenuity people can make really cool movies with very little resources.”


For the interview, visit the source:  http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/kickstarted-scifi-movie/?pid=2005&viewall=true

More cool space photos!  Photoshopped looking images that actually exist!
The following are photographs of supernovas; essentially stars that exploded.

Oldest Supernova

The oldest recorded supernova is this one, RCW 86, located 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Circinus. It was noted nearly 2,000 years ago (in 185 A.D.) as a “guest star” in Chinese astronomical documents. Light from the supernova was visible for nearly eight months in the sky before it faded, leaving this amazing remnant behind.

Crab Nebula

Arguably the most famous supernova remnant is the Crab nebula, found 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. The remnant represents the remains of a supernova that exploded in 1054 A.D., which was recorded by Chinese and Japanese astronomers at the time. At the Crab nebula’s center is a spinning pulsar, a neutron star that spews a beam of radiation at Earth every 30.2 seconds.


Source:  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/01/supernova-remnants-gallery/?pid=6103

Decades of space photography has revealed a considerable amount of information and has produced incredible imagery that happens to have an artistic aesthetic.

"In 1992, the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft made a pass by our planet’s closest companion, the moon. This mosaic of 53 images shows the different composition of rocks on the moon's surface. Blue and orange colors represent lava flows, bright pink areas are highlands, and light blue colors indicate recent impact material with the youngest craters showing blue rays extending away from them."

"When NASA’s Voyager 1 mission zipped by the Jupiter system in 1979, it discovered that far from the sun were worlds of incredibly active worlds. In particular, it shot spectacular pictures of the moon Io, which is covered in volcanoes and is now known to be one of the most geologically active places in the solar system. This image shows a plume from a volcano on Io’s surface."


Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/wp-content/gallery/solar-system-geology/iovolcano.jpg

This is a self-portrait.  Thought it may only appear to be a crude outline of a person, it was formed from an actual photograph of myself.    The violent rapid splash of colors conforms with the Neo-expressionism art style popularized in the 80s, the decade in which I was born.  Recently I’ve become very interested in the revisiting of the culture from that era, and represented myself in that style as a result.  Furthermore, I find this colorful vibrant representation of myself considerably more than the uninteresting reality of my appearance.

The upcoming art show "LOLcat: The Exhibishun" features just what it suggests, media based on the internet's fascination with cats.  The pieces range from pictures, to animated .gif images, and video. 

"“For many people, especially those who don’t spend a ton of time on the internet, ‘funny cat pictures’ are shorthand for internet culture as a whole,” Miltner said. “From my perspective, it makes total sense that a phenomenon with this level of cultural significance would be explored through other art forms.”

Essentially, he feels that this is representative to the internet as a whole for a lot of people, and beyond that it is representative on people's fascination with cats.  I love it, so there's at least some truth to his thoughts.

The full story and gallery at the source.

Source: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/01/lolcat-teh-exhibishun/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29&pid=8639