Nearly two years ago, Italian street artist Blu made waves with MUTO — arguably the most creative graffiti-driven animation of all time. Today, Blu is back with BIG BAG BIG BOOM, the latest gem in his treasure chest of stop-motion urban storytelling — an abstract exploration of the beginning and evolution of life.

What makes this so remarkable is that all of the animation effects were achieved in-camera, “animated” simply by filming the progression of painting on buildings, sidewalks and objects, with no post-production composting whatsoever. This analog, organic, lo-fi visual storytelling offers a complete paradigm shift, challenging us to think differently about a medium that is, at least today, inherently digital and software-assisted.

At least for today — Art: 1, Algorithm: 0.

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By now you likely know that we’re devoted to bikes, to riding them as well as admiring them in all their variety. Today we’d like to steer you to three waypoints in the growing bike culture trend—at least we hope it’s both growing and a trend.

BICYCLE INFRASTRUCTURE

David Byrne’s New York City bike racks (remember those?) double as an editorial in iron—each rack is designed to comment on the character of the neighborhood, its businesses and denizens.

We all know that lots of adults ride bikes in Copenhagen—about 30% of that city’s population regularly commutes by bike. That compares to about .07% of New Yorkers. So it makes sense that the city planners would think of all the little improvements aimed at making the cyclist comfortable, such as this footrest.

David Hembrow documents life on a bike in a country perhaps most deeply associated with practical riding in everyday life, The Netherlands. In his blog, “A view from the cycle path,” David recently showed how civil and green the Dutch can be, all without stepping off their bike — rubbish receptacles for coasting and disposing.

For the big bicycle picture, for advancing its place at the center of US politics, there’s the Bike Caucus, run by congressman Earl Blumenthal who always begins his speeches on behalf of the caucus with a dedication to all those Americans stuck in traffic on the way to the gym to ride a stationary bike.

To chart not only the increase in bike-friendly infrastructure, but also to chart your next ride, use the new Google Maps directions for cyclists. Map it, cycle it, and then give Google your feedback—all ways to do your own two-wheeler activism.

BICYCLE ART & STYLE

Joe Schumacher is a NYC-based photographer who walks a lot and takes pictures of things he finds. His blog, what about the plastic animals?, captures the off-beat and pedestrian, but we’d like to direct you to his haunting and beautiful photos of abandoned bicycles of Gotham.

Those who don’t abandon their bikes can also evoke a striking scene. Perhaps a cousin of steampunk, the Bicycle Tweed movement is rolling through cities across the U.S. Here’s the site dedicated to San Francisans astride their velos and attired in their distinctive and antique wool.

Art and commerce come coasting together at Bertelli Bici in New York City. The site’s photography is simple and gorgeous and these bikes, built from a combination of old and new parts, achieve a kind of sculptural beauty.

BICYCLE ACTIVISM, OF SORTS

We all know about the Critical Mass movement spreading around the world. But devoted cyclists have a nice set of alternatives to express their dreams of making the world a better place. One organization we’ve long admired is Bikes Not Bombs in Boston. It’s an organization that stitches together community, education and employment of the under served, and bicycle culture as an alternative to cars, the oil economy, and war.

And what could be less threatening than a kid on a bike looking for a high five? Well, not so much if that kid happens to be a SCUL pilot steering a ship called Angry Candy and offering a high five from about six or seven feet up, roughly the position of a pilot on a typical SCUL ship. SCUL (Subversive Choppers Urban Legion) is a Massachusetts-based “anti-elite band of pilots testing out experimental ships, exploring the Greater Boston Star systems and occasionally other galaxies” from their “subspace communication broadcast headquarters.”

Finally, we’ve got to give a shout out to our local bike culture faves, the volunteers at Bikerowave. Lots of cities have them, but this LA neighborhood tool library and DIY bike repair hangout has a great vibe and lots of knowledgeable and friendly volunteers.

Andrew Lynch is a refugee from the academy now working in advertising. While he sometimes misses writing heady sentences including words like “teleological”, he’s enjoying his stint decoding the more varied and messy signs and symbols of pop culture, consumer trends, and brand stories.

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Despite the recession, the global economy is a massive force of commerce, shuffling billions of dollars around its ecosystem of goods and services. By comparison, the nonprofit sector — and humanitarian aid in particular — is microscopic. So what if could take a fraction of that fat commmercial mega-budget and allocate it to underfunded good causes? That’s what Robin of Shoreditch, a group of anonymous creative outlaws, is doing with The 100 Brands Project — an effort to take from the rich and give to the poor, or in this case, to the people of Haiti.

It’s a simple, brilliant idea — the team, composed of various ad industry creatives, do what they do best: They offer each company on BrandZ’s 100 brands index a creative idea that could help their business and, in return, they ask for 1/10000000 — that’s one ten-millionth — of the value of that brand as a fee, 100% of which goes to relief efforts in Haiti.

Every Monday morning, the crew released a new idea for one of these A-list brands, including FedEx, Nike and American Express. They then send the brand an actual invoice and hope for the best.

Why go anonymous?

The truth is we’d rather keep our identities secret so not to compromise our ‘normal life’ jobs at various advertising and marketing agencies. We’re creating ideas for the top 100 brands and some of these bring us into conflict with the brands we work on day-in, day-out through our jobs.” ~ “Little John”

None of the 12 companies approached so far have actually paid up, but we think this is a brilliantly innovative take on “corporate social responsibility” and any brand that embraces its incredible potential — to do good but also, perhaps cynically, to generate some solid buzz — would be deserving of an epic hat tip.

You can follow the project’s progress on the team’s blog and keep an eye on Vimeo channel for fresh videos every Monday.

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Here’s a factoid: Back in the day, Brain Pickings took its first steps in West Philadelphia — a beautiful and sadly underappreciated city with a vibrant creative culture. Among Philly’s gems is its rich street art scene, from the iconic mosaic murals to its mysterious Toynbee tiles. Last year, we raved about another pinnacle of Philly’s street art genius — A Love Letter for You, the work of street artist Steve Powers, a.k.a. ESPO. It’s a beautiful ongoing graffiti love letter stretching across 50 building facades over 20 blocks along the Market-Frankfurt subway line in West Philly.

Powers first started painting on these rooftops as a teenager in 1984. Exactly 25 years later, he returned to Philadelphia to write a love letter across them, meant for one but relevant and inspiring to all. With its candid poeticism and superb typographic design, the letter reads as much like an intimate confession as it does like an ode to the city.

Listening to Powers speak about the project makes its mission come to life even more powerfully, as a piece of postmodern poetry that both feeds off of and replenishes the city’s urban romanticism.

It’s meant to be a reflection of the community. It’s meant to be a reflection of one person’s love for another person in the community, but at the same time it’s meant to live beyond these distinctions and just be something for everyone, no matter where they’re at. You don’t need to know where Farson Street is, or where Conestoga Street is in relation to Market Street. What you need to know is love exists here, love exists in yourself. The city is a giving, nurturing place if you let it give to you and nurture you.

The eponymous book about the project comes out on April 30, but it’s available for pre-order today.

Powers appears in the street art documentary Beautiful Losers, which we featured last year, and is speaking at the PSFK Conference in New York this Friday. We’ll be there — will you?

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New York City. Was there ever a more diverse, colorful and eclectic hub of humanity? Fascinated by the incredible hearth of culture that is NYC, strategic planner and hobbyist photographer Friko Starc set out to document it at its rawest, most candid form. For three years, he took portraits of strangers and passers-by at five Manhattan corners in what became The Corners Project, an inspired cross-section of New York’s living matter.

The five corners where the candid, spontaneous portraits were taken — Clinton & Rivington, Chrystie & Grand, Wall & Broad, Lex & 116th, 19th & 8th — stretch all across the island, from Chinatown to Wall Street, Lower East Side to Chelsea to Spanish Harlem.

From hipsters to homeboys, executives to entertainers, the project spans the entire social spectrum, with all its vibrant richness and charming quirk. Often presented in pairs, the portraits bespeak a unique blend of diversity and solidarity, the unmistakable we’re-in-this-together-ness of New York.

Last September, All Day Buffet awarded The Corners Project as one of the 100 best New-York-centric creative initiatives. And we tend to agree.

The project is part Ari Versluis’ fascinating Exactitudes, part Jason Polan’s wonderful illustrated Every Person in New York, with its own gritter, more unfiltered take on the ambitious goal of cataloging NYC’s incredible diversity and energy.

Explore The Corners Project and find it on Facebook, then go stake out a street corner of your own and marvel at the living runway of urbanity.

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Brooklyn-based artist Dan Witz has been one of the defining forces in contemporary street art.

It was Dan Witz who, back in 2003, first showed us how powerful street art could be. Each summer Dan’s projects take street art to new levels by adding elements of “surprise and delight” into the city landscape. For us, Dan Witz is the consummate street artist. He’s provocative. He’s dedicated. And most of all — he has absolutely wicked skills.” ~ Marc and Sara Schiller, Wooster Collective

Witz spent this past summer working on his latest project, Dark Doings, which opens as a solo exhibition tonight at the Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art in LA.

Inspired by a recent visit to the Red Light District of Amsterdam, Dark Doings explores the tragic obliviousness we’ve developed to our surroundings through subtle, haunting images of human and animal faces trapped behind dirty glass windows.

I’m trying to exploit our collective tendency towards sleepwalking by inserting outrageous things right out there in plain view that are also practically invisible. My goal is to make obvious in your face art that ninety-nine percent of the people who walk by won’t notice. Eventually when they stumble upon one or find out about it I’m hoping they’ll start wondering what else they’ve been missing.”

The project embodies the true purpose and power of street art — to challenge, to compel, to jolt us out of our self-constructed comfort zones and stagnant defaults. Dark Doings is a remarkable reminder of, to quote the theme from TEDGlobal, the substance of things not seen.

See more of the installations from the series, and remember to look a little closer — in the street, and in life at large.

Editor’s Note: On a related note, I’ve explored the importance of mystery in street art in my first article for the wonderful GOOD Magazine, investigating the greatest guerrilla art mystery never solved.

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You may recall UK artist Luke Jerram and his brilliant glass microbiology from our Biology-Inspired Art issue. But besides exploring the beautiful intersection of science and art, some of his work transcends aesthetic art, entering into social experiment and anthropology.

Play Me, I’m Yours is a fascinating project, touring the globe since March 2008 and placing street pianos in locations all over the world. From train stations to laundromats to skate parks, the pianos emerge in public spaces, inviting the community to engage and interact with them in a way that creates a playful and vibrant canvas for grassroots cultural self-expression.

Questioning the ownership and rules of public space ‘Play Me I’m Yours’ is a provocation, inviting the public to engage with, activate and take ownership of their urban environment.

Since its launch, the project has received wide media attention from NPR, The New York Times, BBC, and a myriad other culture-purveyors. And the 112 pianos installed so far have been played by anyone from school children in Sao Paolo to the London Symphony Orchestra.

Next year, Play Me, I’m Yours is hitting London, Belfast, Barcelona, Pécs, Cincinnati, San Jose, Medellin, Cartagena, Bogatoa and 17 more cities.

The project is a much better-conceived and more ambitious analogy to Volkswagen’s recent Fun Theory effort, which tests the simple hypothesis that giving people something fun to do will change their behavior and their relationship with public space.

Explore Play Me, I’m Yours and more of Luke’s amazing work for a glimpse of art’s transformative power in human behavior and sociology.

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Since 2002, designer Paul Budnitz has been pushing the boundaries of what art toys can be in his iconic brand of super-premium vinyl toys, Kidrobot. Now, he is pushing the boundaries of what technology can do. As Android and other mobile platforms make QR codes an increasingly prevalent data tag format, why not have some fun with it? That’s exactly what Kidrobot is doing in Dunny Hunt 09 — a QR-based scavenger hunt around Manhattan, promoting Kidrobot’s Dunny Series 2009, from strategic creative studio WeArePlus.

The five-day hunt kicked off yesterday, offering Kidrobot fans daily clues leading to a promotional displays — posters, stickers, postcards, t-shirts — hidden all around the city. Kidrobot also provides links to free smartphone apps which, once installed, can be used to scan the QR codes embedded in the promotional displays. (Although their choice of iPhone app is BeeTagg Reader, we’d recommend UpCode instead.)

Victorious hunters can collect the day’s Virtual Dunny Collection image, with a chance to win various prizes, including limited-edition Dunny toys. The first person to scan the QR Code from the day’s hidden item wins a special reward. The grand prize is no less than a full set of the Dunny Series 2009 designer toys.

Dunny Series 2009 drops on September 10. Artists behind the collection include Amanda Visell, Mori Chack, Brandt Peters, Gary Taxali, Amy Ruppel, Travis Cain, Thomas Han, and more.

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Imagine, if you will, the days before Craigslist. Local business was done mostly through neighborhood flyers announcing anything from a yard sale to a lost cat. Today, these dinosaurs of communication still exist, although much rarer, and remain the same visual atrocities they always were.

Enter Cardon Copy — designer Cardon Webb‘s bold mission to hijack these unseemly pieces, redesign them with a powerful visual message, and replace the original with its aesthetically upgraded version.

Part neighborhood Banksy, part Pixelator, part utterly original, the project is pure conceptual genius.

Besides being a noble crusade for everyday visual literacy, Cardon Copy is also the most brilliant self-promotion by a designer we’ve ever encountered.

And we love the extraordinary lengths Cardon has gone to with this, indiscriminately and cleverly redesigning even the most illegible to make it, well, just as illegible but oh-so-much easier on the eyes.

We can’t wait until someone (psst, Cardon, need a new project?) hijacks Craigslist listings, no less visually atrocious than your typical neighborhood flyer, and embarks upon a similar digital mission.

Dev-design geeks, start your engines.

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In 2008, Beautiful Losers — a documentary about contemporary street art culture from director Aaron Rose — made serious waves at SXSW. This year, the film is finally making its full-blown national screening tour — and we think it’s a must-see.

Based on the eponymous and equally excellent book, the film explores the creative process and cultural influences of iconic artists like Barry McGee, Jo Jackson, Mike Mills, Brain Pickings darling Shepard Fairey, and many more.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyRAHKTy6hI

The greatest cultural accomplishments in history have never been the result of the brainstorms of marketing men, corporate focus groups, or any homogenized methods; they have always happened organically. More often than not, these manifestations have been the result of a few like-minded people coming together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it.

We think Beautiful Losers is important for two reasons: For one, it’s a genuine piece of cultural anthropology that captures some of the rawest, most powerful creative genius of our time.

But, more importantly, it’s a brilliant testament to the importance of the cross-pollination of ideas — you begin to see the influences of various subcultures, from skateboarding to street fashion to graffiti to indie music, on these artists’ original creative output. And this matters, because it’s real-life proof for the power of remix culture — something essential to the ability to harness our collective creativity, yet unfortunately hindered by current copyright law.

For an even deeper perspective on the global, cross-cultural influences in street art, check out Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents — another excellent book, exploring the emergence of a new global creative culture driven by the advent of the Internet as a cross-pollination platform for wildly diverse subcultures and modes of self expression.

Thanks, Amy!

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