First he jumped his car more than 171 feet. Then, he jumped his car off of a ski slope next to a group of snowboarders. Now, Ken Block is showing off his skills in a demonstration of a sport called Gymkhana, and it’s one of the most beautiful pieces of automotive cinema ever created.
For those (like myself) that have never heard of Gymkhana (pronounced jim-kah-nuh), it’s “an automotive sport taking place on an open field or a parking lot requiring drivers to skillfully maneuver their cars around a series of cones, slaloms, 180 degree turns, 360 degree turns, figure eight turns or other obstacles using extreme acceleration, braking and drifting”.
Ken Imhoff fell in love with the euro-spec 1982 Lamborghini Countach LP5000S that played a staring role in the classic film Cannonball Run, so he did what any extremely talented automotive fanatic would do: He build one in his basement.
Ok, so there are probably not more than a handful of people that could pull off a full replica build of this quality in their basement, but Ken is definitely one of them, and has proven it with what you see here; the end result of more than 17 years of hard work and creative construction.
The car started out as a wooden buck that Ken built off of dimensions taken from the real car, over which he hand shaped aluminum using an English Wheel. Ken also designed his own space frame that he also based off of the dimensions of the real thing, and then designed an interior to match.
The end result is a dead on knockoff of a real Lamborghini Countach, and even features real Lambo taillights, parking lights, windshield and badges for a little extra authenticity.
The engine is a Ford Cleveland Boss 351 making 514 horsepower, and a ZF 5-speed transaxle out of a Pantera handles the shifting and axle duties. Wilwood Suprelite brakes take care of the stopping, and they hide behind custom rims with handmade center sections that are wider than they are tall. The exhaust was also handmade by Ken, and modeled after the GT-40’s ‘bundle of snakes’.
It definitely wasn’t an easy process, but after removing part of his basement wall to get the car out from under his house, I bet Ken is enjoying every minute that he spends in, around, and not working on his Countach.
Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that created a representation of the $100 bill using 10,000 anonymous artists, each paid one cent per contribution.
By using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the two main artists (Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima) were able to enlist the help of thousands of other people/artists to recreate the bill. Each person was given a small area to draw, and was paid one cent to do so, though they were never told the overall goal.
Thus, the total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100.
The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, “crowdsourcing,” “virtual economies,” and digital reproduction.
In all, it took almost five months to complete, and the result is surprisingly accurate.
Be sure to visit the site for a clickable pic that lets you view a movie of each image that went into the final piece.
Sift Heads Sniper Game is a half movie, half sniper shootout game that manages to tell a story along the way.
Each mission revolves around a certain person or persons that you must shoot, and as you progress your way through various levels, the story manages to progresses along with you in a believable way.
