Naturally, the most compelling poster is of Darth Vader, comprised of the Death Star and what looks the entire Imperial fleet, though the one of the stormtroopers made of stormtroopers is pretty cool as well.

The one of Boba Fett reminds me of a question that I think of every time I watch the Star Wars Saga again. Would George Lucas have fed Boba Fett to the Sarlacc if he had known the popularity of the ultimate bounty hunter ahead of time? Yeah, it turns out Fett actually escaped in Dark Empire, but that was clearly an afterthought. If you still like to imagine that Fett was chewed to pieces by the Sarlacc, this poster should serve as a reminder.

But I digress. These awesome posters were created by the agency Bleublancrouge, and if you’d like to see the exhibit behind these posters, it starts April 19th in Montreal and on October 27th in Edmonton. Let’s hope they take this show on the road.

[Star Wars Blog via Rampaged Reality via Thaeger]

The museum is getting the gear directly from Nintendo, who is donating 5,000 Nintendo 3DS units. They will begin using them in March 2012, to replace traditional audio guides, which are only being used by 4% of the museum’s 8.5 million annual visitors. The hope is that more people would use a 3DS.

Nintendo will develop the content for the Louvre and they will have editorial control. An iOS app is also in development. Somehow I doubt that visitors will be allowed to switch over and play Mario Kart in between the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.

[via PhysOrg via TechCrunch]

Instead of putting up just the usual tree this year, the Holburne Museum in Bath, England decided that they wanted to do something different and called in an artist to do their lights for them. And boy, did Bruce Munro get creative with the lights.

He painstakingly connected and set up over 5,000 glass spheres to come up with the Field of Lights on the grounds of the museum. The bulbs are planted on the ground, with the spheres supported by acrylic stems. Each of the spheres is threaded with fiber optic cables and are lit by a color projector.

Of his work, Munro says, “I think it is a piece with universal appeal and I’ll be happy if it makes people smile at Christmas time.”

I definitely think there will be a lot who will be smiling because of the Field of Lights this Christmas. I know I would, if I had a chance to visit the museum.

[via Daily Mail and Flickr]

In 2010, a computer shop called PC Shop Group helped SArd set up a private exhibition for his collection of 35 graphics cards. I guess his exhibit was well received, as people kept asking about it and eventually donated some of their old cards to the museum. There are now about 200 graphics cards in the collection, which has since been moved to PC Shop Group’s store. As you’ll see in the pictures, the cards are labeled with information like its specs and a list of games that it can play at a respectable frame rate.

I’m sure the museum’s collection will only continue to grow – after all, a new video card is released every 5 seconds. Seriously though, SArd should try asking Nvidia and AMD for material; I bet both companies have a ton of items that they can offload. PC enthusiasts, honor your craft and its roots – and make your pilgrimage to the Video Card Museum at the PC Shop Group Pushkin outlet in Russia.

[via Oddity Central & Habrahabr.ru via I Heart Chaos]

Touching the pieces on display isn’t really something you’re supposed to do with the Mobile Museum either, but it’s interactive in a different way: you can contribute to the works of art to be featured. The folks behind the Mobile Museum are accepting submissions from artists, designers, illustrators, photographers and other practitioners of art.

The first viewing of the museum was held last April 12-17 at the Milan Furniture Fair, and the second exhibition was on July 29 (which was just a few days ago, so boo to everyone who missed it) at the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the Friday Late Summer Camp program.

Hopefully the Mobile Museum will schedule more exhibitions so the spirit of a different kind of art will be kept alive. This kind of museum, I’m definitely interested in checking out.

[via Yanko Design]

This motion-sensing triceratops can detect the presence of any onlookers and react by letting out a loud bellow, moving its head left and right, stomping and scuffing its forelimbs, or opening its jaws while growling. Each eye is integrated with motion-activated cameras that work in conjunction with an interactive software installed that enables the prehistoric recreation to detect and recognize the facial features of onlookers.

This animatronic Triceratops has actually seen a whole lot of the United States, as it has been on tour in different museums all over the country as part of a traveling exhibit. You can read more about purchasing this massive tri-horned animatronic if you’ve got a lot of money–and I do mean a lot of money–to burn by heading on over to Hammacher Schlemmer.

[via Geekologie via Dvice]

The artist made a pyramid out of cases of bottled beer for an art project displayed at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. Each of the blue cubes you see is a case of the imported Turkish beer called Efes. The reason the exhibit would woo most beer fans to the museum is that part of it had to do with letting viewers participate.

In this case, participate means scale the beeramid and drink your fill. The artist says that the idea was to show “Preserving a monument goes hand in hand with destroying it.” You can see one pic of drunkards climbing all over the beeramid and then the final pic with broken glass and cardboard everywhere.

The part that blows my mind is that this was free beer – in Germany and there are unopened cases left – and I don’t see puke anywhere.

[via Fastcodesign and Colossal Art + Design]

It wears a dress and has a pointy head that’s rather like Sputnik. The bot was created at the Tsukuba University in Japan and was intended to improve the interaction between man and machine. The bot is supposed to master non-verbal communication with humans and serve as a guide by moving the head, arms, and waist.

The collar the bot wears has cameras and a laser range finder to help it determine position and direction.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The thing reminds me of a character from some sci-fi flick or show, but I can’t quite place it. It will drive me crazy all day, so if you know the one I am thinking of, feel free to share.

[via Plastic Pals via CrunchGear]

As he passed through the monument on the day of its inauguration in August 1989, Saddam declared, “The worst condition is to pass under a sword which is not one’s own or to be forced down a path which is not willed by him”. The monument, which is located in Central Baghdad, does indeed look similar to a drawing in one of the movie posters of The Empire Strikes Back:

Not too convincing a connection right? New Scientist‘s Jessica Griggs tries to fan the flames of parallelism: “You may have heard that when US troops stormed one of Saddam’s palaces they stumbled across lurid posters by fantasy artist Rowena Morrill.” Griggs says that Morrill is a “close friend of Boris Vallejo,” the artist who drew the Star Wars poster shown above. Rakowitz played on the similarties with his own version of the Hands of Victory:

Still not impressed? Neither am I. But this one’s crazy:

The helmet on the left needs no introduction; the one on the right was part of the uniform of Saddam’s army. The uniform was mandated by Saddam’s son, Uday, before he passed the command of the army over to his younger brother. Griggs said that Uday presented the new uniform to his father “as something to remember his (Uday’s) work by.”

What do you guys think? Personally I’d sooner believe that Guerilla Games stole the Helghast design from Kerberos Panzer Cop than Saddam Hussein being inspired by Darth Vader, but perhaps if I saw the whole exhibit for myself I’d change my mind. Rakowitz’ exhibit is currently at the Tate Modern in London, England.

[via New Scientist]

Brown is biased towards older models and has vacuum cleaners dating back to 1919. He can’t fully explain why he’s fascinated with the gadget, but he does note that when they were first invented they were a luxury: “When they first came out they were seen as things of wonder. High society families would throw parties to celebrate getting their first vacuum cleaner.”

But nowadays, unless it’s a robotic one with a cat riding on top of it, I think it’s safe to say that we don’t show much love to vacuum cleaners. Not Brown though, who claims that he has spent a total of £50,000 (approx. $77,000 USD) on his collection. The most expensive vacuum cleaner in his collection cost him £2,000 (approx. $3,100).

But more than the money Brown has spent on vacuum cleaners, perhaps the ultimate proof of his passion is that he claims that he can identify and differentiate models based only on the sound that they make. The Telegraph actually put his claim to a test, which he promptly aced. That’s (the other) James Brown – Mr. Vacuum Cleaner. I don’t know if his museum sees a lot visitors, but the place won’t be gathering dust anytime soon, that’s for sure.

[via BBC and Neatorama]

As it’s name implies, the CheckMaster was used to balance checks. The calculator itself is embedded in a folding case, perfect for storing a checkbook. The CheckMaster can store the latest result or balance even after it’s turned off, quite remarkable for a calculator that was built in the early- to mid-seventies. Also remarkable, but in a bad way, is the fact that the CheckMaster could only add and subtract, and yet it required 6 AAA batteries. 6! The storage function probably sapped most of the juice.

But not all of the old calculators look as boring – or as brown – as the CheckMaster, some are geeky yet cool, like calculator watches. Wrist calculators, on the other hand, are just geeky. Wrist calculators crank the geek up to 11 x 10²³ . Wearing one is a sign that you’re too smart for your own good. One such watch, the Quik-Check, is not only a bully magnet, it’s also a dumbbell for your wrist, because it required a freakin’ 9 volt battery to function.

The Quik-Check is also a 70s baby – the one featured here was made in 1977 -  so it also has red LEDs and the brown theme going on.

For me, one of the few rewarding aspects of studying any kind of history is when I discover that some things have always been the way they are. Well not always-always, but you know what I mean. Case in point: the Calcu-pen. On one hand, this calculator has a comically simple yet functional name: it’s a calculator embedded in a pen, therefore it’s a calcu-pen. It’s a nice contrast to the nonsensical names of gadgets today, weird shit like Zune, Bravia, or Zii Egg Plaszma. On the other hand, it’s a calculator embedded in a pen.

Here’s how it works: “The buttons are 4-way switches. To operate, a finger is placed on a button and moved sideways in the direction of the number or operation required.” Rather than get a slight headache trying to analyze the hows and whys of this device, let’s go back to my “discovery”: what’s so familiar about the Calcu-pen? Nothing really; it’s people behind such an absurd device that comes as no surprise: the Calcu-pen was made around 1975 by Brando a Japanese company. See? Calculators can be interesting after all. You just wasted a couple of minutes of your life by reading this post! Check out the museum for more pics and information that you will not be able to use unless you’re planning on joining Jeopardy.

[via Retro Thing]

You won’t find any Donkey Kong, Pac-Man or Space Invaders in this arcade museum. Nope. Games had names like Магистраль (Magistral), Городки (Gorodki) and Морской бой (Morskoy-Boy).

The early machines featured at the museum mirror some of the earliest U.S. and Japanese games with simple racing games, shooting gallery, a sub hunt game, and mechanical tabletops like basketball and ice hockey.

The museum currently has 37 different types of retro arcade machines in its collection, with 20 of them now restored to full working order. But even if you don’t get a chance to get to Russia any time soon, you can see many of the details of these oddities thanks to the excellent, detailed photography and descriptive overlays over on the website.

Perhaps the coolest thing about the site is that the designers over at Art Lebedev Studios went the extra mile by building playable Flash versions of many of the games.

Be sure to check out the online versions of Magistral, Gorodki, Morskoy Boy, and Autorally. You can even see the old 15 Kopek coins used to play these machines.

The Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines is located at the Moscow State Technical University, and you can find out more details about their amazing time capsule of retro games over on their English language page here.