NASA wants to launch your masterpiece into space

Perhaps I'm late to the party but did you know that NASA is opening an art gallery for aliens? In September, the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu. In hopes of making the minor planet the first extra-terrestrial art gallery known to man, the space agency is inviting the public to submit paintings, sketches, photographs, poems, songs, videos and other forms of creative expression. These works will be encoded on a chip and left in the asteroid's soil.

NASA is accepting submissions until March 20, and artists around the globe can send their works to the OSIRIS-REx Twitter or Instagram accounts using the hashtag #WeTheExplorers. Videos published to YouTube and Vimeo will be accepted as well; just link to your clips in an appropriately tagged tweet. To know more about the technical guidelines, visit the campaign's website. Below are some of my favorites from Twitter.

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Gilbert Legrand turns mundane stuff into delightful characters

Gilbert Legrand doesn't see the world like the rest of us. You see a scrubbing brush, he sees an Apache chief. You see a a pair of scissors, he sees smooching lovers. The French artist's imagination is so wild and unrestricted that he can turn the most ordinary objects into unexpected sources of delight. I just spent half an hour lurking on his website, and you should, too.

Nick Smith creates NSFW prints using Pantone color chips as pixels

Scottish artist Nick Smith , known for his Pantone mosaics, recently unveiled his latest work at London's Lawrence Alkin Gallery . Called Paramour , the erotic images look like they've been heavily pixilated, almost like 8-bit art. If you look at them up close, you'll only see the Pantone color swatches, but if you step back—or zoom out—you'll see the NSFW pieces. "Marking 400 years since Shakespeare's death, Paramour employs Nick Smith's signature 'colour-chip' methodology, combining modern nudes with excerpts from the Bards' sonnets and plays. As well as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Venus and Adonis , the works feature racy text from poetry and prose by DH Lawrence, John Cleland, EM Berens and Sarah Walters. Exploring lust, love and appreciation of the female form, Paramour brings classic literature to the modern conscience, telling stories of illicit love through evocative imagery." [h/t: WideWalls ]

The Salimbaa

Here's a strange tribal instrument I never heard of before now. Originally from the Tinananon tribe of southern Philippines, the bowl-shaped Salimbaa is made of metal and wood, has 30 bronze wound strings, and is played using two small sticks. Caleb Byerly, who makes lost/extinct musical tools in his North Carolina workshop, has an interesting story on how he made his first Salimbaa. WATCH: More details about Caleb and his craft over at Our State .

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