It’s that time again!  Time to make giant animals out of straw! 

Autumn is a rice harvest season in Japan. Every year, farmers make sure that the leftover rice straw, known as “wara”, does not go to waste. From feeding the cattle to improving the soil, the straw finds its purpose. In particular, Niigata province has a very creative way of using these leftover rice husks by hosting an annual event called “Wara Art Festival”.

See more pictures at DesignYouTrust

Sydney’s annual Vivid festival fills the harbour with barges equipped with powerful projectors that use the buildings ringing the harbour (especially the iconic Sydney Opera House) as geometrically complex screens for projection-mapped lightshows, synchronised to music.

Here’s a video of this year’s gorgeous Sydney Opera House projections, created by Jonathan Zawada and titled “Metamathemagical.”

Website: (vividsydney.com)

https://youtu.be/Kj4524AAZdE

The Wara Art Festival in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture is a showcase for art, but it’s also a harvest festival. Giant sculptures are constructed of rice straw leftover for this year’s rice harvest.

The Wara Art Festival all started in 2006 when the local district reached out to Musashino Art University to seek guidance on transforming their abundant amount of rice straw into art. And in 2008, the very first Wara Art Festival was held. Since then, every year the school sends art students up to Niigata to assist in creating sculptures made out of rice straw. The festivities have ended but the sculptures are on display through October 31, 2017.

In this video, watch students from Musashino Art University build one of the sculptures for 2017.