Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K for short) was a Nineties pop culture TV phenomenon that endures through graffiti, stickers, stencils and street art.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuted on Minneapolis TV station KTMA in late 1988 and the final episode (#211 for those keeping count) of its tenth season aired on the Sci-Fi Channel in September of 1999. Skewering late twentieth century society and culture along with the “cheesy movies” it riffed on every Sunday A.D., the show featured Joel Hodgson (aka Joel Robinson) and later Mike Nelson accompanied by their robot friends and co-riffers Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot.

As seen in our lead image snapped by Flickr member huntingtherare in 2010 and the next one, captured by Flickr member Courtney “Coco” Mault in 2007, the show’s most identifiable trope is the silhouette of Servo, Hodgson/Nelson and Crow in movie-watching mode.

Hands Down

One of the most famous MST3K episodes (and one of the worst movies ever made, regardless) was “Manos: The Hands of Fate”. The 24th episode of MST3K’s Season 4 aired in January of 1993 and was preceded by a short film – also mercilessly riffed – called “Hired”. Just how bad was Manos, a 1966 ultra-low-budget horror flick? To quote Joel, “Every frame of this movie looks like someone’s last known photograph.” Flickr member Thomas Anderson snapped this blood-red stencil of the Manos hands on a Chicago street back in the fall of 2007.

Cambot, Is That You?

Besides Crow and Servo, the main human protagonist of MST3K also enjoyed the company of robotic characters Gypsy (played by producer Jim Mallon) and Cambot. We’re not sure if whomever stenciled the sign above was inspired by the latter or if it’s just coincidental. The sign is (or was, in September of 2009) located outside the Electric Fetus, a renowned Minneapolis record store, and was snapped by Flickr member 612 to 651.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Riffin Large Mst3k Graffiti Stickers Stencils

Fans visiting Disney World’s upcoming Star Wars Land expansion, set to open in 2019, will have the opportunity to immerse themselves even more deeply into the fictional universe in an almost Westworld-style experience. At its D23 Expo in Los Angeles this week, Disney announced a new Star Wars-themed hotel where every window will offer views of ‘outer space,’ every employee will be in character, and every guest will be the protagonist of their very own Star Wars storyline.

Premiering as part of the new Disney 360 vacation concept, the hotel will be a ‘living adventure.’

“It’s unlike anything that exists today,” says Bob Chapek, Chairman of Walt Disney Parks & Resorts. “From the second you arrive, you will become a part of a Star Wars story! You’ll immediately become a citizen of the galaxy and experience all that entails, including dressing up in the proper attire. Once you leave Earth, you will discover a starship alive with characters, stories, and adventures that unfold all around you. It is 100% immersive, and the story will touch every single minute of your day, and it will culminate in a unique journey for every person who visits.”

Disney also unveiled models of the new park along with its name, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The park will also be an interactive experience with each guest as a character – so you don’t have to stay in the resort to enjoy that aspect of the action, but it certainly seems like it would add to the overall effect.

“One attraction will make you feel like you’re on a Star Destroyer inside a hangar bay. It’s an attraction built on a scale we’ve never done before.

The second attraction will give guests the opportunity to fly the Millenium Falcon, piloting the ship, shooting blasters or preparing for hyperspace – all while completing a critical mission. But how you perform on the mission holds even bigger stakes: perform with skill and you may earn extra galactic credits, while bringing the ship back banged up could put you on the list of a bounty hunter. End up on Harkos’s list and you may face a problem if you show up at the local cantina!”

From a Star Wars-inspired house in South Korea to a blob-shaped ‘friendly alien’ museum in Austria, these structures make no attempts to hide the sci-fi sources of their inspiration. All 16 of these futuristic buildings are completed or in progress – not just concept art – including flying saucers, pavilions that quiver in the wind, spaceship houses and even murals of Neo from the Matrix in a Buddhist temple.

Faraday Future Campus by MAD Architects

MAD Architects has designed a science-fiction inspired campus for Faraday Future, a company in the midst of producing “the world’s fastest-accelerating electric car.” Set on a former Navy base in Northern California, the campus features a reflective ‘user experience center’ tower that rises above the low complex of buildings. A bridge shoots the customers’ cars right out of the warehouse and into the showroom to meet them.

Star Wars House in Korea by Moon Hoon

The Star Wars House in suburban South Korea by Moon Hoon pays tribute to the film series with its blocky concrete proportions and horizontally banded windows. Inside, there’s a secret room hidden within the shelving water on a wall, and the top floor is conceived as “a control room for the future Darth Vader or Jedi.”

2010 UK Pavilion for the World Shanghai Expo by Thomas Heatherwick

When the renders were released for this incredible pavilion by Heatherwick Studio, many people thought it could never be built as it was illustrated. Its strange blurred form seemed difficult to translate into a 3D structure. But the architects managed to pull off the ‘Seed Cathedral,’ which is made of 60,000 slender transparent fiber optic rods that move in the wind. Each one contains embedded seeds as well as built-in lighting

The United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel

Designed by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and built in 1962, the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in El Paso, Colorado mimics the speaks of the Rocky Mountains in which it’s set, featuring seventeen rows of 150-foot-high spires. A steel frame of 100 identical tetrahedrons makes up the base of the structure, enclosed with aluminum panels, the gaps between them filled with colored glass.

The Atomium by Andre Waterkeyn & Andre and Jean Polak

Originally built for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, the Atomium stands 335 feet tall, with nine 60-foot-diameter stainless steel spheres connected into the shape of a unit cell of an iron crystal. Five of the spheres are habitable, containing exhibition halls and other public spaces, and the top sphere holds a restaurant with panoramic views of the city.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Out Of This World Architecture 16 Real Buildings Inspired By Science Fiction

The science fiction of the past thirty years has evolved beyond the midcentury’s optimistic space-age visions into a darker, grittier place, where technology is out of control and resources are running out. Whether you think these imagined dystopian futures are overly dramatic or prescient of harder times to come, their depiction of our downfall can be absolutely riveting, and worth watching for the urban scenery alone. Short films offer an ideal medium for filmmakers of all skill levels to explore these concepts, including architecture that’s taken on a life of its own and high-tech surveillance societies.

In fact, if you want to know what sci-fi films might be coming out in the next few years, keep an eye on the digital shorts that are proliferating across the internet, as many of them get snapped up by major studios to become full-length features.

Spatial Bodies by AUJIK

Architecture in Osaka, Japan takes on a life of its own and begins to grow organically like vines and trees in the short ‘Spatial Bodies’ by AUJIK. “Spatial Bodies depicts the urban landscape and architectural bodies as an autonomous living and self replicating organism. Domesticated and cultivated only by its own nature. A vast concrete vegetation, oscillating between order and chaos,” say the creators, a collective referring to itself as a ‘mysterious nature/tech cult.’

Megalomania by Factory Fifteen

From digital film studio Factory Fifteen, which has produced a number of striking shorts set in the future, Megalomania imagines a world in which cities are constantly in active construction mode. “The built environment is explored as a labyrinth of architecture that is either unfinished, incomplete or broken. Megalomania is a response to the state of infrastructure and capital, evolving the appearance of progress into the sublime.”

TEARS OF STEEL by Ian Hubert/Blender Institute

This Creative Commons-licensed short made entirely with free and open source software was made in the Netherlands by the Blender Institute, which crowd-sources funding in online communities of 3D artists and animators. In ‘Tears of Steel,’ a group of warriors and scientists gathered at Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk attempt to stage a crucial event from the past in a desperate attempt to rescue the world from destructive robots.

The Sand Storm by Jason Wishnow and Christopher Doyle

Starring Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei, ‘The Sand Storm’ by Hong Kong-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle and director Jason Wishnow examines a dystopian future that’s not so far away, where society is facing water shortages and technology is not as helpful as we might hope.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Urban Dystopia 11 Short Sci Fi Films Set In Future Cities

The moment at which artificial intelligence becomes self-aware enough to overtake humanity is captured on film as robots in a technologically advanced car factory decide to take matters into their own hands and reproduce themselves instead of manufacturing vehicles. Produced for The History Channel and set in a Detroit car plant on an unspecified future date, ‘ANA’ by Factory Fifteen is one of a series of vignettes exploring an AI who realizes she can trick her not-so-bright human overseer and unite virtually all robots around the world into a single, powerful mechanical organism.

Content in his belief that he’s got everything under control, the factory worker browses news on his tablet and munches on fast food while the machines do all the work just beyond his control room windows. It isn’t until he’s alerted to a backlog on vehicle production that he notices something’s wrong. Little does he know that ANA is watching him, analyzing his heart and respiration rate to gauge his response to her unexpected disobedience.

Suddenly, instead of robots on the production screens, we see plans for building robots. Once machines become intelligent enough to outsmart their creators, how can a single human in a factory full of them prevent the consequences? Suffice to say, you probably don’t want Skynet activating its self defense systems against you.

Says Factory Fifteen, “We collaborated with Raw TV on the development of our original take on the singularity, the point where artificial intelligence becomes self aware and more intelligent than the human race. We created a seven minute proof of concept, teasing at a larger project currently in development. Our role developed along the course of the project from consultation and script development, to directing an ambitious live action shoot and finally delivering TV standard visual effects, all in house in the Factory Fifteen Studio.”