December 30, 2012 Priests Fight in Bethlehem Church Palestinian police restore order in the Church of the Nativity in Jesus's birthplace after scuffles erupt between Armenian and Greek Orthodox clergymen.
December 29, 2011 Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Projections In celebration of United Arab Emirates National Day, San Francisco based creative agency Obscura Digital created a projection mapping display on the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. Forty-four projectors with a combined brightness of 840,000 lumens were used to cover a 600ft wide x 351ft high surface.
December 28, 2011 Standards of Spelling | David Mitchell Spelling is a bug-bear for many of us. David has gotten himself into a lather about the breakdown of British society, as reflected in the generally decreasing standards of punctuation. It just goes to show, you cant be too careful.
December 27, 2011 All That Glitters: The History of Shiny Things Produced by ETSY, this docu-short asks the question, "who isn't dazzled and enchanted by that wondrous stuff called glitter?"
December 21, 2011 Nokta Nokta is an abstract short film project which is an improvisation of organic pieces and themes like power, control and luck. Using low-budget equipment and with the combination of actual camera shooting, 2d and 3d animation techniques, the film alters the reality and physics of the real world with the help of the liquid and dynamic simulations’ impact.
December 20, 2012 Light “Light” a short film directed by David Parker, initially began as a project intended to bring awareness to energy waste. Bleeding, crying lights were meant to metaphorically parallel the way in which we invisibly squander our natural resources without much thought. While the original sentiment remains, the film also grew into a poetic statement about a world run amok and the human tendency to exploit that which we hold dear. The film was shot over a couple nights in Los Angeles as two friends drove around with a camera exploring the city’s architecture and abandoned landscapes.
December 19, 2011 Brilliant Noise by Semiconductor Brilliant Noise takes us into the data vaults of solar astronomy. After sifting through hundreds of thousands of computer files, made accessible via open access archives, Semiconductor have brought together some of the sun's finest unseen moments. These images have been kept in their most raw form, revealing the energetic particles and solar wind as a rain of white noise. This grainy black and white quality is routinely cleaned up by NASA, hiding the processes and mechanics in action behind the capturing procedure. Most of the imagery has been collected as single snapshots containing additional information, by satellites orbiting the Earth. They are then reorganised into their spectral groups to create time-lapse sequences. The soundtrack highlights the hidden forces at play upon the solar surface, by directly translating areas of intensity within the image brightness into layers of audio manipulation and radio frequencies.
December 15, 2011 LOL — David Mitchell David tackles text speak and the charming little innovation LOL. But will he be for or against the modern habit of approving a joke with the abbreviation?
December 14, 2011 Glass Harp Sugar Plum Fairy Glass Duo (Poland) - Chamber Music Festival in Bologna, Italy - June 2010.
Placed in Chiostro della Basilica di Santo Stefano.
Festival di Santo Stefano XXII edizione.
P.Tchaikovsky - Sugar Plum Fairy (The Nutcracker)
December 13, 2011 Top 10 Quirky Science Tricks for Parties Psychologist and author Prof Richard Wiseman carries out research into luck, the science of self-help, perception, belief and deception. A passionate advocate for science, Wiseman gives us ten entertaining ways to be the catalytic life of the party.
December 12, 2011 Magic Carp-pet This winner of the Red Dot Design Award "Best of the Best 2011" uses no electricity, monitor or projector to create its motion which is achieved through the optical illusion effect "Moire Animation".
December 8, 2011 Ice Cube Celebrates The Eames Ice Cube brings us back to his NWA years when he studied architectural drafting before launching his rap career. One thing he learned that translates is to always have a plan. Cube describes the modern, green and resourceful building design of Charles and Ray Eames — visionaries of connecting nature and structure.
December 6, 2011 Machines | David Mitchell's Soapbox David berates the modern button-loving gadget designers who are given free reign with their counterintuitive scratchable DVDs. Do you too lament the simple days of the VHS?
December 5, 2011 Generative Art An intriguing combination of programmers, artists, and philosophers, these creators embrace a process that delegates essential decisions to computers, data sets, or even random variables. This allows important metaphors to arise in their work, calling attention to the relationship between humans and the computers that surround us, the mountains of information we generate, and the powerful impact that technology has on our relationships with each other.
December 2, 2011 Philip Glass at Occupy Wall Street Protest From an Occupy Wall Street protest at Lincoln Center, on Dec. 1, 2011. A performance of Philip Glass's Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera has just ended, and in the first three minutes of the video protesters try to get operagoers to ignore the police, walk down the steps, and join the demonstration. Then, after 3:00, Glass recites the closing lines of his opera, which come from the Bhagavad-Gita: "When righteousness withers away and evil rules the land, we come into being, age after age, and take visible shape, and move, a man among men, for the protection of good, thrusting back evil and setting virtue on her seat again."
December 1, 2011 Venice Backstage: How Does Venice Work? Venice is not just a stage set. It is also a city with a resident population, which has productive activities, transportation and services. But how does the “Venice system” work? How do the tides in the lagoon behave? How are the canals formed? And the embankments? What’s under the buildings?