Same Room – Oh So Different Room

New York Times Interactive piece here. Fascinating how people live so differently with the same starting point. Photography by Corine Vermeulen. 
Via G.

Sunflowers a No-Go

Oops. Too much fun was being had by visitors to the Ai Wei Wei exhibition. (See entry below). The dust was deemed unhealthy. When I was there, people were really gouging into the 100million seeds.  Pity though. It's off limits now. So much for interactive art for the masses.
Guardian article here.

Ai Wei Wei - Sunflower

"I always think art is a tool to set up new questions"

'Sunflowers' officially opens today in the turbine hall, Tate Modern. I loved the simplicity. You can just hang out on the millions of porcelain hand-made sunflower seeds, make angels, play with the seeds, watch the world go by... The documentary is worth seeing - Chinese production in a small traditional town with long heritage of hand crafted ceramics. Sunflowers are symbols of the chinese during the Cultural Revolution, Mao was the sun.

Article on ME magazine

Julie Gough – Time and Space and Memory

At the moment she's in Ireland researching her roots and no doubt making something... Here are some images from Tasmania

Cork Culture Night 2010

The whole city threw open its doors. Artists' studios, churches, archives, city hall, galleries, even the synagogue. I guess it was Ireland's version of the White Night, but not for the whole night. So I took myself and my push bike across one side of town and dropped into a few places.

Festivities on the River Lee to kick off Culture Night

Billy Foley explains his paintings, in The Cork Artist's Collective

Figuring out Julie Gough's work in The National Sculpture Factory

Sean McCarty (Sculptor), Happy Man, Miriam (my art teacher from back in the day) and Eilís O'Connell (Sculptor)

Rory Tangney's work in progress sketches in The Golden Section Studios

Helena O'Donnell's space in The Golden Section Studio

Trad session in Sin É.

USA - Ways of Getting Around

Hang on: did you see Rodin's Thinker tucked away behind the jews? What's he doing??

New England Houses

It's been pretty quiet on this blog lately. No doubt about it. I've been Stateside catching up with family. So in that spirit of homes from home, here are a few little New England houses.

West Cork, Ireland – A Day Out

Rasmus Engelhardt Gundersen – Alfabetisk

I revisited Danish designer Rasmus Engelhardt the other week – (I know him from the MA in London College of Communication, where he was one of those with a sensitive typographic touch and unassuming manner). His work is grounded in a strong sense of playful modernity and rich heritage, which when applied to a museum environment or a city such as London, works wonderfully. 

www.alfabetisk.dk

Richard Florida – Who's Your City?

I really did say to myself in 2004 " It doesn't matter where I do my MA, it's more about what I do and what I want from it". Well, ahem, I discovered that I got that so wrong. It did matter, and it does matter where I live. A friend of mine, who was also on that course was fascinated by how the city environment affects us, and did an amazing project on psychogeography. Anyhows, I also realise the power of place when I check out the hits to one of my sites and see that there's something about California, Texas and New York that seems to return to it. I like the Monocle 'Top 25 Most Liveable Cities', because I like the magazine. So, when I came across this book I immediately ordered it:

It’s a mantra of the age of globalization that where you live doesn’t matter ... According to Richard Florida, this is wrong. Place is not only important, it’s more important than ever... Globalization is not flattening the world; on the contrary, the world is spiky. Place is becoming more relevant to the global economy and our individual lives. The choice of where to live, therefore, is not an arbitrary one. It is arguably the most important decision we make, as important as choosing a spouse or a career. In fact, place exerts powerful influence over the jobs and careers we have access to, the people meet and our “mating markets” and our ability to lead happy and fulfilled lives.

On his creative class website, are interesting data maps and a nice questionnaire to help you compare your own choice of top cities. Below, a global map of innovation locations, and personality areas in the States.

KHUAN + KTRON – Weekend Knack Magazine

By Khuan + Ktron
Via Grainedit

Hans Rosling - Population Growth

When I learnt about the arithmetric involved in population growth, I was gobsmacked. It seemed like there was no hope for the world to sustain itself once the global headcount would inevitably double. Hans Rosling offers a pragmatic solution, one that involves a positive approach to human welfare.
Via TED

The Professional Walker

My Dad spent his working life walking farms, talking to farmers, looking at the land. For many years he was part of the Irish State's project to divide common lands amoung locals, and once that was done he helped oversee grant allocations from the EU. Despite being part of bureacracies, at the core of what he did best was to walk, look, listen and interact with land and the people on it. I think that's amazing, don't you agree Richard Long?

Matthias Heiderich – Colour Berlin

Behance
via grainedit
matthias-heiderich.de

RSA Animate - The Secret Powers of Time

Professor Philip Zimbardo conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world.
Lots more of these videos here. Super engrossing.

And, following up from a recent post about mirror neurons and the scientific validity of empathy, here is an appropriate video from the series expanding on this. It is based on a lecture by Jeremy Rifkin.