Tracing Shadows

Here is a very interesting art display by American photographer Michael Neff called "The Chalk Series". The following is the artist's discription of his work...

These images capture the quiet, empty world of night, when parking lots lay fallow, when meters are allowed to rest and sidewalks can breathe. In tracing the fugitive contours of shadows cast by the patient lights of the night, I draw the attention of the nighttime passerby and reveal what the night holds. In this way I am sharing the night city with its daytime inhabitants and making visible something that is normally hidden. I photograph these drawings because, rendered in chalk, they themselves are fugitive and may only last until they are hosed down in the morning. I want to draw attention to what is likely overlooked, or perhaps so familiar that it is essentially invisible.

One Thousand and One Dreams

Note: This post contains nudity and may not be safe for work, if you are easily offended and/or under 18 please avoid looking at the following pictures.


Married couple Moroccan artist Yasmina Alaoui and Chilean photographer Marco Guerra have created this captivating series called "one thousand and one dreams". Inspired by the legendary tales of A Thousand and One Nights, the photographic series combines nude photography with delicate ink drawings, otherwise known in other cultures as henna.

Here the human body form is treated as a medium for complex geometrical and floral decorations. In some artworks these decorations would gradually disappear to the background. In other works, the decorated bodies stand out in contrast with the plain black background, a method which effectively emphasizes the shadows created by the sensual curves of the human body.

From what I read about the series I am not sure if the bodies were actually painted and then photographed or if they were photographed first and then digitally painted. Either way, the end result is mesmerising and can only evoke a strong feeling of admiration.

A cool gadget

I found this cute design by JVC revealed in the 2008 Tokyo Designer's Week. Its called Kirikabu speakers, which are made of renewable materials, can be assembled into different shapes and even grow a tiny bonsai tree on it.

More info here and here

A Special Fountain

This is an amazing fountain in Japan, according to the title of the video found in YouTube. The best part starts at 1:48. Watch the entire video though, I find it very relaxing, especially with the nice water rhythm the different shapes create.

The pink and blue project

According to a recent study by scientists at Newcastle University, the difference in colour preferences between men and women has biological and not cultural roots. It goes back to ancient times when women were primarily involved in gathering fruit and vegetables, while men were involved in hunting. Fruits and vegetables are edible when they are ripe, and this often means when they are bright hued, generally red or green. Blue, on the other hand, is a direct reference to blue sky, the sign of good weather and therefore auspicious for gathering food and water. The information collected by researchers shows that males prefer colours in the blue-yellow range, while females instinctively go to the red-green hues, and especially pink.

“The Pink and Blue Project” is achieved by JeongMee Yoon on a different context yet could very well be a visual guide to the research. Children are photographed in their rooms, surrounded by their clothes, toys and accessories with their faces lost in a maniacally orderly multiplicity of objects.

Text and pics from Zoom magazine.

Boom Town

This is the Dubai sandwich: at the bottom, cheap and exploited Asian labour; in the middle, white northern professional services, plus tourist hunger for glamour in the sun and, increasingly, a de-monopolised western market system; at the top, enormous quantities of invested oil money, combined with fearsome social and political control and a drive to establish another model of what modern Arabia might mean in the post-9/11 world. That is the intriguing question: can Dubai do what Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, or almost anywhere else in the Arab world you might like to mention, have failed to do? Is Dubai, in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern centre of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab centre of the modern world.

Read more here