Aesthetically, I have always hated down pipes on facades - like pit lids, they always seem to be an afterthough which wasn't thought through... Atypical of this, the Funnel Wall in Kunsthofpassage in Dresden, Germany plays music when it rains. 
Some props to help those of us who over analyze everything and talk to ourselves to get through the day.
I pronounce the Silly Season... OPEN ~
Would have loved to be there for the briefing meeting for the engineer who made this happen... Maybe Gehry should use the "But, your honor, its art!!" defense for the Stata Center case.Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.
In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.
‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.
In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.
A granite paving sample fell on my friend and co-worker Jooyeon's foot yesterday and bruised her. I don't think it she was using it for the purposes that the sample was issued, in fact I think she was using it to stabilize a book that she was photographing because she couldn't be bothered scanning, so maybe its the sample's way protesting its abuse. (I have been reading the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). But the incident got me wondering if there was a better way to manage the millions of paving samples that we receive constantly - I request new ones for every project because its simply too hard to find the ones I want in the existing sample collection. And voila ~ the interior designers have already come up with a way of doing this... At this year’s NeoCon World’s Trade Fair, Tricycle launched a significant expansion of the program, called Tryk. Previously the company could only create samples of tufted carpet, but Tryk works with woven carpet as well as wall-coverings and fabrics. It also allows for different scales and larger sizes—and the image quality is improved. “We continue to move toward a more photorealistic image,” says Michael Hendrix, Tricycle’s creative director and chief brand officer. “If you could see an image from three years ago, the tufts looked flatter. We’ve been able to improve the perception of volume in the overall look.”
"Vote for the Drivers of Change that you think will influence your area of work. Vote as many times as you like and add your own if you feel that a driver is missing." ...vote here 
In the artist, Jason Freeny's words -
"We harness interruptive technology to expose the secret possibilities of the workday. As a time-stealing agency, the Bureau of Workplace Interruptions works directly with employees to invisibly insert intimate exchange into the flow of the workday. Our promise is to create interruptions that challenge the needs of our users and the social and economic conditions of the modern workplace.You know how receiving flowers at work can put a buzz on the rest of the day? So do we. That's why we create surprise, the kind that slices through the banal and opens up new places for your mind to wander. The ruptures we create are temporary spaces for open dialogue, invisible resistance, and general amusement. In short, we hope to invigorate some of the time you spend at work in order to create new experiences and possibilities outside the flow of capital."
ANYMAILI have investigated how I can use natural metaphors to visualize my inbox, its structure and attributes. The metaphor of microbes is used. My objective is to offer the user another experience of his email world.
The project was developed during the MFA thesis “Natural Metaphor For Information Visuzalization” (thesis.zip, PDF, 7mb) at the Dynamic Media Intitute Boston in 2007.
The emails used in the prototype are read from the users local Apple Mail database. The prototype was built with Flash and Processing. The Anymails source code (OS-X 10.4.9 ppc) is available for download (2.5mb)."
via the underwire
A Chinese farmer has made his own solar-powered water heater out of beer bottles and hosepipes. “I invented this for my mother. I wanted her to shower comfortably,” says Ma Yanjun, of Qiqiao village, Shaanxi province. Ma’s invention features 66 beer bottles attached to a board. The bottles are connected to each other so that water flows through them. Sunlight heats the water as is passes slowly through the bottles before flowing into the bathroom as hot water, reports China Economy Network. Ma says it provides enough hot water for all three members of his family to have a shower every day. And more than 10 families in the village have already followed suit and installed their own versions of Ma’s invention.
