A beautiful talk by Elif Shafak.

“…communities of the like minded is one of the greatest dangers of today’s globalized world. And it’s happening everywhere, among liberals and conservatives, agnostics and believers, the rich and the poor, East and West alike. We tend to form clusters based on similarity, and then we produce stereotypes about other clusters of people. In my opinion, one way of transcending these cultural ghettos is through the art of storytelling. Stories cannot demolish frontiers, but they can punch holes in our mental walls.”

La Fete (HD – 2010) from Malcolm Sutherland on Vimeo.

A lovely short video by Malcolm Sutherland, looking at people at a “La Fete Nationale” celebration in Montreal, Quebec. Combined with music by Kevin Kardasz, it’s people watching captured at it’s best.

Japan – The Strange Country (Japanese ver.) from Kenichi on Vimeo.

for english version follow the link:

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/t1BQBJnvEIQ/

“Emotionally Vague is a research project about the body and emotion…” I really like the visual simplicity of the results. Check them out on the Emotionally Vague website.

Today we visited the MIT Museum in Cambridge and saw the Arthur Ganson exhibit. His work put a smile on my face. Each of his little machines, some being very simple and some quite complex, seemed to have their own strong personalities. Especially the little wishbone and the artichoke petal…

I am overwhelmed by how beautiful this video is.

This morning I got an email from my dear friend Wojtyna. I am glad that it was the first email that I read today because it inspired me very much! Wojtyna pointed out this “neck hugger” to me, which e found on Etsy. This way I found out about Maronon and her work. She has lot’s of beautiful jewelry and accessories and I was even more excited to see some pictures of her process on flicker. Very inspiring find overall, including the quality of her documentation!

I am fairly familiar with Konstantin Grcic’s work even though I had no idea how to pronounce his last name. I think apart from the work that was being displayed I really enjoyed the “presentation”. The way the two dimensional materials such as sketches, process pictures and the inspirations were presented on the walls and on the floorboards along the walls reminded me of a studio desk setup (see the post below). I recommend everyone to go see it before January 24th. You can even sit on all the chairs to test them out in the middle “chilling” area.

Side Story: My hair was still damp when I left the hairdresser ($14 haircuts at Aveda Institute) and my curls froze to the point that I could break them! It was pretty cool.