I stumbled upon a fallen redwood in Northern California along the Avenue of the Giants in 2005. I immediately fell in love with the grove, including what I have since called "my tree." I set everything up and took a self-portrait in black and white film. Every year and sometimes twice a year since, I have carefully picked my way through the Avenue of the Giants in the hope that I will recognize......read more
Fully automated electric taxis could dramatically reduce transportation sector's emmisions, a new study finds. By Lindsay Abrams The energy efficient cars of the future will allow the transportation sector to lower its greenhouse gas emissions not just because they’re electric — but because they’ll also be driverless. That’s the forward-looking conclusion of a new......read more
14-year-old Zev (aka "fiddle oak") from Natick, Massachusetts has the blogosphere abuzz with his mesmerizing, digitally manipulated self-portraits. And for good reason. They would be impressive coming from an adult. Looking like illustrations from the best children's story book ever, the imaginative works depict a miniaturized version of the artist himself in surreal natural landscapes.......read more
Imagination plus sense of space gives JeeYoung Lee's photographs their magical quality. Once again, this series has zero post-image manipulation. Working like a set designer, Lee creates these incredible situations for real. JeeYoung Lee creates highly elaborate scenes that require an incredible amount of patience and absolutely no photo manipulation. For weeks and sometimes......read more
A pair of industrial designers have dreamed up an alpine hut that can be airdropped into remote mountain zones to provide adventurers with a high-tech, self-sufficient home away from home. The “Huba, a design concept by Malgorzata Blachnicka and Michal Holcer, is designed for high-elevation places (3,280 feet above sea level and higher), where wind speeds can reach 100 feet per second.......read more
For her Earth Paintings series, German artist Ulrike Arnold travels the world to create abstract site-specific works on canvas using pigments taken directly from the earth. Borrowing from an artistic lineage dating back over 300,000 years, when humans began painting rock art using ochre pigments, Arnold's work emerges from direct experience with the earth itself. To paint with these earth......read more
It's always a challenge to apply the principles of modernism to architecture in rural places. In urban neighborhoods, clean lines and square angles sit harmoniously with the street grid, but out in the country they can come off as rigid and unnatural. Architect Lisa Moffitt manages to avoid these pitfalls with the House on Limekiln Line, an off-grid home in Ontario’s rural Huron......read more
With conservative skeptics in Congress thwarting national action on climate change, states and cities are making moves to address the issue. The latest government to step up is the City of Chicago, whose Climate Action Plan acknowledges the reality of rising global temperatures — and readies the city for a warmer future. In the first of a series of NYT articles on......read more
For most of us, the thought of being without clothes in some dark, desolate corner of an abandoned factory is, quite literally, a nightmare. For Miru Kim, it's just another day at the office. In Naked City Spleen, the New York-based artist photographs herself standing stark naked in urban ruins such as abandoned tunnels, sewers, catacombs, factories, hospitals, and shipyards. The body of work......read more
What's with Canadians and turning trash to energy, eh? The latest ingenious idea is to convert waste soda and beer (because no self-respecting Canadian would throw good beer down the drain) into ethanol that will in turn be used to power a waste plant on the Atlantic seaboard. The pilot project is an initiative of New Brunswick Community College's Bio-energy and Bio-products Applied......read more