Here are some cool photos of an abandoned Japanese amusement park. Looks like the photographer’s name is Tadashi Taro Shibakoen (at least that’s what a Google translation says), and it looks he was even able to climb around on the coaster tracks– perhaps the liability laws are a little different over there. And here are more photos from abandoned spaces in Japan. I especially like this restaurant/banquet room place.
The Atlantic has a nice graphic displaying the changes in American society and government since 2000. Read the sources for the map.
In Miami, a group called Take Back the Land is moving homeless families into previously empty, foreclosed homes. And a lot of people are happy about the situation: the neighbors prefer it to an empty sometimes-looted shell next door, the police don’t mind, the banks don’t mind –and even prefer that someone’s doing a little upkeep on their property.
In Animalia, Basque photographer Mikel Uribetxeberria puts animals in domestic situations to nice effect. Reminds me of Doug Aitken’s amazing Migration installation at 303 Gallery in New York.
Hoping to shore up a $10 million dollar budget shortfall, Brandeis will close its Rose Art Museum and sell off more than 8,000 pieces of modern in its collection including works by Jasper John, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Matthew Barney, Helen Frankenthaler, Nan Goldin, Donald Judd, Richard Serra, Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith.
In Danish photographer Peter Funch’s series Babel Tales, you can see where Photoshop and street photography meet. See more of his work at the V1 Gallery in Copenhagen and Levine & Leavitt in New York.
You might like the bright, minimalist work from Spanish photographer Aleix Plademunt. I especially like espectafors where he turns some beautiful vistas into waiting rooms and his cult gallery and scotland grey too. See more at Galerie Waltman in Paris.
Pittsburgh artists Benjamin Kinsley and Robin Hewlet and the Mattress Factory museum teamed up with Google to create an interactive art piece using Google Streetview. They created scenes along Sampsonia Way in Pittsburg that could have taken place, but probably could never have all happened at the same time. A ten-foot plucked chicken sits behind a chainlink fence, two men have a medieval sword fight, a faux marathon runs by, firefighters save a cat in a tree, a garage band plays in a garage, and a high school marching band parades by in just a few blocks of Sampsonia Way at the same time. Read more or watch video of how they pulled it off.
Watch Charlyne Yi’s Man on the Street.
Take a look at the President’s Crackberry. It seems to be a $3,300 Sectera Edge that is NSA-approved and has the ability to communicate classified emails and phone calls.
My favorite presidential portrait is here.
Hong Kong architect Gary Chang has done the most of his 344-square foot apartment. By using shifting wall units suspended from steel tracks bolted into the ceiling his studio can transform into at least 24 different layouts. Check out the photos.
At precisely noon yesterday a change happened in this country. The whitehouse.gov website has changed with the new President and it brings a few touches of clean design and function from Obama’s campaign site. Another thing under the hood has changed too, the robots.txt file for the whitehouse.gov website is different now too. The last robot.txt file under the Bush White House prevented search engines from indexing more than 2400 files and directories on the site. The new administration’s site prevents the indexing of only one directory. This is an encouraging, if small, sign of a more transparent government from the Obama administration.
A group of Americans are taught to fly by some Norwegians who jump from the highest cliffs in the world. It’s like a dream.
wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.
For 2009, we’ve got a nice, new look here at houze.net. There are lots more features now, like live twitter updates and the ability to comment again (damn you spammers, damn you all to hell!). Under the hood it’s all Wordpress as well as lots of customizing built on top of the Whitepress theme created by John Tsevdos. Hey look, I’m posting an iphone photo to Flickr while I’m twittering about this blog post right now!