Cool Stuff Friday

First up, absolutely stunning macro shots of some awesome insect architecture: Macro Photographs of Nature’s Tiniest Architects by Nicky Bay. Be sure to click the link so you can see all of the photos. All I have is “Wow!”

Arctiine moth pupa (Cyana sp.)

Arctiine moth pupa (Cyana sp.)

Bagworm Moth

Bagworm Moth

Next, a lake of mirrors. This left me speechless. A Photographer’s Digital Journey to Produce a Lake of Shattered Mirrors.

“Impact” by Erik Johansson, image provided by artist.

“Impact” by Erik Johansson, image provided by artist.

Swedish photographer Erik Johansson had a vision for a digital photograph of a lake shattering like a mirror, an image he wanted to produce as accurately as possible. To achieve this effect for Impact, Johansson bought 17 square meters of mirrors, found a boat and a model, and posed all three in a stone pit until he got the best shot for the final image. Several months of planning, shooting, and editing later and he has an entire video that documents the tasks that lie far beyond the many hours he spent in Photoshop.

Get A Life

westwood-diary

Dame Vivienne Westood DBE RDI has just blown out her 75 candles, but she’s already back at work with the announcement of a new book. The “godmother of punk” is compiling her best journal entries in Get a Life: The Diaries of Vivienne Westwood.

Dame Viv is pictured on the cover wearing a portrait of transgender WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, currently imprisoned for sharing classified information on the Iraq war.

“My diaries are about the things I care about,” Westwood said. “Not just fashion but art and writing, human rights, climate change, freedom. I call the diaries Get a Life as that’s how I feel: You’ve got to get involved, speak out and take action.”

Get a Life will be released on October 6, 2016. This will definitely be on my stack of fall books, and I’m looking forward to it. The 75 candles link is NSFW.

Standing On Sacred Ground

Eight Cultures, One Fight.

Around the world, indigenous people stand up for their traditional sacred lands in defense of cultural survival, human rights and the environment.

Watch them stand against industrial mega-projects, consumer culture, resource extraction, competing religions, tourists and climate change.

[…]

As part of a four-part documentary series on indigenous struggles over sacred sites that was over seven years in the making, Standing on Sacred Ground, will be broadcast on PBS’s First Nations Experience channel (FNX) as well as other stations to include KQED through April and May, nationally on WorldChannel and the San Francisco Bay Area station KCSM beginning Sunday, April 17 through Friday, April 22 (Earth Day.) … The project airs over the course of four episodes and includes stories on the indigenous shamans of the Altai Republic of Russia, a northern California tribe, the Papua New Guinea people, the First Nations near the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, the Gamo Highland peoples of Ethiopia to the indigenous communities near the Andes of Peru, as well as Aboriginal Australians and Native Hawaiians.

Standing On Sacred Ground Home. Broadcast Schedule. ICTMN article.

Oceti Sakowin and Chante tin’sa kinanzi Po

The protest against the Dakota access pipeline continues.

 

The spirit riders at Standing Rock show support for keeping the Missouri River waters clean.

The spirit riders at Standing Rock show support for keeping the Missouri River waters clean.

In the coming weeks or maybe even days, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will issue a decision as to whether or not they will allow the Dakota Access Pipeline, also known as the Bakken Pipeline, to be constructed.

Until then, citizens and allies of the Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires of the Great Sioux Nation) will continue to protest the pipeline, urging stakeholders to recognize the devastation that would ensue should the pipeline be built.

“The DAPL poses a threat to our people, cultural and historically significant areas,” said Paula Antonie, Chair of Shielding the People and a Rosebud Sioux tribal citizen. “We will stand by our Hunkpapa relatives in defending against any major environmental, public health and safety hazards within our treaty territory.”

The proposed pipeline would stretch for thousands miles across four states beginning in western North Dakota and ending in Indiana. It would cross the Missouri River mere feet away from the northern border of the Standing Rock Reservation, threatening to contaminate and destroy the waters.

Full Story Here.

Cool Stuff Friday

The Creator’s Project on Instagram. Some fabulous work there, have a browse.

 

Creators

Turning thousands of discarded plastic bottles into art

 

Serge Attukwei Clottey uses his art installations to educate local communities about pollution and waste. Photograph: Serge Attukwei Clottey

Serge Attukwei Clottey uses his art installations to educate local communities about pollution and waste. Photograph: Serge Attukwei Clottey

The brightly coloured plastic jugs once played a vital role transporting water during Ghana’s droughts. Now, they’re creating a new environmental catastrophe of their own.

Seas of discarded yellow, blue and white containers – referred to locally as “Kufuor gallons” after the water crises endured under president John Kufuor in the early 2000s – have become a troubling part of Ghana’s landscape.

No longer used by local communities, vast quantities of jerry cans have built up on city streets, dumps and beaches, contributing to worsening pollution levels. In response to the growing crisis and government inaction, local artist Serge Attukwei Clottey has started using large-scale plastic art installations as a way to draw attention to the issue.

The artist says his aim is to galvanise the local community to combat the large quantities of plastic waste now blocking sewers in cities and endangering wildlife habitats along the coastline.

Clottey, who has been gathering the containers for more than 15 years, cuts them into small tiles and shapes them over an open flame, later moulding sections together and binding them with copper.

The process results in what he refers to as “paint-less paintings” – large plastic tapestries that also incorporate other salvaged waste items, such as discarded electrical goods or wood, bones and shells gathered from the coastal neighbourhood where he lives and works in the capital, Accra.

The full article is here.