The whole situation was very Hitchcock

Ian Stevenson's art is funny, twisted, unconventional and it speaks loud from the facade of a building to the viewers passing by. Like all the easy things Ian's art is also hard to actually get. 

As many contemporary british street artists Ian can be highly visible and at the same time he would act as a chameleon hiding his messages in very unikely places such as bags of trash. 

Capital letters, very basic lines and forms, big smiles and mice, all the features in his works scream simplicity and forwardness. 

As I saw his pieces I thought about a sort of JeremyVille, darker somehow but undoubtly hilariously twisted. 

Short film "ALMOST HOME" by DreamWorks Animation introduces the audience to a whole new universe of cinematic fun...

They are an alien race, the Boovs: alongside with their charismatic leader, Smek (Steve Martin), the clumsy group creatures from the space are reaching Earth after a long, unsuccessful quest all over the galaxy to find the perfect planet to take over.

This is the plot of HOME, the new animation feature by DreamWorks Animation coming out later next winter. The short film serves as a introduction of the charachters since they are all new to the audience and to explain how they eventually ended up on our planet. The story will develop around an unlikely friendship between a little girl and one of the aliens.

Nicolas Bruno - Incognito

Young artist Bruno is a photographer from Northport, (NY), born in 1993.  

His art so far struck me for the subjects: events of dangerous nature that involve people running from fire or silently facing death or refuging. Those human characters either have no face or they are blindfolded, other times we can just distinguish their presence in the smoke. They are alone or if they are with someone the other person is the one where the danger is originated. However even if in peril, the people depicted still are calm, maybe not knowing what is happening, they pose elegantly as they face their fate (are they challenging fate?). 

Like other photographers, Bruno directs plays with no ending, suspended just before the final act.

Susanne Heintz - Meet the Heintzs

Susanne was tired of answering to friends and relatives asking her -are you married | why aren't you married?- during social gatherings and family meetings. 

Why does a modern woman still have to give reasons why she choose spinsterhood? A woman that is not sporting the wedding ring or that did not push a toddler in his stroller for some time in her life is often considered less woman. And you all know common sayings. 

Starting from these arguments, Susanne, started working on a project, difficult but at the same time meaningful: she decided to get married to a mannequin and raise its child. The unlikely family traveled the world with a Kodak camera documenting with photographs everything they were doing like any other normal family does. Life in plastic is fantastic, 

14 years in the making, thousands of miles covered and a lot of perfect family pictures. What are the differences between Susanne's family album and your family album? Those perfect family albums with all the poses sometimes feels like people in it are made in plastic. Albums are often used as proof of normality,- yes i have a caring husband and a son, look... here! we are skiing on the Dolomites... and here ahah it was Christmas two years ago...blahblah.

Susanne's works also speak loud about free will and self consciousness. Having a real family is difficult but is not easy to have to phisically carry your mannequin family around the world and then build them on the place and enjoy your day out. It is all about choice, Susanne choosed not to follow the same path that many of her friends and people she knows did.

Nonetheless her family album is ugly or less beautiful that the normal. 

Well Barbie, we're just getting started.

Fliike : Let Facebook in your activity, phisically

- Are you a fan of quirky, nerdy new goodies that are also cool and fresh?

- Do you own an activity or a businnes?

- Do you need a new way to show off your number of followers on FB?

The Fliike is the first phisical real time Facebook fan counter. It cost around $400 and is currently sold out.

Smiirl, a french company designed this product, with the smaller businesses in mind, like shops and restaurants, not the huge brands, in fact the counter stops at 99.999. 

The flip-counter device easy as it gets must be connected via wi-fi to a FB page account that's it. The producers are collecting feedback and working on costumized versions of the device, something that can maybe count also Twitter stats, G+ etc.

I personally like the simple kind of country-ish old toy-ish design of this counter, it reminds me of the old calendars at my grandma's.

APP here comes the future in the moviegoing experience

First it was Odorama and then 3D, now it is time for the second screen tech that promises major engagement and enahnced cinema experience.

So far only Disney worked with synchronized second-screen technologies where the second screen is the one people hold in their hands in form of Ipad. Before the screening of re-releases of classics such as The Little Marmaid people were asked to download a special app that would have shown them special contents during the movie. Apart from that almost nothing has been done, until now, in Europe, Netherlands.

Bobby Boermans axperiments and directs APP a movie that is produced and thought as a new way to engage with public, in particular the teens and young adults who are notorious to not be able to move away from their mobile devices also during screenings. 

Why not tranforming a bad habit into something creative and fun? And so after downloading the App (called Iris, available both for Iphone and Android) people can be absorbed into the movie at a level never reached before. 

in the movie APP the plot goes around a girl, Anna, a student of psychology who after a trauma became completely addicted to her smartphone. The morning after a crazy bash Anna discovers a new app installed on her phone, it goes under the name of IRIS. The mysterious app is soon revealing some dark sides as it is able to answer personal questions related to Anna troubled past. Soon Iris turns out to be something far more dangerous that just a small program.

This movie is the latest feature addressing the topic of technology and the way artificial intelligence is entering our lives and influencing our mind and feelings; on a different level the critics favorite Her succeeded in showing the love between a human and an operating system.

The movie APP utilizes an audio watermark technology that dialogues with the devices running the app during the screenings. Information (watermarks) not audible by human ears are captured by the mobiles connected who as response to that input allow their owners to access additional contents through the app. And so clues can be revealed, images, hidden details are shown, etc. 

The app will feature more than 30 interactions accessible during the screenings.

The movie is promised to be equally enjoyable for people that will choose not to install the app, plus there won't be particular annoyance since the app will only features visual contents and not audio.

MAT COLLISHAW - Youth and Beauty Under Attack

Mat is a London based artist born in 1966, he is most likely to work with digital photography and video. "Burning Butterflies" collection is a series of pictures taken by Mat back in 2004 and showcased more recently in Verona.

In a simple picture so much content can be read and analyzed. A butterfly is slowly burning against a dark canvas. Butterfly often symbolize something that is beautiful and that lives short, something that is very fragile and that flies in freedom with grace, a being that is a miracle of nature and evolution. This art is making us reflect about youth, about things we want to do before it is too late, resolutions, and atonement.

Beyond that the photos are showing various phases of the burning - we are left questioning ourselves whether the fire was self starting from the inside of the butterfly or if someone has set the insect on fire. Is this fire meaning death or another step of the evolution of the caterpillar? You will tend to the latter if you happen to be a positive thinker; otherwise all you can see is a grotesque depiction of the End of Beauty, a moment we all experience, when we give up to aging or to illness. Or a moment of internal decay to the zenith, when our inside is so corrupted that starts ruining and destroying also our outer appearence. If you are a pessimist this is a moment of undeniable destruction, something is forever gone. And you can't do nothing but watch. Butterflies are helpless, like us at some point even if we are at the top of our beauty, death can come to us unexpected and uninvited.

Not only butterflies are dying in this collection. In fact also a bouquet of fresh roses are devoured by flames. Roses and flowers too are often linked to the idea of perfect beauty and life. Is the artist commiting some sort of crime by attacking so directly these values? What is our positions when we see the others burning?

Silvia Camporesi - Out of The Myst and into the Gondola with Antonioni.

The fog that lurks around the objects of these photographies is soft, somehow mysterious but not distant, maybe the opposite -  it is inviting us to blow it away and reveal what is now hidden, something that is just a stone away from us. It is easy for me to love these pictures of my beloved Venice.

Armed with her tools and her vision, Silvia, decided to spend a month living in the Serenissima, during the month of February, the only time of the year when the city is almost desert, silent and not invaded by the tourists. This quiet lasts for a moment. The Carnival is just some days around the corner and the city will be screaming again but it will be also somehow dead, completely empied of its romantic allure. Silvia depicts a city in its real essence, in its eternal beauty, she is portraying the real soul of Venice.

The artist allow the city to actually breathe in this collection where no one else is around walking or shouting. I spent infinite minutes in front of these pieces first time i saw them, in particular because I was in Venice and it was August, very close to the actual locations shown in the pictures. And thousands of people were strolling around. (Collection : The Third Venice)

Manic Street Preachers - Rewind the Film ft. Richard Hawley 

Spike Jonze's "Her" Official Trailer

Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Scarlett Johansson.

MUSE. Museo delle Scienze - Science Museum - Museum für Wissenschaf

TRENTO, Italy - 2013 July, 27. Opening Ceremony of the new Science Museum designed by Renzo Piano.

photography and text by: Luis Remelli 

A contemporary Science Museum, MuSE, just opened in Trento, a small city in Northern Italy. MuSE is part of an ambitious project of urban requalification, a district of culture and commerce designed by archistar Renzo Piano.

The intention was to create a new pole of attraction for the city. The area destined to host the new complex was a strip of land close to the river Adige; a former important industrial site for Michelin. The area, a stone’s throw from the city center is creating a new connection between Trento and the waters of the river;

MuSe is connected with the old Palazzo delle Albere (a renaissance-style Villa) just behind the museum building; the rest of the district hosts commercial activities, residences, recreational spaces, and offices.

Basically the district is recreating the city conditions on a smaller scale with facilitated pedestrian’s circulation, squares, green spaces, offices, restaurants, complex of dwellings.

Green is the dominant color in the quarter, trees and flowerbeds are adorning the outdoor spaces whenever possible.

THE MUSEUM

MuSE adopts a top down approach of the visit, from the fourth floor to the -1 the structure is replicating a real mountain, discussing the Alps peaks on the +4, the mountain environment at the +3, Geology of the Dolomites at +2, Alpine Prehistory and sustainability at +1 and Evolution at -1. An ecosystem recreating The tropical Forest of Tanzania is hosted in the greenhouse attached to the main building and connected to it. 

Zero Gravity is the leading design approach adopted for all the installations and exhibitions hosted inside the MuSE: everything looks light as it is floating in the air. Under this vision all the objects, tables, shelves, screens are all hanging from the ceiling and floating in the space. The Zero Gravity system fundamentals are two suspended constructs: vertical (graphic panels, divider) and horizontal plans (tables 2mx4m, platforms in glass, wood or stone). The result wanted is the invisibility of the supporting plans that float in the air. Zero Gravity expresses the ideal absence of weight in the installations, all the structures of the exhibit transmit lightness and transparency, a sort of invisibility of the structure in order to let the objects or the interactive exhibits to be the actual attraction. 

Inside Muse the internal structure is reconstructing a real mountain, with the -1 serving as valley bottom and +4 as the icy peak. Interactive installations, touch screens, hands on exhibits, educational materials are scattered all around the Museum in a way that lead the visitor in an educational, immersive trip that culminate with the encounter of the real ice.

Maybe the most important space in the Museum is THE BIG VOID: a large open space that connects vertically all the floors of Muse, ranging from +5 called Skylight to -1. Taxonomies are literally floating suspended into the empty space hanging from the ceiling with transparent wires. The animals depicted in their behavioral attitude are representatives of real animals, exemplifying their relative altitude distribution in the Alps in a dynamic and changing narration of stories related to mountains, enhanced by sound suggestions. An upward spiral of flying animals is places in the central space of the Big Void, at the base there are the reptiles and at the top the high altitude the birds and eagles. Behavioral postures are giving an overall impression of assisting a live wildlife documentary.

When you visit this Museum keep in mind the concept of EDUTAINMENT. (term coined in journalistic jargon to describe ‘attractions that wrapped educational content in an entertaining presentation’).

PROS: Stunning building, bright objects and exhibits, great atmosphere, large spaces, interactive exhibits that foster curiosity and encourage engagement, cozy cafe where is possible to meet researchers and scientists and ask questions…

CONS: sometime overwhelming, not all of you will love the animals hanging from everywhere.

sources :

- Gino Tomasi, Per l’idea di Natura: Storia del Museo di Scienze Naturali di Trento - Un museo dalle lontane e solide origini : la storia del Museo dalla sua istituzione alla fine del secolo scorso, 2008

- Piano Culturale del nuovo Museo delle Scienze del Trentino

Esopo's Scorpion and the Frog ...and the frog accepted to help the scorpion crossing the river giving him a ride on his back, after made him promise not to sting...

I won't sting because if I kill you then I would die too, see? I can't swim... the Scorpion said. 

How do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me...asked the Frog

I will be too grateful to reward you with death... assured the Scorpion.

The Frog agreed to take the Scorpion across the muddy river.

When they reached the second half of the stream a deadening numbness began to creep into Frog limbs. The Scorpion stung him. 

You fool! Now we shall both die! what the fuck, Why did you do that?- screamed the Frog.

I couldnt help myself, It is my NATURE. said the Scorpion while they both were siking into the muddy waters of the river.

Ladybugs and cheeseballs please take into consideration visiting Mantua soon before heading for an intense tour of Bologna or Venice.

I'm in a state of slumber

I'm allowed to be confused and stumble once in a while