Category Archives: Blog

Seawalls: Artists for Oceans in Quirky Napier, New Zealand

On a recent cycling trip to Napier, the Polish Bear and I were astonished to find the most amazing street art in the side alleys, shop fronts and carpark walls. Art Deco Napier is a place full of surprises. Seawalls Napier: Bringing the oceans to the streets Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans is a groundbreakingContinue reading “Seawalls: Artists for Oceans in Quirky Napier, New Zealand”

Linden Frederick: Night swimming through urban landscapes

Linden Frederick paints ultra-realistic everyday scenes during the nocturnal hush of the evening. In the real world many of these buildings would be unremarkable, but in the hands of Frederick these shabby homes and plain looking commercial buildings take on a different form at dusk and night, there is a mysterious imagining of the building’sContinue reading “Linden Frederick: Night swimming through urban landscapes”

Asmrion the online generator of positive feelings

Asmrion is an elegant and beautiful ambient sound simulator that’s best enjoyed with headphones. It’s completely interactive and has a very natural, organic and soothing user experience with subtle buttons to shift up and down volume. It’s possible to attune yourself with these app tools to varying states of consciousness, all pleasant, reassuring and relaxingContinue reading “Asmrion the online generator of positive feelings”

<3 The Internet: Recommend me a book

Stuck on what to read next? Hate judging books by their covers? Then the Recommend me a book app will delight you. The app takes you headlong into reading the first few pages of a book without knowing anything about the author, title or context of the book itself. This allows you to gain some traction andContinue reading “<3 The Internet: Recommend me a book”

Marshall Berman: All that is solid melts into air

To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world – and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything that we know, everything that we are. Marshall Berman, “All that is solid melts into air’.

Postconscious: a web experiment

POSTCONSCIOUS is a web experiment by Andrew McCarthy that extracts random posts from Twitter, and reads them aloud using Speech Cloud text-to-speech. The app uses a cute and kitsch reverb effects and a retro typeface called Space Mono. What results is a strange echo-chamber of vaguely familiar and yet alien sounding voices coming out ofContinue reading “Postconscious: a web experiment”

Hiroshi Yoshimura – Soundscape 1 Surround

Over the coming weeks I will share an eclectic lucky dip of music that I discovered and loved via subreddit /r/listentothis, Here is no.5 on the jukebox, Japanese ambient/new age producer Hiroshi Yoshimura’s floaty album Soundscape 1 Surround from 1986.  There is something eerily familiar about Hiroshi Yoshimura’s 1986 album Soundscape 1 Surround. It’s soContinue reading “Hiroshi Yoshimura – Soundscape 1 Surround”

<3 The Internet: Solistice Streets makes pagan worship easy

Solistice Streets is a web-based app that’s the brainchild of some pagan programmers who wanted to make it easier to worship the seasons and the summer solistice (21st of December) and winter solistice (20th June). In particular they wanted to create an online place for collective worship in honour of Stonehenge. A place where onContinue reading “<3 The Internet: Solistice Streets makes pagan worship easy”