Without wanting to rehash everything which has already been said the world is clearly in shock at the events which have occurred and are still unfolding in Japan. For most people we can only look on at the vivid pictures being beamed into our homes with a mix of emotions and an overriding feeling of helplessness in the face of mother natures wrath.
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals (think Facebook, but more serious), has launched a new service called InMaps that visualises your ‘connections’ to other people as a single network graph. I had a play with it earlier and here’s how my network of 163 people who I’ve connected with through work looks like:
Last weekend Shenzhen opened its first Fringe festival centered around Coastal City in Nanshan (where I live) loosely based on the original from Edinburgh. Two weeks of events are planned and proceedings kicked off with a colourful parade with various community groups taking part along Shenzhen Bay Avenue.
It struck me yesterday while playing with my iPhone that hardware is no longer what defines an object in much the same way that a person’s body is not what makes us who we are (even if it is a contributing factor). Technology of the past was defined by physical switches and buttons which each served a singe function but todays devices are mere windows into the software which ties all their components together. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.
Harajuku (原宿) is an area north of Shibuya (next to Meiji Shrine) which is renowned as the center of Japan’s extreme teenage fashion styles where young people gather on Sundays to socialise and show-off. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to visit on a Sunday but I did wander around the adjacent shopping district and came across a few interesting places of note.
Last night I finally saw Inception in the cinema (it only came out this week in China). Like most people I was blow away by the ingenious complexity of the dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream storyline and immediately sat down with a pen and paper to try to work it all out. Below is my attempt to visualise the various levels of the storyline (SPOILER warning):
I never knew there was an art to typographic design until one day one of my friends told me she had studied it (while simultaneously trashing the layout of something I had just made). This new world of serif, san-serif, ascenders, descenders, terminals, baselines and kerning fascinated me so I set out to try to educate myself on the subject.
Last Sunday evening I had the pleasure of being invited to present some of my photos along with ten other photographers at a “Photo Story Exhibition and Salon” held at Yishu Art Book Bar in Shekou, Shenzhen. While a few of my photos have been used in a couple of museum exhibitions I’d never properly presented them before and was a bit nervous to be doing so alongside real professionals!
As a foreigner in China it’s not unusual to get stopped by people wanting to take your photo (especially outside big cities or at tourist attractions). This is OK the first few times but does get increasingly tiresome, especially when you don’t like having your photo taken in the first place. A friend of mine was recently looking for a way to deter said snappers so I put together a quick T-shirt design for her:
The words “culture” and “Shenzhen” are rarely heard together in the same sentence, such is the nature of a young city of immigrants who have come to make their fortune. This isn’t to say there is no culture in Shenzhen but it can be hard to find. One place trying to invigorate Shenzhen’s art scene is OCT-LOFT in Nanshan district where old factory buildings have been renovated into a modern art and cultural center (somewhat similar to Beijing’s 798 district).