Meekyoung Shin

Translation Vases (2009),

Shin reproduces several pieces of highly collectable porcelain - produced in China since the sixteenth century for consumption in the West - translating the form directly from the original. By rendering these precious objects in a seemingly fragile and transient material such as soap, Shin questions the authority and originality the original vases demand. Presenting the new vases on the packing crates

in which they are shipped from location to location further emphasises the sense of dislocation and transformation.

Guilty Pleasures 2

Rankins' American Horror Series

genuinely quite a strange film...

Ode to Entropy

All change distributes energy

spills what cannot be gathered again.

Each meal, each smile,

each foot-race to the well by Jack and Jill

scatters treasure, lets fall

gold straws once woven from the resurgent dust.

The night sky blazes with Byzantine waste.

The bird's throbbing is expenditure,

and the tide's soughing,

and the tungsten filament illumining my hand.

A ramp has been built into probability

the universe cannot re-ascend.

For our small span,

the sun has fuel, the moon lifts the lulling sea,

the highway shudders with stolen hydrocarbons.

--John Updike

Jana Sterbak

the oldest thing we have ever seen

This image shows the afterglow of GRB 090423 (red source in the centre) and was created from images taken in the z, Y and J filters at Gemini-South and VLT (credit: A. J. Levan).

“This explosion provides an unprecedented look at an era when the Universe was very young and also was undergoing drastic changes. The primal cosmic darkness was being pierced by the light of the first stars and the first galaxies were beginning to form. The star that exploded in this event was a member of one of these earliest generations of stars,” said Dale Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Perito Moreno Glacier

Chankillo, Peru

The Thirteen Towers of Chankillo run from north to south along the ridge of a low hill within the site; they are relatively well-preserved and each has a pair of inset staircases leading to the summit.

The rectangular structures, between 75 and 125 square metres (807-1,345 sq ft) in size, are regularly spaced - forming a "toothed" horizon with narrow gaps at regular intervals.

About 230m (750ft) to the east and west are what scientists believe to be two observation points. From these vantages, the 300m- (1,000ft-) long spread of the towers along the horizon corresponds very closely to the rising and setting positions of the Sun over the year.