A Second Tulip Mania, do the prices of contemporary art works represent a 'classic investment bubble'? 'In Russia [contemporary art sales] rose 2,365 per cent in five years (2000-05)'. Also, 'In Britain, there was the Banksy market, a kind of contemporary art lite, for people with thousands rather than millions to spend. Images that would once have never made it past a T-shirt, mug or wall, were now bought and sold as limited edition prints and stencils on canvas.' Comments at First Drafts, the Prospect Magazine blog.

Disappearing Places, via me-fi, the cartography of nostalgia / Unusual and Imaginary Maps / Hoogerland National Railways / we can build you, a tumblr / Ninth Letter, a weblog / Ruffly, a very minimalist blog / The Diorama Diaries, or how a contemporary humorous essayist translates their work into something flickrable.

The Dark Lord of Logos meets the Metal Band Name Generator. Any logo generators out there? / CTRL+V, think we linked this one before / CTRL+C, copy and paste a new Taj Mahal. A move that has not been popular in India / Vroman's, a tumblr / Futurgasm, 'future excitements of the world' / Eskissos, an architecture weblog.

Nukephoto.com, 'the comprehensive source for photographs of U.S. nuclear weapons systems' (via me-fi, again) / Stephen Fry seems to be single-handedly keeping every mobile phone company in business right now / an extraordinary set of photographs of fossil hunting in the former Green Sahara. The giraffe petroglyph is incredible.

Spaceship!, a piece of 'Collaborative Interactive Fiction' from The Guardian's Gamesblog Community. Play the demo. Heavy shades of HHGTTG ('This must be a Thursday.') but promising nonetheless / Popular Mechanics, lots of / C.Y.L, an image log with music and video too / Maiike, a weblog / make books at blurb / is Shanghai built with dodgy steel? / The Clothes that got me laid, fashion advice in blog form for sartorially driven metrosexuals.

The Barclay Brothers (poor Wikipedia entry) start closing down their interests on the small island of Sark. On the face of it, this looks very much like the kind of feudal behaviour the newspaper owners are claiming to be striving to remove. Following their failure to win popular support for their 'regime' ('It just shows that turkeys can vote for Christmas', according to a member of the 'Barclay camp'), will the Barclays retreat to their castle on Brecqhou?

Top image from The Little Artists.

Labels: linkage

posted by things at 12:33 / 1 comments