Damien Hirst is at it again. He just unveiled his latest piece at an exhibition in London, a jewel-encrusted human skull. Maybe you've heard about it already? It's not all that difficult to grasp the buzz behind the work. The life-size platinum skull is set with 8,061 diamonds worth £20 million (roughly $43 million dollars Canadian). The teeth aren't made of diamonds, but they are real teeth. This piece is one of the most expensive contemporary artworks ever made. Oh, and it has already sold for its asking price of over $100 million Canadian. Read more about it here and here. More pictures here.

A new book discussing the relationship between New York and New York in the movies has come out and has a related show on display at Grand Central Station.

New York is a city that has old buildings.

If anyone has tried to do an image search online they know that people are horrid at flagging things with metadata and keywords. Well, there is this new technology on the horizon that lets your metadata and keywording generation be taken care of by the larger community. ( It's also really freakin cool looking ).

It's called Photosynth, and it basically mines websites like Flickr for photos, and then composites them together into these really wicked 3D representations. It's quite stunning.

Photosynth Demo

So, for all those photographers ( and stock photography company employees ) in the society, take a look see. It is neat stuff. Oh, and the BMW hydrogen powered car ad at the end is pretty sweet too...

The Triangle Gallery (Calgary) has an upcoming exhibition of sculpture work by local artists Lylian Klimek, Eric Cameron, Reinhard Skoracki, Ron Kostyniuk, Honsun Chu, Katie Ohe. It runs June 7 to August 24. Those of you who attended the University of Calgary are sure to be familiar with Ron Kostyniuk and Eric Cameron, two wonderful professors of the Department of Art. See what they've been up to in recent months at this exhibition. Opening reception is on Thursday, June 27 at 7:30pm at the gallery (104, 800 Macleod Trail S.E.).

OK, moving back towards more artistic posts...

I'm looking at umbrellas- photography umbrellas that is. Here, you can see how some of those photos we're oh so accustom to seeing are lit. Different umbrellas, different setup = subtle differences in the type of light and shadows you're throwing.

Some important things for the sculpture artists to think about when documenting.

If you're really into it, check out Strobist, a blog about lights... "yes, yes, oh yes, show me more!" :)

(and thank you Peter for your help today)