Sally Mann

I went to see Sally Mann's exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery with my dad last summer but I was just reminded about her.

Her work is considered quite controversial by some but nevertheless the photographs are amazing.

evolving fractal landscape

Surface detail from subBlue on Vimeo.

Surface detail By subBlue

VIVIAN MAIER

http://vivianmaier.blogspot.com/

(Street photography. Quite want to see exhibition at Museum of London about street photography in London.)

Is there a genius in all of us?

Those who think geniuses are born and not made may be wrong, says writer David Shenk.

London cabbies famously navigate one of the most complex cities in the world.

In 1999, neurologist Eleanor Maguire conducted MRI scans on their brains and compared them with the brain scans of others.

In contrast with non-cabbies, experienced taxi drivers had a greatly enlarged posterior hippocampus - that part of the brain that specialises in recalling spatial representations.

What's more, the size of cabbies' hippocampi correlated directly with each driver's experience: the longer the driving career, the larger the posterior hippocampus.

That showed that spatial tasks were actively changing cabbies' brains. This was perfectly consistent with studies of violinists, Braille readers, meditation practitioners, and recovering stroke victims.

Our brains adapt in response to the demands we put on them.

Read the whole article from BBC news here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12140064

RSA Animate - The Empathic Civilisation

"Bestselling author, political adviser and social and ethical prophet Jeremy Rifkin investigates the evolution of empathy and the profound ways that it has shaped our development and our society." - RSA

(Sort of related to Memento mori, which I've been reading about recently)

Farnham charity shops are ace. Continued.

1950's Hoover in Oxfam. The colour is awesome. Unfortunately it had already been sold.

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger

Since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, Hesse-Honegger has collected, studied and painted morphologically disturbed insects, which she finds in the fallout areas of Chernobyl as well as near nuclear installations. Her findings show that the radioactivity has affected the health and development of the leaf bugs. Her research was highly controversial at the time. Many scientists and worst of all governments have disregarded her research totally, denying that low-level exposure to radioactivity has any effect on health.

http://www.wissenskunst.ch/