Here’s a couple of more aesthetically pleasing images of the new Brisbane City Hall dome. It actually changes colour like a tripped out psychedelic lava lamp, and later on it had kind of a moving cloud design on it.

As for the actual Grand Reopening, it was not a bad day at all. I just randomly staggered in there after breakfast and saw a bunch of interesting shit, like a woman playing a Chinese harp, a jazz trio, a dude on xylophone, a dude playing a lute, a string quartet and not one but two 50 piece choirs. I also met the Town Crier (although only for the weekend) plus checked out the newly opened Museum of Brisbane, where they had a retrospective on Expo ‘88, which was kind of weird and terrifying but interesting all the same.

cultxcult:

Lucas Foglia: A Natural Order

Lucas Foglia, A Natural Order

“I grew up with my extended family on a small farm in the suburbs of New York City. While malls and supermarkets developed around us, we heated our house with wood, farmed and canned our food, and bartered the plants we grew for everything from shoes to dental work. But while my family followed many of the principles of the back-to-the-land movement, by the time I was eighteen we owned three tractors, four cars, and five computers. This mixture of the modern world in our otherwise rustic life made me curious to see what a completely self-sufficient way of living might look like.

From 2006 through 2010, I traveled throughout the southeastern United States befriending, photographing, and interviewing a network of people who left cities and suburbs to live off the grid. Motivated by environmental concerns, religious beliefs, or predictions of economic collapse, they build their homes from local materials, obtain their water from nearby springs, and hunt, gather, or grow their own food.

All the people in my photographs are working to maintain a self-sufficient lifestyle, but no one I found lives in complete isolation from the mainstream. Many have websites that they update using laptop computers, and cell phones that they charge on car batteries or solar panels. They do not wholly reject the modern world. Instead, they step away from it and choose the parts that they want to bring with them.”

(Source: cultxcult)

nevver:

Born on this day, Vincent van Gogh

The man.

ianbrooks:

Riding the Pyramid

Climbing up the Great Pyramids of Giza is punishable by imprisonment up to 3 years, but pretty pictures don’t take themselves, so sometimes risks have to be taken. A small, intrepid band of Russians visited Cairo and entered the Pyramid grounds as tourists, hiding from guards as visiting hours ended and then making the long, arduous trek to the top of some of humanity’s most ancient structures. Once atop the Egyptian skyline, they took some magnificent photos while evading detection from the guards, but also found engravings in many different languages: the rest of the world’s contribution to Egypt’s towering history.

(source: raskalov-vit / via: English Russia)