Cory Arcangel is a leading digital artist who lives and works in New York. The American artist’s work uniquely encapsulates the relationship between culture and technology by using various artistic forms including sculpture, drawing, photographs and video.

Arcangel became best-known was for his video game ROM hacks, the process of modifying a video game ROM image to alter the game’s graphics, dialogue and levels in order that new life is breathed into old games.

Arcangel’s fascinating depictions of the modern digital era has seen his work appear in many museums exhibitions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Barbican Centre in London, the Whitney Museum in New York, as well as the New Museum also in New York.

The digital artist’s latest exhibition titled “Pro Tools” is being held at the Whitney Museum.

Pro Tools is aimed at exploring the idea of “product demonstrations”, of which all the work featured in the exhibition have been created by Arcangel using technological tools with a specific emphasis on mixing and matching both amateur and professional technological tools.

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San Francisco’s Pier 70 has for decades been lined with derelict and rundown warehouses, a blatant reminder of the city’s industrial past and a makeover is well overdue.

In light of the much-needed reconstruction of Pier 70, earlier this year, the port of San Francisco announced that it has selected developers, Forest City Enterprises, to embark on designing and re-constructing the former shipbuilding site.

Four different companies, including the architectural resources Group, Evan Rose, the California subsidiary of Cleveland-based Forest City and Forest City Enterprises, competed to be given the opportunity to redesign a site that is brimming with potential to be something outstanding.

Talking about the 25-acre former shipbuilding facility, Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, an urban think-tank in San Francisco said:

“It’s a really extraordinary site but also an incredibly difficult site. It’s very exciting to have a serious proposal, developer, and process moving forward on this one.”

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Tax invoices have long been the bane of employers’ lives, with a tendency for throwing them in the shredder being preferable to letting the dreaded tax receipts clog up your desk’s drawers.

Well flinch no more at the arrival of the stomach-lurching tax invoice arriving on your doorstep, as artist Nava Lubelski has created a method of transforming what has to be one of the most despised correspondence into a piece of art.

In tearing these rampantly feared pieces of paper into thin strips, Nava Lubelski then rolls the defaced official letters very tightly into tiny coils, before cluing literally hundreds of them into intricate arrangements.

The end result of the artist’s creative vision to what has long been one of the most dreaded arrivals of the business year is simply fantastic.

Although it is not only tax invoices that are used to make up Nava Lubelski’s remarkable cellular sculptures, as other ‘unfavourable’ postal correspondence, such as rejection letters and tax files are shredded and coiled to create the artist’s unique organic paper structures.

The sculptures are reminiscent of tree cross-sections and, as the cellular coils spiral outward, it mimics biological matter and growth, and as they are glued together into flat rounds, the sculpture suggests disease and lichen – a stark reminder of manmade corruption on the environment.

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In combining novelty and isolation with nature and simplicity, the Tree Houses and Cabanes Des Grands Lacs in Eastern France, are bringing a new meaning to the concept of ‘rural retreat’.

Designed by the young designer and entrepreneur Gaspard de Moustier, this alternative accommodation, tucked away in France’s most pastoral and picturesque countryside, is proving to be a huge success.

Suspended in the air amongst a labyrinth of ancient oak trees, an aerial village of tree houses can be made out, whose uniquely designed structures and alternative rope ladder staircases, are somewhat camouflaged by the tonnes of wood, bark and branches littering  this beautiful forest in France, enclosed and bounded by clear water lakes.

This unique tree house village is free of electricity and running water and takes its visitors back to a simple and uncomplicated ancient era.

In designing the Cabanes Des Grands Lacs, 26-year-old Gaspard de Moustier, wanted to combine his passions for both nature and entrepreneurship to create his own vision of a true ‘city escape’ in accommodation integrated with nature.

15 tree houses and three floating cabins have been constructed on Gaspard de Moustier’s 150-hectare estate in Franche-comte on the border of Doubs and Haute-Saone.

The more ‘luxurious’ section of the Cabanes Des Grands Lacs is found in the three floating cabins, which have running water and solar powered electricity. In 2012, the young entrepreneur is to open a secluded spa at the estate, to help augment the notion of ‘barefoot luxury’ lay within a beautiful and densely wooded forest at the edge of a crystal clear fresh water lake.

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