Perhaps it is because I’m used to see it in black and white, but it’s fascinating to see how incredibly modern Berlin looks in this colour film from 1936. It was a beautiful city. Except for the bloody Nazis. More »
The Gardens of the World in Marzahn Recreational Park in Berlin is home to various gardens that show off the world’s different cultures. This particular installation is the Christian Garden but really, it’s the Garden of Typography. The walls are, well, literally made with type. More »
I can only pray our future is this obnoxious. A media group in Berlin hacked together a sort of digital slingshot. Type in a message, aim at a building and fire. Your message splatters all over a facade. There’s video: More »
On November 9, 1989, thousands rushed through the ruins of the Berlin Wall, celebrating the unity of East and West. Twenty years later, millions across the world watched as 1000, 2.3m-tall dominoes fell marking the occasion. More »
German artist Tom Schmelzer is one troubling dude: His proposed interactive walkway, Out of Joint, is supposed to give you a physical feeling of turmoil to match the cataclysmic ups and downs of the global financial markets. So, thanks to avalanche-simulating hydraulics, instead of just feeling sick to your stomach, you will actually be sick to your stomach.
In 1894, when German Emperor Wilhelm II ordered the construction of the neoclassicist Berliner Dom, otherwise known as the Berlin Cathedral, he probably didn’t think it would turn out like this. Projected with the visual musings of graffiti artist Jaybo (specifically, Disney cartoon hands forming Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa), the Dom is always a spectacle…but not like this. Here’s the cathedral on any other day:
It could be a line in that Alanis Morrisette song about ironic things that aren’t actually ironic: the German Government is going to hire out about 500 GPS-enabled PDA-like gadgets for tourists who want to see the Berlin Wall but are disappointed that so little of it is left.
The devices, known as the “Mauerguide” (Wall guide), will be available to tourists from May 1 for between 6 and 15 Euros ($10-$25). The device will show pictures, video and audio at five major points along the Wall’s route, including the Bernauer Strasse, the Brandenburg Gate, the Topography of Terror, Checkpoint Charlie and the East Side Gallery, with more locations to come in the future. It will relay information in both German and English at first, although more languages will be added.
Hopefully we’ll see other international governments incorporate gadget-based tours into their tourism plans – who knows, it might actually make some places interesting.
[Yahoo News and Net Tribune]
What do you do with a 25-metre-high acrylic glass cylinder, 238,000 gallons of sea water, 2,600 fish from 56 different species, and two divers? The Aquadom, the largest cylindrical aquarium in the world, that’s what. In its core there’s an elevator that travels through a cylinder of glass. As you will see in the videos after the jump, it’s simply stunning.
