Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera's intriguing artwork certainly takes the cake.
Blank wall but is it art?
The three-week February exhibition of Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera consisted of a blank wall in Chicago's West Loop gallery - with the artist present only in the sense that he was residing in a narrow, 3m crawl space behind the wall with only a single sign alerting patrons ("I am here, but you will not see me"). Diaz-Perera's In the Absence of a Body was designed, he said, to explore the boundary between presence and absence. (via newsoftheweird.com)
Stock up for motorway mayhem
A Te Atatu Peninsula resident comments on the traffic situation caused by the new Northwestern Motorway layout: "Have eaten my breakfast, drank my coffee and filed all my nails. Still not to the motorway on ramp. And that was just moving from Gloria Ave. Might eat my lunch now."
'Don't pee here. We pee back'
The Gold Coast City Council is weighing up a novel solution to the problem of people peeing in the city's streets. The council is considering whether a special type of paint - designed to splash urine back on sneaky leakers - might encourage people to do the right thing. The German city of Hamburg is already using the paint in the St Pauli nightclub district, with signs erected warning: "Don't pee here. We pee back". Gold Coast councillor Lex Bell said the liquid repellent paint was an interesting idea and he would take it to council officers for consideration. But the paint, also used in shipbuilding, is not cheap. Julia Staron, from a community group in Hamburg, said it cost about $700 to cover a 6sq m area.
Fruit flies master aviators
A bizarre experiment in which fruit flies carrying tiny magnets are forced to roll in the air has demonstrated the insects' ability as "fly-by-wire" master aviators. US scientists wanted to study how the flies manage to fly so well when their small bodies and fast-beating wings make them inherently unstable. Tiny magnets attached to the flies made it possible to upset the insects by zapping them in mid-flight with brief magnetic pulses, forcing them to roll like out-of-control aircraft. But the flies did not stay out of control for long. Instead they applied lightning-fast corrective responses, putting them fully back in charge in as little as 23 milliseconds.
