The tightly-wound compact fluorescent light bulbs we’ve welcomed into our homes have a little sister. Plumen is low-energy, yet she’s trendy, twisted and a designer’s dream. Not yet in production, you can see Plumen hanging alone in MOMA.

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Fancy a fern in the face? The Sky Planter will fulfill your greenest fantasies. It is designed to conserve water, save floor space and puzzle visitors. An internal reservoir system to feeds water directly to the roots, so no water evaporates or drips. And somehow the soil is ‘locked in’. Woo!

A brick of any other kind would look as sweet, believes artist Jan Vormann. She began filling crumbling walls with multi-coloured Lego bricks in Bocchignano, a little village close to Rome, and was then invited to continue her rainbow reparations in Tel Aviv and Yaffo. Beautiful appropriation or ugly sacrilege?

From the what will they think of next box comes [drum roll please] Pileus — an umbrella connected to the Internet, ‘to make walking in rainy days fun’. Pileus has a large screen on the top, a built-in camera, a motion sensor, GPS, and a digital compass. And it provides two main functions: social photo-sharing and a 3D map navigation. Yes, indeed, rainy days will never quite seem the same again.

Drawing from his background in physics and psychology, Peter Jansen’s latest series captures sequences of human movement in space and time. These pieces are best described as ‘energetic spaces’, adding a dimension to works like Duchamp’s Nude Descending Staircase, which Jansen directly references in his sculpture by the same name. He’s yet to tackle Drunk Descending Staircase. I live in hope.

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Neal Murren likes hanging out in forests — deep, dark forests — from which dark artworks featuring clowns, frogs, marionettes, skeletons, Courtney Love fairies, and the requisite giant toadstools weave together in penciled delight. It’s the kind of work you’d pore over, nose-to-page, in a crack of sunlight.

Just a few days ago, Benjamin Verdoncke climbed out of the human-sized nest he’d been residing in for the past seven days. The Belgian artist took six weeks to build the nest, which hung fifty metres high against a skyscraper in Rotterdam. To build the nest he apparently used twenty-three silver birches, one birch, one willow, two straw bales, one bucket of spit (take note, nest builders), three bags of sand, twelve buckets of glue, nineteen cans of polyurethane foam, and a partridge in a pear tree. And no, he did not get laid.

If you find preachers unamusing, unoriginal and ugly, I hereby introduce Commands, a series of three digital prints that’ll guide you towards enlightenment. Or at least a nose chuckle and a demi smile. $12 buys you a lot less these days.

When this scruffy fellow opens his gob, something high and mighty emanates. His music is great for long drives, in cold places and long nights in warm places. We speak of Bon Iver, who we interviewed recently. No frills, just acoustics and gentle melodies. Your music is beautiful. Yet there’s a dark undercurrent to it, in the minor key chord changes in particular. Is there really such thing as a good happy song? ‘I think there is joy in a sad song: the alleviation. The pain being instantaneously discovered, and pushed out. It gives a sense of welling up. I think the firing in the brain for emotions, all happen in pathways nearby, or the same tracks or something, because they seem so eerily similar’. ‘Good Winter’: does this speak for your appreciation of the colder climes? Or is it a passing reference to one winter in particular? ‘It’s more about the sacred quality of winter for me, in general. Every season, every first snow. Every center of winter’. I like the double tracked vocals on the album — very John Lennony. Is it hard to get that falsetto up there without it? ‘The double vocals were a way to mask ego, I think, on the record and the vocals. I could be expressive without being so obtuse’. If you were to play us a cover song right now, on your acoustic, what would it be and could we sing backing vocals? ‘Umbrella, by Rhiana or Bleeding Love, by Leonna Lewis. You pick. I would love to have a choir behind me’.

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Barbra Proust is a German-born photographer exploring the idea of a photographic moment. Her ‘Exposures’ (bare with me) are multiple photographs of the same event or subject from different angles and various distances. She uses a radio-controlled release system to simultaneously trigger the camera shutters. It’s out with the single gaze and in with the multi-gaze, folks! [see also the photos of Mia McDonald]

Dadadadaaaaa! Kids are superheroes. Only in adulthood do we lose our charm and imagination. Jan Von Holleben’s latest photographic series Dreams of Flying distills the preciousness and freedom of a childhood many of us are lucky to have had. Van Holleben created various action scenes on the ground and shot them from above to achieve an interesting balance of reality and make believe.

Davin Youngs has got something sweet going on. His pictures, as he calls them, are the of-the-moment kind. Y’know, the spontaneous, romantic, stylised yet amateurish thing photographers are doing these days. Like American Apparel, but lost in the woods or asleep on the toilet. I really appreciate it. What I appreciate less is Davin’s written and photographic portraits of his relationships with his closest friends and family members. It’s a nice concept, but I just see it stumbling drunk into a bush of self indulgence.

Perusing the illustrations on Jimmy Turrell’s site is akin to walking through the botanical gardens in spring; it’s an overkill of wonder and beauty. I’m sickened, and I daresay wildly envious. Luckily he only creates one-off pieces for magazines, ad campaigns and the like. But if you think you’re comfortable with perfection amassed, click through his entire portfolio. If you end up blind and numb, well, I warned you!

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Lovers, ahoy! Take a photo of your darling’s face (or your own if it’s prettier) and put it into an ASCII generator for an old-school arty gift. Because, let’s face it, every day is love day.

The goldest star goes to Erone, French painter-illustrator extraordinaire. His skewed, stylised portraits are composed of layers of patterns, bold lines, and warm colours. If you’re an investor, I recommend you buy this man.

Even Melissa Joan Hart’s favourite dog can’t take her mind off the stairs. Ian Francis is a young British artist and storyteller. His multimedia artworks and their titles are vivid, intimate snapshots of modern life, often with reference to television, world events, celebrities, and day-to-day living: ‘It’s about pornography and news reports from war zones instead of sex and death’, he says of his work.

B-Reel is real smooth. And when I say real, I mean really. They created the latest ad for kicks brand Onitsuka Tiger. The campaign — Made of Japan — was launched in January 2007 with a giant shoe built out of Japanese collectibles. Then came the promo site. And now the campaign continues with this electric shoe inspired by Tokyo’s vibrant lights. Rather like L.A. Lights and a field of mushrooms.

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One person’s trash is another person’s gorgeous table. Beth Fuller created the Junkture Table from a magnesium wheel rim found in a New York City junkyard. All materials for the table are locally sourced, reclaimed, 99% recycled, or 100% recyclable. Chic! [see also online furniture store, Modhaus]

Don’t judge an artist by their website. Tokuro Sakamoto’s fine, minimalist paintings are floating in e-space without titles, dimensions, or descriptions. Nothing appears to be for sale, the text is two percent Engrish, ninety-eight percent gobbledygook, and I can’t even tell you if Tokuru is a lady or a gentleman. All hail the postmodern posterchild.

Photographer Kimiko Yoshida’s self-portraits are luscious quasi-monotone scopes of texture and form. ‘My self-portrait is a still life. I disappear into the background. There is no search for identity in my work. I know that identity doesn’t exist. There are only infinite layers of me. If I peel them back, like the skin of an onion, there will be nothing underneath’. The above is from her Bachelor Brides series.