If you are afraid of heights you may want to skip these photographs. Lucinda Grange has spent six years climbing tall buildings and scaling awe-inspiring heights so that she can photograph from the top. If the role of photography is to open our eyes to things unseen, she has certainly done that. Among her subjects are the Great Pyramid in Giza, the eagle's head atop the Chrysler Building in New York City, and a long view of the Bulgarian Communist Party headquarters in Mount Buzludzha, Bulgaria. Her photo of Times Square may well make you spin.

You can forget about "once upon a time". Or perhaps replace it with "once upon a gif". Today's fairy tales focus, for example, on a king named browser and a queen named CompuServe. New myths are being written, new narratives of living emerge, and Snow White goes into the dustbin of history along with Rapunzel and Cinderella. Stay tuned.

Remember Pokemon in the younger days of computing? Well now he has become an interactive game called "Twitch Plays Pokemon", described as "bizarre, mind-numbing and mesmerizing". The controls are now in the hands of millions of online gamers all feeding in instructions at the same time. Just imagine some 50 thousand players issuing commands, resulting in jerky motions and sometimes interminable delays. The author wonders if leaving the computer for hours and returning to find Pokemon in the exact same spot has a weird fascination all its own. Somehow it seems to enthrall, engage, and make obsessives of a lot of people. If this kind of gaming is your thing, you might enjoy a web comic called xkcd, with an episode titled "First Date". (Thanks to Nick for this one.)

The Smithsonian provides a fascinating picture of the area in New Guinea where Michael Rockefeller disappeared in 1961. You find a vibrant description of the birds, animals, plants, sea tides and swamps of this 10,000 square mile area. Asmat sounds perfect, until you also read of the tribespeople living virtually in the stone age and described as "warriors drenched in blood." It makes for gripping reading.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is exhibiting what they call "An Exciting Discovery: Italian Futurism". On view until September 1, 2014, the exhibit includes some rarely-seen pieces, articles by historians and curators, and the form of poetry called "parole in liberta". Part of the movement's history includes a celebration of war and of war's potential for bringing greatness back to Italy.

Not art, not culture, maybe technology, but certainly absorbing: this article from Salon opens a window into the apparently brutal atmosphere in the warehouses of Amazon dot com. Amazon seems to have taken the metrics of time and space motions to an extreme, with results that sound like the sweatshops of the early industrial revolution. You might keep this fact in mind next time you order from them.

I remember the first time I saw Le Corbusier's Ronchamp Chapel and the feeling of awe inspired by the grand sweep of the entrance. That sweep stayed with me for years and was translated into the White Nun digital sculpture seen above. Sadly, vandals seem to have broken into the building, while art lovers claim that the structure has been allowed to severly decay as it serves the tourist industry.

The Huntington Library in San Marino, California, has just bought a collection of 4,600 photographs collected by Ernest Marquez. Marquez is a descendant of Mexican settlers who owned land in Santa Monica and Rustic Canyons as well as sections of Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades. He describes his obsession with early pictures of the land and his journeys to antique shows and flea markets for images of early California. This purchase is apparently the most expensive collection of photographs by the Libray since 1927.

One of the few remaining "Book of Hours" still in private hands was auctioned at Christie's recently for roughly 13 million USD. Books of Hours are small, exquisitely illustrated prayerbooks created for the very wealthy in the late Middle Ages. The books are sectioned into prayers for different times of the day and frequently include Old Master painting as well as Flemish masterpieces.

The National Women's Caucus for Art has presented an exhibition at the ARC Gallery in Chicago called "Best of 2014". (I am told there was just a "little" blizzard during the opening.) 18 of the exhibited pieces, including my own, are featured in a Limited-Edition 18 month print calendar.

A professor at Plymouth University in the U.K. concentrates his energies on a project called Music Neurotechnology. Using a brain cap, Professor Eduardo Mirando programs his device to read the subject's thoughts and then translate them into music. He is currently preparing a concert called "Activating Memory", taken from the readings of four people and put into a string quartet.

A major ethical debate appears to be brewing in the 3D printing of biomedical parts. On the horizon is the creation of living organs and tissues by nonliving machines, parts like artificial limbs. It is expected that the technology may well be banned by the year 2016 until its ramifications are fully explored.

Have you checked out the Tate "Unlock Art" series? This one is on the nude throughout the history of art. It is a bit cursory but informational nonetheless.