Hashima Island (Border Island) more commonly know as Gunkanjima (Battleship island) due to its resemblance to the shape of a battleship, was once the most densely populated place in the world but today is abandoned and derelict.

The island was bought by Mitsubishi in 1890 with the aim of using it to mine coal from the sea bottom. The mine and island were closed in 1974 and today travel to the island is prohibited.

"The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, 'Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride ...' And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, 'Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead, spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace. Thank you very much, you've been great."

[several gunshots ring out, Bill mimes being hit and falls to floor, motionless.]

(Onstage closing comments of Bill Hicks Revelations special from 1993)

Owned by Yorgo Tloupas, built by Max Knight and photographed by Thomas Brown - That's all we know!

Go watch it in action here...

World's Smallest Gun

The SwissMiniGun is two inches long and fires bullets at 270 mph. Perfect for killing baby bunnies. They're delicious!

Shepard has joined many of Alain Ket Mariduena’s friends in supporting his on going battle with the NYC courts by presenting an Art Benefit for Alain Ket’s Legal Defense. Art will be auctioned off on July 26th and an event will be held on August 1st in NYC with proceeds going towards the defense fund.

Alain Ket Maridueña is a publisher, writer, Hip Hop historian, activist and graffiti artist from New York City. He was charged in New York City courts (Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan) on counts of felony criminal mischief, possession of graffiti tools, and X., all relating to a search performed on his home in New York City in late 2006.

Alain Maridueña’s arrest had come in the context of a growing anti-graffiti sentiment in city government due to the growing gentrification of New York City and as part of the Mayor Bloomberg’s quality of life push, one started by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Alain’s arrest appears to be politically motivated attack for his involvement with Marc Ecko and Ecko’s successful lawsuits against the city of New York in order to hold a graffiti event and repealing a spray paint sales ban to 18 year olds. Many consider the charges against Alain excessive.

Alain’s court cases are ongoing and his family and friends will be raising funds to pay his legal defense, setting up public events to educate people about the incarceration of artists, and providing financial, logistical, and legal support to Alain throughout his proceedings.

For more information visit www.supportket.org and www.thewallsbelongtous.com

An experimental journey in the freestyle, unconscious mind

Mr Basista, ex Juice FM host, Freestyle lyricist and longtime Defcon artist, presents his debut solo album THUNK.

THUNK is a daring debut solo project, an all out bold collection of tracks, captivating and fresh. THUNK beats comprise powerful funk and hip hop influenced sounds and samples, combining them fluently in a jazz atmosphere which is complimented by interjecting frank, rhythmical lyrics. THUNK is written, produced and performed by the extra ordinary talent, Mr Basista.

Mr Basista (Big. In. Japan., Defcon) has previously recorded and released critically acclaimed tracks alongside Fenna Rhodes and The True ingredients as well as featuring on mix tapes ‘Play times Over’ &‘Hiphoperation’(Chameleon Records) and for Baggy Flag Records alongside UK rap heavyweights Supa Nova, Wordsmith & Dr Syntax.

THUNK provides a fun and funky soundscape for listener’s ears, Basista begs us to revel and roll in funk and electro indie without ever sacrificing his hip hop roots. Upbeat tracks Booda and Bait King featuring hard funky horns and shuffling keys will be banging DJ favourites, and wouldn’t sound out of place played at a funky house or disco club night. In contrast the honest imagery & flowing rhymes in ‘Dad and Me’ will satisfy all the head nod hip hoppers out there.

For any one who believes the UK rap scene takes itself too seriously, for any one who believes we need a fresh perspective. We have found the man for the job.

THUNK, by Mr Basista is OUT NOW and available to buy from: www.mrbasista.co.uk or www.roughtrade.com

Art Battles is a live-art competition where artists create work side- by-side in front of a live audience. For six years Art Battles have been a platform for talented artists to showcase their skills in and around NYC in a most unique setting and under tremendous pressure to perform. There's no time to sleep on your ideas, no chance to mull the nuance of each brush stroke. No, with Art Battles, time is as much of the essence as is inspiration and talent.

In May 2007, MTV hosted Art Battles live on the picturesque MTV outdoor deck overlooking Times Square. That evening, 12 artists vied for a chance to have their art displayed in Times Square for public judging.

After almost two hours of paint-induced frenzy, eight finalists were chosen:

Concep, Nick Poe, Leif McIlwaine, Martina Kubinyi, Ben Angotti, Brian Ermanski, Kevin Ragnott and Megan Whitman.

Now, the artwork they created during that Art Battles session has been reproduced onto shades that hang in the MTV TRL studio windows high above Broadway, the most famous street in the world. These artists are veterans of the Art Battles that have been staged all over New York.

The only difference is that this time, the ultimate art jury is you.

Check out the eight finalists and see their work. And be sure to watch the video montage of the May 4 event to see what they did to get into the finals. Art Battles are as much about the finished pieces as they are about the personality and performance of the artist in the moment.

After you've gotten to know the artists and their work, cast a vote for your favorite and tune into TRL on June 11 when the ultimate winner is unveiled LIVE! The winner gets the coveted center shade in our studio windows and bragging rights.

You decide who has the illiest painting skills and whom deserves the title of the 1st MTV Art Battle.

HISTORY:
Created by Sean Bono, Art Battles began in 2001 on a small lot on 45 E. Houston Street in downtown New York City. Since then, there has been tremendous organic growth in the movement with artists battling independently all over the world. It is a means of breaking down the boundaries of elitism and making art more social and tangible to everyone.

At its most basic, Art Battles are a competition in which two or more artists compete against one another in front of a live audience. Painting or drawing on canvas, they strive to create their best piece of artwork in the moment. The artists are limited only by the amount of time each has to complete their painting.

The true essence of Art Battles is the unearthing of the struggle an artist experiences when confronted with an unfamiliar atmosphere and an audience. It is here that the balance of raw talent, creativity and ingenuity can trump an opponent. To the viewer, this is the beauty of watching an Art Battle unfold, often unpredictably.

The connection the viewer feels after being part of the creation process is what compels them to choose their favorite at the end of every competition, with the winners judged as much on the quality of their art piece as they are for their performance in the heat of battle and their personality.

For more information on Art Battles check out www.artbattles.com.

THE FOUNDER
Sean Bono moved to New York City in 2000 from neighboring New Jersey in pursuit of a future in art. He made his first big splash in the NYC art scene at 19 years old, as the creator of Art Battles, a live competitive art show he staged in a junkyard gallery/ performance space in downtown Manhattan. Sean's skills have since become polished, yet still maintains an explosive painting style. At 25 years old Bono is an artist with a very exciting career to come.

WillItBlend.com, the official home of the "Will It Blend?" video series.

According to Will It Blends Tom Dickson extreme blending depends on the capabilities of the machine being used. Tasks that may be extreme for some machines are, quite frankly, simple tasks for Blendtec blenders...

Tom is ready for a new iPod, so naturally his old one needs to be blended! Don't try this at home.

VBS.TV have been on air since Feb 5th 2007 and have already got some excellent productions online. Most TV makes me want to paint my face blue and repeatedly pound my head with oranges. This is a station with attitude with programmes that really made me sit up and pay attention. Oh and its true what they say, they really do save your eyes from the blinding pain of television.

SneakerPlay have teamed up with NIKEiD to bring you 'The AF1 Playoffs'.

This exclusive release of the new Air Force 1 is not available to the public. Only Sneakerplay members can participate. Starting March 6th you'll have the chance to design your own AF1's. If the community picks your designs, you could win an exclusive pair of the new Air Force 1’s - complete with rolled leather edges, a re-engineered interior, matching silver or gold accessories and a polished metal deubre declaring 'AF1 82' - in your winning design. (This shoe is not available to the public!)

To get in the game, visit NIKEiD.com and login to teamLOCKER. This new feature allows you to create designs with fellow aficionados in an invite-only space. It's a great way to see what people really think of your style and design. Once you've created and placed your AF1 masterpiece(s) in the Sneakerplay teamLOCKER, you'll have the opportunity to vote on other designs. Each member can submit up to five designs and the most popular, as voted by you and the other members of Team Sneakerplay, will win. You can only vote once per design, but you can change your vote as often as you like.

First place winner as voted by Team Sneakerplay will take home two pairs of their winning design, one to wear, one to archive. Two runner-ups as voted by Team Sneakerplay will take home a pair of their winning designs. Two additional winners will be chosen by Sneakerplay staff, each taking home one pair of their winning designs.

You can register to get on team Sneaker play at http://www.sneakerplay.com/contests/

Image Source : TheeErin

All the featured artists on http://maarav.org.il/draftedart/ are Israeli citizens or individuals that live, work and create art in Israel but oppose the actions of the Israeli government and military. They feel it is important that this statement comes out of Israel and is created by Israelis, therefore they are not accepting art from fellow artists abroad. They would, however, welcome any future collaboration focused on joint struggle, especially with artist in our neighboring countries.

http://maarav.org.il/draftedart/ more pics on Flickr

Check out this amazing animation. A Chinese rap video about e-waste. One of the best things I've seen in ages, and a nice message from the folks at the receiving end of our throw-away gadget stream. Amazingly, no understanding of Chinese required, other than the "Play" button is in the lower left.

Watch It Here

The Designed To Help project was launched by UK designers iLovedust, earlier this year.

The idea was to produce a book of graphic design, illustration and photography, to raise money to help charities deal with the tsunami crisis in Asia.

iLovedust received an overwhelming response from designers and prospective partners who wanted to support the project, and when renowned design publisher Die Gestalten Verlag (dgv) joined iLovedust, 'A Book Designed To Help' became a reality.

The book is a lavish hardcover of 304 pages, featuring around 1,000 artworks from over 240 contributors from around the world. The book is a 'must have' for a design-oriented audience worldwide and all profits from the sale of will go to respected worldwide charity organization CARE, who will use the funds to help the poorest communities recover from the tsunami disaster. The book can be ordered now through online booksellers from around the world.

Please buy a copy! A record of the donations made month by month to the charity CARE can be downloaded from the link at the top of the site. Go on! Take a look and be proud.

For more information on the artists involved and how to get hold of this book please go here www.designedtohelp.com

Jackson Pollock: Number 5, 1948

These shocking satellite images from the European Space Agency show how the Arctic summer ice pack has changed in just one year. The left image was taken in August 2005 - the right in August 2006. See the difference?

In both images, pink represents pack ice and the colour blue open water. Intermediate colours orange, yellow, and green indicate lower ice concentrations of 70%, 50% and 30%, respectively. In the 2006 image, the low concentration ice pack can seen by the high concentration of yellow, orange and green colours.

By the way - the UK and Ireland haven't somehow drifted north - the ESA folks just added the outlines to give a sense of scale.

More info here

Oooh you have gotta love the NHS...

Australian environmentalist and television personality Steve Irwin has died during a diving accident.

Mr Irwin, 44, was killed by a stingray barb to the chest while he was filming an underwater documentary in Queensland's Great Barrier Reef.

Paramedics from the nearby city of Cairns rushed to treat him at the scene but were unable to save him.

Mr Irwin was known for his television show The Crocodile Hunter and his work with native Australian wildlife.

Police in Queensland confirmed the naturalist's death and said his family had been notified. Mr Irwin was married with two young children.

"It is believed that Mr Irwin collapsed after being stung by a stingray at Batt Reef off Port Douglas at about 1100 (0100 GMT)," a police statement quoted by AFP news agency said.

"His crew called for medical treatment and the Queensland medical helicopter responded. However Mr Irwin had died."

1. eBay.com

Founded: Pierre Omidyar, 1995, US

Users: 168m

What is it? Auction and shopping site

You cannot buy fireworks, guns, franking machines, animals or lock-picking devices on eBay, the internet's premier auction site, but almost everything else is OK: sideburns, houses, used underwear and of course Pez dispensers.

Pez is where it is said to have all begun for eBay's ponytailed founder Pierre Omidyar when he responded to his fiancee's worries that she would no longer be able to expand her toy collection when they moved to Silicon Valley. Omidyar developed a car boot sale anyone could use wherever they were, and without the need for getting dressed. The name sprang from Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consultancy company, and the first sale was a broken laser pointer.

Things have moved on a little since then. We spend more time on eBay than any other internet site. There are more than 10 million users in the UK. And eBay is far from just a second-hand stall. New items are sold by global companies; many people have abandoned their jobs to eBay full time, and normally sane people fret about 'negative feedback' and being outbid by 'snipers'. eBay owns PayPal and Skype, making dealing almost effortless.
Simon Garfield

2. wikipedia.com

Founded: Jimmy Wales, 2001, US

Users: 912,000 visits per day

What is it? Online encyclopaedia

As a young boy growing up in Hunstville, Alabama, Jimmy Wales attended a one-room school, sharing his classes with only three other children. Here he spent 'many hours poring over encyclopaedias', and faced the familiar frustrations: their scope was conservative; they were hard to navigate and often out of date.

In January 2001 he created a solution. Wikipedia was a free online encyclopaedia and differed from its predecessors in one fundamental regard: it was open to everyone to read, and also to edit. If you had something to add - from a pedantic correction to an entire entry on your specialist subject - the Wiki template made this easy. The software enables entries to be updated within minutes of new developments. There is nothing you cannot find - how best to make glass, the use of the nappy in space exploration - and if something isn't there, you may wish to take matters into your own hands.

Like any fast-moving venture - the site attracts 2,000-plus page requests a second - it has not been slow to attract criticism. Occasionally a libellous article will lie undetected for months, as happened with an entry linking one of Robert Kennedy's aides with his assassination. But Wales says his creation is abused only rarely, and swiftly corrected by other users. 'Those who use Wikipedia a lot appreciate its true value and have learnt to trust it,' he says. 'Sometimes a prankster will substitute a picture of Hitler for George Bush, and within an hour someone would have changed it back.'
SG

3. napster.com

Founded: Shawn Fanning, 1999, US

Users: 500,000 paying subscribers

What is it? File sharing site

Shawn Fanning created Napster in 1999 while studying at Boston's Northeastern University, as a means of sharing music files with his fellow students. Of course, it was entirely illegal (home taping kills music, remember) and was quickly attacked by a mainstream music industry already struggling to make profits on its money-guzzling artists. Its popularity reached a peak in 2000 with over 70 million registered users before Fanning's company was forced to pay millions of dollars in backdated royalties: a move which bankrupted the original, free-to-use Napster the following year. By then, however, the premature leaking and sharing of hotly anticipated albums by some of the major labels' most bankable artists had proved to be a stimulant, not a thief, of sales once the CD version was released. The new Napster - effectively a renamed version of a pay-to-download MP3 site owned by the original Napster company's buyers, the German giant Bertelsmann- has never recaptured its original cool, precisely because it is now legitimate. What it did in its brief period of illegal notoriety was popularise the notion that making music freely available on the internet - through MySpace, one-off downloads or artist-sanctioned 'leaks' - does artists no harm at all; indeed, it's helped to launch the careers of many.
Lynsey Hanley

4. youtube.com

Founded: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, 2005, US

Users: 100m clips watched a day

What is it? Video sharing site

When Chad Hurley and Steve Chen began working out of a garage in San Mateo in late 2004 to figure out an easy way to upload and share funny videos they'd taken at a dinner party, they had no idea just how huge an impact their creation would make. The former PayPal employees launched the user-friendly site in February 2005 and it has since become one of the most popular sites on the net, with YouTube claiming that 100 million clips are watched every day. Through the grassroots power of the internet and good word-of-mouth, the site quickly went from a place where people shared homemade video clips to users posting long-lost TV and film gems such as bloopers from Seventies game shows to ancient music videos. It has also taken off as a place for amateur film-makers to show off their talents - take David Lehre, a teenager whose MySpace: The Movie became such a popular clip he's already fielded job offers from major movie studios.

Not all television studios immediately embraced the idea of their archived copyrighted footage being shared. 'We're not here to steal,' insists Chen. 'When [US television network] NBC asked us to take something down, we did.' In fact, NBC only last week announced plans to work alongside YouTube, airing exclusive clips and trailers and eventually hoping to post episodes of The Office and Saturday Night Live on it. The company has had several offers to be bought out, but the pair swear they will not sell out. They continue to work out of their San Mateo loft, overseeing 27 employees and developing ways to make the site easier to use while whirling lucrative deals with studios.
Gillian Telling

5. blogger.com

Founded: Evan Williams, 1999, US

Users: 18.5m unique visitors

What is it? Weblog publishing system

There weren't too many computers lying around in the cornfields of Nebraska in the 1970s when Evan Williams was growing up. But he was drawn to them when he found them. He was also drawn west, to California in the 1990s. Williams founded Pyra Labs with two friends. At first it made project-management software for companies. It was not glamorous. Then it made Blogger and changed the world.

'The funny thing was I actually hesitated before working on Blogger because I didn't see the commercial applications,' says Williams. 'We had started a company and we needed to make money. We didn't see how this little hobbyist activity was going to make anyone money.'

The little hobbyist activity was blogging, the art of keeping a weblog - of diarising, theorising, satirising, fictionalising your life and observations online. It had already taken off among the tech fraternity in the Nineties, but it required building and maintaining your own website; the luddites were excluded. Williams created a tool that made self-publishing online as user-friendly as word-processing. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of this innovation. It didn't just create a new form of creative expression, it turned the media upside down.

Content was once made by companies for passive consumption by people. After Blogger, people were the content. They wrote about and read about their friends, their opinions, their cats. (There was a lot about cats in the early blogs.) None had a huge audience but collectively they were massive. 'Now you see TV networks saying: "We've gotta get on the web because that's where the audience is,"' says Williams.

There is no accurate count of the number of blogs in existence now. There are millions. One is created every minute. The revolution might have been possible without Blogger but it would have taken everyone a lot longer.

'Something like it would have existed anyway,' says Williams. 'And lots of things like it do exist. It was a combination of helping push an idea as well as just being in the right place at the right time when the idea was right.'
Rafael Behr

6. friendsreunited.com

Founded: Steve and Julie Pankhurst, 1999, UK

Users: 15m

What is it? School reunion site

In July 2000, as the dreams of the internet boom crumbled around them, a husband-and-wife team were busy launching a rough and ready web phenomenon. Friends Reunited, which was sold to ITV for £120m last December, was Julie Pankhurst's brainchild. While pregnant, she became obsessed with finding out what her old friends had been up to since they left school. Her husband Steve, a computer programmer, had been brainstorming with his business partner Jason Porter for an original internet-based idea, and Julie suggested a website to cater for her newfound obsession. It took her some time to convince them. 'In the end,' says Steve, 'I designed Friends Reunited just to shut her up.'

The site took off slowly, getting half a dozen hits per day, but everything changed at the start of 2001 when its lone server collapsed. 'The Steve Wright show on Radio 2 had made us their website of the day. Tens of thousands of people had tried to access the site at the same time.' Within a month membership rose from 3,000 to 19,000; the couple were working 18-hour days. Friends Reunited quickly became a household name and membership soared into the millions.
Killian Fox

7. drudgereport.com

Founded: Matt Drudge, 1994, US

Users: 8-10m page views per day

What is it? News site

What began as a gossipy email newsletter has, since its first post in 1994, developed into one of the most powerful media outle