SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark, is participating in this year's music event Roskilde Festival 2010 with a series of action-based art works, under the title PingOut with SMK.

SMK invites festivalgoers to play ping-pong on unique tables decorated by young contemporary artists. Furthermore, the first 1000 players will receive a work of art shaped as a sweatband to help them wipe their sweat and tears.

The sweatbands, embroidered with the mysterious text 'I Miss Sol LeWitt', are produced by SMK in limited numbers in collaboration with the artist Nikolaj Recke.

In case you cannot make it to the festival, you can enter an on-line competition for 50 extra sweatbands by joining the project's Facebook page.

• www.smk.dk/pingout-with-smk

Traditionally we don't get to hear or see much about a museum exhibition until it is actually open to the public. However, MoMa is doing things differently with their future exhibition Talk to Me.

Talk to Me - an exhibition on the communication between people and objects - will not be opening before July 24 2011, but already now they've launched an exhibition website, or as they call it, an "online journal".

The idea of the website is to document the curatorial process by sharing findings, considerations, and explorations. At the site, you can see which projects are being evaluated by the curatorial team, and you are also invited to give feedback and even come up with suggestions for the exhibition.

• http://wp.moma.org/talk_to_me

If you live in Chicago you may be able to get yourself a Frank Gehry building for free. Or more precisely, a copy of Frank Gehry's Venice Beach House (pictured).

Behind the gift is an architect/artist called Nick and in exchange for the building, you need to document your experience with the structure, periodically recording how it has effected your life.

The purpose of the project is to question the benefits of contemporary 'starchitecture' and its effects on the human condition. If interested, you can contact Nick via Craigslist.

• chicago.craigslist.org

The Facadeprinter is a software controled robot, slightly similar to a paintball-gun mounted on the ground.

It can print large images on a surface by shooting small balls of paint on it. It works from a distance of 12 meters and each dot in a print is about 5-10 cm, which is the size of a splashed paint-ball.

The Facadeprinter is created by three young product designers based in Berlin. The machine is not for sale but you can order a print at the website - that is, if you have legal access to a big wall. Check the website for more information and images.

• www.facadeprinter.org

It is time for the Webby Awards again and no matter what you think of events like this, it is a great way of getting updated on new and interesting websites, trends etc. Just visit the site and browse through the different categories and nominees for inspiration.

And if you don't already know it, be sure not to miss - and vote for - POKE's Bakertweet! An intriguing way of using twitter to blend the physical and virtual world.

• http://webby.aol.com

Just came across a video at PopTech with Kacie Kinzer presenting her fascinating project TweenBots.

TweenBots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of the people they meet. The bots themselves are relatively 'dumb', but equipped with cuteness, they manage to get strangers to interact and collaborate.

• www.poptech.org

Bucky Bar is a spontaneous and temporary public building made entirely of umbrellas.

Visitors were asked to show up with an umbrella at an outdoor location on a Friday night in Rotterdam, NL. With the help of a team of architects, the umbrellas were then used to build a fully equipped bar, complete with DJ and drinks.

300 people turned up at the event, and just as it began, the beautiful building ended its life spontaneously when the Police showed up at 2:00 AM.

Bucky Bar is a project by the DUS Architects and the Studio for Unsolicited Architecture, produced to coincide with the opening of the Architecture of Consequence exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi).

• www.dusarchitects.com

For the annual art event IHME in Helsinki, British sculptor Antony Gormley created the project 'Clay and the Collective Body' in which he brought together 1300 local inhabitants to work with a 4x4x4m clay cube.

The giant piece of clay was placed in a hangar-sized tent, and in the course of 10 days the clay was gradually transformed to thousands of small sculptures.

• read more at Flash Art

Reknit is a service where you can turn an old sweater into something new.

The service is operated via the web, and all you got to do is to send in an old sweater and Reknit will unravel it and use the materials to create a new item.

Each month has a theme during which sweaters are turned into a certain item such as a glove, a hat, a scart, a laptop case etc. At the website you can vote for next months Reknit theme and you can also see a gallery of previously reknitted items.

Reknit is apparently run by a single person whose mother is doing all the knitting. Consequently, they only accept 30 requests per month.

• www.rekn.it Via Netted

The Next Nature foundation calls upon designers, technologists and artists to submit speculative nanotech products for the upcoming NANO SUPERMARKET in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

The supermarket will be feature debate–provoking visions on possible products expected to hit the shelves between today and 2020.

Submission deadline: May 12, 2010.

• www.nextnature.net/events/nano-supermarket

For Transmediale 2010 members of the R&D network F.A.T. met in Berlin and produced a series of projects dedicated to the topic of the week: FUCK GOOGLE.

In addition to on-site workshops, F.A.T. Lab built a fake Google Street View car and took it out for a ride in the city of Berlin.

Watch the hilarious video, in which the fake Google car gets lost (the driver has to ask for directions), jams the traffic and in other ways attracts negative attention.

For information on how to make your own Google Street View car go to: fffff.at/google-street-view-car

• Video on Vimeo via PopUp City

Shady URL is an online tool, that can turn an innocent looking URL into a suspicious and frightening one.

For instance, the ShadyUrl engine turns www.twitter.com into http://5z8.info/illegal-guns-for-sale_f5v7f_launchexe and CNN.com into http://5z8.info/guns_u1t5v_murdervids.

You can also opt for shorter URL's, albeit making them a little less shady.

• www.shadyurl.com

Ambo Dextro is a typewriter in which the keys have been rearranged so there is no correspondence between what you think you type and what you get on the paper. Characters, words and sentences are simply turned into abstract visual text as you type.

Ambo Dextro is on display in Copenhagen at the new gallery IMO projects until March 20. The piece is made by New York based artist Tauba Auerbach. Visit her website for other fabulous pieces - her website is basically a piece in itself.

• Ambo Dextro

For the past 10-15 years, an anonymous admirer have been sending different items to fashion designer Paul Smith by post.

Items include a a surfboard, a coffee-pot, a skateboard and lots of other things. These objects were never send in a box, they simply had post stamps on them. Quite amazingly, they still arrived at Paul Smith's store in Covent Garden, London.

The objects were recently exhibited at Stockholm Furniture Fair and Designboom has put together a great post with pictures from the exhibition, including some comments from Sir Paul himself.

• www.designboom.com

Polluter Harmony is an anti-polluting campaign site, shaped like an online matchmaking service for polluters, industry lobbyist and politicians in the USA.

The site is a project of PolluterWatch / Greenpeace and the aim is to draw attention to the close connections between polluters, influence peddlers and friendly public officials.

• www.polluterharmony.com

The author Douglas Rushkuff has asked readers at his website to help him come up with a title for his new book.

The book is a paperback version of "Life Inc: How the world became a corporation and how to take it back" but in order to (re)publish it, Rushkuff's publisher RandomHouse asked him to retitle it.

If you feel inspired and want to help out, you can submit suggestions at Rushkuff's website. The winner will receive books, credits - and lots of community respect.

• www.rushkoff.com

The Tenants’ Rights Flash Cards is a non-profit product designed to make renters in New York more familiar with their rights.

The flash cards translate New York’s official Tenants’ Rights Guide into a simple and friendly format that covers issues from security deposits and subletting to paint and privacy.

The concept is developed and designed by Candy Chang in collaboration with the organization Tenants & Neighbors. A boxed set of 30 cards costs 10$. They are available for sale online.

While you're at Candy's website, be sure to check out the inspiring project section.

• www.candychang.com

The Danish Broadcast Corporation DR is offering a unique position as social media specialist - or as they call it: "Facebook Reporter".

The main job responsibilities are: (roughly)

• To tell news stories to the Danes via relevant social media
• To qualify DR's news coverage on the web, radio and TV through social media
• To show your colleagues how social media can be used to create dialogue with the Danes

The position is an experiment with a trial period of 6 months. Application deadline: February 15th, 2010.

• Full job description (in Danish)

On a wet day, bike saddle-cover marketing stunts come in very handy, but usually the ads themselves are pretty forgettable, probably because they fail to relate to the situation they place themselves in.

However, here's finally a relevant one recently found in Copenhagen. The ad promotes a new free service for cyclists offered by the local S-train. The text reads: "Bringing your bike on the S-train is now free of charge..

Bike saddle/seat cover marketing is probably best known in bicycle-friendly cities so in case you are not familiar with the phenomenon, you can find more examples below.

• Here + Here + Here + Here + Here

On December 17th 2009 four Greenpeace activists grabbed news headlines around the world after they peacefully gate-crashed a party dinner for the heads of states during the Copenhagen climate summit.

Their action - or performance - left the Danish police not only embarrassed but also very upset, and the four activists was jailed for 20 days without trial.

The activists were referred to as The Red Carpet Four and while they were still in prison, Greenpeace released a video telling their story.

• Video on YouTube

A piece by Nicolas Roope (of Hulger, Poke and much more) in which he plays with the boundaries between a virtual visit to Chicago in Google Streetview and a real visit to Chicago in person.

Apparently it worked like this: Nicolas first went to selected places in Google Streetview, grabbed some of the Street View images and photoshopped himself into them. Subsequently, he went in person to the same places in Chicago, placed a print of the photoshopped Street View images at the scene they were originally taken. Then, he documented it by taking a photo of the image and put it on the web along with a a small text and a link to the Street View location.

•www.chicagoteleporter.info

City Eyes is a project from 2008 by DUS Architects that addresses the border between the private and public domain.

Through a series of events in Amsterdam, the architects played with the characteristics of the window as a screen between interior and exterior.

See for instance the performative project "breakfast" (image) which connects a living room with the street outside.

• www.dusarchitects.com | Via

A Dutch character used in a TV program on climate change. Perhaps an idea for the next generation of comic heroes.

•Promo on youtube

Copenhagen Poverty Walks is a new alternative walking tour giving locals as well as visitors a unique opportunity to experience the city from the perspective of homeless people.

The tours are guided by homeless themselves and during the walk, participants will hear about the guide's personal street experiences and universe.

Poverty Walks is organized by the NGO project Udenfor (Outdoor). You can read more about the walks on Copenhagen's official tourist website Visit Copenhagen.

Related: The Other Tour

• www.visiticopenhagen.com

Kunsthal Nikolaj in Copenhagen has kicked-off the upcoming football World Cup with an exhibition of works that in different ways are linked to the world of football.

In the spirit of the game most of the works are pretty playful. Team-shirts are remixed in Floor Wesseling's Blood in Blood out and the very template of the game is challenged in Asger Jorn's Three Sided Football (pictured). Asger Jorn developed the concept in the sixties and today the game is still occasionally played.

Other more political works in the exhibition include www.0100101110101101.orgs legendary culture hack Nike Ground.

The exhibition runs from April 22 through August 8 2010.

• www.kunsthallennikolaj.dk

NIKE78 is a project that challenge the function of a pair of NIKE shoes.

78 creatives have received a brand new pair of NIKE shoes and have be asked to challenge their function using 'sport' as an inspiration. After the shoes have been collected, an exhibition showcase is planned for the
London Design Festival 2010 but already now you can see some of the in-progress outcomes at the website's news section.

Nike78 is a project of Paul Jenkins, a final year graphic design student at the London College of Communication.

• http://www.nike78.co.uk

Have you ever wondered just how *hetero* your twitter stream is?

Probably not, but here's a tool that can help you find out.

Howhetero is a web application that can analyze and rate your level of 'heteronormativity' based on words in your tweets. To prove a point, the application is very judgmental and words like "shopping" and "design" will decrease your hetero rating (if you're a boy).

The application was created for the Stockholm Pride event last summer and it has just been nominated for a Webby Award in the Interactive Advertising Category.

• http://www.stockholmpride.org/howhetero

A public event in which three poets created small pieces of climate inspired poetry based on various sources of text, such as the Danish Google translation of the Kyoto protocol.

The event took place in conjunction with the UN Climate Change Conference. For an overview of other related events taking place in Copenhagen these days, check out Hopenhagenlive.

• Via www.ibyen.dk

The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, a small performance troupe based in Boston, USA, proposes to not release at least 38,575 kilograms of CO2 into the air by not traveling to the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The amount of energy saved in fuel could feed 150 people for a year or power 325 60w lightbulbs turned on continuously for a year.

You help can help document this massive effort of local pleasure by contributing photos to Flickr with the tag "notgoingtocopenhagen".

• www.flickr.com/search/?q=notgoingtocopenhagen

The Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam recently came close to moving out of its historic building, build by the legendary architect of the same name.

However, the plan (initiated by the academy's own management) was met with anger and was abandoned after students, x-students and other friends of the place, orchestrated a string of creative protests.

Some documentation is available on-line such as this visual petition, this t-shirt and this poster.

• www.rietveldforrietveld.org

In 2008 the Danish Artnode foundation published the book 'Vi elsker din Computer' (We Love Your Computer), a 500 page anthology with no images on the phenomenon of net art.

Not exactly light material, but as if the format and perhaps subject itself wasn't already dry enough, the Artnode team subsequently transformed the publication into an audio book, which consists of a single audio track containing a 14 hour long, poorly recorded, reading.

When listening to the track you can't help feel sorry for the reader who on many occasions stumbles over some of the net.art references and URL's mentioned in the book - such as the numerous references to: http://0100101110101101.org.

The 200mb audio book is available for download at Artnode's website. Quite brilliant, but unfortunately only in Danish.

• www.artnode.org

Copenhagen Podride is a series of podcasts created for passengers on the Copenhagen subway, the S-Trains.

The podcasts contain stories about the urban and sociological development along the S-train lines. Stories are divided into chapters that match the S-stations, thus making it possible for passengers to get a location-specific story as they ride by.

The podcasts are only available in Danish but hopefully they will be produced in English as well as the content seem well suited for tourists and other visitors interested in alternatives to the traditional city tours.

Copenhagen Podride is provided by DSB: S-Train and Copenhagen X. The service is free of charge and available for download on the web, or on your mobile phone via SMS.

• www.cphx.dk

A blue line painted on the ground currently runs through Copenhagen's city center.

The line represents the capital's new waterfront if all the inland ice of Greenland were to melt, prompting water levels to rise by seven meters.

The line is a part of an art project called 'Water Knows No Walls' by the artists Haubitz + Zoche. The project takes part in the exhibition Rethink: Contemporary Art & Climate Change, which is one of many events taking place in Copenhagen these days as the city gets ready to host the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference.

If you want to know the potential consequences of rising sea levels in other parts of the world, you can use a map provided by Geology.com.

• www.waterknowsnowalls.com

Most Blue Skies is a complex computer generated installation that responds to real-time changes in the atmosphere to locate and visualize the 'bluest skies' in the world.

The result is displayed as a square of blue light that shows the most accurate possible reproduction of what it would be like to look up at that sky.

Most Blue Skies is created by Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway. The installation takes part in the 'Rethink' exhibition at Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen.

• www.rethinkclimate.org

Selfpromotion: Here follows a description of a project I recently designed for a cultural festival in Spain.
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Urban Cursor is a GPS enabled object designed to facilitate social interaction and play in public space.

The object, which is shaped as an oversized 3-dimensional computer cursor (pointer), was placed on a square in Figueres, Catalunya during the cultural festival Ingràvid.

Here, people could touch it, move it around and sit on it as an alternative to the benches.

Despite being removed from its normal screen based environment, the cursor was still in touch with the digital world. Via an embedded GPS device, the cursor transmitted its geographic coordinates to a website. At the website, the coordinates were mapped in Google Maps thereby documenting the cursor's movements in the physical world and making it possible for participants to see how they collectively helped move the object around.

• www.urbancursor.com

IdeAporting is a new online platform where users can share ideas and innovations that could be imported, exported or both between countries worldwide.

The platform promotes social sustainability and you can help shape and improve it by submitting cases from your own community. Something that may seem trivial to you could be a new and radical idea to someone else.

Cases collected so far range from Nike's ReUSE A SHOE initiative (picture) to a landsharing service in London.

• www.idea-porting.com

Wordr is a new micro-blogging service that enables its users to create small text-based posts much like Twitter.

The main difference however, is that Wordr only let users post a single word at a time. The maximum length of a word allowed in Wordr is 23 letters, as in antidisestablishmentarianism. Making up new words is welcomed by the Wordr team.

Word.org is currently running in Alpha mode and you need to a Twitter account to log on. The idea is developed by Frankie Roberto and the design agency Rattle, based in the UK.

• http://wordr.org

In conjunction with a music event held outside the The National Gallery in Copenhagen earlier this summer, the gallery introduced a new kind of service: Art Toilets.

Besides being cleaned after each visit, the Art Toilets were equipped with art magazines and posters, thereby turning the trivial and potential unpleasant activity into a somewhat nice and memorable experience.

To access the Art Toilets, users were required to send an SMS to a dedicated number, which in return gave them a virtual toilet token, free of charge.

The phone numbers were collected and later used by the National Gallery to kick start a new SMS service.

• Video on Facebook

The Knitted Mile is an outdoor installation by the artist Robyn Love created for a mile of roadway in Dallas, US.

Ninety knitters from around North America helped create this long pieces of knitting, which was made to look like a yellow road stripe. Photographs of each knitter working on their section were included as part of the piece when it was removed from the road and later installed in a gallery.

• www.robynlove.com

Private Moon is a travelling light sculpture by the Russian artist Leonid Tishkov.

Earlier this year, the sculpture was on display at different rooftops in Linz, the European capital of culture 2009.

During the exhibition, the public could either take a look at the moon from a distance - or they could borrow it for a while and install it at their own homes.

• www.linz09.at

The Other Tour is an alternative boat-tour through the harbor of Copenhagen.

The tour takes place in a traditional tour boat, on a traditional tour-route and with a traditional tour-guide, but rather than pointing out the usual highlights, The Other Tour focus on less known and less promoted stories of Copenhagen.

The guide tells stories about minorities as well as great and small chapters in the fight for human rights and equal opportunities. For instance, tour participants will get the story about Christine (Georg) Jørgensen who underwent the world's first male-to-female transgender operation in 1952. Participants will also get the less than glamorous story about Flotel Europa, which was an old ship the Danish government used to house thousands of refugees from x-Yugoslavia in 1992-94.

The Other Tour takes part in the exhibition Works at Work at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. It is organized and scripted by the artists Nynne Haugaard og Lisa Strömbeck aka 'Women down the Pub" (Kvinder på Værtshus).

If you are in Copenhagen, don't miss this informative and surreal experience!
The exhibition continues till the end of August. Boats sail everyday at 14:45.

• www.kunsthalcharlottenborg.dk

Copenhagen International Wood Festival is a competition in which 15 teams were selected to build unusual sculptural constructions using the same kind of wood.

The competition is over and the constructions are currently exhibitted in a park in central Copenhagen.

Team 12 (Meyer & co) was awarded the first price for their cocoon-like structure while team 11 (pictured) seemed to get the children's award.

• www.wood-works.dk

In 2007 the artist Kristin Lucas succeeded in legally changing her name to... Kristin Lucas.

The purpose of changing her name to an identical name was a conceptual way of rebooting herself.

The judge who granted the request said: "So you have changed your name to exactly what it was before in the spirit of refreshing yourself as though you were a web page."

The name-changing process is documented and manifested as an installation in which Kristen Lucas shows "before and after" portraits and other related items, such as an amusing transcript of the court hearing.

• www169.pair.com/klucas/before_after

Dominic Wilcox is an artist who works within the area of everyday objects, environments, buildings and human interaction.

Recently he put together the website 'Variations on Normal', which serves as an outlet for thoughts, ideas, and designs that pop into his head.

Here you can read about the worlds smallest job application, the sit down everywhere fashion accessory, the geneticallty modifed egg improvement design and lots of other ideas.

Related: www.stealourideas.com

• www.variationsonnormal.com

Meet Marc from Amsterdam and Mikael from
Copenhagen.

Marc and Mikael are both bloggers and bike enthusiasts and they met up to compete against each other in a discipline probably best known to children.

• www.copenhagenize.com

As a part of his graduation project, graphic design student Christopher West is inviting you to pay him for wearing a T-shirt with a message of your choice.

In other words, he will be a walking billboard, promoting your message.

Every week a new blank T-shirt is put on auction on eBay. The highest bidder gets to decide the message and the design. Christopher will print it and wear it for a full week.

The idea behind the project is to investigate the medium of printed T-shirts and apart from the project's performative aspect, Christopher West is also producing a publication.

All the T-shirts will be exhibited at the graduation show at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. You can also see them on eBay, where a new one is added every week.

Related: Body Billboardz + VoiceVertising

• Auction on ebay.com