As the days grow shorter and colder in the Northern Hemisphere, billions of birds are migrating south. Their routes, habitats, food sources, and behavior are incredibly varied. From distinctive plumage to sleeping habits to intimate connections, the world of avians is as about as expansive and awe-inspiring as it gets.

More than 11,000 species have been formally documented around the world, but there may be upwards of 20,000 depending on how they’re recorded. And through the eyes of fine art photographers, we’re afforded a stunning look into this unique world. A new book, Aviary: The Bird in Contemporary Photography, celebrates feathers and flight.

Published by Thames & Hudson, Aviary features the work of more than 50 international photographers. Colossal readers may recognize images by Joseph McGlennon, Søren Solkær, Tim Flach, Leila Jeffreys, and many more, all of whom approach their subjects with an eye for atmosphere and individual personalities.

Christine Ward’s “Connection,” for example, is an eminently relatable moment between two ravens. In Jeffreys’ portrait of an owl, we can imagine being given the side-eye, as if it knows more than it’s letting on, and the dangling songbird in Kimberly Witham’s “Still Life with Goldfinch, Bleeding Heart and Tulip” evokes a distinct sense of humor.

More than simply a catalogue of different species, the volume highlights vibrant and artistic portraits, landscapes, and candid moments that glimpse “our complex relationship with birds, questioning how we observe them and respond to their presence—and vice versa,” the publisher says.

Find your copy in the Colossal Shop.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Aviary’ Explores the Beautiful, Symbiotic Relationship Between Humans and Birds appeared first on Colossal.

Fans head out on game day ready to root for their favorite teams, with all eyes on the pitch, enclosed in a large venue that is separate from its surroundings. The Xi’an International Football Centre in China, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, becomes one with the landscape, with open facades that make passerby and the city itself part of the event experience.

Commissioned by the Chinese Football Association, the 60,000-seat stadium is located in Xi’an’s Fengdong district. The building’s sinuous form is not only distinctive, it also minimizes the impact of various outdoor conditions, like winds from the north that cast a chill, and intense summer heat.

The fluid forms of the roof, supported by brick red concrete columns, protect the saddle-shaped edifice. With the utilization of digital modeling, the roof was formed to maximize the availability of seating at midfield. It also rises at the center of the main stands, which increases the number of seats with premium views alongside the field.

A wide concourse surrounds the stadium on the upper level, and a series of shaded south-facing terraces with a host of amenities, from recreation to dining facilities, are available to guests not only during the regular football season but also for cultural events and performances.

Braced by a tensioned cable-net structure, a translucent membrane over the seating bowl protects spectators from inclement weather and the harsh, direct rays of the sun. It still allows significant levels of natural light to reach the surface, which promotes the growth of grass for optimal play on the field.

Launched with a trio of under-23 Asian Cup qualifier matches in September, the stadium is set to host other professional teams as well as community leagues and youth academies. Xi’an International Football Centre is a place for athletes and visitors of all ages to gather and enjoy a sport that is celebrated around the globe.

To learn more about the Xi’an International Football Centre, please visit zaha-hadid.com.

Photography by Hufton + Crow.

Tea, the women’s safety app which went viral earlier this year before facing multiple data breaches, has been removed from the Apple App Store.

“This app is currently not available in your country or region,” a message on the Apple App Store currently says when trying to visit a link to the app.

It is unclear whether the app has only been removed temporarily or permanently, or whether Apple banned the app or Tea removed it itself. Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment. Randy Nelson, head of insights and media resources at app intelligence company Appfigures, first alerted 404 Media to the app’s removal.

After launching a number of years ago, Tea skyrocketed to the top of the App Store this summer. The idea was for women to come together to share information and red flags about their dates. Tea users can “find verified green flag men,” “run background checks,” and “identify potential catfish,” according to Tea’s website. Crucially, the app said it verified that every user was a woman by asking them to upload a selfie.

In the wake of its new found attention, members of the notorious troll and harassment forum 4chan targeted the service, and found an exposed database containing Tea users’ driver licenses and selfies. Days later, 404 Media revealed a second data breach at Tea impacted users’ direct messages, including those discussing abortions and cheating.

Tea turned off its direct messaging functionality altogether after that breach, and a Tea user filed a class action lawsuit against the app. Despite those data breaches, Tea continued to grow its userbase, Tea previously told 404 Media in a statement.

404 Media subsequently published an in-depth investigation into Tea and its CEO and founder Sean Cook, revealing how the app tried to essentially hijack the Are We Dating the Same Guy community, an ecosystem of Facebook pages that are credited with keeping women safe. Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook pages with nearly identical names. That investigation also discovered a third security breach which revealed the personal data of women who were paid to promote the app as part of an affiliate program.

The app is still available on the Google Play Store. A number of other copycat apps that include “tea” in their name and advertise similar features are still available on the Apple App Store as well.  

As of Wednesday Tea is still posting to its social media accounts, including its Instagram. The most recent post from around 13 hours ago describes Tea as “The first ever girls-only space that truly amplifies women’s voices and gives them an anonymous space to share their experiences, find comfort, and get the info they need on the man they’re talking to, in the name of DATING SAFETY💜”

One of the replies to that video simply says “App is gone.”

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

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Before you saying anything, I'd like to dedicate this breakup conversation to pioneering portraitist Frida Kahlo.

French “internet of things” engineer Olivier Mével just released La Machine as a device that reprises the true essence of Marvin Minsky’s first “useless machine,” albeit in a playful and boldly colored composition. Unsurprisingly, he drew stylistic inspiration from noted Postmodernist Ettore Sottsass. A founder of the Memphis Milano movement, Sottsass was never afraid to use jarring interplays of shape and pattern, often articulated as surface material.

It reflects the same playfulness and supposed poetry Mével imbued in Nabaztag: a rabbit-shaped illuminated device – released in 2005 – that communicates the day’s forecast and one’s emails in both spoken text and flashing lights. It’s all about humanizing and personifying technology, not as a marketing ploy that nefariously draws us in for endless hours of mindless rot, but as an interactive object that more closely reflects our temperament and perhaps even distracts us from the stresses of the day.

Unpredictability is another key factor. An entropic algorithm ensures that no two La Machines act the same. When and if it decides to turn itself off is hard to predetermine. If left alone for too long, it’ll take matters into its own hand – or its “little arm” lever – and remind us of its existence. A jingle sounds each time it does. The correlations with the Furbys of the late 1990s – zoömorphic robots that required a lot of attention – are palpable. Sometimes, it might refuse to cooperate altogether.

La Machine is anything but an addictive platform that is always there, ready to mine personal data. As Mével puts it: “La Machine is neither here to serve you nor enslave you, yet paradoxically becomes a necessary object: one that reminds us that the useless, the gratuitous, the absurd may in fact be precious spaces of freedom in our daily lives.”

Satire doesn’t just crop up in literature and film. It also creeps into design. One has only to look back at the Italian Radicals of the 1970s or the Dutch designers of the early 2000s. Both groups poked fun at the profusely ornate styles of the past but also the heavy-handedness of “purist” modernism. Postmodernists often emphasized the power of the image over actual form and function as a means of social commentary.

In technology, satire has often come as an antidote – a way of mitigating the ceaseless forward march of so-called “progress.” A decade ago, Jasper Morrison sought to push back the tide of the ever-refined and all-consuming smartphone with the Punkt MP01, a precursor to the revival of burner phones. All it had was a Dieter Rams-esque keypad to make calls and a small screen to send rudimentary texts, take notes, keep a calendar, and calculate numbers.

The desire to look back and nostalgize a pre-mechanical and digital age – or challenge the dominance of a few corporations co-opting certain innovations – has long preoccupied some of the more critical yet impactful technologists. Take American cognitive and computer scientist Minsky – a heavyweight of both Bell Labs and MIT extraction. He was one of the first to explore the potential implementation and wider implications of AI.

In 1952, he developed the first “useless” or “ultimate machine,” a novelty toy that would turn itself off right after an external actor had turned it on. One flipped a switch that activated a lever, appearing from a concealed compartment, that then flipped that switch back off. The inherent irony is hard to miss.

What it was primarily: an engineering hack. In the vein of do-it-yourself maverick Italian designer Enzo Mari, it was a format and kit of parts for others to reimagine and iterate upon. More and more complex versions were developed over the decades. Some turned it into a coin-snatching piggy bank. It’s even said that it inspired the autonomous Thing hand from the gothic sitcom The Addams Family.

For La Machine, it’s a much more tempered expression. The base form is rendered in yellow, the oversized round knob in red, and the top layer “opening compartment” in black. The entire contraption – available in a limited run of 2,500 – is produced in France using 100% recycled plastic.

For more information on La Machine, visit la-machine.fr.

Photography courtesy of La Machine.