This week had us gawking at art and photography that transports — to places magical, funny, troubling.

First Person Soccer – super visceral ad by Guy Ritchie (Mr. Madonna, Lock Stock) makes you the soccer star

First Person Parkour – graphically beautiful game puts you in the head (and in control) of a free running master (find out how it works at Edge)

First/Third Splitscreen – Radiohead goes activist with a video that thoughtfully compares a kid’s life in the first and third world. Kudos to MTV Exit

Subway Culture Jam – mystery editing of NYC subway ads results in fall down hilarity

Massive Moving Wall – Beijing’s GreenPix gets in your face with is a huge, gorgeous media wall that has zero carbon footprint

Where the Mekong Die – Suthep Kritsanavarin captures jaw dropping scenery and puts you in the shoes of fishermen along the Mekong in Thailand

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This week had us infatuated with design transformation: building up, tearing down — but always emerging with something wicked.

Building Lust – NYT has a great behind the scenes look at the making of Bjork’s stunning new video Wanderlust

Living Bridges – transformative bridges that do far more than transport people; they become a destination

Design Gets Minted – comparing the beautiful new British coins to the horrid design-by-committee US five dollar bill

Murakami Retro – the Brooklyn Museum launches what looks to be a fabulous retrospective on the father of Superflat, Takashi Murakami

Where Billboards Went Рsuper clever repurposing of trashed Ṣo Paulo billboards after the public advertising ban

Jamming Apparel – appropriately raunchy mockeries of American Apparel keep popping up all over NYC

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The past few weeks have brought a flood of amazing photos from all corners of Africa: South Africa to Kenya, Burkino Faso to Morocco, and more. Such diversity, such beauty, such joy, such hardship.

People Of The Klein Karoo – stunning black & white shots of children and families on the Red River Farm, Western Cape, South Africa

Moroccan Road Trip – Stefan Rohner’s luminous candid photos capture daily life in Morocco (via raul)

Learning in Burkino – the Times had lovely, colorful photos from Burkina Faso for its cover story on aid problems in Africa

Kings of Africa – a three year journey produces wonderfully diverse photos of over 70 descendants of the great African dynasties

Born in Nairobi – capturing the moments after birth in Kenya. Four more amazing shots (one, two, three, four) from the same photographer appear as part of Japan’s Uneo Hikoma Awards.

See also War and Weddings, Mark Brecke’s work documenting genocide in Darfur and elsewhere (previously) and Unphotographable, a meditation on photos lost.

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Running to keep up with the ever explosive change in Asia is dizzying. Here’s a snapshot of what’s particularly surprised, shocked, and dismayed us over the past week out east.

Down the Block Badass – gorgeously redesigned Tokyo hair salon stunningly sticks out (via myninjaplease)

Living in Refuse – the flip side of Tokyo’s super opulent hair salons is found in Cambodia’s garbage dumps, where families live day-to-day on what the rich throw out

New Gambling Capital – skid row meeds front row in Macau, the Chinese territory that’s just surpassed Las Vegas as the most profitable gambling spot on Earth

Yao-Yi Trumps Super Bowl – NBA matchup featuring two Chinese players drew more than twice as many viewers as the Super Bowl, most of them in China

Sub Surprise – undetected Chinese sub surfaces amid a US Navy exercise in the Pacific, tweaking the nose of the “vastly superior” American sea force

China Dumps Dollar – Chinese state TV implores citizens to abandon US currency before it tanks

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This week hit us with ads that either made no sense or were seriously suspect. Here’s a sampling:

Toyota Alien Apocalypse – who uses the violent end of the world to sell a truck? Here’s the answer. And ironic, too, considering the carbon footprint of those things. (via coloribus)

Farting Squrrel Saves World – end of the known world at hand? Nothing that farts (caused by the freaking product they’re trying to sell!) can’t cure. Clearly, we’re going to need these masks.

Ads Most Offensive – on a more serious note, NOW collects ads seriously offensive to women (and should be to the rest of us, too)

And a couple more for the road…

MoFrames – clever video collages show motion in a single image. The soccer bits are particularly spectacular. (via cplove)

Superhero Beatdown – lovely illustration of Superman and Batman getting what they had coming

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When we think China, we often think of a place steeped in centuries old mythology. But new myths spring up now and again, too.

Communist Opening – the majestic visuals surrounding Communist Opening Day belies a political agenda that’s anything but

Hairman Mao – Zedong’s hidden history comes out of the closet in a Yuan retrofit for the ages. Bald to Bouffant in 60 seconds

New Mao / No Mao – speaking of Mao, Shanghai’s Guangci gives two sides of the man: one in mythmaker sterling silver and another melting grotesquely under the bright lights of historical scrutiny

And shedding light on myths around the globe:

Daily Deforestation – paper dispenser hack connects consumption with its environmental effects

Visualize World Health – lovely visualization highlights where doctors are needed most

War and Weddings – photographer forges credentials and sneaks into places officials would rather forget to shed light on world issues that desperately need solving. It’s people like Mark that make sure we remember

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This week found us stumbling into all kinds of odd. But, then, we should have seen it coming after this first item out of India:

Flight to Nowhere – Indian entrepreneur sells virtual journeys on one-winged plane. Get all of the hassle of travel with none of the, well, travel.

Heavy Metal Collage – totally strange physical mashups of old school metal vinyl albums. Remix goes lo-fi. Playable, too. I bet it sounds like Jason Forrest.

Hazardous Future – three videos catalog bizarre future f*ckups. (First one is best, but give it a minute to get going.) And speaking of future strange, check these hysterical retro ads for modern products.

Cut Here – real streets turned into papercraft by a clever stencil

Innocence Industry – professor finds the dark side of Norman Rockwell and wonders why we feign shock over world events that shouldn’t be all that surprising

Night Refuge – unusually luminous wooden structure among the once supermodern, now decaying Shimodera Public Housing Complex in Osaka (click for enlargement)

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This week we were overwhelmed by inspiring photos and video from around the world, and each one tells a story that made us want to learn more.

Hell From Heaven – stunning colors in this photo amidst the chaos of the Nigerian pipeline disaster

Twilight Zone – night glows in these luminous photos of Tokyo taken from an emergency staircase. Also love these in-the-trenches night photos of the streets of Tokyo and Osaka by the same photographer

Max Density – culture and technology overlap in an amazing train meets market video out of Bangkok

Real Toy Story – heartfelt portraits from the heart of China’s toy central: Guangdong province. See also Mike Wolf’s shots of Chinese-made toys alongside their makers

Colorful Crumbling India – lovely multilayered shot of weathered posters on the back streets of Mumbai leaves us with more questions than answers

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Warped Wall – wallpaper reacts to objects hanging from it by warping beautifully

Unchained – typically oppressive chain link fences become objects of beauty in The Netherlands

Blown Up Living Room – living areas overtaken by inflatable tendrils

Vuitton Refused – irony abounds as high priced fashionista Louis Vuitton does garbage duty

Helios House – Keith shoots a gas station gone low poly just outside of Los Angeles (more)

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Psychic Vacuum – Mike Nelson’s new installation in Essex Street market is a beautiful expression of the haunting environs an urban explorer might encounter on entering a long abandoned space — a modern Pompeii (more at Bluejake, Gothamist, NYT)

Save The Words – video from the future cleverly examines the loss of written language

Folder-shaped Folder – metaphor amusingly fleshed out with this USB drive shaped just like the files it carries

Open Secret – graffiti just outside Cape Town puts intimate thoughts in plain sight

Lady Cab Driver – cabbie and blogger Melissa Plaut takes us inside what it means to be a female hack in New York City

Cornered at the Bend – love this unexpectedly powerful shot from the streets of Mumbai

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