One of the more interesting and worthwhile music projects in the San Francisco Bay area is the Jewish Music and Poetry project. The project's participants are Nanette McGuinness, soprano, David Garner, composer, Dale Tsang-Hall pianist and guest cellist Adaiha Macadam-Somer. The Project's mission, according to their website, "is to perform, commission, and record new chamber music and song cycles by Jewish women poets, particularly those from 20th-21st century Germany." The group has received support from the East Bay Community Fund, but donations will enable them to continue this important work.

Another worthwhile musical venture in the San Francisco area is provided by the Vinaccssi Ensemble, which is performing at the Berkeley, California Fringe Fest at June 6 at Trinity Chapel. Formed in 2008, the Ensemble has been an important factor in resurrecting the work of Italian composer Benedetto Vinaccesi (1666-1719), few of whose works have survived.

For years I have watched the work of Chris Twomey unfold with brilliance and skill. She has now produced a DVD called "The Triumph of XX", raising intense questions about inheritance, gender, infinity, and DNA. A still image from this album is stunningly realized. According to the DVD blurb, "her newest work will preserve her own DNA, so that it may be cloned at some time in the future after her death. Her cloned body would have no memory of its former life, but this new work asks, if her clone were raised as an amnesia victim and encouraged to re-learn who she was by viewing the art she had made, is it possible she could be resurrected?" Vital questions indeed.

Taken from the album "Eskimo" on Ninja Tune, this vimeo, titled "We Got More" is a fascinating excursion into patttern, repetition, concentricity and image-making. Let it take you an a journey through the familiar into the uber-familiar. You won't regret it.

Titled "Titian and the Gang", this exhibit claims to show every painting in the Northern Italian Renaissance show at the Metropolitan Museum. The exhibit is subtitled "From Bellini, Titian and Lotto". Be sure to click on the slide show at the bottom of the page. And don't miss Giovanni Battista Moroni's Portrait of a Little Girl on the Redetti Family, c. 1570.

A full-frontal painting of the President of South Africa in abstract nudity has raised the shackles of the ruling party. Titled The Spear, the painting uses the soviet-era style set except for the subject's genitals, which protrude generously through the opening in his pants. The issue of freedom of expression has been in the forefront of South Africa's political discourse since at least 2005, when Jonathan Zapiro drew a cartoon showing then-President Zuma unbuckling his belt before raping a blind "Lady Justice" as she was being subdued by his compatriots.

Prepare to be astonished at this 121-megapixel photograph of Planet Earth taken as a single shot by a Russian weather satellite from 22,369 miles away.

Los Angeles photographer M. A. Katcher has produced a haunting series of photographs titled "Ceci n'est pas une personne/This is Not a Person". Ghostlike images that appear to be people are actually mannequins found in store windows and creating evocative shadow personalities. More images may be found here.

Edouard Vuillard painted domestic scenes that have been described as "intoxicating dissonances of shape and color". Now showing at the Jewish Museum in New York, the exhibit's subtitle, "A Painter and his Muses", hints at the complex relationships between Vuillard and women. The home life of the painter, his Mother, his sister and her unfaithful husband, and another painter who was Vuillard's best friend fill these canvases with mystery and intrigue. Another site gives further details of the life of this fin de siecle painter.

Described as the coolest elevator in New York, this one will blow you away once the blank steel doors open. Scroll down to see a lobby remnant of a school bus crashing into a giant hand, all left over from when the building was a Macy's warehouse.

Known for his extreme performances and gestures, Australian artist Stelarc has gone to great lengths to probe the outer limits of his, and our, tolerances. From swallowing a stomach sculpture that almost killed him to undergoing aggressive and strange surgeries, Stelarc has pushed the boundaries of his art and his body to their limits. His current project has involved surgically inserting an ear, which he calls a "biocompatibe scaffold", into his forearm, intending eventually to insert a small microphone into the biostructure so that people in Tokyo or Berlin can hear what his "ear" is hearing. This is an unusual project, to say the least.

A new sports video, called "Going the Distance", by Susan Kaprov brilliantly recreates the world of sports as a dance animation. Created for the University of Iowa's new Carver-Hawkeye arena, the video merges animation, sports footage, choreography and intense color to produce fascinating moving films of sports in action. More of Kaprov's work, including her stunning "Night Riders", and the lovely "Convergence" fired enamel glass windows, can be seen at her website.

Have you flarfed recently? If so you are aware of the newest innovation in the field of modern poetry, using random word combinations that appear in Google searches. There are even fifteen flarf books, and flarf readings have been held at the Whitney Museum in New York and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

And if you really want to hear what the new world has to offer, listen to these excerpts from composer Zosha di Castri's music. Di Castri, a composer and pianist from Canada, has been chosen to compose one chamber work and one orchestral work under a project titled "New Voices" to be performed by both the San Francisco Symphony and the New World Symphony. Be prepared for some unusual sounds. (Thanks to lyric soprano Nanette McGuinness for this.

I have omitted graphics and used only links, partially due to the current brouhaha over copyrights. Give me your feedback on your how you feel about this.