Glassmaker Etsuko Ichikawa uses molten glass to create abstract drawings on paper. She calls them Pyrographs, and filmmaker Alistair Banks Griffin has made an excellent film of her at work.

KQED introduces us to a material that they compare to "frozen smoke". Called Aerogel, as shown here, it can be used to insulate space suits and perhaps one day our homes. It is the lightest solid on planet earth. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is one of the research facilities experimenting with this remarkable material.

Czech painter Zdenek Sykora,one of the earliest users of the computer in art, has died at the age of 91. Sykora has written that his work was strongly influenced by his viewing of paintings by Matisse at the Hermitage Museum in 1957. His lifetime of work, including some pieces done in collaboration with his wife Lenka, earned him the Herbert-Boeckl Prize in 2005. A You Tube of his work is available without comment online, as well as a brief animated 1990 video of a line drawing.

The next time I go to Berlin I must see the Nhow Berlin Hotel. In fact, I might have to plan a trip just to stay there. Designed to host concerts and live music events, the hotel includes roughly thirty TV and fifty music radio stations. The exterior is as dramatic as the interior. I think we all should go Nhow!

The Kinetic Museum of Electronic and Experimental Art, located in London, has just completed the Kinetica Art Fair in June of this year with some truly amazing exhibits of technology and art. Browse through these images and tell me that you are not tempted to go to London (after Berlin, of course). Be sure to click on the link to the 2010 Fair as well. Look for the Bus to Somewhere, and Harry Bertoia's sound sculptures among other delights.

Look at these Yochiro Kawaguchi Robot designs and you will bring a smile to your day. Creative to say the least. Playful, inventive, beautifully executed, they are a treat to see. Be sure to click on other links on the page for more explorations in the world of communications and design.

For the camera buffs among you, the European Space Agency is planning to launch a ginormous Gigapixel camera which is planned to spend five years making a 3D map of our galaxy. As a small idea of its capabilities, the camera will be able to measure the depth of a single strand of hair from more than six hundred miles away.

Albert C. Barnes was an enigmatic but passionate collector of paintings and sculpture and amassed an enviable collection. The original building housing the art is closed, but a tour of some of its highlights is available here online.

Cy Twombly is described in the Telegraph as "like nothing else in art". Although born in Lexington, Virgina, he now works in Rome, and the combination of the two cultures can be seen in his work. An interesting interview with him was conducted in 2008 by Tate director Nicholas Serota and reveals much about the man and his personality. Amont other things, he said, "I work in waves, because I'm impatient".

Sol LeWitt was a major figure in the minimalist movement in America. The Walker Art Center shows, minimally I think, the work in putting up an exhibition of his pieces. You might also surf over to a discussion of LeWitt's work in collaboration with Philip Glass in a major piece called "Dance" created in 1979.

Artist/photographer/teacher/scholar Tom Chambers presents a project examining the "circle-square crop configurations in the Texas Panhandle", with a fascinating discusssion of the role of the circle in the Middle Ages, the views of artists such as Mondrian and Kandinsky on shapes in space, and the possiblity that farmers in the Texas Panhandle may have an intuitive understanding of aerial art.