Picture it: Italy, 2007. In the green hillside of Calvi dell’Umbria sits a cherished 17th century Baroque convent. A group of artists, dedicated to their passion for finding new ways to communicate and collaborate, have come together to create, imagine, inspire and tend the walled garden that grows their food. At the end of the day, they meet together to sing a Gregorian chant before bedtime. Sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it?

This idyllic “life as art vision” is about to be realized by The Art Monastery Project. Soon Californian artist couple Christopher Fülling and Betsy McCall will lead 30 artists to Italy and bring this dream to reality. Over the next few years they hope to build a community of artists and musicians, allowed to live in the monastery in exchange for renovating and caring for the property. Those retreating there, both visitors and long-term residents, will share a regular schedule (not unlike the convent’s former residents) designed to focus their minds and add fuel to their creative fires.

After searching 25 locations in Italy, there were formally invited by the Mayor of Calvi dell’Umbria to use the convent following a June 2007 visit of 30 artists that included a concert in the town’s oldest church, dancing in the piazza, and a great deal of wine.

McCall says their goal is to foster “an intentional community where the depth of collaboration and vitality of discussion produces genuinely transformative art.” Wow.

If it wasn’t for my lease (and job… and goldfish…), I’d be heading for the Alitalia terminal right now.

Hiding beneath the vibrant candy colors of Canadian photographer Liz Wolfe’s stunning works is a whole bunch of twisted contradictions.

Exploring the juxtaposition between what we commonly consider pretty (flowers) and what we mostly consider gross (an octopus), the sugary perfections of her work force us to reevaluate those considerations. Her shots include tentacles gently curled inside the curves of a rose and a pattern of sardines and daisies laid on the grass beneath a woman’s high-heeled feet. My personal fave is a prostrate hand impaled on a candy stick that bleeds red sprinkles. Never what they first seem, her photos make the ugly look exquisite and the horrific seem cute. One of the great powers of her work is that by forcing us to try and understand why a bouquet of fish heads can looks so beautiful, we’re driven to re-evaluate our very ideas of beauty itself.

One of my favorite TED Talks of all time was just posted — you can view it here or click on over to the TED site to explore. This 18 minutes of fascinating and intriguing stories by J.J. Abrams, creator of Lost, Alias and the soon to be released film Cloverfield, was just as awesome in person as it is now in digital form. His passion and genius for mystery is clear. Watch Lost, then go watch the man talk about it!

List views are so 2007; next up in the growing line-up of visualization interfaces is a new service from Youtube that lets you visually search related videos.

Looking perhaps a little too much like (and moving noticeably slower than) digg labs’ swarm, related videos move around your current choice in multi-coloured bubbles. As you scroll into the other topics, the recs shift based on your preferences and the bubble colours change to help you keep track of which themes you’ve chosen and those you’ve steered away from. Click on any bubble to watch the vid. A white line, giving you a nifty trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back to where you started, instantly connects the videos you decide to watch.

Currently only available in full-screen mode and not yet on all videos, the search takes a little bit of time to get used to. Once you’re in the groove and let your right brain take charge, it’s easy and fast to intuitively move around and find a whole treasure trove of videos you probably wouldn’t come across by search alone.

Sneaker freakers who are behind on their forum reading, you’re looking at Nike Brazil’s newest ill entry inspired by those vinyl records you love to collect almost as much as kicks themselves. Released in Brazil only to the Art Walk mall store chain last month, these sleek Blazer honeys were developed with DJs Marky, Ze Gonzales and Mix Hell (who happens to be Iggor Cavelera, the former drummer of Sepultura, and his wife) chiming in on how they should look. Vinyl material — in reference to the obvious — was used in the back, but I find the grooves stamped into the leather on the sides totally ingenious. Each shoe comes with an option to switch out the shoelaces with an included, differently colored lace topped off with metal detail at the ends chosen by these DJs. And in case you’re wondering, the answer is no, Art Walk doesn’t have an online store. Bummer.

The speaker lineup for the legendary and incredible TED Conference I attend in Monterey, California just released their speaker lineup for the event — 50 days away! — and it is seriously stellar. As the folks at TED say, their most ambitious to date (I’m not surprised, they don’t play around); a diverse group of folks like Kaki King (love her) alongside author Dave Eggers, John Knoll, Walter Isaacson, industrial designer Yves Behar (he did the Jawbone) to name a few. And of course, Al Gore will make another appearance on the same stage he announced his film, An Inconvenient Truth. The yearly brain safari I alluded to last year in all my TED 2007 posts is almost here. I can’t wait! Be sure to check out the whole program here, because you know you can look forward to them as TED Talks in the future.