Epic Sahara Desert Art Installation Still Exists After 17 Years And Is Visible From Google Earth

 The word “epic” is thrown around a lot these days to describe art or other media that people like. If you want a good idea of what “epic” really looks like, however, you need to see Desert Breath, a truly epic art installation near the Red Sea in Egypt. 17 years after its completion, this mystical desert spiral is still clearly visible on Google Earth.

The work, by D.A.S.T. Arteam, is of truly epic proportions – between 1995 and 1997, 8,000 m3 of sand were displaced to create an art installation that occupies 100,000 m2 of desert between the Red Sea and a range of ancient volcanic mountains in Egypt’s Eastern Desert region. It consists of a massive spiral of cones and pits that spiral out of a central pool of water. As the walking viewer approaches the center, the gradually smaller cones will make the viewer will feel as though they’re growing larger.

The team of artists consists of installation artist Danae Stratou, industrial designer and architect Alexandra Stratou, and architect Stella Constantinides. Located between the sea and a body of mountains at the point where the immensity of the sea meets the immensity of the desert, the work functions on two different levels in terms of viewpoint: from above as a visual image, and from the ground, walking the spiral pathway, a physical experience,” explains the team. “In our mind’s eye the desert was a place where one experiences infinity.”

Colorful Mandala Designs Made From Flowers And Plants

Kathy Klein, an artist and “lover of plants, animals, people and the divine presence within all,” creates beautiful flower mandalas, which she calls “danmalas,” out of intricate arrangements of natural plant parts.

Klein, who is based in Arizona in the U.S., has a deeply spiritual process to creating the mandalas, centering herself in a meditative devotional space as part of the creative process and drawing inspiration from “the golden sound residing within perfect silence.” She often leaves the works where she made them, to be found by lucky passers-by.

The traditional Buddhist mandala, off of which her works are loosely based, is a deeply spiritual and also impermanent art form with its roots in Buddhist beliefs. For more examples of this diverse and intricate art form, check out the work of Joe Mangrum.

Macro Photos Of Cute And Cuddly Jumping Spiders

When you hear the word “cute,” “spider” is probably not the first word that pops into your head. But photographer Thomas Shahan is out to change all that with his incredible macro photographs of doe-eyed jumping spiders.

Jumping spiders are unusual in that the majority of them do not hunt with webs. They have powerful hind legs and the best eyesight among spiders, allowing them to hunt actively with powerful jumps. They can still produce silk, however, often using it to tether themselves before jumping or to create shelters.

With the exception of Australia, where just about every living thing out there can kill or maim you, I don’t get why people hate spiders. A world without spiders would be a world with far more mosquitoes and flies, which carry countless diseases. And when you know that some of them can look this cute – are they really all that scary?

And that statistic you might have heard about the average person swallowing eight spiders a year? In 1993, a writer circulated this and other fake facts to prove how easy it was to circulate false information. His demonstration was extraordinarily successful.

So the next time you see a spider, keep in mind that it’s probably more interested in hunting bugs that are trying to bite to bite you rather than biting you.