Thai artist at Documenta 12

Artworks and audiences challenge each other at the huge modern art show Documenta

Documenta, the world's largest contemporary art show, which is held every five years, opens for the 12th time this weekend. The exhibit features more than 500 works from 113 artists including Thai artist Sakarin Krue-On, who will present his work "Rice Terraces".

The $25.3million (Bt875million) show opened last Saturday in the central German city of Kassel and runs until September 23.

It brings together disparate works of modern artists, including a photo series by Palestinian artist Ahlam Schibli focusing on the lives of her people. There is also a performance art piece by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei that will see 1,001 Chinese people - including farmers, workers and police officers - fly to Germany and then walk through the streets of Kassel for a week.

 "We think of the exhibition as a medium, a move away from representation toward production," said organisers Ruth Noack and Roger M Buergel in a statement.

"Rather than simply lining up the 'best artists of the world', we have considered the format of the exhibition in terms of spectatorial experience as a space in which both 'artwork' and 'audience' challenge each other and are qualified."

The exhibition is primarily spread out over several locations in Kassel, but also includes a presentation of food as art by star cook Ferran Adria at Spain's famous El Bulli restaurant, about two hours north of Barcelona.

Others exhibiting include American concept artist Mary Kelly, African artist Romuald Hazoume and Argentine Alejandra Riera.

For more information visit www.documenta.de.

Fashion world mourns Ferre

On June 17 the fashion world lost one of legends, Italian designer Gianfranco Ferre, who suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. He was 62. Ferre's international career included eight years as artistic director for the prestigious house of Christian Dior in Paris. He was born in Legnano, northern Italy, on August 15, 1944.

He studied architecture in Milan, qualifying in 1969, although within a few years he had moved over into fashion. But his first love never left him: he has been called "the Frank Lloyd Wright of Italian fashion".

"Dressing a woman or man one must think in terms of lines, volumes, proportions. It is exactly the same as 'dressing' a space. The difference, the most important one, is that for the fashion designer the work of reference is the human body, an object in motion," he once said.

The catwalk show of his men's springsummer 2008 collection will go ahead as planned on this Sunday, said Tonino Perna, the head of "It Holding", which owns Ferre's fashion house.

A number of Italian fashion heavyweights, from Giorgio Armani to Roberto Cavalli and Valentino, hailed Ferre for among other things "his intellectual and artistic correctness" his "talent" and "his beautiful personality".

The British fashion writer Colin McDowell has said Ferre's creations had the "power and beauty of sculpture.

Dancing penguin robot

Japan's Sega Toys recently followed up the success of its popular iDog with the electronic gadget iPenguin, a penguinshaped robot with seven LED lights and a speaker on its body connected to a CD player. The iPenguin dances and flashes LED lights to express different emotions. Also, you can hook up iPenguin to an iPod, MP3 player, or your PC with an audio input jack. Sega Toys will put it on the market next month.