Madeline von Foerster’s Uprooted painting series is an ecological cautionary tale told through the eyes of a wooden doll living in a curiosity cabinet. 

The collection begins with the doll’s realization that she was once a tree, and chronicles her longing to rejoin the forest and be surrounded by living things rather than the lifeless artifacts preserved alongside her.

The idea of the German curiosity cabinet is a symbol of humans’ relationship toward nature: “a laudable curiosity and animation combined with a fetishistic, ultimately doomed desire to contain and possess,” says von Foerster. 

With Uprooted, she hopes to make viewers think about the histories of the objects that surround us every day: tables and chairs that were once trees, bits of ivory that were once elephant tusks, coral that once belonged to a vibrant underwater ecosystem.

Learn more about the project and help von Foerster publish a catalog of these paintings here.

Epic Orphan is a game about nuclear proliferation that aims to have a real-world impact. You play as a government agent investigating and preventing nuclear crises around the world, tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and managing waste — all while engaging in puzzle and practice-based mini-games that test your smarts and skills. 

“While the games are designed to be engaging and novel, they are also intended to provide more context and a systems-level approach to understanding issues,” says the nonprofit Games for Change, who created Epic Orphan. “Nuclear security means three key things: disarmament, nonproliferation, and safety and security of existing materials and weapons sites. Right now we’re more insecure on these three fronts than perhaps ever before.”

Learn more about the game — and the real-world issues that inspired it — right here.

Loes Heerink wants you to see what she sees: “the art that street vendors create every day.” 

The Hanoi, Vietnam-based artist plans to release a book of photographs of street vendors in Hanoi taken from above — artful, vibrant compositions of fruits, vegetables, and flowers balanced in baskets on the vendors’ bicycles. See more and support the project here.

Imagining that Hurricane Sandy —  which devastated whole swaths of the northeastern United States in 2012 — tore a literal hole in time and space, photographer Michael Marcelle has created a startling series of images that explore its hallucinatory aftermath.

His photobook, Kokomo, will depict the traumatic experiences and efforts to rebuild of one family in a small town. 

Inspired by the aesthetics of 1980s horror films, the images “capture the sense of disorientation left in the wake of this unimaginable destruction,” as once-familiar places “were turned into strange, uncanny inversions of themselves,” Marcelle says. Using special effects, the series conjures “an alternate reality layered atop our own.”

See more of these surreal, visceral images and support the project here.

                                      “There’s no place like home.”

Dorothy’s ruby slippers first captivated audiences in technicolor when The Wizard of Oz hit theaters in 1939. Almost eighty years later, the Smithsonian​ is working to conserve these glittering icons of Hollywood history, which have been on display for millions to see at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History since the 1970s. 

Find out how you can help to keep them sparkling for years to come here.

Explore the remains of a fallen empire alongside a wolf with an old soul in the flat-out gorgeous Lost Ember.

The game invites you to uncover the secrets of a ruined civilization alongside your lupine companion. You’re able to control every animal you see as you meander through an exquisite game world, making your way to a mysterious city that promises to answer your many questions. Along the way, you can swim, fly, burrow underground, and climb steep cliffs to see the world from new perspectives at your own pace. 

Learn more and support the project here.