The Diary: Primate Cinema; J M Synge; New Sensations exhibition; Walter Hugo; Ryo Arai

Monkey business

There is a chimpanzee arts revolution going on. Films such as Project Nim and Rise of the Planet of the Apes are filling our cinemas with monkey fans. Last month, artwork made by chimps was exhibited at Florida's Hippodrome State Theatre. Now we've got Primate Cinema, a film project by the artist Rachel Mayeri, which reveals that chimpanzees respond to violence, desire and inanity on television just like humans. Mayeri's primate soap opera stars humans dressed as chimps at play, at war and generally monkeying around. The double-screen projection shows three real-life chimps at Edinburgh Zoo reacting to the onscreen activity. The human-simian similarities are startling. Primate Cinema caused a stir at the Abandon Normal Devices festival in Liverpool last week and is heading to London's The Arts Catalyst space from 19 October.

Weighty issues

Irish playwright J M Synge's unusual writing technique of eavesdropping on strangers and scribbling down their words was mentioned in this paper in a recent review of the Old Vic's Playboy of the Western World. Apparently Synge used only "one or two words not heard among the people of Ireland" in his 1907 dramaturgy. Such appropriation of language is all very well in the name of good art. But fast forward 104 years and followers of the Old Vic's Twitter account have been treated to a less innocuous form of linguistic borrowing. Spammers took over @oldvicnewvoices and began urging the theatre's 4,000-odd followers to lose weight. Messages, such as "Are you serious about weight loss? Read this article ASAP!", included a link to malware so dangerous the Old Vic issued instructions recommending those caught out reset their twitter passwords.

New Sensations at Regent's Park

If you take the London Underground every day and feel fed up with billboards promising medical insurance, then it will be worth your while to take a little detour via Regent's Park Tube. An extension of the Saatchi Gallery's New Sensations exhibition is taking place on Platform 2. Artworks by the 20 finalists of this year's Channel 4- and Saatchi-sponsored graduate art prize have replaced advertising. Those of you worrying about artworks being defaced with stuck-on chewing gum, never fear! The real artworks are safely housed at B1, Victoria House, Bloomsbury and the mock advertising posters have been specially created by Art Below.

The fine art of Hugo

Despite this being the age of digital art, the 29-year-old artist Walter Hugo is going back in time to produce breathtaking "photographic frescos" at London's Cob Gallery. Hugo would not be seen dead messing around with Photoshop or computers. He prefers noxious chemicals and has been reviving 100-year-old ambrotype photography techniques. I was at the Cob to watch him paint silver nitrate emulsion on to the walls and waited in pitch darkness wearing a gas mask as he developed images straight on to the plaster board. I witnessed a rather risqué sepia triptych appear like magic. The technique means the artwork is indelibly imprinted. Cob curator Victoria Williams isn't sure what will be done with it once Hugo's show closes in two weeks' time. "We might paint over it," she said, smiling in response to Hugo's look of alarm. "Or we may have to saw them out of the walls."

Old haunts

Techniques dating back 400 years have been used by two artists to make goblins, ghosts and other fantastical creatures due to tip up at London's ICN gallery just in time for Hallowe'en. Ryo Arai's ethereal papier-mâché (or hariko) sculptures use techniques rooted in the Edo transom sculpture, netsuke and noh theatre mask-making traditions. Wood-engraving artist iTARO has combined ancient artistic practises with a comment on the Japanese toy market, making grotesque baby dolls with wind-up pins in their backs. The combined impact of the creepy artworks is the stuff of nightmares, representing possessed demons and spirits thought to bring disaster to mankind.