Gastro-Vision: Food and Technology in an Art Lab
November 26th, 2010
by Nicole Caruth

Leonor Caraballo adorns a pennant symbolizing her breast cancer tumor.Artists have long been inspired by stand-out events in their lives. From traumas to creative exhilaration, inspiration comes in many forms.

Caraballo-Farman, a two-person team made up of Leonor Caraballo and Abou Farman, have been collaborating on various art and filmmaking projects for three years. Serving a artist residency at Eyebeam, the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the United States, the team’s most recent project demonstrates the array of unique 3D printing applications through the visualization of breast cancer tumors.
For Caraballo-Farman, a grim diagnosis became an inspiring project. Diagnosed with Stage I Invasive Lobular Carcinoma, Caraballo also tested positive for the genetic mutation known as BRCA2. Always fascinated by medical imaging technologies –

[Aram Bartholl] is building his own filesharing network that screws those fat cats who want to control your freedom. He’s added file cache devices throughout NYC (five so far but more to come) that are anonymous and free to use. Upload what you want, download what you want. They’re completely offline which means monitoring who’s doing what gets a lot harder and quite possibly requires a warrant from a Judge (we’re obviously not legal experts, your mileage may vary).

As for the slew of comments that are sure to point out the dangers of malicious USB device; We think everyone knows they’re taking on some risk when connecting to a USB plug protruding from a brick wall.

Have you ever had the urge to randomly dump a massive amount of files in a public location so that any passerby could share in the fun? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But a new EYEBEAM project being conducted by NYC resident Aram Bartholl is pretty cool. He’s essentially running around downtown New York and installing flash drives, called “Dead Drops” into anything and everything — walls, curbs, posts, etc. The idea is that people are to share random files with one another, offline and on the go.

The concept is pretty cool to think about. Though I’m not too sure just strolling up to some random flash drive jutting out of the wall and then hooking it into my computer is the safest thing to do. Nevertheless, it’s a cool social/tech concept. Any NYC residents run into any of these “Dead Drops” yet?

Step inside for a few shots of what these Dead Drop stations look like…