This symposium looks interesting and I’m thinking of attending the “Emulation Performance” by jodi and the afternoon session. Get the details here (click symposium).

The symposium accompanies the exhibition “Seeing Double,” which is very successful IMO. According to the press release:

This exhibition tests the promise of an experimental treatment—emulation—for rescuing new media art from the ravages of time.

The art work seems to have been “rescued.” The does more than just that. By exposing ‘how’ you emulate new media art it you also illustrates to the public the ‘material’ of digital art.

That’s to say, most people go to a museum and look at a moving image on a screen of some sort and it’s not self-evident what the material of the image is. Is it simply a video? Or is it a computational piece which is getting real-time data from the Internet or running some software algorithm to auto-generate visuals or what have you. It’s not always obvious.

But in “Seeing Double” the materials become obvious through the process and exploration of emulation and that does new media art and the art public a real service.

What is the mathematical, fractal relationship between shapes found in beehive honeycombs, a pineapple, tesselating hexagons, and African-American hair braiding? Dr. Gloria Gilmer, founding president of the International Study Group on Ethnomathematics, is glad you asked. Link

AgoraXchange, an online community for discussing and designing a massive multi-player global politics game...


Architecture, Design and Development by FDTDesign.

A must-have for all fans of Sequential Art:

I just received a copy of Prophecy Anthology, Volume 1. A beautiful, full-color, 9.5" x 13" book published by Sequent Media and featuring a plethora of sequential art by artists such as Shannon Wheeler, Scott McCloud, Sho Murase, Yuko Shimizu, Nathan Fox and Bernie Mireault and many others.


Get a copy here.

for reference: episodes 1, 2, and 3 [via] 

After three days in Bilbao, we are heading to Manchester now for FutureSonic. Kaki will be leading a workshop, and I will be exhibiting and speaking about the Wifi-Hog project. Please stop by and say hello if you are in the area! As for Bilbao, I checked out the exhibition finally and there were some really interesting projects including John Kilma’s long awaited, Terrain Machine (pictured w/guts), a real-time depth display with hundred of motorized potentiometers with stretched spandex connecting each point. The result is a moving “terrain” with a projected image of a woman floating on the surface, allowing users to manipuate the depths of the pots as they cast a shadow. I am in the process of writing up a more detailed report, so I will post a link soon. Also checked out the Guggenheim Bilbao which definitely reminded me of an updated Guggenheim NYC. The best was on the recorded tour when the voice says, “The stones of the building were crafted by robots!”. Nice touch.

"I turn emails into music. You can send titles, lyrics, directions, and anything else that can be described in words and they may end up on this site as little songs (1m:11s or shorter)"

The CUWiN project wants to allow self-forming, noncentralized, mesh-based Wi-Fi networks using standard, old PCs with no configuration. Slightly more advanced units could be ruggedized boxes using Compact Flash, but the basic unit would be a 486 or later PC with a bootable CD-ROM or bootable floppy that bootstraps a CD-ROM. Once booted, a unit finds other similar units without any other configuration or control and forms a mesh.

Read the rest of this post at Wi-Fi Networking News

The original Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, serves both as whimsical background music and as motivational tool for a rock band.

The current issue of Scientific American features a mind-blowing article by W. Wayt Gibbs about "synthetic biology," the effort to create designer organisms from the bottom up:

"This nascent field has three major goals: One, learn about life by building it, rather than by tearing it apart. Two, make genetic engineering worthy of its name--a discipline that continuously improves by standardizing its previous creations and recombining them to make new and more sophisticated systems. And three, stretch the boundaries of life and of machines until the two overlap to yield truly programmable organisms. Already TNT-detecting and artemisinin-producing microbes seem within reach. The current prototypes are relatively primitive, but the vision is undeniably grand: think of it as Life, version 2.0."

Self-propelled swarming robot traffic cones: nuff sed.

The new road markers have been developed by Shane Farritor, a roboticist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in a bid to help reduce the $100 billion per year that the Department of Transportation estimates is lost to the US economy through accidents and delays caused by highway lane closures.

The self-propelled markers take the form of robotic three-wheeled bases for the brightly coloured barrels that are set out to demarcate road repair zones. Farritor says they can open and close traffic lanes faster and more safely than humans.

Link

Scientists program the world's smallest computer, made of DNA molecules, to detect and treat prostate cancer. They hope the mini machine will one day be administered as a drug, where it could search for and combat disease in every cell.

Sam Arbesman has written up an initial analysis (PDF file) of the results of the Memespread Project. In discussing the spread of memes, it's common practice to utilize familiar biological terms: viral, epidemic, contagious, incubation, etc. My favorite quote of the article along those lines is "Jason Kottke is an informational equivalent of Typhoid Mary". Heh. But in this case, MetaFilter turned out more Mary than I: What seemed most...

Highlights affordable and reliable compression technologies, transport protocols, software and hardware setups for video streaming.

Given the vast panorama of video technologies available nowadays, this research could fill up way too much paper in the attempt of covering every aspect of this field, instead i'll just try to narrow the focus to certain advanced aspects of streaming video, also trying to give a quick reference guide to the usage of selected free software.

The next dorkbot-socal meeting will take place on Saturday,
May 1st at 8pm at the Arts Computation Engineering Bunker (Building 522)
at the University of California Irvine. Presenters: Tom Jennings -- Car
Parts and ASCII; Mark Allen and Sky Frostenson -- Waco Ressurrection
Project; Beverly Tang -- Sublimina invisible-sensing "third eye"
necklace

FreeJ is a digital instrument for video livesets, featuring realtime rendering of multilayered video and chained effect filtering directly on the screen. FreeJ deals with every video source as a layer, making then possible to dynamically apply on each a chain of filters, loadable as effect plugins and easily customizable.

It looks like EAI is starting to promote on-line work. This site features video and net art from various artists, including few Eyebeam alums.

A symposium at the Guggenheim on May 8th about new techniques for preserving digital art (PDF file).

While walking home from work the other day I passed a group of guys emerging from a pizza joint. After a few handshakes and goodbyes they parted ways and made arrangements for their next meeting. And then one of them yelled across the street, "something me on Thursday." His friend looked a little confused, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. He added, "IM, call, email... I don't care."

Despite our proximity to MIT, these guys did not strike me as the type who wear t-shirts that say Go away or I'll replace you with a simple shell script or tote around Leathermans in their utility belts. These were just normal guys with too many ways to talk to each other.

I'm guessing that we have reached some saturating point in communication technology where the actual medium itself has become unimportant. When I thought about the expression, "something me," I realized that we don't have a satisfactory, general expression for communicating in our common vernacular. It seems like an issue that will only become more important as we add media and devices to the current equation, but at current I can't come up with anything better.

"Phone Dial: To use it, one dials an IP address rather than typing a URL. Dots are entered by pressing a button, external to the dial."

Flesh Gun: Dutch artist Joanneke Meester holds up a replica pistol made out of an eight-inch piece of her skin. Joanneke made the pistol from a flap of her own skin which was surgically removed from her abdomen. The puckered skin was stretched and sewn with nylon over a plastic and fiber mold.

"If everyone made a pistol from their own skin, I think they would think twice about using a gun. I think there would be less violence in the world," she said. "But it's not that easy. Violence will always exist."

Scambaiting is the sport of baiting and messing with 419 scammers.

Paintings by Teresa Margolles made by dipping paper "into the water used to clean human corpses after autopsies" (Part of her ''Muerte Sin Fin'' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt.)

Philip Kollar writes "AllRPG has just posted Games As Art, Part 2. In this article, I attempt to create a viable list of things that come together to make a ...

check out the rest of Roi's portfolio [via] 

Spectra-txt is a 30ft high metal tower, which changes colour when people "call" it on their mobiles.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Music | Bowie asks fans to bootleg songs Oooh! How exciting! How avant-garde. Look! They even have a picture of DJ DangerMouse in the same article. This must be the punkest expression of anti-copyright activism from a well-know star, right? W R O N...

nuff said

If you download and run these applications, make sure you know how to force quit.

A system that projects light beams directly onto the eye's retina could change the way we view the world.

based on the original fake [via] 

Colors, the magazine owned by the Italian apparel company, returns with surprisingly little resonance to the political turmoil of the world.

"Read real-world hyperlinks with a camera phone. A semacode is a URL barcode. Click on the semacode with your camera phone, and the semacode software will automatically load the corresponding web page in seconds."

The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata: "Discover, identify and create your own Steam Age nanobot." And, while you're about it, papermachine—an interactive puzzle, also by the Lycette brothers—is worth checking out too, though I haven't yet managed to complete it.

(Via Steve.)

The Surrealist Compliment Generator...

Similar to voice-mail, Tecnomen's solution allows unanswered calls to be forwarded to a video mail service. Callers then see subscribers' video greetings and can leave video messages.

Some ideas for customizing the outside of your iBook (Niche business alert: will rich hipsters pay for custom designed iBook exteriors?)

perfect for all your cartographic slicing and dicing

One of my favorite things about robotics hobbyists is that they're always driven by one overwhelming goal: To create a robot that can serve them a beer. The closest we've come so far is the Androbot, sold back in the 80s, which came with an "Androfridge" attachment so that it could carry beers to you as you rot, senescent, on your barcalounger. But now Brian Pietrodangelo, a student at the Univerity of Florida's Machine Intelligence Laboratory, has created Koolio -- a "travelling autonomous refrigerator robot". Anyone at the Lab can order a drink online and Koolio will deliver it. This requires a terrific bouquet of navigation techniques, including: - Sonar for accurate long distance coverage. - IR for close obstacle avoidance. - Shaft encoding for accurate navigation once location is determined. - Web cameras for reading room numbers off the wall. (Thanks to Slashdot for this one!)...

Design your own lightshow, and have it displayed over the city of dublin. Get in line, the sites been slashdotted!

Claire Chanel, the person behind the Jay-Z Construction Set, has decided to net.judo-ify the RIAA's spoof tracks, random noise disguised as top-40 singles which it promulgates on the P2P netowrks.

As a follow-up to our last project, the Jay-Z Construction Set, Scary Sherman and I decided to take a fair & balanced route by highlighting one of the positive moves made recently by music industry leaders.

The RIAA-Mix Vol.1 is a compilation of the hottest underground remixes of top40 hit tracks produced by the upcoming talent at Overpeer. These homages to 20th century noise artists and avant composers pull a frightening bait and switch on listeners veering wildly from recognizable pop hooks to jarring digital distortion.

Available at riaamix.com as downloadable mp3s, streaming flash audio, or on a compact disc, we're hoping our compilation can help support the arrival of challenging new music to mainstream exposure.

Link

niktesla writes "Scientific American is carrying a story about sythetic life - genetic engineered "machines" made from DNA building blocks called "BioBricks". ...

Earlier this month, we posted Monochrom's call-for-submissions for jpegs of random punchline-text from comic strips. Now, Monochrom brings us the outcome: a web page werein a single-frame comic and a punchine are combined at random. The results are funny-esque and very weird. Reload often. (Thanks, Johannes!)

"touch. DEPRIVATION" was a series of actions that were seldom emotionally touching or gripping, as seen at the Joyce SoHo on Saturday.

Now in its 9th year, the upcoming incarnation of Manchester, England’s Futuresonic festival could be the most innovatively programmed and conceptually integrated to date. Focusing equally on contemporary music and media art, the festival explores multiple intersections of the two through workshops, demos, artists’ talks, panel discussions, and performances. Featured are two festivals within the festival: a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Technics 1200MK2, and a series of mobile technology adventures and installations located in and around the city. Venerable intellectuals and writers like Sadie Plant and Hugh Davies are finally scheduled alongside club genii like Greg Wilson and Andy Votel – implicit recognition of the parallel achievements of each cultural legacy. From the time-jumbling laptop queen Kaffe Matthews to stalwart fusion keyboardist Joe Zawinul, the musical styles here span genres, while the musicians themselves span generations. This year’s Futuresonic looks to take note of where we are and where we’re heading through an intermingling of media/music pioneers and enthusiasts. – Andrew Choate

http://www.futuresonic.com

Please welcome Jason Kottke who will be guest reBlogging this week. Jason is a pioneering and influential weblogger. Over the past 6 years, his site (kottke.org) has reached millions of people and helped define a new medium. Jason is also a professional web designer and a speaker at leading technology conferences. Take it away, Jason.

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from an amazing page of NES Speed Videos, distributed with BitTorrent  

Cool blog about the designs baristas can make in the foamy milk that sits on top of your caffe latte. My favorite coffee hang in Los Angeles is Urth (even though I can never get a table), in part because their coffee is dark, sweet, earthy, and delicious -- and in part because the guys who make it draw little hearts and zigzags and bunnies in the foam.
Link (Thanks, Jean-Luc!)

Computer users tend to form strong ties with a particular machine, researchers have found.

Why have so many photographers imitated painting? The exhibit "Art History" invites the viewer to speculate.

I'm not sure how I feel about being in the WSJ for my stupidity, but I agreed in order to emphasis my point to more people.

Not only am I posting a link to the web site for the INAUGURAL AVON HERITAGE DUCT TAPE FESTIVAL, but AVON, OHIO is practically my hometown. It’s the town where my mother and grandmother live.

It really isn’t my hometown, Elyria, OH has that glorious distinction, but it’s pretty damn close.

I never thought I’d ever type this, but, thanks for the link Mom!

Cell phones and tiny cameras magnified attendance at a riot in Iowa this week.

(thanks to Wil Natzel)

20 roman candles, one motorcycle helmet, one t-shirt with a target on it and one drunk boy makes for a good party

DScaler is a piece of software that grabs analog, interlaced video, and deinterlaces it to make it a progressive scan feed then allows scaling to any resolution for use on your computer monitor or projector.

interesting information design [via] 

A panel that recommended decertifying Diebold's touch-screen voting machines in California also wants to see the company face charges for violating the state's election laws. Kim Zetter reports from Sacramento, California.

A riveting, all-elbows-and-knuckles documentary about the proto-punk warriors known as the MC5.

The upcoming festival marks their 25th aniversary.

Hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on Thursday on the Internet by a Web site dedicated to combating government secrecy.

A symposium about responsive environments and new technologies being explored by contemporary sound and visual artists.

A voting panel urges state officials to stop using voting machines made by Diebold. The panel also asks the attorney general to consider slapping the company with civil and criminal law