Philosophical article about art, craft, and science

HHMI researchers have found that bacteria of different species can talk to each other using a common language -- and also that some species can manipulate the conversation to confuse other bacteria.

in addtion to the extraordinary work, a really good designed site...FM

Send yourself an email in the future! But be profound, you can't use it as a reminder service.

@ the Dutch Film Festival

Live performance ResonanCity by Sara Kolster and Derek Holzer, October 3, 20.00 uur; Dutch Film Festival/Re:visie, Centraal Museum [Post CM building], Utrecht NL.

Many sounds and images in our everyday lives slip past our notice simply because they are too small, or because we lack the proper receivers to pick them up.

And now with MirrorMask, two legends of the comics scene -- illustrator Dave McKean and writer Neil Gaiman (creators of Sandman) -- have constructed a blend of live action and animation.

So the word is in on what it will take for the iPod subway maps site to continue distributing its wares: $500 will net a one-year license from the MTA to reformat and distribute New York subway maps for free (the license does not allow the maps to be sold, to raise money for the license or otherwise).

The low-fi net art locator is a project to increase visibility of art projects which use the internet as a medium and to promote development of 'net based art.

Bridging the Phyical-Digital Divide

motione: Using state of the art, real time motion capture technologies and motion analysis techniques, the movement of the dancers and the structures of the choreography are analyzed in real time. Through novel artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction systems, the results of the analysis informs the creation of digital graphics and sound environments that react to, accompany, enhance and comment on the choreography.

An application for our 2006 Next Generation Design Competition, which closes December 15. The competition offers $10,000 in seed money to an emerging designer with a “big idea” that will make our environment better, safer, and more sustainable.

Moller International has developed the first and only feasible, personally affordable, personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen. You've always known it was just a matter of time before the world demanded some kind of flying machine which would replace the automobile. Of course, this machine would have to be capable of VTOL, be easy to maintain, cost effective and reliable

Passenger "Please don't wander into non public parts of railroad tunnels. It is against the law, and it is dangerous." the author

Immune system cells are connected to each other by an extensive network of tiny tunnels that, like a building's hidden pneumatic tube system, are used to shoot signals to distant cells. This surprising discovery, being reported by University of Pittsburgh researchers, may explain how an immune response can be so exquisitely swift. The research proves cells other than neurons are capable of long-distance communication and reveals a hereto-unknown mechanism cells use for exchanging information.

MIT mathematicians have discovered how certain insects can climb what to them are steep, slippery slopes in the water's surface without moving their limbs--and do it at high speed. Welcome to the world of the tiny creatures that live on the surface of ponds, lakes and other standing bodies of water. There, "all the rules change," said David Hu, a graduate student in the Department of Mathematics and first author of a paper on the work to appear in the Sept. 29 issue of Nature.

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Majken Kramer Overgaard interviews author, curator and net art critic Rachel Greene about herself, her book and her work with Rhizome.org.

In the beginning of April 2005, a Swedish chapter of the global organizaton Dorkbot was started in Stockholm, Sweden. The initiator of Dorkbot Stockholm Majken Kramer Overgaard sent us an update on the launch and some words about the Dorkbot concept. Majken is a quite mobile and energetic individual on the new media scene, working her way from New York to Stockholm and on to Tokyo this fall.

David Pescovitz: The journal Science and the National Science Foundation have announced the winners of the 2005 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. The entries spanned five categories--illustration, informational graphic, photography, interactive media, and non-interactive media. First place for photography went to James S. Aber of Emporia State University for his image titled "Autumn Color, Estonian Bog."

Hybridization of Practices

TRANSMISSIONS crystallizes the integration of creativity in the arts, science and technologies. Today research, experimentation and creation in new media are, by their volume, at least comparable to what could have been produced in the 1960's, with the development of mass media. The hybridization of the practices and the digital components between the scientific, technical and artistic fields invigorates inventive processes, experimentalism, interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity. The artists are unceasingly exploring the potential of technology for new relations with the world, new constructions of knowledge and new social spaces and means of expression. The researcher thus intersects with the artist or the mediator, in their common zest for experimentation.

Political Videogames Against the Dictatorship of Entertainment

The MayDay NetParade--by Molleindustria--is a virtual demo that runs thru a heavily guarded and branded city put under siege by insurgent legions of brain+chain+temp workers and assorted anarchists, commies, queers and greens. The marching avatars are digital simulacra of today's exploited masses of neoliberalism: précaires, precari@s, precari, cognitarie, contingent knowledge and service workers. We are a mixed bunch, a heterogeneous multitude of precarious jobs and lives. Yet we have not spawn out of fordist assembly chains, but out of dystopian retail chains and office spaces.

Moving Canvas is a collection of several proposals. They all have emerged from our reflection on the visual and symbolical importance of trains in an urban context and the possibility of exploiting their short-lived prominence as brief communicative moments.

Talking tooth When background noise is horribly loud - in a tank, on an airport runway or aircraft carrier - ordinary microphones are useless. Even mics that clamp to the throat or skull are no good because the noise vibrates the sensor. So four inventors deep in the heart of US Defence territory, in Maryland and Virginia, have come up with a mic that is clamped to a back tooth. This, they say, shields it from external vibration while still picking up speech from the jaw bone.

Internet Art in the Whitney Biennial...

Like an autobahn crash, we just can’t look away from these Czech animatronic “peeing“ statues. The figures actually “write” quotes into the pool from famous Prague residents via their, uh, fleshy stylus. Immune to stage fright, the stream of quotes can be interrupted via an SMS message which these 2.1-meter bronze gods-o-piddle obediently begin to dribble. Now, we don’t know what this says about the quality of Czech quotations but at least one from F. Kafka seems apropos, “a first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”

[Via BoingBoing]

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SPONSORED BY: Fable: The Lost Chapters. Now On PC. Enter a world where every choice changes your fate. Enhanced graphics, new journeys, good or evil-how will you choose to play?

NASA has developed a computer program that comes close to reading thoughts not yet spoken, by analyzing nerve commands to the throat.

"A person using the subvocal system thinks of phrases and talks to himself so quietly it cannot be heard, but the tongue and vocal cords do receive speech signals from the brain," said developer Chuck Jorgensen, of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California.

Belief Systems and their Medial Marketing Strategies

For 2005 Europe based Media Artists in the fields of digital media including internet and computer based art, filmmakers, sound and video artists are invited to apply for a two month residence based stipend at Werkleitz Gesellschaft's Center for Media Arts Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. EMARE includes a grant of 2.000 Euro, free accomodation, 250 Euro travel expenses, access to the technical facilities and media labs and a professional presentation.

Call for Applications

Mediamatic Interactive Film Lab @ Budapest 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | final presentation 8 October 2005: In this workshop 16 makers, producers editors and educators of film, radio, television and video use their own material to make an interactive film that can be published on or offline. The workshop is an intense process where you get to know the possibilities and applications of interactive film in a wider media context. You design your own project and discuss it with peers and experienced trainers and build a working prototype.

Application Deadline: September 30, 2005 | online registration >> | workshop schedule (pdf, 219K) and more info >>

For centuries, all we've known about giant squid is what we could learn about them from examining the occasional beached giant calamari. Now, for the first time, scientists have captured film of a living giant squid doing its thing in the inky depths.

DOUBLECELL, singlecell's 2nd volume, is an online inclosure of responsive ecologies. Its focus is centred about the themes of dyads, twins, pairs, mates, dualities, diptychs, couplets, dicephalics, siamese formations, symbionts, palindromes, mirror images

martin wattenberg, Casey Reas, Golan Levin, the best of the best gathered in this web site...FM

"Carbon Sequestration" is sometimes suggested as a parallel process alongside a significant shift away from carbon-producing technologies. The logic is straightforward: carbon dioxide is still produced, but rather than remaining concentrated in the atmosphere for a century, it is extracted. This extraction can take place at the point of production (so-called "carbon capture") or more generally, using CO2-loving plants. Although some may hope to use carbon sequestration as an excuse to delay or ignore a move towards non-carbon-emitting technologies, the reality is that the planet is close enough now to a potential climate tipping point that we should not rule out any effort that might help us forestall disaster

This fantastic series of photos of subway stations really makes me appreciate mass transit in a way that I haven't in ages. Look at Stockholm!

Any space where people spend a significant amount of time waiting every day should be beautiful. It seems like that's something people agree on, regardless of what culture they're from. Thanks to Byrne for the link.

New york's is also included, not for being the most clean one anyway...FM

"The island of Manhattan was formed over the course of more than 500 million years," but "the island of Robert Smithson was formed over about a week, in a ragged-looking barge yard on Staten Island."

See different places 247 thoughout an everyday day. Good look at different light levels throughout the day.

really interesting idea followed by a great interface design...FM

We started out with an old modem and ended up with a useful circuit to convert phone audio to regular line audio. This little hack is useful for those of us wanting to record Voip telephone calls for podcasts with good quality audio. Keep in mind that recording telephone calls without notifying all parties involved is against the law in many parts of the world.

recycle electronics...FM

LAMB: Where did you get the idea?

WALES: I had the idea basically from watching the growth of the free software movement. So all of the software that really runs the Internet, Linux, Apache, the Web serving software, it‘s all written by volunteers collaboratively working together using free licenses. And it‘s really good quality stuff.

...etc..FM

According to a new study by researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology, the early spring snowmelt currently being experienced in Alaska is accelerating climate change in the region. The progressively early snowmelt is producing the warmest summers in 400 years. The lead author of the study, Terry Chaplin, professor of ecology at the university stated that Each of these changes seems to trigger other changes that mean more changes will occur,

Microsoft has been awarded a patent for using human skin as a power conduit and data bus. Patent No. 6,754,472, which was published Tuesday, describes a method for transmitting power and data to devices worn on the body and for communication of data between those devices.

The FatJab offers another perspective to the process of reclaiming public spaces. It is a handheld printer that allows artists to print patterns and stories on any surface in the physical space. It deliberately doesn't contain any sensing technology. The goal is to let the artist gain full control over the interface and distort the printed data as it is sprayed onto a surface to create a more personal rendering of a digital artwork. The FatJab is an attempt at creating a medium where users create patterns and stories in the digital space and bring them to the physical space in a very expressive manner.

What can I expect to see? Keepin' it simple. CultureTV! delivers you the best mix of art, short artvideos, events, museum, galleries, artists and artnews. You can even communicate with us in real-time via Skype ( free Voice Over IP - get with it already!), chat, and more.

this is greeeat...just try..FM

Dutch solar car on track to break race recordSept 26 Nuna 3 from The Netherlands is more than an hour ahead of the pack. (SkyScan) ABC News.au - A new race record is being predicted in this year's World Solar Car Challenge. The race leader, Nuna 3 from The Netherlands, is more than an hour ahead of the pack. It is one of several vehicles expected to cross into South Australia from the Northern Territory today. Given the right conditions, the leaders will hit speeds of more than 100 kilometres an hour. Race spokesman Chris Selwood says that means they will enter into Adelaide at a cracking pace. "If visibility and heavy rain doesn't cause them to stop, I reckon we're going to see winners in the centre of Adelaide on Wednesday afternoon," he said.

well... here you have a solution to the fuel crisis Mr Bush...FM

Toyota has proven that they are one step ahead of the curve with their prescient focus on gas-sipping hybrid vehicles, and now they have plans to turn your ride into a rolling diagnostic toolkit. At last Thursday’s Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit, U.S. Toyota chief Jim Press told reporters that future models may sport such healthy add-ons as medicated seat covers designed to heal rashes (does this mean we have to drive naked?), diabetes-detecting steering wheels, and built-in blood pressure monitors. The oddest concept that Press threw out, however, involved using the sensors to detect a driver’s mood and change the headlight color accordingly. Swerving car coming at you with blazing red beams? Better pull over, the guy probably spilled a boiling Frappacino all over his lap.

[Via transportTrends]

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A Hollywood in-house secret, Japanese TV commercials were once talked about with a wink and a shake of the head. Piles of cash were paid to stars willing to peddle anything from whiskey to cigarettes, cars to coffee, instant noodles to cafe latte — as long as nobody told the fans back home. Hey, did you know Dennis Hopper did one for bath products? How much do you figure Leonardo DiCaprio got for that SUV spot? A million? Three?

Sadly, the days of seeing, say, Harrison Ford guzzling Kirin beer may be over. American stars have not vanished from the Japanese advertising landscape, but their numbers have dropped dramatically since the heyday of the 1990s, when even Mickey Rourke was considered bankable here.

Advertising industry analysts offer various explanations for the decline. With the irrational exuberance of Japan's bubble economy a distant memory, ad budgets have shrunk to at best half their former size. Hollywood stars still expecting to pull in $3 million for an afternoon's work trying not to garble a simple Japanese phrase are finding few takers. (LA TIMES)

JhohannaVH writes "MSNBC.com is running a story about yesterday's successful test of the Space Elevator!! Maybe it will become a reality after all." From the article: "This week's testing involved a 12-foot (4-meter) diameter balloon. Safety lines held by team members kept the balloon from floating away. The ribbon dangling from the balloon was made of composite fiberglass, with the robot lifter running up and down the tether ... During the day, the highest altitude reached by the balloon/ribbon/robot combination was 1,000 feet (305 meters). 'It gives us complete confidence that the mile goal is well within reach,' Laine said. Laine said that the Federal Aviation Administration has been very supportive and helpful in orchestrating their test flights. "

SODA: highly addictive interactive web-based applications.

create amazing virtual machines...FM

Viewers are confronted with a blinking cursor. As they type, rooms begin to take shape in the form of a two-dimensional plan, similar to a blueprint. The architecture is based on a semantic analysis of the viewer's words, reorganizing them to reflect the underlying themes they express. The apartments are then clustered into buildings and cities according to their linguistic relationships. Each apartment is translated into a navigable three-dimensional dwelling, so contrasting between abstract plans/texts and experiential images/sounds. Apartment is inspired by the idea of the memory palace. In a mnemonic technique from a pre-Post-It era, Cicero imagined inscribing the themes of a speech on a suite of rooms in a villa, and then reciting that speech by mentally walking from space to space. Establishing an equivalence between language and space, Apartment connects the written word with different forms of spatial configurations.

but of course one of the great projects by Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg, now they are working on "no Place" a great collaborative project I highly aim you to participate...FM

Behaviour Management

The 2002 Ideo case study Social Mobiles, in collaboration with artist/designer Crispin Jones explored the public/private domain and social impact of mobiles and the ensuing anger/frustation toward the intrusive nature of mobiles in public space.

check their sound art projects also...FM

John Klima employs a variety of technologies to produce artwork from electronics and computer hardware and software. Consistently connecting the virtual to the real, Klima builds large scale electro-mechanical installations driven by 3d game software he programs from scratch. The virtual computer imagery mirrors and extends the potential and agency of the physical components to produce cohesive worlds that are both humorous and sinister.

One of the big internet artists in NY...FM

this is one of the locations where Ars Electronica took place this year's edition, check their interesting shows, I was there few weeks ago and the place is perfect to show new media art...FM

Country: Spain City: Madrid Dates: 9-13 February, 2006

A big art fair, They have Madrid Abierto Open call for public art projects, This year the deadline is over but don't miss next year's edition and send your stuff. Big bucks for projects, they also show the winners of Life7.0 international tech-art competition...FM

For the fourth year in a row, SonarSound returns to Hamburg at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival on August 12. This is one of the most prestigious cultural events of the European circuit. Established in 1986, the festival consistently combines performances by big classical music stars with concerts that showcase new trends. It also devotes each edition to reviewing the current music of one country. This year it is Japan’s turn.

Created in Spain is One of the biggest new media art festivals, Check it out...FM

An art competition at the Marunouchi shopping district, named "the Tokyo Competition 2005". Some 40 robot dogs accompanied the would-be artists during the performance.

Via news 3yen. Image.

Using Cellular Automata to generate music that can be used as cellphones. Awesome!

Its features are based on the data parsed from user-defined web URLs. The emerging plant appears to use the colors similar to those found in the website HTML, CSS or images, while its size & branches depend on the site structure, content or number of page

I tried with www.eyebeam.org/reblog and looked pretty nice... try it. FM

How it works The Georgia Tech system essentially exploits the "retroreflective" property of digital camera lenses. When light strikes a retroreflective surface, a portion of the light bounces back to the original source. While eyeglasses, bottles, watches and other glass surfaces are retroreflective, a coating on virtually all digital camera lenses puts cameras in a class of their own. "The film atop lenses (is) highly reflective," said Patel. "A lot of people probably have known this but they haven't thought about leveraging it." In this system, a device bathes the region in front of it with infrared light. When an intense retroreflection indicates the presence of a digital camera lens, the device then fires a localized beam of light directly at that point. Thus, the picture gets washed out.

NES glitch

no text whatsoever, but curious to see..FM

University of Arizona physicists have directly measured how close speeding atoms can come to a surface before atom wavelengths change. Their research has huge implications for nanotechnology and atom optics.

The past 100 years has been The Age of Electricity, says Professor Fei-Yue Wang. During that time, our homes have become increasingly complex and home appliances now have sophisticated internal microprocessors and CPUs. This includes VCRs, TVs, DVD players, telephones, microwaves, dishwashers, CD players and many other devices. As we enter the Age of the Internet, it's time to rethink how we control our homes and appliances, says Wang, a professor Systems and Industrial Engineering at The University of Arizona.

Xeni Jardin: Image: Two geese and a jungle fowl hen wait out Hurricane Rita in a men's restroom at the Houston Zoo. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

Benjamin Gaulon

cool projects based on recycling all kind of media...FM

Easy and simple network security and privacy. Beat sniffers and script kiddies on your msn talk or just hide your stuff on forums Google, yahoo, etc all major search engines look in texts to give you the best search results, and while this is really great sometimes you want to post something on a forum or just send some text to someone without it being searchable. Or sniffable. A peronal story on a forum, a password or just just some login informaion you'd like to send via MSN or AIM. There are solid and much better methods for this but they also require special programs, plugins and keys. HideText doesn't pretend to be much more then simply a text obfuscator, that's all it is. But it sure is a handy quick solution. HideText.net converts your text into an image, and this sure doesn't make the transfer of your data failproof, but it will become untracable for search engines and for kiddie scripters sniffing your connection. After converting your text you can choose to download and delete the image, and it will be removed from the server. If you don't delete it, it will be stored on our server so it can be displayed on the forum or website you've used it on.

curious way to "encript" information..FM

Low Tech Sensors and Actuators investigates how low-tech sensors and interactive actuators can be produced inexpensively from hacked toys and devices.

Artists and architects who want to experiment with concepts of interactive spaces and responsive systems are often prevented from doing so because of the complexity, logistics or costs of such systems. Prototype research seems too expensive and the most interesting concepts remain on the drafting board until a suitable client/investor/sponsor is found.

Nullpointer's CCTEX installation is based on the expanding cultural practice of game modification and the increasing presence of CCTV and mass observation technologies. In CCTEX a level from Counter Strike is re-mapped to offer the user an experience of covert surveillance.

Although digital technology is becoming increasingly personal and intimate, electronic artefacts and systems are often conceived of as tools, designed to support goal-oriented tasks and activities as efficiently as possible. The Digital Peacock Tails project looks beyond this narrow point of view and employs digital technologies not only as efficient tools but also as beautifully challenging plumages.

Are iPods Destroying Hearing? Audiologists have long expressed concern about hearing loss stemming from the use of headphones, but according to some, the new generation of digital music players pose a particular threat, allowing consumers to listen for long periods at high volume, and eliminating so much of the distortion and background noise common to, say, cassette players, that many listeners won't even realize how much sound they're pumping into their head. "Even with the sound piped directly into the ear canal, noise from the outside often competes with the music, and listeners turn it up louder. People listening to music while riding [commuter] trains, for example, frequently increase the volume levels to drown out the sound of the commute."
Link

Xeni Jardin:

This site includes a Google hack that combines Google Maps with hurricane tracking data, for a comprehensive view of Rita's activities: Link

The network will bring together practicing artists, technology developers and ethnographers with the aim of advancing interdisciplinary understanding and building consortia for future collaborative projects. It will be of relevance to people working in th

via BoingBoing, 9/22/05:

Reporters Without Borders on Blogging Anonymously

Cory Doctorow: Reports Without Borders has shipped a free guide for "Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents" on publishing anonymously without getting fired, imprisoned or executed.

Call for Proposals

The final exhibition and conference of PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network will take place in Manchester during July 2006 as a part of the Futuresonic 2006 festival. PLAN is currently developing the scope and format of the exhibition, and the PLAN Technology Workshop in October will feed into this planning.

Advance Expressions of Interest: If you have a proposal for a new project that you would like to develop with PLAN to be included in the exhibition then please send an initial outline to us immediately, to arrive no later than Friday 7th October.

"Theatre of Restless Automata comprises three animated universes modelled from variations of the same computational formula. Each universe has a distinct aesthetic quality, which ranges from geometric abstraction to decorative figuration. Using computer algorithms based on scientific modelling techniques, the artists demonstrate how simple programming rules can create an infinite number of elaborate patterns. From these mosaics of pixels emerge small robotic figures (beings), which perform in a digital 'theatre of life'" Press release (pdf)

Sascha Pohflepp’s Eavesdripping uses falling drops to write on water - turning a rain puddle into a pixelated lite-brite screen or, alternately, turning rain into a dot-matrix printer.

Really cool idea...FM

WRT interviewed artist Ken Wronkiewicz about his work:

David Pescovitz: Playing FLICKR v2.0 is a digital urban atmospheres experience installed by Mediamatic on the 11th floor of Amsterdam's PostCS building. Visitors to the bar/restaurant/club 11 are invited to send SMS's containing keywords of their choosing to the installation. The software then grabs Flickr images tagged with those keywords and displays them on the restaurant's panoramic screens.

Textmode Quake is an ASCII art rendition of the Quake 3D engine graphics, playable in real time. As the characters are being used only for their pixel density, the text has no meaning beyond texture. Textmode Quake is achieved through serializing open source libraries meant to transform any graphics input into text, and was conceived of less as an art piece than as a portability hack in the spirit of It Plays Doom.

I Highly recomend the quicktimes at the bottom of the page... FM