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More stuff from Waldemeyer, amazing - full video LED dresses, laser dresses for Hussein Chalayan, a moving chandelier for Fredrikson Stallard and illuminated chairs that sense the colour you are wearing… Jeez! - Link.

Related:

OK Go jackets! - Link.

2500 LED pong table - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on December 7, 2007, 7:00am

Evan writes in -

A collection of some great video circuit bends. Some have schematics if you want to try them out at home. I stumbled across it a few weeks ago and I was able to make my own dirty mixer within a few minutes.

Video circuit bending - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on December 7, 2007, 5:00am

Another pretty simple day project. Affix some bright white LEDs to the inside of a venetian blind, add a timer switch, attach to a blank, empty wall in your house or apartment, and you instantly have a much psychologically larger living space. The “Bright Blind” by Makoto Hirahara will fool you into thinking that there might be a way out of your one room shack.

Bright Blind - [via]

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on December 8, 2007, 10:45am

Allison Kudla has got a live tissue geometric design CNC up and running in New Orleans. It prints live material in patterns which then grow! - Link

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on December 8, 2007, 5:16am

Pioneering avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen died on Wednesday. Stockhausen’s experimental electro-acoustic music influenced everyone from John Cage to the Beatles, David Bowie to Sonic Youth. He was 79.

Link to Stockhausen.org, Link to Associated Press obituary

Originally by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing on December 7, 2007, 7:12pm

Inhaling aerosolized pig brains could be hazardous to your health.

In the slaughterhouse floor at Quality Pork Processors Inc. is an area known as the “head table,” but not because it is the place of honor. It is where workers cut up pigs’ heads and then shoot compressed air into the skulls until the brains come spilling out.

But now the grisly practice has come under suspicion from health authorities.

Over eight months from last December through July, 11 workers at the plant in Austin, Minn. — all of them employed at the head table — developed numbness, tingling or other neurological symptoms, and some scientists suspect inhaled airborne brain matter may have somehow triggered the illnesses.

Originally by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing on December 7, 2007, 4:49pm

The “Expected Curtain” or “Curtain for the lonely person” is meant to make your home more secure by implementing “Home Alone” trickery and adding human silhouettes in the windows of an empty apartment or house. The mysterious figures disappear during the day and only appear at night when the lights go on. This project might either improve or hinder your social life depending on how jealous your significant other is.

MKODAMA DESIGN - Link, [via]

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on December 9, 2007, 5:19am

Originally from BLDGBLOG on December 9, 2007, 5:09pm

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a fairly ecogeeky energy bill. Though the bill still has to get through the Senate and somehow dodge an already threatened veto from W, it’s worth taking a look at why this bill matters and why (so far) it looks fantastic.

1. $13 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies will be repealed
2. Renewable energy projects (including wind, solar, hydro, landfill gas, biomass and waste-to-energy) will get $21 billion in funding
3. The average fuel efficiency of American automobiles will be increased from 27 to 35 by 2020
4. 36 billion gallons of the fuel America consumes in 2022 will be required to be biofuel, and 21 billion gallons of that has to come from non-food sources
5. Power utilities will be required to get 15% of their power from renewable sources

So there you have it. All at once we have significant legislation promoting wind and solar thermal, funding renewable energy, increasing vehicle efficiency and spurring research and interest in cellulosic ethanol.

It’s very likely that the bill will be watered down in the Senate, and the president has threatened to veto anything that requires a 35 mpg fleet efficiency. But this is a good starting point.

Every hit this bill takes will hurt our country, but maybe what comes through in the end will be enough to put America back in a leadership position for the coming clean-tech. economy.

Originally posted by Hank Green from EcoGeek.org, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Dec 8, 2007 at 08:24 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on December 8, 2007, 7:24am

Proving that we really are all in this together, Europe is considering plans to spend more than £5 billion on a system of large solar power stations in North Africa. This proposed solar power plan could provide the EU with a sixth of its electricity needs, and, as a bonus, provide fresh water to African nations. Though Europe would be the beneficiary, the panels and power stations would be placed along the Mediterranean desert shores of northern Africa and the Middle East, with the electricity transmitted via underwater cables to EU nations.

(more…)

p://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/Inhabitat?a=fgj3qA”>

Originally posted by Emily from INHABITAT, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Dec 6, 2007 at 09:11 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on December 6, 2007, 8:11am

the infographical opening sequence of the movie “The Kingdom”. compressed in 4 minutes, it shows the history of U.S. involvement in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

[link: picagency & thekingdommovie.com|thnkx Scott & Vincenzo]

Originally from information aesthetics on December 6, 2007, 12:27am

Scientists at the climate conference in Bali say seaweed and algae could be a potent weapon against global warming. Sea plants can suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at rates comparable to the largest rain forests.

Originally posted by Associated Press from Wired Planet Earth, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Dec 9, 2007 at 09:33 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on December 9, 2007, 8:33am

China questioned the fairness of binding cuts on greenhouse gases at U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali. China argues it cannot agree to mandatory cuts during a time of industrializion for economic growth and to fight poverty, with its per capita emissions at about one-sixth of those by the U.S.

Originally posted by Associated Press from Wired Planet Earth, ReBlogged by Leah Gauthier on Dec 9, 2007 at 09:32 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on December 9, 2007, 8:32am

Just as i was panicking that i wouldn’t be able to post anything today because i had spent most of my time doing some silly shopping, enters Vicente Gutierrez. Our Tokyo correspondent went to visit the latest exhibition at ICC, swift as the light he wrote a few lines about it and thus saved my life. I like drama, you might not so let’s go straight to his report from the show:

Currently at the NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC] in concrete-laden Tokyo is an exhibit devoted to nature’s inter-relationships within the ecosystem we share with plants and animals.

Focusing on the interaction between plants, animals and humans, or this ‘invisible communication’ of nature which our senses might not always perceive, the works in the Silent Dialogue exhibition exhibited make those signals visual and audible through the use of biosensors as well as other algorithm-based software programs. Relying on such simulations, the works on display are a true fusion of science, design and art and provide a glimpse into the secret lives of plants while revealing more about the human effect and affect within the ecosystem we share. Investigating how plants, animals, or insects communicate and behave offered new perspectives to the effect of making us more apt to the signals our environment sends in an era of increasing interaction from humans and technology.

Call ⇔ Response, 2007, by tEnt [Tanaka Hiroya + Cuhara Macoto], with technical support by Kamiyama Yusuke

Call < -> Response by Tanaka Hiroya and Macoto (who are working under the collaborative title, tEnt) simulates a natural environment for birds in an effort to derive and explore how they communicate. Attempting to communicate beyond human language, the software was designed to record, generate and layer simulated bird calls. Here, the coconut shell is fitted with a small speaker which emits varying bird calls via a continuous algorithm-based signal.

Bio Photon: Allelopathy, 2007, by Ando Takahiro

One of the most interactive works displayed was Bio Photon: Allelopathy by Ando Takahiro. As plants germinate and grow, photons are emitted from their leaves. They are invisible to our eyes but in his work Ando work visualizes the amount of photons via the discreet sensors which results in a hyper-sporadic display of flickering lights across the dome at light speed, if you will. Ando has intentionally set up two electric-current-generating for us, which upon touching, allow us to feel the currents that we couldn’t otherwise visualize.

Paphio in My Life, 2007, by Fujieda Mamoru + Dogane Yuji

Dogane Yuji, a botanist who has focused his research on orchids, collaborated with composer Fujieda Mamoru for Paphio in My Life, where the inaudible sounds of plants are picked up by connected wires then converted to manifest a plant’s ‘voice.’ As plants respond to environmental stress, simulated by varying vibrations induced by the artists’ algorithmic program, the plant’s ‘voices’ vary accordingly. By broadcasting such a dialog, Dogane hopes to bring us closer to plants through this glimpse into their life.

Orchisoid 03, 2003, by FUJIHATA Masaki + DOGANE Yuji

In Orchisoid 03, Dogane Yuji worked with renowned digital media artist Fujihata Masaki (some of his previous works include Unreflective Mirror and Beyond Pages) to better understand adaptation and homeostasis in plants. For this project, several orchids were again wired and set to experience a variety of vibrations from the shifting table they rest upon. The artists concluded that the physiology of the plants changed the same way as human brain wave patterns change in response to stress. And because the orchid’s wave-activity fluctuates in real time, rather quickly, Dogane recognized it as a sign of high-level information processing.

Interactive Plant Growing, 1992, by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau

Also on display were Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau’s installation Interactive Plant Growing from 1992. Touch the plants and watch the screen fill up with a digital cascade of the plant’s leaves; still a great example of physical action into digital realization.

Ha, Ha! Your Mushrooms Have Gone, 2005, by Michael Prime

For a glance into the secret lives of mushrooms, Michael Prime affixed bio-sensors to various kinds of locally grown mushrooms to reveal a dialog we perhaps thought never even existed. From their docile setting in an aquarium, the bio-receptors broadcast the sounds of pulsating waves of noise through speakers in the installation space. The result- a surprising continuous drone that shifted tones rather sporadically revealing a brash, trance-like state of mushrooms- fascinating, surreal and surprising.

Until February 17, 2008 at the NTT InterCommunication Center[ICC].

All images Courtesy of ICC.

Fresh from our fruit & veggie aisle: Life Support Systems - Vanda, Night Garden, Post Patman, Upside Down Mushroom Room, Regulated Fool’s Milk Meadow, Living Letters, Real radish races on the net, Flora fights back, Plants racing for survival, etc

Originally from we make money not art on December 6, 2007, 12:29pm

I finally got to visit From Spark to Pixel. Art + New Media, which presents developments in contemporary art involving the large-scale use of digital and interactive media. The exhibition is running at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin until 14 January 2008.

Image on the left: Erwin Redl, Berlin Flow, 2007. Photo: Lepkowski Studios, Berlin

What a great show! I want more of these. I want more traditional museums taking up the challenge to exhibit new media art works and demonstrating that although it certainly isn’t a piece of cake, setting up a new media art show doesn’t have to be such a challenge after all. I want more media art where families have a good time, where even the art snob will admit that this is indeed art and not just some geekery, where the security people smile at you and say that you can touch (though not everything and being allowed to touch doesn´t imply that hell won´t break loose if you take your photo camera out of your bag which wouldn’t drive me wild if at least their press office could provide us with a decent collection of images showing details, works seen from several sides, etc.). Their book shop had even stacked up an amazing collection of essays about media art (i bought half of them, and left what i couldn´t carry). But big thumb down to you guys for publishing a catalog in german only.

Spark to Pixel is pure heavy machinery with dark rooms, experiments straight from the physics class, references to the pre-history of cinema, illusion tricks and glowing bulbs.

One of the most striking pieces is the artificial blue sky that Erwin Redl has created specifically for the Martin-Gropius-Bau. But then i might be a bit biased when it comes to Redl because i have a soft spot for his work. Never met the guy but his installation was the first installation of “new media art” i remember having seen. It was Matrix IV which was part of a show called Massless Medium: Explorations in Sensory Immersion, back in 2001 in Brooklyn.

Anyway, Flow Berlin is a virtual ceiling made up of 30,000 blue LEDs mounted on cables. The individual strings of LEDs are switched on and off in sequence and form an enormous wave pattern.

You can experience the work from the atrium below, and from there it looks like an electro sky but if you go upstairs and see it from the balcony it appears as a living light wave.

Image on the right: Ulf Langheinrich: Hemisphere, 2006–2007. Photo: Jirka Jansch

When you’re on the ground floor, you can also have a good look at the way Flow Berlin dialogs with Ulf Langheinrich’s Hemisphere, 2006-2007. Hemisphere is an artificial space created by 5 high definition beamers projecting onto a suspended cupola. The installation plunges the visitor into an immersive environment that, despite the seductive apparatus of presentation, comes close to a charged nothingness. What is perceivable is a fine murmuring and shimmering that essentially rests on calculations of fractal structures and particle systems. It is an aesthetic plasma that is constantly restructured and changing.

Hemisphere seemed to have on visitors an effect similar to the one created by Ólafur Elíasson’s Weather Project at Tate Modern a couple of years ago. People sitting underneath the cupola, their head up or they lying, under the spell of the constantly changing granular virtual world, they are very quiet, as if they were under the effect of some luminous drug.

Ulf Langheinrich: Hemisphere, 2006–2007. Photo: Jirka Jansch

Curator Richard Castelli has articulated the exhibition around four key concepts -fire, electricity, light and pixel- which each draw attention to the way contemporary artists engage with energy. Starting with fire, the first form of energy to be mastered by man, the exhibition follows human evolution through the stages of electricity, light and the pixel. I’ll just follow my own whim and will to do my best not to whinge profusely because the information and the pictures offered in the press kit are so scarce that i won’t be able to talk (let alone show) much about some of the pieces…

Aaaanyway, let’s stoically keep on blogging and mention another startling piece: Brad Hwang’s latest installation Time May Change Me / I Can’t Change Time. It looks like a super long sledge with an electrostatic generator and two huge revolving discs. You can hop on, sit down and start rowing, your movements will be turned into electricity.

Brad Hwang, Time May Change Me / I Can’t Change Time, 2007. Photo: Jirka Jansch

You can’t see it from the picture provided in the crap press kit (there goes my stoicism) but the effect is enchanting: the room is dark and the sparkles and little noises created while rowing reminded me that something that we usually take for granted, electricity, is actually quite magical and fascinating.

The work is based on the Wimshurst Influence machine (image on the right), an electrostatic machine for generating high voltages. Developed between 1880 and 1883 by James Wimshurst, the electrical generator features two large contra-rotating discs mounted in a vertical plane, two crossed bars across them, and a spark gap formed by two metal spheres.

With this installation Hwang is trying to change the parameters of physical space and to combine visible and invisible phenomena with his homemade constructions and to expand the metaphorical aspects of the Wimshurst machine to become “a time machine”.

Images courtesy of Martin Gropius Bau.

Originally from we make money not art on December 5, 2007, 10:38am

From Spark to Pixel (Part 1)
Second part of the visit of the exhibition From Spark to Pixel. Art + New Media, which is running at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin until 14 January 2008.

Christian Partos had some impressive installations.

M.O.M. - Multi Oriented Mirror pixelises the artist’s mother’s portrait with 5000 micro-mirrors whose infinitesimal slant makes the intensity of the reflected light vary. If you stand close to the installation all you see is just lots of tiny bits of mirror. Take a few steps back and the the portrait of Partos’ deceased mother appears. The effect is really amazing. No picture of it in the press kit, sorry. I made this blurry image which might give you a very vague idea of what it was like.

Christian Partos: Visp, 2000. photo: Lepkowski Studios

The Swedish artist had another work on show, Visp, a continuously changing shape made of 5 light-wires, 30 feet long, spinning like skipping-ropes, two revolutions per second. A computer, which also revolves, switches the LEDs on and off to create animated patterns on the revolving surface. Bitmap pictures, text etc. can be sent to the sculpture via radio link. Made for the Swedish Pavilion Expo 2000, Hanover.

Thomas McIntosh with Emmanuel Madan and Mikko Hyninnen, Ondulation, 2002. Photo: Lepkowski Studios

Ondulation, by Thomas McIntosh in collaboration with Mikko Hynninen and Emmanuel Madan is a truly hypnotizing composition for water, sound and light. A two-ton pool of water is set in motion by powerful loudspeakers. Waves travel across the basin, rising or falling in response to the sounds. Lights, bouncing off the moving surface, send reflected ripples over the walls of the gallery. The surface of this “liquid mirror” is slowly shaped by the sound into a kind of 3D expressions of the music which in turn become reflections on the wall. The simultaneity is such between the sound and light waves that we are left with a sense of seeing the sound and hearing the image.

Shiro Takatani (whom you might remember for a work Vicente recently reviewed: LIFE: fluid, invisible,inaudible… ) had some lovely installations and that’s is too bad for you if you can’t go and see the exhibition in Berlin because, once again, the press kit snubbed him. Chrono, a fiberglass cone recreates the exactitude of each pixel of an almost infinite number of fish-eyed images of skies shot in one day in Australian desert. Camera Lucida was commissioned for the retrospective of the nuclear physicist Ukichiro Nakaya (1900-1962) by the Museum of Natural History at Riga. Nakaya was the first to perform a systematic study of snow crystals and their different shapes. Camera Lucida is an intimate piece using fibre optics to explore the micro building blocks of nature.

Dumb Type, Voyages, 2002. Photo: Jirka Jansch

Takatani is one of the founders of Dumb Type. The Kyoto-based collective is showing Voyages, a work which brings to light the feelings of uncertainty and dislocation that accompany today’s shifting realities. Images of nature and other scenes are projected upon a narrow panel on the floor, circles showing a network of flight routes are superimposed. Visitors are invited to remove their shoes, step on the panel and embark on a journey through these multilayered realities. By adjusting their upheld palm to “catch” a projected circle, they can bring a “handheld” image into focus.

Joachim Sauter, Dirk Lüsebrink, ART+COM, The Invisible Shapes of Things Past, 1995–2007. Photo: Jirka Jansch

Joachim Sauter and Dirk Lüsebrink (Art + Com) had a room filled with architectural objects and sculptures generated from existing film stills, using a method they developed in the ’90s and which they call The Invisible Shapes of Things Past. The project enables users to transform film sequences into interactive, virtual objects.

In The Invisible Shapes of Things Past stills of a film sequence are arranged in a row in accordance with the camera movement with which they were shot. Thus, a straight camera movement produces a cube-shaped object and a pan a cylindrical object.

Gregory Barsamian, The Scream, 1998. Photo: Jirka Jansch

Gregory Barsamian uses relatively simple technoloty (strobe lights and motors) to transform his dreams into 3D animations. Using the idea of the zoetrope, the 19th century automated flipbook, Barsamian utilizes strobe lights synchronized to objects mounted on rotating armatures to create series of rapidly changing images. For each flash of the stroboscope, one sculpture representing a stage of the metamorphosis follows after the other, giving the impression of a constant transformation of its shape. Through the “persistence of vision,” the human mind transforms the images into the illusion of motion. An animation without the film.

Video of one of his pieces.

The Scream is a self portrait which concerns the issue of mind clutter: bits of unwanted information, songs and sound loops, images and nonsense syllables. In this piece a head emits a scream. The mouth widens and widens not stopping until the head turns inside out revealing some of the detritus within.

Image on the right: Greg Barsamian, No Never Alone, 1997. Photo: Jirka Jansch

The name of another of Barsamian’s installation, No, Never Alone, is taken from a Christian spiritual. A central figure is shrouded and thus blinded. The figures surrounding it are constantly taunting it for its intentional blindness. Hands dangle a carrot in front of it as well as show it an eye chart that it obviously cannot see. Another pair of hands holds an open book on whose pages dances a blind dervish while hands clap in time.

Here’s a slideshow of the exhibition. Please do not forget the credits for each image if you use any.

Originally from we make money not art on December 7, 2007, 3:41am

The MPU van is fitted out with a powerful projector, batteries, inverter, wireless internet, video camera and GPS unit. It is taken over by different crews of artists who take it to various locations around the city and project their works onto the surrounding surfaces of the inner urban built environment. The MPU operates from after dusk, on most nights of the festival.

((( Melbourne Digital Fringe getting it’s annual mobile projections underway. See live streams on the site for the next few days … jp )))

Originally from , ReBlogged by jeanpoole on Oct 14, 2007 at 06:54 PM

Originally posted by

from artificialeyes.tv reBlog, ReBlogged by yatta on Dec 7, 2007 at 2:03 PM

Originally from unmediated on December 7, 2007, 1:03pm

Originally from Life as an Artificial Lifeform on December 9, 2007, 5:10pm

Originally from Subtopia on December 9, 2007, 5:10pm

On the left, an aerial shot of the dam (image The Times)

The Three Gorges Dam is the largest project in China since the Great Wall and the Grand Canal. The hydroelectric river dam, probably the biggest concrete construction in the world, spans the Yangtze River. The total electric generating capacity of the dam will reach 22,500 MW, at which point it will also claim the title of the largest hydro-electric power station in the world by capacity. The dam is not expected to become fully operational until about 2011.

Unfortunately and despite the economic benefits such as flood control and hydroelectric power, the project also sets records for number of people displaced (at least 1.3 million), number of cities and towns flooded (13 cities, 140 towns, 1,350 villages). The 600 kilometre long reservoir will flood some 1,300 archaeological sites and the effects on the environment is quite frightening (the quality of water in the higher banks of Yangtze is falling rapidly, biodiversity is in danger, etc.)

A billboard in the port of Wushan shows the height that the water will reach, ultimately submerging all of its wharf facilities (image BBC)

Flotsam Jetsam, is an art project produced by Patty Chang and David Kelley in the Three Gorges area and currently on view at the Franco Soffiantino gallery in Turin.

Chang & Kelley, Captain, 2007

Upstairs is a screening of the Flotsam Jetsam video along with photographic material. Downstairs, there’s a wooden model of the submarine and Embankment, an experimental documentary created during a research trip in the Three Gorges area and which you’re invited to watch lying on water beds.

Submarine Head and Tail (Italian version)

Very quietly and elegantly, the work engages with landscape’s relationship to identity, in the midst of the deep infrastructural changes at the Three Gorges site. The first video details the process of fabricating a submarine, launching it below the Three Gorges Dam, following the submarine’s progress along the river and through the dam’s boat locks to the reservoir. Along this journey various performances are enacted. These vernacular tales compose a third narrative regarding landscapes link to imagination. Inspired from a collection of sources including: Chairman Mao’s many swims in the Yangtze, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and contemporary news’ exposés on economic development and imaginaries of the Asia ’s modernization.

Chang & Kelley, Hua Building Shot and Reverse, 2007

More images from the exhibition.
At the Franco Soffiantino gallery, Turin, until January 19.

Originally from we make money not art on December 9, 2007, 2:56am