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Fast Company has a post on an experiment using solar power to help power a cargo ship carrying Toyota Prius’ – Cargo Ship Propelled by Solar Panels Docks in L.A.

More info here as well.

You know times are hard when robots quit working…

At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.

More here.

Had no idea until this week that back in 1981, the famed French film director Agnes Varda shot a documentary about all murals in Los Angeles. Here’s a clip:

A note on IMDB explains:

“The French director Agnes Varda spent a couple of different years in Los Angeles, and this particular year produced her documentary “Murs, murs” and her fiction film “Documenteur”. The title means “Walls, walls”, but also puns with the word “murmurs.” Varda located dozens of murals around LA and filmed them. Many of these are gone today, so this is a true documentary, documenting a wonderful aspect of southern Californian visual culture. She interviews the artists, a truly multicultural and multicolored group–and shows the paintings in their urban contexts. One memorable scene shows a mural at Venice Beach with young people dancing in front of it (probably near where their sons and daughters are roller skating or skateboarding now). An enjoyable movie by a European with deep aesthetic appreciation for marvelous, imaginative, colorful imagery that was considered throwaway pop culture at the time. “

Originally from Wooster Collective on July 10, 2009, 3:13am

You can see more of ROA’s work here.

(Thanks, Anne)

Originally from Wooster Collective on July 13, 2009, 7:11am

Originally from Wooster Collective on July 13, 2009, 7:20am

Originally from Wooster Collective on July 13, 2009, 7:25am

Originally from we make money not art on July 14, 2009, 7:27am

Originally from we make money not art on July 14, 2009, 7:27am

Originally from we make money not art on July 14, 2009, 7:27am

Road & Temple by Duncan Malashock.

Originally by pieter | today and tomorrow from today and tomorrow on July 14, 2009, 2:54am

Banksy in Afrika

Es sind neue Stencil-Artworks von Banksy aufgetaucht und schon geht ein kleines Lüftchen durch die Streetart-Blogosphäre…

Die Banksy-KennerInnen sind sich zwar noch nicht einig, ob die Fotos nun aus Kairo kommen, oder doch in Mali gemacht wurden – Fakt ist allerdings, dass sie relativ neu – zumindest undokumentiert – und aus Afrika sind.

Zusehen sind unter anderem eine Frau, die die Streifen eines Zebras auf eine Wäscheleine hängt, Jäger, die eine kaputte, als Büffel stilisierte Wand erlegen und natürlich kleine afrikanische Kinder.

Info via unurth.

Originally by brennA from Streetart Berlin Blog on July 13, 2009, 11:27am

Erik Adigard is a communication designer whose work stretches into
domains as broad as identity systems, web sites, videos, visual
essays, and book design, as well as documentary films and
installations in art museums and exhibitions. With distillations of
trends and ideas into visually arresting spreads and iconography,
Adigard and his M.A.D. company partner Patricia McShane’s work was a
key element establishing Wired magazine’s visual storytelling from its
start in 1993. This last decade has seen Adigard nearly as involved in
installations and art venues as he is with his admittedly broad design
practice.

Adigard’s most recent public work was AirXY, for the 2008 Architecture Biennale in Venice, created with M.A.D. and Chris Salter. A multimedia installation with interactive animation, sensors, haze, light, and sound, AirXY explored space, architecture, media, and the human presence, extended by sensors and transformed by interfaces and networks. Its manifesto described the “de facto landscape of screens” and disembodied living and called for “re-materialization” that would unite “data and bodies.” It followed Dualterm, in which Adigard and Salter used a Toronto Airport Terminal as a mixed point of departure into a SecondLife 3D world, along with other, less virtual destinations.

Friends and sometime collaborators, we sat down in a San Francisco
Mexican restaurant–in the midst of a blaring and lengthy Michael Jackson
tribute–to talk about how his approach changes when working
in the different modes of art and design. -John Alderman

How does your approach to “art” differ from your approach to “design”?

That’s an ongoing, essential question: Am I moving toward the wide
open horizon of art practice that is more introspective, or am I
going toward the chaos and the confusing world of design, which is all
about combining my skills and understanding of the state of things to
develop solutions, to bring someone else’s idea, or service, or
whatever it is into the marketplace?

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally by Ceci Moss from Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest on July 9, 2009, 10:20am

A lead ball rests on the “g” key of a laptop, producing the letter “g” within the body of a Word document.

Originally by Ceci Moss from Rhizome Inclusive: News, Blog, and Digest on July 13, 2009, 9:08am

A collection of projects that use tactile physical particles as an interface…

Sandscape (2003)

The Sandscape project by the Tangible Media Group at MIT follows on from their 2002 project Illuminating Clay.

“The users can alter the form of the landscape model by manipulating sand while seeing the resultant effects of computational analysis generated and projected on the surface of sand in real-time”.

“The users can choose from a variety of different simulations that highlight either the height, slope, contours, shadows, drainage or aspect of the landscape model”.

Watch video

Glowing Pathfinder Bugs (2008)

Glowing Pathfinder Bugs by squidsoup:

“The bugs analyse the shape (topography) of the sand around them, preferring to move gently downhill. This means they can be shepherded, enclosed within walls of sand, encouraged to meet each other (at which point strange metamorphoses happen; they merge into larger caterpillars then, if you’re lucky, into butterflies. If they get frightened, they pop and disappear”.

Watch video

Oasis (2008)

Oasis by Yunsil Heo and Hyunwoo Bang:

“A surface covered with black sand turns into a pool full of life when people grab and remove a handful of sand away. In this micro-world, virtual creatures are born, live and perish.They recognize their spatial boundaries and obstacles of living and respond to peoples’ touch in various ways”.

Other mentions
self.detach by Jens Wunderling using particles as an output device.

Sensual Interfaces by Chris Woebken is a conceptual project about organic electronics and nanotechnology.

Originally by Chris OShea from Pixelsumo on June 4, 2009, 1:52am