interesting 9.13.09
- Jarbas Agnelli: Birds on the Wires – song made using exact location of birds on electric wires as notes [video]
- Institute of Play launches Quest to Learn, the new NYC public school using game-inspired teaching methods
- Shoot: Photography of the Moment – book of works by Tim Barber, Dash Snow, Juergen Teller, Glynnis McDaris, etc
- ‘Telepathy’ chip that lets you control electronic devices using the power of thought being developed by scientists
- Derek Lerner: Apple Snow Leopard 10.6 Build 10A432 QuickTime X color & contrast inconsistency
- National September 11 Memorial & Museum: Make History – a collection of stories, videos, and photos submitted by people who experienced 9/11
- Vision Library for PlayStation Eye: augmented reality using facial recognition
- augearth: Augmenting aerial earth maps (Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth) with dynamic information obtained from videos, visualizing the live broadcast of dynamic sceneries within a city – Georgia Institute of Technology
interesting 6.14.09
- Miranda July: The Hallway – art installation
- Banksy Versus Bristol Museum
- Come Out & Play Festival 2009 – innovative public street games transform NYC into a playground, June 12-14
- 3 Snow Leopards Focus of First New Central Park Zoo Exhibition Since 1988
- ZulaWorld: kids virtual world for science, math and astronomy
HOME a film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand: environmental documentary with spectacular aerial views of 54 countries
HOME (Trailer)
HOME a film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
Produced by Luc Besson
Narrated by Glenn Close
From National Geographic:
This visually dramatic special illustrates the planet’s fragile state entirely from a birds-eye view in stunning high definition. With spectacular aerial views from more than 50 countries, viewers will see the extent of human impact on our landscapes. And not a moment too soon: In the past 50 years --a single lifetime — the Earth has been more radically changed than by all previous generations of humanity.
From HOME:
A hymn for the planet
HOME is an ode to the planet’s beauty and its delicate harmony. Through the landscapes of 54 countries captured from above, Yann Arthus-Bertrand takes us on an unique journey all around the planet, to contemplate it and to understand it. But HOME is more than a documentary with a message, it is a magnificent movie in its own right. Every breathtaking shot shows the Earth -- our Earth -- as we have never seen it before. Every image shows the Earth’s treasures we are destroying and all the wonders we can still preserve. “From the sky, there’s less need for explanations”. Our vision becomes more immediate, intuitive and emotional. HOME has an impact on anyone who sees it. It awakens in us the awareness that is needed to change the way we see the world. (HOME embraces the major ecological issues that confront us and shows how everything on our planet is interconnected.)
Synopsis
In 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has upset the balance of the planet, established by nearly four billion years of evolution. The price to pay is high, but it is too late to be a pessimist: humanity has barely ten years to reverse the trend, become aware of the full extent of its spoliation of the Earth’s riches and change its patterns of consumption.
Watch the full movie online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
interesting 5.24.09
- Gallery of default anonymity: A work in progress
- Team ICO: Project Trico – early footage trailer of new game by visionary Fumito Ueda
- Cold War Kids: I’ve Seen Enough – interactive music video
- Metaverse U Conference at Stanford University, May 29 – 30
- UnitedVisualArtists: Chorus – light and sound installation
- MIT SENSEable City Lab: EyeStop – interactive bus stop for the City of Florence
- Andreas Lutz: navigate website using gesture and voice
BBC Blast Studio: collaborative interactive art installation created by all of you via the internet
From BBC:
Welcome to the Blast Studio. An experiment in creativity.
Fancy showing us how creative you really are?
Blast Studio is a brand new interactive studio space for you to play with. The Blast Studio will give all of you an opportunity to explore the creative artist within you and add to a community art installation that will be created by all of you over the next four weeks.
Housed in the Topolski studio at London’s Southbank Centre, this great new initiative will allow you to create a real exhibit. Four machines will provide you with the tools to remotely control how you paint and design this space. Control from a choice of a cool glue gun, paint pellet machine, printer or hanging light strips all directed from your computer.
Watch the action online and get involved at Blast Studio.
The Studio is live everyday between 12pm and 12am, from 12th May till 9th June.
From the official press release:
The BBC today launches the Blast Studio – an interactive art installation on London’s South Bank that will allow young people to create a piece of collaborative work in real-time over the internet.
The project aims to help teenagers explore their own creativity by experimenting with different artistic styles in an interactive environment.
The Blast Studio has been produced by the BBC as an experimental introduction to BBC Blast, the social learning initiative that supports the development of creative skills in 13 to 19 year olds.
Blast online is at the heart of the initiative, allowing participants to upload their own content and gain feedback from both peers and media industry professionals.
This year’s Blast tour is visiting 29 cities across the UK offering free media industry workshops, and the highly successful Blast work-placement scheme has so far put 350 young people a year into placements in the creative industries.
Content created by users on the website and the tour will be collected throughout the year and a showcase will be screened on BBC Two in November 2009.
With the Blast Studio installation housed in The Topolski Studio at London’s Southbank Centre, young people will get an opportunity to take part in creating a real exhibit.
The new Blast Studio lets participants contribute to the installation by controlling machines remotely via a BBC Blast mini-site. The machines then create the installation in real time: by firing paint against the walls, adding to a sculpture, creating a custom audio-visual sequence using hanging strip lights, or using automatic typewriters, the installation will be created organically over a four-week period.
Members of the public will be able to view the display at all times, by visiting the Blast Studio at London’s Southbank as well as online 24-hours a day.
The Blast Studio was conceived, designed and built by London creative agency, Fallon.
Further details of the machines that users can control remotely:
Paint machines will fire paint pellets at a blank wall. Users can control the shape, colour, stroke and location. The shape can be drawn by a computer mouse – or the participant’s finger movements could be picked up mid-air by their own webcam.
Sculptures can be created collaboratively, with users able to direct a flow of coloured glue onto a turntable, controlling the thickness or the speed and direction of the turntable itself. Each person’s contribution will be added on top of the previous – creating a huge stacking structure.
Light & Music – 30 strip lights will be hung in five different areas of the space. Each set will have individual sounds or a musical scale linked to each bulb. The user will control the lights and sounds temporarily by moving along the different hanging strips of bulbs creating their own musical sequences.
Writing – printing machines fixed to the side of the space will print out text, symbols and figures generated by users.
interesting 4.26.09
- The Big Picture: Cassini’s continued mission – amazing images of Saturn, its ring system and moons
- NOVA: Car of the Future – in search of a new breed of clean, fuel-efficient vehicles [video]
- DARPA Passes Key Programmable Matter Milestone – developing particles that can assemble into solid objects on command
- Mind-reading headsets will change your brain
- Aaron Meyers: YouCube – map YouTube videos onto an interactive 3D cube & then save to a database to share with others
- Twitt3D – Follow Your Twitter Feeds in 3D
- 2009 Webby Awards Nominees for Netart: Britglyph, Dreamgrove, JacksonPollock.org, Protect 77, & Time Spent Alone
- STAR TREK Avatar Contest in PlayStation Home
- A crash course in emerging technologies – how Singularity University might change the world
- Distance Lab: melding technology, design and the arts to redefine and overcome distance
- Boffswana: Living Sasquatch – funny interactive augmented reality Sasquatch avatar
- slowLab: slow design as a positive catalyst
interesting 3.29.09
- XI: world’s first console-based Alternate Reality Game starts in PlayStation Home – ARG
- moot, 4chan.org founder, ranked #1 in TIME’s World’s Most Influential People of 2009
- VentureBeat: GamesBeat 2009 Games Conference [webcast]
- Vimeo’s TOS claims unrestricted rights to use any video “without compensation to the submitter”
- MacHeist 3 Bundle: 12 Mac apps for $39, 25% goes to charity of your choice
- Vuzix to introduce World’s 1st Consumer Augmented Reality Video Eyewear at GDC [PDF]
- Mozilla and the Khronos Group Announce Initiative to Bring Accelerated 3D to the Web
- Steve Lambert: SelfControl – OS X app that blocks email, Twitter, Facebook, etc for set times with no undo
- Academic Earth: Video lectures from the world’s top scholars – Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale
- Idea IS the format: The future begins – a quick look at Star Trek movie posters
- Peter Beste: TRUE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL – 7 years of documentary photographs
- WWF Earth Hour: turn off your lights for 1 hour to show support for action on climate change – March 28 @ 8:30pm
- enlarge my penis, and my mind will follow – spam creativity
interesting 2.22.09
- Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
- Lifesize Transformers Autobot Bumblebee Build for Chicago Auto Show [video]
- TED Talks: Juan Enriquez – How mindboggling science will outlast the crisis [video]
- Skynet Research: Creating the latest in robotic technology – Terminator Salvation
- squidder: PaperTweet3d – Augmented Reality T-shirts show your latest post from Twitter using FLARToolKit
- Tom Hanks to switch on repaired Large Hadron Collider
- Jaydiohead: Jay-Z + Radiohead [free download]
- ♥ → Sweet GIFs
- Spoiler Alert: WATCHMEN is fucking awesome. ≠)
- String theory officially useful, may not represent reality
- David Lynch proves it’s really him on Twitter (@DAVID_LYNCH). [video]
- How To Play Console Games On The iPhone
- Tiny Art Director: “My Art Director is four years old.”
- iScreener: The Future of Dating
- Twitter Group: Metaverse Please join!
- ‘iTunes university’ better than the real thing
The New Frontiersman: The Keene Act & YOU (1977) – WATCHMEN
From The New Frontiersman:
Government PSA on behalf of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Integrity in journalism… subscribe today!
http://www.thenewfrontiersman.net
≠)
The Future of the Internet III – 2008 survey of experts by Elon University/Pew Internet Project
From Imagining the Internet:
This eight-part 2008 survey of technology experts and social analysts inspired thousands of intriguing predictive statements tied to eight compelling question sets about the state of things in 2020. Experts were asked what devices we will use to access the Internet and how we will connect, if social tolerance will be improved thanks to new ways of connection, if our work and home lives will be better, and how much influence virtual reality and augmented reality will have.
Among the quantitative results from the expert group:
- Some 77% said the mobile computing device (the smartphone) with more significant computing power will be 2020′s primary global Internet-connection platform.
- 64% favored the idea that 2020 user interfaces will offer advanced touch, talk and typing options and some added a fourth “T” – think.
- Nearly four out of five respondents (78%) said the original Internet architecture will not be completely replaced by a next-generation ‘net by 2020.
- Three out of five respondents (60%) disagreed with the idea that legislatures, courts, the technology industry, and media companies will exercise effective intellectual property control by 2020.
- A majority—56%—agreed that in 2020 “few lines (will) divide professional from personal time, and that’s OK.”
- 56% said while Web 2.0 is bringing some people closer, social tolerance will not be heightened by our new connections
- 45% agreed and 44% disagreed with the notion that the greater transparency of people and institutions afforded by the Internet will heighten individual integrity and forgiveness.
- More than half (55%) agreed that many lives will be touched in 2020 by virtual worlds, mirror worlds, and augmented reality, while 45% disagreed or did not answer the question.