Thursday, April 19, 2007
Hidden Lives art project by Justin McMurray of ideogeny
Australian artist, Justin McMurray, has created a beautiful new media art project crossed with a social network. You can post your thoughts as yourself or anonymously. If you can’t think of something, he gives you starters such as “My darkest hour was...” or “My hope for the future is....”.
Hidden Lives is a space to reflect on your innermost thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears and imaginings. Pause, let your soul drift, listen and then reveal your hidden life to the world.
Hidden Lives aims to become a unique global artwork brimming with intimate, beautiful and moving self-expressions from people all over the world.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Dreams & illusions in the desert by Matthew Collings from Dubai
The image above is architect Zaha Hadid’s design for a new performing arts building in Abu Dhabi, UAE
For a while now, I’ve been working on the idea of an artfuture theme park (i.e. the world’s first resort devoted to art and technology). For the most part, it seemed like a fantasy as it would be hard to find others interested in something on that scale. Then I kept watching what was happening in the giant malls of China and the plans for Dubai. The scale and over-the-top construction is just amazing to watch. Hopefully it will end up being something that benefits everyone. I’ll definitely plan a trip to check it out.
This article by Matthew Collings from the Telegraph.co.uk is a good perspective.
The new museum [a branch of the Louvre] will be housed on an island, named Saadiyat, or “Paradise”. As well as the Louvre, there will be a new branch of New York’s Guggenheim Museum, a performing arts museum, a maritime museum - plus an art biennale, wildlife reserves, luxury hotels, shopping malls and restaurants. The purpose of the development, costing many millions of dollars (the island’s infrastructure alone will cost $1 billion), is to reinforce perceptions of the capital city as a regional and international business and tourism hub.
I was taken round a scale model of the art district by one of the directors of the development. The new Guggenheim is designed by Frank Gehry, the new Louvre by Jean Nouvel, who modernised the Louvre in Paris, and the performing arts museum by Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid.
Symbiont by Pavel Sterec
An autonomous biorobotic plant climbing up a living tree. The installation searching for a feasibility of an intimite and balanced relationship between the artificial and the natural.
The installation consists of a water collector in place of a tuber, solar panels instead of leaves, rubber tubes and an artificial fruit. Inside the fruit there is nutritive soil in which microorganisms reproduce.
After gradual “ripening” the “fruit” is released due to excessive pressure. It falls down, where it fertilizes the host tree. A “seed”, which is actually a SD card is placed inside the fruit. All the data necessary for the breeding of a new symbiont is put into the card. A microcontroller guarantees the accuracy of the growth process and is in control of the whole procedure. Symbiont offers nutrients, which promote growth of the host plant, in exchange for a better access to light (i.e. Solar panels in the treetop).
Link | Via orgamism: making art with living systems
Residential Tower Project in Singapore
There is something pretty amazing about this futuristic looking building.
Four individual apartment towers are vertically offset from one another and suspended from a central core. The skyline of floating towers directly relates to the surrounding building volumes and explores the most attractive views towards the city center and an extensive green zone to the north. The lifted apartment towers reduce the building’s footprint to a minimum; the liberated ground level provides communal leisure activities embedded in the tropical landscape.
Link | Via Boing Boing Via we make money not art
Monday, March 12, 2007
Louisa Bufardeci’s Embroidered Phone Conversations
Louisa Bufardeci’s embroidered art displaying phone conversations in data form.
Warrantless, wireless, telephone tapping – how does it affect the home-sweet-homeliness of the domestic space? 13 captured telephone conversations - all one minute long captures the sense of paranoia generated by the idea that anyone could be listening in, anytime. These particular thirteen conversations are sourced from a mixture of conversations history known to have been tapped, conversations from my private home, and conversations between abstract people.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Space is the Place Exhibition
This exhibition, organized by iCI Exhibitions, includes sixteen artists from around the world who are creating art which explores the theme of space exploration. The above photo is of Lia Halloran with one of her paintings in the show.
From the catalog: A skilled astronomer and self-confessed “space junkie”, she makes drawings visualizing the physics of space travel. Halloran, an accomplished skateboarder, also uses her own stop-action photographs of women skaters as models for paintings investigating the psychology of space flight.
The show is currently at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, California. The current schedule is:
Bedford Gallery
Walnut Creek, California
March 4 – May 27, 2007
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Scottsdale, Arizona
June 16 – September 2, 2007
The Hudson River Museum
Yonkers, New York
June 21 – September 7, 2008
Movie Panels at WonderCon in San Francisco this weekend
I spent Saturday at WonderCon in San Francisco to check out what’s new. This day was the major day for studios to preview their upcoming films and there is some really creative work being done and pushing the digital tools. First up was Brad Bird from Pixar and actor/comedian Patton Oswalt talking about Ratatouille, the next animated feature from the studio. They definitely have another hit on their hands and you can see the progression of digital imagery in the quality of the expressions, movements and lighting.
The next amazing film is 300. This is movie based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel and most of the film was created digitally and combined with live imagery. It was done in such a lush artistic way that it really is destined to be a classic. Here is a short clip from the panel which included Zach Snyder (director), and leads Gerard Butler and Lena Headey.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Visions from Within the Mechanism: The Industrial Surrealism of Jeffery Scott (1019)
I met the author/photographer and one of the models this weekend at WonderCon in San Francisco. This is an amazing book full of surreal, fairly dark scenes of mostly artistic nudes and it is one of the best photography books I have seen in a long time. The most fascinating images were the ones that merged the biological with the mechanical like the cover image. It’s not for everyone (if you like H.R. Giger you’ll like it), but it offers a unique take on our possible future as science and technology advance.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Leo Villareal
Leo Villareal’s Solaris is a five-foot diameter, ten-inch deep sculpture consisting of 80 LED fixtures arranged in four concentric circles. Complex and layered patterns are generated through Villareal’s programming which explores symmetrical relationships within the geometry. Rhythmically pulsing, the work provides a radiant center for the exhibition.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
La Perla Launches Attraxionbra at CTIA’s Fashion in Motion Technology Fashion Show
Visit the CTIA Fashion in Motion technology fashion show in Orlando, Florida, USA in March 2007 to see a world exclusive preview of La Perla’s Attraxionbra. The Attraxionbra was developed by The La Perla Science Department in collaboration with Alexandra Fede, the European scientific researcher who is at the forefront of the integration of fashion, technology and science.
The objective of this project is to create a new underwear concept that will allow those who wear it to extend their communicative impact and influence interpersonal relations in a positive way. Concepts such as “femininity” and “seduction”, which have always belonged to La Perla’s system of values, can acquire new meanings through the use of technology at the service of emotions.
CTIA’s technology fashion show, Fashion in Motion, is a collection of the most innovative and creative products and prototypes in the wearable wireless arena. This couture style fashion show features the latest wireless devices, accessories, technical textiles, smart fabrics, and fashions available today, along with the futuristic visions of tomorrow.
Revisit: Nanoplastics - A Home System from the 1990’s at the Illinois Institute of Technology
Back in 1992, Nanoplastics was one of two projects conducted in the Illinois Intitute of Technology, Institute of Design’s Systems and Systemic Design course. Charles Owen and his students speculated on the future of design using nanoplastics. It was widely reported on in the press and through tours at the time. The kitchen section was always my favorite:
This quote is from the January 1995 The Futurist article about this project:
Foodware: Traditional bowls and dishes hardly exist in the future kitchen. At your request, a foodware bowl senses the presence of food and forms itself up from the countertop into various dish shapes suitable for preparing, cooking, or serving. The bowl can either keep food warm or keep it preserved without the need for a refrigerator.
Wet island: You can place your pots and pans with their baked-on stains atop the permeable, wavelike surface of the wet island, and then watch them sink down into a bath of scrubbing nanoplastic detergent. The wash plane in the center cleans individual dishes as you pass them under its arc. The architiles supplying water to the wet island’s central compartment also channel water to support indoor plants.
The report was updated in 2004 which is great as it’s now easily available for a new generation. Enjoy! The pdf can be downloaded here.
Jane McGonigal’s Massively Multi-Citizen Science Proposal
This is a very fascinating idea merging art and science from Jane McGonigal who is known for creating immersive, collaborative entertainment.
Can a game developer be nominated for a Nobel Prize in one of the sciences by the year 2032? That’s my plan, which I presented this past weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
My goal over the next decade is to support the development of a massively multi-citizen science through massively collaborative games (think: alternate reality games with real-world data embedded inside.)
Count me in!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Larry Page’s talk at AAAS in San Francisco
I stopped by the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in San Francisco Friday night to see Larry Page (co-founder of Google) deliver an interesting talk. He covered a wide range of topics, including: education (needs to be improved), transportation (there has to be a better way), energy (solar is good), artificial intelligence (will probably arrive sooner than we think), big projects such as the X Prize space competition, Google.org, Google’s book scanning project, climate change, and the marketing of science. It was nice to see someone thinking positively about how we can mobilize people and projects to make a difference.
I’m sure the full video will appear online soon but for now, here’s a small portion of it on cnet
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Polymer Vision announces world’s first production facility for rollable displays with Innos
Polymer Vision today announced its cooperation with Innos (UK) to establish the world’s first production facility for organic semiconductor based rollable displays. Manufacturing will start this year to meet the increasing commercial demand for the unique Polymer Vision display technology and product.
PerGames 2007
PerGames 2007 (4th International Symposium on Pervasive Gaming Applications)
June 11-12, 2007, Salzburg, Austria
The PerGames series of international symposia addresses the design and technical issues of bringing computer entertainment back to the real world with pervasive games.
PerGames 2007 will take place in and around Max Gandolf Saal at the University of Salzburg, Austria, on June 11. & 12. 2007. It will be co-located with the ACM Conference on Advancements in Entertainment Technologies (ACE). It is supported by IPerG, the Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming from the European Commission’s IST Programme.
http://www.pergames.de/index.html