Monday, August 23, 2004
Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; (September 1, 2004)
ISBN: 1591392888
http://gotjuice.org/bookdesc.htm?v=glance&s=books
Building value in our global economy increasingly demands creating new opportunities and solving new problems. In a nutshell, that’s what inventors do. Just as software has driven growth and opened new markets over the past generation, invention is poised to become the X-factor for the future.
With a foreword by former Microsoft research chief Nathan Myhrvold, this groundbreaking book takes us inside the laboratories and inside the minds of some of today’s leading inventors to demystify the critical process by which they imagine and create. Evan I. Schwartz argues that invention has remained steeped in myth and misunderstanding. We tend to view invention as a byproduct of accidental discovery or supernatural genius rather than what it truly is: a focused quest fueled by a special creativity latent in each of us.
In 2005, there will also be a television series based on this book airing on PBS: (http://gotjuice.org/pbs.htm)
JUICE: The Inventor’s Fuel is an entertaining and exciting 6-part film series that will air as part of PBS’ NOVA series, profiling the new breed of entrepreneurs that are reinventing invention. NOVA , the popular science show from WGBH in Boston, airs in prime time Tuesdays at 8 p.m. in 99 percent of the country and is PBS’ second highest rated show. Programs reach a nationwide audience of 8 million and are seen in nearly 100 countries. JUICE will have its own section on the NOVA website, which receives up to a million hits a month. Also, the NOVA Teachers Guides, with curriculum material for each NOVA show, reach 90,000 U.S. teachers a month.
What goes into the creative process? What does an inventor do? How does an idea get created? How is it brought to market? What about patents? How do inventors make money? What do they do when they’re not inventing? Can invention be taught? What gets them out of bed in the morning? What can you learn from them? All of these potable questions will be answered in JUICE.
Design Software Comes with Machine Shop Attached
It’s the Internet Revolution meets the Industrial Revolution. A new service at eMachineShop.com allows hobbyists and non-engineers to simply design 3-D objects in metal or plastic--and then order them online.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
College established for Internet game industry (Beijing, China)
The first college to provide training for the Internet games industry has been opened in Beijing, China. (If anyone knows the name of the college, please let me know - thanks)
CALL: Sci-Fi London - The 4th London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film
The 2005 festival plans are shaping up nicely and the line-up is starting to come together. However, we still need to see your film!
We are looking for science fiction, fantasy and documentary feature length and short form movies. At the festival we can screen BetaSP, Digi-Beta, DVD and 35mm - we also have HD5 and HDCam playback.
Submitting is easy, download our entry form and send it along with a VHS or DVD screening copy. Remember there are no entry fees to SCI-FI-LONDON.
CALL: Boston Cyberarts Festival 2005
The Boston Cyberarts Festival celebrates the use of technologies in all the arts.
http://www.bostoncyberarts.org/home_participation.html
Deadline: January 1, 2005
Artist Participation
For the individual visual or performing artists, there are three steps to being included in the Festival.
1. Visit our APropos Registry. Submit a general description of your work or a specific proposal for the next Festival. The submission deadline for the 2005 Festival is January 1st, 2005. Include links to your website and your email address so others can contact you. We will be also asking arts organizations to submit calls for entries for Festival related exhibits and events. So check it out on a regular basis.
2. Target specific arts institutions and propose a show or submit your work for consideration, especially (but not exclusively) those with which you have a previous relationship. Send a proposal and resume along with documentation or website information. On the outside of the letter write “Proposal (or artwork) for consideration for the 2005 Boston Cyberarts Festival.” This insures that it does not go into a regular proposal file, which is looked at only occasionally. A list of past participating arts organizations is available on this website in the past events listing from the 1999 Festival, 2001 Festival, and 2003 Festival. Other arts and educational organizations in the Greater Boston area may be interested in participating as well. Boston Cyberarts is always interested in including new organizations.
3. Propose a show or submit your work for consideration to Boston Cyberarts. Many of the exhibitions and performances in the last festival came about when arts organizations asked us who they ought to consider. Boston Cyberarts maintains records on numerous visual or performing artists. Make sure we have up to date information. Boston Cyberarts is foremost an organizing body. It does present some of its own exhibitions and performances during the Festival, but in most cases the exhibitions and performances are organized by the collaborating organizations (theaters, galleries, museums, etc.) and the participating artists.
Saturday, August 21, 2004
DigiDrama to revive Rajasthan’s theatre art (India)
In a bid to revive the dying art of theatre in Rajasthan, a company here plans to inject a mix of computerised special effects, animation and digital surround sound into traditional plays.
DigiDrama is said to be a first of its kind venture in India.
[Mahesh] Bhatt said his firm [Lucky Digital Media Lab], along with the Mask Production company, would introduce the new innovation ‘DigiDrama’, which comprises computerised effects, animation, graphics and sound.
New Kerala (India News)
New on-line digital library of world art (ARTstor)
Art History lecturers and professors from around the globe will be excited to learn of recent digital developments which threaten the survival of the slide as the primary art history teaching aid. ARTstor, brainchild of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, holds approximately 300,000 images of art, architecture and archeology and is set to become an essential resource not alone in universities but also in institutions such as museums and libraries.
CIRCA Art Magazine
Art festival to break boundaries at Ayers Island (Maine)
George Markowsky, chairman of the University of Maine’s computer science department, bought Ayers Island in 1998, with the goal of turning it into a place where art, science, culture and commerce can thrive.
This weekend’s opening draws together 15 young artists from Maine, Montreal, London and France who are working with new technologies to create experience-based sculptures and media-driven pieces that encourage interaction and exploration.
Bangor News
Wave Pillow helps surfers check the waves from bed
Elmar Trefz is an Interaction Designer and New Media Artist currently based in Sydney, Australia. His work has a strong focus on putting the user in the center of attention. He is passionate about the relationship between the real and the virtual world.
He is interested in how the Internet can be liberated from the screen and float freely around us. This interest is manifested in his latest work The Wave Pillow, where a Surfer can feel the size of the waves on the vibration of a pillow.
Surfersvillage.com
Friday, August 20, 2004
CALL: (H)earat Shulaym - Independent Art Journal - Issue # 8
Encyclopaedic Dictionary of 21st Century - (P)Art I
Collective project by (H)earat Shulaym Art Journal
The deadline for submission is: 30.09.04
The aim of the call is to produce an encyclopaedic dictionary, which will define through a poetical, and/or theoretical approach central concepts and keywords related to art through a project of collective collaboration.
Though art considers as a result of a dialogue between the artist/s and the community/society where he/she acts, as well as a result of an interaction with economic, social and political factors, we encourage a wide range of concepts related to those topics (from concepts such: Collective work, Common property, Net, New media, Cybernetics through keywords such as Social, Activism, National, Intervention, Macro-economy, Resistance, Performance, Video, Digital, Avant-garde, Canonical, Local, Museum, Gallery, Pencil, Paper, Ink, Data, Printer, Finger, Market, Studio, Critics and so on).
We ask for artists, curators, critics and cultural mediators to send us keywords and concepts that seems to be relevant to their own definition of art, defined through an image (photo, painting, sketch, collage, etc.) or/and a text (definitions, articles, references, etc.)[see submission form].
The result of this call will be the publishing of an encyclopaedic dictionary [(p)art I] as the coming issue of (H)Earat Shulayim Art Journal - independent journal for contemporary art, on November 2004, in 1000-1200 copies.
January, 2005 the issue will be available @ no-org.net site, for free downloading and print continuing the data/reference/art project at no-org.net (edited with VagRearg)
http://www.no-org.net/issue8_call.htm
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Luminous feast (Adelaide, Australia)
THE first of five nocturnal artworks commissioned by Adelaide City Council has appeared in Rundle St.
Images of giant seed pods striking the south wall of the Target building were inspired by the council’s brief to create a work about sustainable living and city business practices, says Brisbane artist Craig Walsh.
“You will actually hear the pods come screaming in and hitting the surface, and you’ll hear them growing and being expelled from the surface.”
Getting clued in to Queen Street West
Check out this new form of storytelling. It is an interactive, fictitious murder mystery developed by graduates from the Canadian Film Centre’s Habitat New Media Lab.
The idea of West Queen West, for instance, is to let participants tour the neighbourhood while trying to solve the murder investigation. With installations at the Drake and Gladstone hotels, the Beaver Café and the DeLeon White Gallery—all just a short walk from each other—participants could go from site to site, getting clues and directions by dialling numbers on their cellphones and reading text messages sent to them on their phone displays. At the different sites, physical evidence and computer displays told as much about the mystery as about the experience of living and working there, all adding to the part-detective drama, part-sightseeing tour.
Prefab becomes ab fab
Visionary architects are reinventing factory-built houses. Their designs are efficient, eco-friendly and surprisingly stylish—created for people with more taste than money.
Saturday, August 14, 2004
SIGGRAPH 2004 CyberFashion Show
Back in 2002, I followed a small handwritten sign listing a CyberFashion show, a time and an arrow pointing me in the right direction. This annual event, attended by roughly 200 people in the first year, has ended up being one of my favorite events at SIGGRAPH. Now in its third year, it has grown into a major event. Conceived of and produced by Isa Gordon (http://www.psymbiote.org) and Alex Lightman (http://charmed.com), it is a showcase for the future of fashion. This includes clothing and accessories that display changeable electronic messages, that react to touch and sound, that survey their surroundings, and that communicate wirelessly with the Web.
In the 2004 show…
Techno/tribal music was provided by mutaytor (http://www.mutaytor.com) who also had a pre-show performance including light spinners, stilt walkers and hoop dancers.
Steve Mann demonstrated his always-on wearable computing devices for capturing your personal experiences. Be a cyborg every day!
The Bristol Wearable Computing Project showed their latest e-wear jackets that display information.
Charmed Technologies displayed the CharmBadge. It is an electronic conference badge which records the contact information of other wearers once they are in range. No more typing in information or carrying business cards! Their other product, the CharmIT Wearable Computer, was worn by Isa to host the evening.
SMARTlab’s SafetyNET project showed clothing that can help in the prevention of violence against women and children.
“This fashion show has been specially designed to hide smartcard, cell and gps sensors for tracking and security of those fearing for their safety. Local information on secure sites, shelters and anti-corruption experts will be picked up and communicated subtly and safely to those in need, while their clothing will hide the information systems and sensors of use to the authorities.”
Paul Davies’ Department of Homeland Security Safety Vest brought the night’s biggest applause. The vest reads the current DHS Threat Level Indicator XML file from the DHS website, downloads it to the vest, and displays the current color.
Lucy E. Dunne’s showed her expressive evening gowns which display physiological responses of the wearer and her massage shirt which gives a wearable massage.
Alison Lewis’s displayed her pullovers which respond to touch by visually indicating the number of positive touches someone has received in an hour or emit silly sounds while being hugged. They are an attempt to reinforce the values of kindness, fun and play through positive touch.
Many artists showcased luminous clothing to be worn in the dark. These included Jim Bunkelman’s bride and groom set, formal clothing embedded with luminous wiring, and attention-getting combinations of silver lame, LED displays and lighted clothing.
New this year was CAD/CAM jewelry and bodywear. With advances in rapid prototyping and 3D printing, artists Kimberly Voight, Stanley Lechtzin, Daniella Kerner, Rebecca Strzelec (brooch attached to the wearer by medical adhesive) and Jennifer L. Sholtis showed us what is currently possible.
For a full list of all participants and more details about their products, visit http://www.psymbiote.org/cyfash/index.html
If you are interested in contributing to or volunteering for CyFash 2005, contact them at:
http://www.psymbiote.org/cyfash/contact.html
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Burning Man Art Show at Photo SF 2004
Burning Man is an annual festival held in the Nevada desert in the middle of summer. It’s a place for free expression and a test of survival where an entire creative social community is planned, built and dismantled afterwards. At the recent Photo SF 2004 show at Fort Mason in San Francisco, there was an exhibit of the Art of Burning Man organized by Barbara Traub. The images capture what this event is about more than words can. From A. Leo Nash’s haunting sepia-toned panorama of giant dominos stacked on top of one another to Ron Halbert’s digital image of Skeletons Car Shopping (see above), it’s avant-garde at its best.
For more information and other artists:
http://www.burningman.com
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~traubleaux
http://www.aleonash.ws/
http://www.manateelovesociety.com/gallery/SierraRon