Jeff Thompson – Blog

Heat death

July 22nd, 2010 at 2:58 pm

Glitter birds

Glittery birthday card from last year (from my grandmother).

July 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am

Gnat tracking videos

Made in collaboration with Angeles Cossio, these sketches process video of a swarm of gnats.

July 15th, 2010 at 10:43 am

EuroDisney

A map of EuroDisney, found alphabetically next to a map of Eurasia.

July 13th, 2010 at 9:33 am

“Vergence” by Tina Frank

“Vergence” by Tina Frank

July 12th, 2010 at 6:55 pm

A gallery of animated gifs of fake rocks.  Click to make them spin.

Via: Artificial Rock Factory

July 8th, 2010 at 1:03 pm

NYC’s “RIP”

New York City has a data project called “RIP” or “Rat Information Portal“.  At least they have a sense of humor about it.

“Hip-hop Word Count”

The image above (50 Cent and Jay-Z) are from Tahir Hemphill‘sHip-Hop Word Count” project.  Using seven criteria, the software:

…estimates the education level needed to understand each rhyme as well as, rates the artistic sophistication employed through the metaphors, similes, cultural references, consonantal/vocalic alliteration and overall pattern of each rhyme. We calculate the final score by averaging the syntactic (readability measures) and semantic (artistic sophistication) scores of each rhyme. On a scale from 0 (illiterate) to 20 (post-graduate degree).

The result is tabulated into a form that looks like this:

Interestingly, President Obama’s energy policy speech ranked lower than a Jay-Z album.

July 8th, 2010 at 12:24 pm

Rutt-Etra Scan Processor studies

Studies by Woody Vasulka and Brian O’Reilly using the Rutt-Etra Scan Processor, a video processor from the 1970′s.

“Disaster Area”

“Disaster Area” is a fictional band from the second book (and television show) of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series.  As the Wikipedia entry puts it:

Disaster Area, claimed to be the loudest band in the universe, and in fact the loudest sound of any kind, anywhere. So loud is this band that the audience usually listens from the safe distance of thirty seven miles away in a well-built concrete bunker.

Hitchhikers.wikia.com adds that the “musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet – or more frequently around a completely different planet”.