Archive for March, 2010
“Burger Digitiser”
The “Burger Digitiser” by Paul Granjon, created in 1996. Re-linked here because the original didn’t play (in my browser at least).
Pharaoh’s Serpent
Sausage > Smoked Meat > Smoking (cooking) > Smoke Grenades > Smoke Bombs > Black Snake (firework)
Surfing at it’s best. The above image is the “Pharaoh’s Serpent”, a version of the classic snake that is banned in most places because it includes mercury.
Reminds me of the work of my friend John Bent, especially the image below.
“The Shedding of St. Bartholomew”, 2008
Via: Wikipedia
Dice.letterpress
How to fold a collapsible background
We recently purchased a Botero collapsible green screen. Turns out getting it back in the case isn’t as easy as it looks.
Luckily, the internet turned up this animated gif. Here’s how to do it without shoes.
Via: Photo.net
First webcam
A screenshot from the first (and sadly now defunct) webcam, a coffee pot monitoring device called “XCoffee” in the “Trojan Room” at the University of Cambridge. The webcam was initiated in 1991 and taken offline in 2001. The coffee pot was then restored by Krupps and then sold for the equivelant of $6,188.30 (£3,350).
Image by: Quentin Stafford-Fraser
Read the “XCOffee Biography“
Rauschenberg, Warhol drawings in space
While considering again the CubeSat program as a means to get art into space, it turns out there’s been plenty of examples in the past.
By far my favorite are these tiny drawings are made by Robert Rauschenberg (a straight line, love it), Andy Warhol (a penis, of course), and Claus Oldenberg (Mickey Mouse) amongst others. Etched into an iridium-plated ceramic wafer at the famous Bell Labs, they were then sent into space as a “Moon Museum” and left there. According to the unfortunately named “Space Place“:
The Moon Museum 1969 a small ceramic tile carried on Apollo 12 on which American artists Robert Rauschenberg drew a straight line; Andy Warhol drew a penis; Claus Oldenberg drew the image of Mickey Mouse; and John Chamberlain, Forrest Myers and David Novros all drew geometric designs. The Moon Museum was delivered to the Moon by the crew of Apollo 12 on board a Saturn V rocket (Earth Launch Date: November 14, 1969. Moon Landing Date: November 24, 1969).
However, a little more digging found a great post on Greg.org explaining that “the Moon Museum was secretly installed on a hatch on a leg of the Intrepid landing module with the help of an unnamed engineer at the Grumman Corporation after attempts to move the project forward through NASA’s official channels were unsuccessful.”
A November 22,1969 New York Times article by Gracie Glueck (excellently) titled “New York Sculptor Says Intrepid Put Art On Moon” revealed the story/incident. My favorite is the last line, in which a NASA official is quoted saying “Now I know that there’s a soulful piece of art up there – a piece of software among all that hardware and junk”. A surprisingly thoughtful, though sentimental, reaction.
Images and first text via: Space Place
Additional quote and source of the NY Times article: Greg.org
“Playing a Note on the Violin While Walking Around the Studio”
Bruce Nauman’s “Playing a Note on the Violin While Walking Around the Studio”
1967-68, black and white 16mm film
Via: MoMA
First black on black drawing?
Transcendental geometry
Reading “Flatland” recently, I came on the term “transcendental geometry”. The citation for this comparison is the following quote from the Feb 27, 1885 issue of the journal Science.
The modern mathematician finds the space of three dimensions, in which our visible universe is containled, entirely too contracted for his conceptions, and is obliged to imagine a space of “n” dimensions in order that his fancy may find room to disport itself. But it is a new idea, on the part of the novelist, to make the conceptions of transcendental geometry the basis for an amusing story.
The very short article goes on to compare “Flatland” with “Through the Looking Glass” and their use of geometry as speculative and imaginative.
In trying to find more about this term, it appears that sadly the intelligent design crowd has laid claim to it. The most I could find (in an admittedly short search) was this related Wikipedia article on “Complex Geometry“:
In mathematics, complex geometry is the study of complex manifolds and functions of many complex variables. Application of transcendental methods to algebraic geometry falls in this category, together with more geometric chapters of complex analysis.
Voxel, ribosomes
A ribosome molecule made of voxels
Learned a new term today: voxel. A voxel (short for volumetric pixel) is, at least in terms of video game design, a slightly out of date technology being replaced by what may be my other new favorite thing “height maps“.
The above image is of a ribosome molecule, though it seems like it could be an enemy from an SNES game. On a (slightly) related note, here’s a great animated .gif of the ribosome of Haloarcula (a tiny seawater creature) by David S. Goodsell:
