Friday 31 October 2008

MVI_0547 movie by Jesús Olmo


I find this movie to be curiously dumbfounding. nevertheless we are offered a morsel of this artists thoughts when Jesus Olmo quotes from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"

"Maybe the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters, the skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, maybe these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known".


music: by Cousin Silas - "The Sign of the Radar", from the album "Ballard Landscapes II".

Thursday 30 October 2008

Search by DoAn Forest


The media artist DoAn Forest says he

"submitted this video for the KISS Contest, (the Kamloops Independent Short Short film competition) on May 15, 2008. It is the most recent example of my experiments with my portable projector connected to my video iPod. The video shows images of animals that used to live where I now live projected into different spaces of the house. Then, projected videos of youtube into nature, hoping the animals in the shadows might enjoy them.”

Tuesday 28 October 2008

WOFL 2106 (HD); an Entoptic adventure animation

Entoptic phenomena are visual effects whose source is within the eye itself.

I'm guessing WOFL means Wide Optical Floaters, and in this animation the artist David OReilly has rekindled an entoptic experience and he writes of it:

"you can taste it with your eyes."

This animation works as a very pleasant balance between minimalist patterning, attention to symbolic detail, and characterisation with a very clever sound track.



Related

Daito Manabe Electroshocks his face for Art



Daito Manabe hooks electrodes to his face. Signals are sent to the electrodes in time with music created and programmed by him. Watch video's one or two then check out his website here.

"Pain, just like joy, sadness, fear, surprise, anger and disgust automatically activate certain muscle groups that make the expression appear on the face,"




Via

Sunday 26 October 2008

New Solar Energy Storage set to provide Unlimited Solar Power


In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Daniel G. Nocera, Professor of Energy at MIT in collaboration with Matthew Kanan have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas, a discovery that paves the way for large-scale use of solar power.

In this video Nocera reflects on how photosynthesis works for plant life, which led him to develop a process to use the energy from the sun by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, when it's needed, the gases can be combined inside a fuel cell. That reconnection creates carbon-free electricity that can be used to power an office building, a home or even an electric car, whether the sun is shining or not.

According to the Professor; The process uses natural materials, is inexpensive to construct and is easy to set up, and, "that's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement.This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years, Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now, we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."

The researchers developed a new catalyst, consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode. When the catalyst is placed in water and electricity runs through the electrode, oxygen gas is produced. When another catalyst is used to produce hydrogen gas, the oxygen and hydrogen can be combined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power a house or an electric car, day or night.

Thus together with Solar panels are semiconductors (often found on rooftops) that transform sunlight into electricity will effectively establish your house as your own personal power station ?

Source

Microscopic Life in close-up




Entertaining music track accompanying kinetic motions of active micro organisms:

The microscopic community found in almost every aquatic habitat contains dozens of species. This diversity includes bacteria, algae and small metazoa. Some typical representatives have been filmed in this video.

Saturday 25 October 2008

Coffee and Milk fractalize in the mix


Next time you stare into your 9am double tall latte, look with new respect

Mary Magsamen and Stephan Hillerbrand make minimalist videos of elements of our everyday existence in their collaborative works;
Coffee & Milk is an experimental video that explores communication and sexuality through the metaphor of everyday items, coffee, milk and children’s music. In Coffee & Milk our lives are transformed into something cinematic and larger than life. Images of blowing milk into coffee and blowing coffee into milk are given an unexpected point of view because the camera is placed underneath us. They could be satellite images of hurricane weather patterns or microscope images.


In cohabitation Michiko Shimokawa and Shonosuke Ohta from Kyushu University in Japan have discovered a new type of fractal in the patterns coffee makes as mixes with milk

Placing a heavier fluid onto a lighter fluid always results in an disturbance at their boundary known as a Rayleigh–Taylor instability.

Friday 24 October 2008

The Misguided Slug by Alex Machin





A confused slug attempts to woo a snooty snail.

Thursday 23 October 2008

Banksy's New York City Solo Exhibition of Kinetic Animatronic Sculptures


Banksy's latest project is a departure from past works (like this or this) to say the least.

Demonstrating his twisted but thought provoking sense of humor, Banksy has designed a pet shop that includes fish sticks swimming in a fish tank, a chimpanzee watching chimp porn, a fur coat playing a cat, and hot dog hamsters.

One of the more interesting works has to be the Chicken McNuggets sipping barbeque sauce. With the use of animatronics Banksy is able to take his artform to a whole new level.

More information is also available at The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill.


Source

Wednesday 22 October 2008

Kakapo: 92 of the World's largest and flightless parrot still breathing ?


The Earth is in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of both plants and animals, with nearly 50 percent of all species disappearing, scientists say.

Among the 11% of the world's endangered species from New Zealand the Kapoto or flightless parrot is teetering on the edge of extinction.

Nevertheless scientists are deciphering the mating behaviours of this bush floor bird and discovering that not only the scent of the male is a mating definition for the female but also the colors of the feathers helps a female decide on a possible conjugation, not discounting the overwhelming boomboom boomings throughout the evening.

Among concerned citizens who are trying to help the Kapoto, scientists say wildlife corridors are urgently needed wherever possible all over the world .

And in the case of the big picture imminent animal and plant species extinction biologists at UC Santa Barbara are working day and night to determine which species must be saved.

Source

Monday 20 October 2008

Buckypaper potentially 500 times stronger than steel


Buckypaper, a new revolutionary material 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass, and could be used to shield aircraft from lightening.

Buckypaper is made from carbon nanotubes - amazingly strong fibers about 1/50,000th the diameter of a human hair that were first developed in the early 1990s. Buckypaper owes its name to Buckminsterfullerene, or Carbon 60 - a type of carbon molecule whose powerful atomic bonds make it twice as hard as a diamond.



Source

Pat Metheny:: Last Train Home






A two railway story...

Saturday 18 October 2008

Blender Defender


A cat owner with the genius of teaching his cat not to jump on the kitchen bench when he's not around, writes....

"If you were to walk in my house, you may see something you don't normally see in a kitchen. On the wall, to the left of my sink is a webcam (network camera). It is plugged into the network jack and screwed into the wall plate cover, supporting itself. It doesn't get it the way, nor do we ever have to think about it. The camera is being monitored for motion by my computer upstairs in our office. "

and

"Sorry, but you're going to have to pretend you can hear an extremely loud blender while you watch these clips."


This is almost as funny as the man who jumps on eggs without breaking them !

Friday 17 October 2008

The North Wind Blew South


This video is by Keith Loutit; and is a compilation of scenes of the Sydney Harbour surrounds. Keith combines a variety of techniques including tilt-shift for narrowing depth of field to make things look like miniatures, and time-lapse photography.

"Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium format cameras, often tilting the lens relative to the image plane to achieve a very shallow depth of field. “Tilt-shift” actually encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus, and hence the part of an image that appears sharp. Shift is used to control perspective, usually involving the convergence of parallel lines."

Tilt/shift miniature faking is a technique for making regular scenes look like miniatures. By artificially making the depth of field of a picture extremely shallow using a special lens, you can duplicate the effect of a macro lens, making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is, resulting in a really cool effect.

Keith shoots his footage with a Nikon D60 and although one can purchase the tilt shift lens from Nikon, anyone can affect the fake miniature by using Photoshop CS (tutorial).

Inspiring music by the Headless Heroes.

Reference

Olivo Barbieri is recognized as the first photographer to have discovered the technique of tilt-shift lens photography. Barbieri's technique does not capture true shallow depth of field based on the distance of the subject from the lens, but instead simulates the effect by tilting the lens's angle to the back plane of the camera, which creates a gradual blurring at the top and bottom edges, or left and right edges of the filmed image.

Barbieri says.

“After 9/11 the world had become a little bit blurred because things that seemed impossible happened. My desire was to look at the city again.”

Green Anoles Lizard captures its food hitching on a Wind Turbine

A Green Anoles lizard apparently hops onto this Wind Turbine every day....

"Sometimes he gets thrown off and is right back up there again. We have thousands of them, they eat lots of bugs."

Green anoles are regularly exported from Florida and surrounding states and are largely poorly treated based on some misconceptions. Similarly the lizards are regularly kept as pets and are;
"contradictory to popular belief are actually not ideal for a beginner. Green anole lizards are temperamental to their surroundings, and require the correct temperature, humidity and surroundings to remain healthy...."



Source

Thursday 16 October 2008

Helix Wind Tests its Vertical axis wind turbine

The Savonius turbine that Helix wind is testing here, is a design that catches wind from all directions, is self-starting, nearly silent and does not need over speed control. Mounted up to 35 feet high, in winds as low as 10 mph the Helix system creates electricity to power your home or business. The Helix windmill is quiet, solid, and easy to place in urban areas, and is also aesthetically attractive.

"Wind. The planet breathes, and life is carried on its breath. Simple. Natural. Renewable. Free. Helix Wind is an elegant solution for home and small business owners. Powerful enough to supply your needs yet harmonious with the environment, the strength of the wind is captured by our unique and highly efficient vertical blade design. Sustainable. Affordable. Intelligent. Working with the environment, not against it."

The cylindrical shape allows the Helix to be placed where less space is available thus making them well suited for urban areas. Vertical turbines generally appear more solid, which makes them less of a hazard to birds and bats.


Sources: One, Two, Three


Related Post

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Memories of the Future 2



Dubstep audio mix by Andy Lieberthal aka Grafik. Visual mix by Chuck Przybyl.

A mix shot live in the studio with two cameras and then remixed and then video mixed over.


Featuring tracks by Gravious, Skream, Scuba, and Nightwalker.

Tuesday 14 October 2008

Scientists preparing to Create a miniature star on Earth

The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was built to gather data on the thermonuclear reactions that occur inside atomic weapons.

Scientists are presently preparing an experiment to see if it could be used to harness fusion for unlimited, clean electricity.

The facility contains 192 of the world's most powerful lasers, which wend their way through a series of amplifiers inside the three-football-fields-long laser bay. At the end of their journey, their energy is focused onto a tiny target about the size of the end of your pinkie.

When the facility is up to full-power, sometime next year, the physicists hope the lasers will fuse hydrogen atoms inside the target into helium, giving off more power than was pumped into them.


Source

Monday 13 October 2008

Cyriak presents Moo!




Cyriak is freelance animator based in Brighton, UK.and he uses Adobe Photoshop and After Effects for his surreal animations.

Go here for more information.

Sunday 12 October 2008

ILoveSketch: a 3D curve sketching system


that captures some of the affordances of pen and paper for professional designers, allowing them to iterate directly on concept 3D curve models. The system coherently integrates existing techniques of sketch-based interaction with a number of novel and enhanced features. Novel contributions of the system include automatic view rotation to improve curve sketchability, an axis widget for sketch surface selection, and implicitly inferred changes between sketching techniques. We also improve on a number of existing ideas such as a virtual sketchbook, simplified 2D and 3D view navigation, multi-stroke NURBS curve creation, and a cohesive gesture vocabulary.

The device has just been released by the Dynamic Graphics Project of the University of Toronto researchers. The iLovesketch looks to be very useful in bridging the gap between concept art and a fully rendered 3d model. Or in other words a really impressive translation of standard flat pseudo-3D sketching into 3D models and it also looks very intuitive for artists to use.

More detail

Saturday 11 October 2008

Use Your iPhone to Experience Hallucinatory Audio Synthesis with RJDJ

Reality Jockey Ltd has just released 2 iphone apps that simulate hallucinatory audio synthesis inwhich users interact while listening. This process in technical terms is called cybernetic, (or control mechanisms utilizing feedback principles).

See in this video how listeners discover the RjDj application and you hear what they hear.

Using the microphone of your iPhone, RjDj takes the sounds of whatever ambient environment you find yourself in and morphs them into the single built-in track on the free version, or into one of six tracks on the album version, to both create and influence the music you hear.

The program also allows you to record the unique sensations you have while walking through the city, sitting with friends at a cafe, or playing with children in the garden, which you can save and listen to like a normal music track. Well, maybe not normal, but the effects are stunning, sometimes jarring, nonetheless.


Source

Friday 10 October 2008

Interactive Sculpture, Cranky and Plucky @ Maker Faire Austin,Texas

Cranky is a 14 ft long metal cone on wheels, that has 24 crankshaft music boxes pop riveted onto its exterior. They can be played one at a time, or several can be played by multiple participants to create an eerie carnival-like cacophony. Plucky is an 8 ft long gramophone looking horn that has four strings strung across the top. It produces a bass-like sound. It can be tuned and experimented with, and the experience of it is in the hands of the participant.

The Artist Dominique Vyborny is based in Austin, Texas and makes large interactive sculptures and installations. She has collaborated on, and been project manager for, several large metal art projects featured at the Burning Man Festival and the Coachella Valley Music Festival.

The video blogger Wisegeorge seems to have stumbled upon Cranky and Plucky in the wild and although he plucks a few strings on it we are not yet privy to hearing the total piece.


More about Cranky and Plucky at Maker Faire

Thursday 9 October 2008

Drop by Mr Doob for some choice graphic experiments


The image to the right is a slab of Depth Of Field experiments by Ricardo Cabello aka Mr.doob, using Papervision3D and Tweener which has some very nifty 3D and Flash-projects with lots of nice graphics for visitors to interactively experience.


Here is the link to one of those tiny colored squares, called Performance balls and light. You will swim with the image when moving the mouse over the motion swimming clump of balls.

Here is another called Performance Radiohead.


Or Youtube in SuperHD, (it has nothing to do with YouTube’s Higher Quality videos though).

Wednesday 8 October 2008

uVu: Down the Drain


Ultra Violet Uforia or uVu are a blend of psychedelic and progressive rock that draw their influences from Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane.

They recently performed at the Seattle Peace Concert in Seattle, WA and since there isn't much to see in the video; you may be interested to read about one of the world's smallest seal species, that looks to be going down the drain, as it were !



uVu

Tuesday 7 October 2008

Symbiosis



is an artistic film made for the Microsoft Imagine Cup competition on the theme of technology for health.


If you are interested in entering this competition then you must be over 16 and actively enrolled as a student at an accredited educational institution that grants high-school or college/university (or equivalent) degrees.

Monday 6 October 2008

SolidSound by Joseph Hyde

This was commissioned by Hewlett Packard, Alias Software (now part of Autodesk) and the Watershed Media Centre (Bristol, UK), as part of the SE3D project. SE3D was essentially a Research and Development project initiated by HP. They're developing something called the 'Utility Render Service', which is basically an enormous server 'farm' (literally thousands of computers sitting in a room somewhere in California) for 3D animation. This facility can be rented as required, potentially giving access to the kind of render power the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks use to... well, people who aren't Pixar or Dreamworks.

Saturday 4 October 2008

Scientist creates lifelike spider with artificial intelligence and apparent sapience


Tomas Eriksson
Invites you to play with this spider


When you tire of this little experimental game be sure to click the

Source Link
where you may find many more distractions

Harpbot


When we hear about accelerometers we think of the iphone or the G1 phone but an accelerometer measures the acceleration and gravity it experiences and can be used to sense inclination, vibration, and shock. They are increasingly present in portable electronic devices and video game controllers.


The Harpbot invented by Symbiotic Media student Jesse Harlin has eight motors that are placed above eight strings with corresponding visual feedback LED’s. Hanging in front of the Harpbot are two glowing eyes, that immediately turn off when touched or jostled, sending signals to the motors and strings. Each eye possess a dual axis accelerometer and the Harpot is tuned to a Japanese pentatonic scale.


Related

Friday 3 October 2008

Magnetic Hover Chairs




Hoverit Lounger invented by Keith Dixon is the world’s first consumer-ready hover chair. Available for just under $10,000 U.S., the hover chair works like a mag-lev train, floating above a set of powerful magnets, The hover chair's magnets require no re-charge and will shed just 2% of their power over the first 20 years of use.

Thursday 2 October 2008

Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles

This video is older than two years, so you have to ask yourself; how long consumers have to wait till car company manufacturers begin a large scale roll out of hybrid vehicles ?

Nevertheless;

if the current U.S. vehicle fleet were replaced overnight with PHEVs, oil consumption would decrease by 70 to 90 percent, eliminating the need for oil imports and leaving the U.S. self-sufficient in oil for many years to come. Even if the electrical power for those vehicles were drawn from coal-fired power plants, CO2 emissions would drop by more than half. If the power were produced by renewable energy sources, and the fuel in the tank were biodiesel or ethanol, the proposition gets exponentially better.


Related


Further

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Computer World by Kraftwork







Puppet music video directed and performed by Andrew Doss.

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