David Maisel’s Library of Dust consists of photographs of copper canisters containing the cremated remains of patients at a state-run psychiatric hospital (the same one where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed). These initially plain and utilitarian urns are now bursting with color and texture as the ashes have interacted with the metals over the decades, imparting uniqueness and personality in defiance of their anonymity.
In 1716, the King of Prussia gave Russian czar Peter the Great a gift of a 180-square foot room encrusted with six tons of amber panels backed with gold leaf, aptly known as The Amber Room. Invading Nazis looted the room in 1941, packing the amber into crates and hightailing it back to Germany. The missing panels have never been found.
Artist Kent Rogowski turns teddy bears inside-out and restuffs them. I love these plucky little freaks!
In addition to being the most awesome-looking piece of machinery I have ever seen, the Large Helical Device is billed as the “largest superconducting stellarator in the world”. This Japanese fusion research device consists of intertwined coils of superconducting material, and is designed to contain a 100-million-degree nuclear fusion plasma. The research aims to solve the many engineering challenges that must be overcome in order for fusion reactors to produce more energy than they consume.
Flam3 is a fractal art generator written by Scott Draves. It’s also the heart of a collaborative screen saver called Electric Sheep (named after the Philip K. Dick novel). While a beautiful fractal animation plays on the user’s screen, their computer is simultaneously rendering a few new frames for a future animation. Each computer uploads its new frames to a server, and in return downloads new animations that were created by the distributed network. These “electric sheep” are the “dreams” of the sleeping machines.
A program called Oxidizer (Mac) lets you edit those animations and create your own – or render single frames as high-resolution artwork. (You could also use Apophysis for Windows, or Qosmic for Linux). To get started, browse the current flock of sheep. Click on one you like, download its “genome”, load it up in Oxidizer and start playing around with its genes (here’s a nice tutorial). You can even cross-breed multiple sheep to create a hybrid. When you come up with something you like, you can render it as an animation or still frame. There are infinite variations to be made, so have at it! Oh, and did I mention that all of this software is free?
Update: Scott Draves just pointed me to a preview of the next version of Electric Sheep, featuring even higher quality animations. Thanks, Spot!
I’ve posted some new photos on Flickr that I took on Christmas Eve. Little details, warm colors, silhouettes, backlighting… Enjoy!
Ferrofluid is a magnetic liquid. Bay Area natives may remember playing with an exhibit at the Exploratorium in which you pass a powerful magnet underneath a black fluid and watch as smooth spikes arise and merge. Japanese artist Sachiko Kodama uses ferrofluids and electromagnets to uncover the surprising creative possibilities of this medium. I’ve just received my own bottle to experiment with.
I just bought this book on Art Nouveau. This turn-of-the-century style is marked by its bold, organic, flowing lines and intricate ornamentation, and has had a strong influence on modern graphic design. The stems of flowers and vines are prominent – in fact, Art Nouveau has even been called “stem style.” The work of Alfons Mucha, with its radiant, neoclassical women with flowing robes and hair that almost resembles celtic knotwork, is quintessential Art Nouveau.
Director R. Luke Dubois spent three days filming actress Lian Amaris Sifuentes moving in extreme slow motion on a set in the street near New York’s Union Square, made to look like an old-fashioned boudoir. Her performance, in which she goes through the ritual of preparing for a date, will be digitally sped up by sixty times and shown as a feature-length film, such that the actress appears to move at a regular pace while city life races by in the background. New digital processing techniques are used which result in smooth motion, unlike the normal fast-forward that we are used to. Scheduled for exhibition in galleries and on HD-DVD in 2008.
