Mountainous countryside near Maelifellssandur, Myrdalsjökull Region, Iceland. Once the young lava fields of Iceland cool down, life begins anew little by little. Ice, wind and water flatten and carve out shapes to begin with, then, during the summer, bacteria, lichen and fungi prepare the soil for plants, in particular mosses which adapt to an environment which remains difficult. These plants colonise the most favourable sites and terrain little by little, forming a new ecosystem.
Each photo has a link to the Google satallite photo of the location. The link for the above image is here.
My friend Jay Schuster just pointed me to a really fun graphical description language, which can produce beautiful images with remarkably small amounts of code.
I encourage you to check out the galleries at contextfreeart.org and try it yourself if you’re inclined.
To give you a taste of what it’s like, this snippet of code:
Got “Spime”? Posted on June 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 am by dr.hoo
We’ve all heard of “evidence based medicine”. Well, the field of urban design is working to develop approaches to their work that use the same concepts: design spaces using an evidence based understanding of the environment and needs (as opposed to unfounded assumptions or purely political pressures).
Space Syntax is one of the world leaders in urban planning. Space Syntax takes an evidence-based approach to the planning and design of buildings and cities, using advanced computer modeling technologies.
Our good friend, world-class genius, and US Director of Space Syntax, Noah Raford, recently spoke to RUDI (the Resource for Urban Design Information) on the “real time data collection methods, parametric modelling at the urban scale, and future possibilities of ‘remote control urbanism’”. Noah predicts both the cool and creepy possibilities that are developing as a result of emerging technologies.
Find out what “spime” is HERE (20 Min Video Lecture)
My buddy VJ Fader (Wen Cui) and I got invited to push our mobile video projection cart around during the Coachella music festival. The cart is about 10 feet tall and made out of PVC pipe bent into five-fold symmetry with spandex covering. Four 20 watt fluorescent bulbs hang on the inside to light it. The power is a small gas generator or a battery system. People loved it… a great response… lots of people came up to it and touched it or hugged it. We’d like to go back next year with a grant… and perhaps build four of these:
As a side note: I built a parabolic solar cooker out of a square meter of cardboard, some aluminum foil and two coat hangers… cooked a stew on it one day… got too hot to touch.
Here’s a great art exhibit that uses 1,600 3D scans of local Charlotte, NC residents as pixels in a larger 3D display that shows each of the faces in sequence. Check the link to get a better description than mine.
Posted in art, visualization|Comments Off on Community Face Project
The NYT talks with the producers of Bjork’s new video, from the SF-based production company Encyclopedia Pictura:
“We basically went into a ritual artistic psychosis mode where we just went to nature and tried to invoke this thing… it involved using psilocybin mushrooms and going out into Nature in a perturbed state.”
Check out John Whitney’s demo reel of work created with his analog computer/film camera magic machine he built from a WWII anti-aircraft gun sight. Also Whitney and the techniques he developed with this machine were what inspired Douglas Trumbull (special fx wizard) to use the slit scan technique on 2001: A Space Odyssey.
SF artist/designer/researcher, Aaron Koblin, “playfully turns lots of data into lots of information”. Here Aaron visualizes actual FAA flight data to create some stunning images.
Be sure to check out his animation of US flight patterns over the course of the day.His original project website from his work at UCLA can be found here.
(This post is dedicated to resident noise traffic controller, Steve)
