A man watches from a balcony as satellite dishes are seen on buildings in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The project to 'pimp' the dishes is an initiative of a Dutch artist working with school children in an area of the city referred to as 'satellite city,' inhabited predominantly by first and second generation immigrants. The hooks on the roof are used all over the city to move furniture in and out of apartments using a rope and pulley, as the staircases are narrow.
From Fox News.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Children Dish Up Street Art
Thursday, June 28, 2007
SPAMshredder
Forward your spam here:
spam@spam-shredder.de
Then watch it be shredded here live:
http://www.spam-shredder.de
SPAMshredder is a collaboration between Ulf Schmidt, Uwe Jakob, Dirk Neugebauer and myself. In a similar fashion as Spamtrap, SPAMshredder prints and shreds spam email. SPAMshredder is different in that people forward spam email from their inbox to the SPAMshredder and can then watch a live video stream of their spam email being destroyed.
Watch the video documentation
Monday, June 25, 2007
ISO-PHONE by James Auger
Watch the video documentation.
"The Iso-phone is a telecommunications concept providing a service that can be described simply as a meeting of the telephone and the floatation tank. By blocking out peripheral sensory stimulation and distraction, the Iso-phone creates a telephonic space of heightened purity and focus."
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Chernobyl Household Nuclear Generator
Scanned '80s Japanese print ad for an imaginary device called the Chernobyl Household Nuclear Generator. It is unknown if this ad is from before or after the Chernobyl disaster. This ad is widely considered a fake.
Here is a loose translation of some of the text in the ad:
- A gentle source of unlimited energy for the home.
- Reduce your monthly electric bill by 80% and enjoy a constant, stable supply of energy free from the fluctuations in supply that affect the oil market.
- A single, user-friendly activation switch makes the Chernobyl Household Nuclear Power Generator simple to operate, even for children and the elderly. One small nuclear fuel rod (about 15 cm long) generates enough electricity to support the average household for six months. To dispose of a spent fuel rod, simply insert it into its special shielded case and discard it along with ordinary non-combustible household waste.
- Main unit: 1.31 million yen [$5,450 US*] (plus tax)
- Set of 3 fuel rods: 137,000 yen [$570 US*] (plus tax)
- Caution: When using the power generator with direct current, people near the device may on rare occasions experience dizziness or a tingling sensation in the hands or feet. If you experience such conditions, temporarily discontinue use and consult a physician.
- Coming soon: Nuclear batteries (Types AA, C and D) 500x longer lifespan than conventional alkali batteries!
- Safe, efficient nuclear power is now readily available for use in your home.
* Dollar figures based on early ’80s exchange rate of 240 yen/dollar.
From Pink Tentacle.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Inversion by Dan Havel and Dean Ruck
From the Press Release:
”Houston, TX - April 26, 2005 During the next couple of months, Houston sculptors Dan Havel and Dean Ruck will sculpturally alter two buildings in a Montrose neighborhood.
The project Inversion will transform two Art League houses on the corner of Montrose Boulevard and Willard Street. The Art League offered Havel and Ruck the old studio buildings before they are demolished this spring making way for a new Art League building.
The adjacent houses have been used for exhibition space and art classes for over thirty years. Havel and Ruck will create a large funnel-like vortex beginning from the west wall adjacent to Montrose Blvd. The exterior skin of the houses will be peeled off and used to create the narrowing spiral as it progresses eastward through the small central hallway connecting the two buildings and exiting through a small hole into an adjacent courtyard.”
More pictures here. From 102kflight.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
BioArt Pioneer
Joe Davis was making bioart before the rest of us knew what it was. A current article/slideshow in Slate, called "Fishing for Paramecia" discusses his practice and profiles several of his inventive projects, including the Audiomicroscope, which makes audible the sounds of microscopic creatures using a laser and a solar cell receiver and Microvenus, in which an image is genetically encoded into ecoli bacteria.
DNAgraphy are images Joe Davis made of nudes which use DNA as a photographic emulsion.
To learn more about Joe Davis' art/science practice, check out this earlier article in Scientific American "Art as a Form of Life".
Sunday, June 17, 2007
BLENDER by Stelarc and Nina Sellars
"BLENDER is the first collaborative installation produced by Stelarc and Nina Sellars. Both artists undertook liposuction operations specifically for the purpose of this new work and have succeeded in securing the sanitised isolation and, most importantly, the legal ownership of the remnants of the procedures. The bio-materials are now housed within BLENDER's industrial casing, which was on exhibition at the Meat Market Gallery B in North Melbourne until August 18, 2005.
The installation itself stands at just over 1.6 metres high and is anthropormorphic in scale and structure. Every few minutes BLENDER automatically circulates or "blends" its contents via a system of compressed air pumps and a pneumatic actuator. The mixture includes 4.6 litres of subcutaneous fat taken from Stelarc's torso and Nina Sellars' limbs, zylocain (local anaesthetic), adrenalin, O+ blood, sodium bicarbonate, peripheral nerves, saline solutions and connective tissue. Installed under a single, dramatic spotlight, BLENDER is also wired for sound. Rainer Linz's sound design subtly amplifies, distorts and delays the audio produced by the blending mechanism itself." more...
The Sound Of by Katie Paterson
"The creaking and splashing sounds of Europe's largest glacier slipping into an ocean grave are just a phone call away now that an artist has installed a microphone in its surrounding waters.
Glaswegian artist Katie Paterson was moved to set up the line after hallucinating about Iceland's giant Vatnajokull glacier during a bout of fever.
The link encourages people to connect emotionally with the glacier, she told Reuters from her tent on the Icelandic shoreline."
From Reuters.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
The Spoon Box by Nick Zammuto
Watch the documentation video. 
From Nick Zammuto:
"I built this prototype of the Spoonbox out of wood, plexiglass, zinc plates, measuring spoons, and closeout radioshack parts. It hooks up to a CD player and small amplifier which cause the spoons to dance. There are small speakers behind the spoons that move in response to the sounds on the CD which I carefully composed using low frequency sine waves and kitchen sounds. The speakers, in turn, blow small puffs of air into the spoons which cause them to bounce/vibrate in rhythmic patterns." more...
Memory Spheres - by Ryan Hale and Bryce Koechlin
Watch the animation. 
More from Ryan Hale and Bryce Koechlin.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
One Free Minute by Daniel Jolliffe
Watch the documentation video.
From Daniel Jolliffe:
"What would you say, given one free minute of anonymous public speech? One Free Minute is a mobile sculpture designed to allow for instances of anonymous public speech.
The principal intent of One Free Minute is to investigate how communication in public space has been, and can be, altered by technology. Whereas cellular phone technology has increasingly created mobile private spaces in the public realm, metering human interaction in billed by the minute increments, One Free Minute seeks to return the public soundscape to the voices of its callers."
Monday, June 11, 2007
A Grand Chicken Breeding Project
Artist Koen Vanmechelen's Cosmopolitan Chicken Project, aims for a hybridized breed of chicken that is not focused on notions of specific purity or nationality. An unusual goal, which runs counter to most breeding projects. While he often exhibits digital and sculptural elements of this project, the live chickens are currently being exhibited in the flesh at the Centraal Musuem in Utrect in the exhibition Genesis, which also includes the installation Nature?, by Marta de Menezes, in which the genetics of butterflies are manipulated in order to express new patterns in the wings (more).
Hamster Powered Shredder
Artist Tom Ballhatchet's "Hamster Shredder" is an ingenious hack -- the hamster-powered paper-shredder fills the cage with shredded paper bits that the rodent can use to line its nest.
From Boing Boing.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Lie - Robotic Cow Tongues by Doo Sung Yoo
Watch the documentation video: QuickTime or Flash
"Lie" is a group of robotic cow tongues by Doo Sung Yoo. This is another example from his series about the relationships between biological objects and machines.
Also check out Doo Sung Yoo's robotic pig stomach titled "Indigestion".
Indigestion - Robotic Pig Stomach by Doo Sung Yoo
Car Hunt - An Episode From Weird America
Watch the episode. 
"We were bad boys. We took a big car and radio controlled it and went out into the desert and let it go and hunted it down with high-powered weapons like a wild animal. It became art."
From Weird America.
Monday, June 4, 2007
IncuBra - the wearable laboratory
The new version of this smart, wearable corset by Cynthia Verspaget and Adam Fiannaca, was on its way to the Bios 4 exhibition, but alas, became lost luggage. The artists presented this interesting concept, as well as images of the previous version of the project at the Bios 4 symposium, which made me want to see it even more. To find out if it ever makes it back to Australia, where the artists live, check up on the IncuBra blog.
Bios 4 - Art Exhibition in Seville, Spain
An exhibition of biotech art, including its relationships with the human body, nano-entities, environmental issues, artificial life and robots. Curated by Antonio Cerveira Pinto, this show is on now at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo in Seville, Spain until September 2. Here are a few images from the exhibition. More can be seen on this Flickr set.
Pigment eating bacteria suspended dye and agar in Mondrian-like petri dish/boxes. The bacteria is only added to the one on the right. By Marta de Menezes - do check out more of her bioart work on her website.
Junior Return - Hydroponic life support system for plants, by Philip Ross
The Martian Rose, 2007 by Laura Cinti and Howard Boland. A rose that had been exposed to the conditions of Mars at a Mars Simulation laboratory. Laura has also posted a great overview of the Bios 4 exhibition and symposium on her site.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
DigEscape - an Art and Technology exhibition
An exhibition of artwork created by undergraduate and graduate students in the Art and Technology Program at the Ohio State University. May 31 and June 1, 2007. Highlights from the exhibition can be seen online here.
HIDDEN SECRETS OF NATURE - SOUND THE CALL!, still image from an animation by Steve Conroy
Hilbert Carpets
animate above image
These images by Sam Sanford were created using algorithms derived from the construction of the Hilbert Curve. The GIFs were initially constructed in Adobe ImageReady and Photoshop. Most of them were then manipulated by scaling them down then scaling them up again. The scaling algorithms in the software interacted in interesting and sometimes unexpected ways with the original patterns.
More about Hilbert Carpets.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
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