art from code

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negroponte's predictions

Prediction is usually a dubious business: things are way too uncertain and we just don't know what we're going to know in the future ('unknown unknowns' in NNT's terms). That's why Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte, which came out in 1995, is all the more freakish in its prescience.

Here's a smattering of things I liked, with the occasional few words after each from the perspective of now.


The tidiest way I have seen the 'receive -> interact' paradigm change articulated.


Basically, Apple's strategy and success.


RSS, Google Reader...


Creeping in more and more. He also talked about "the tiny hole or two in plastic or metal, through which your voices access a small microphone" (p.159). This is still proving difficult.


Things like Google Reader's Top Recommendations, Amazon's recommend emails and iTunes' Genius represent this one quite nicely. Although still some way to go here.


Hulu, BBC iPlayer and all the underground antecedents to these.


This idea - communication as well as information - is rephrased a lot by pundits. What's impressive about this is that it saw the value of social online before it was made explicit with, sorry, nasty phrase coming up, Web 2.0.


Blogging seems the best example.


Radiohead is my favorite example of this at the mo. (Also see here for what bitcasting - another of Negroponte's babies - is all about and how Radiohead's House of Cards 'video' is likely to have been the first example of this).


Very broadly gets to the nub of all the legal issues bouncing around online.

And a few others that didn't make it into digital bites:

"Clipping bits is very different from clipping atoms" p.59

"On the net each person can be an unlicensed TV station" (p.176)

One word. YouTube

"...bits that describe other bits...will proliferate in digital broadcasting. These will be added by humans aided by machines, at the time of release...or later (by viewers and commentators). The result will be a stream with so much header information that your computer really can help you deal with the massive amount of content" (p.179)

tags, labels etc

"automobiles will enjoy another very particular benefit of being digital: they will know where they are" (p.216)

SatNav.

"The important point is to recognise that the future of digital devices can include some very different shapes and sizes from those that might naturally leap to mind from our current frames (sic) of reference. Computer retailing of equipment and supplies may not be limited to Radio Shack and Staples, but include the likes of Saks and stores that sell products from Nike, Levis and Banana Republic."

Basically, the web breaking out from behind screens, which I have thought about here. Nike+ is the golden example of this right now. A continuation of this idea:

"When this happens in a tiny format, all "things" can be digitally active. For example, every teacup, article of clothing, and (yes) book in your house can say where it is. In the future, the concept of being lost will be as unlikely as being "out of print"

I like the nod to long tail stuff at the end there with "as unlikely as being out of print"

(Skepticism: the book, being widely read, could have prompted people to work on the things Negroponte predicted ('invented'), giving the impression that the book is farsighted when it may have been prescriptive to future-makers)

spencer higgins

There's just something very intriguing about this. You need to see it big.

pulse

According to the blurb, "pulse is a live visualisation of the recent emotional expressions written on the private weblogs of blogger.com". It's interesting because stuff online is being used to create art offline.

It's kind of a mashup of Julius Popp's intriguing Bit.Fall (below) and and also the 'feel map' that I blogged about here.



Also reminds me a bit of the plant in E.T. which seems to respond to E.T.'s health.

I really, really want time and location to be factored into these things, especially as mining the emotions gets better. It would be such an interesting insight into people's expressed emotions as news stories ripple through a population or more generally what a particular population is feeling in a year.

brainbow

This stunning image comes from the inside of a transgenic mouse's head (hippocampus I think). Each neuron is expressed as a different colour. More here.

Gliding about Earth

I commented on Photosynth - the very cool little app swallowed by Microsoft - a while back. Viewfinder is similar except it tacks on to Google Earth, adding an elegant new dimension.

I think if it takes on the multi-shot nature of Photosynth (as opposed to single shot shown in the vid above), it will be better.

The software clearly has a slew of uses but I think simply being beautiful is one. Software becomes art.

Pixels and Colour

Having been nowhere before computers, pixels are now everywhere.

They rarely get noticed because their sum is greater. Christian Zuzunaga - apart from having a great surname - has created a really strong visual language of lushly coloured pixels across his work.

One example that is doing the digital rounds, after being in Design Week, is the sofa above; I wouldn't want this in my house but I'd love it on my wall (as I pic, I'd add quickly).

His other work is exciting too. You'll find them on his website, which I would also class as a piece of art in itself, although I am a sucker for bright colours on black.

Wolf stream

China is good at making fakes. They are so good, they have stepped beyond human things and are taking on nature. Like fake eggs, for which assembly instructions can be found here. I have even heard of fake apples.

Cai Guo-Qiang has exploited this mastery in faking for Head On, a brilliant installation where 99 wolves, made in Chinese factories from sheep coats ('a wolf in sheep's clothing'!), are frozen like they are part of a bullet time sequence as they stream through the air and crash into a screen.

I am sure there is some lesson in here about the potentially negative outcomes of blindly following the crowd but I just think it is a real visual treat.

He likes floating things. Like these from Inopportune: Stage Two:

Scanning light

This is what happens when you scan in your desklamp. Click to enlarge.

Viscosity: modern art generator

Click to enlarge

Viscosity is a playful little Flash app, where you start of with a shape and using various brushes fashion your own art.

The Singing Ringing Tree

By architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu.

Statistics and Art

Intricate, massive, overwhelming and visually obsessed with quantity, Chris Jordan's work portrays "contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics" in pursuit of a "different effect than the raw numbers alone" (source). Squeezing down Jordan's work to fit here will doubtlessly remove some of its impressiveness but there are successive zooms (clicking on the last one in a series will reveal actual size). Shoot over to Jordan's site to see more but here are a few choice bits from Running the Numbers.

Nearly half a million mobiles phones - the number retired in the US every day

1.14 million paper bags - the amount used in one hour in the US

11,000 jet trails - the number of commercial flights every 8 hours in the US

Design and the Elastic Mind

Wish I could get to this exhibition in the MoMA which looks fascinating. There's about 3000km of water stopping me though. When will museums have online exhibitions?

Phillip Toledano

Car salesmen, people's faces whilst they play video games, recently occupied offices, the anonymous, marks left on skin from objects and clothes, the artic and the internal desires and paranoia floating about in American life (pictured here) are just a few places Mr Toledano has pointed his lens. His often bleak compositions are quick to grab you visually (he was an art director in advertising for ten years) and force all sorts of questions on you. See more on his slick site.

Capturing Lightning

These beautiful dendritic patterns are made by injecting a piece of insulating material with a high speed beam of electrons. The fractals are thought to extend right down to the molecular level. Here's a vid of a Litchenberg figure being created and the subsequent light fizz:

Light played by key

Scan of a the front cover, digitally unmodified

Was digging around in a box today and came across this little book of postcards purchased at the New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1963 when it was running Thomas Wilfred's Lumia Suite, Op.168. First, I love the idea of a little book of postcards. I have only ever seen postcards sold separately.

Secondly, the work is exciting and fantastic. Wilfred was a pioneer in 'art from light' - Lumia. To do this he used a machine that he called the Clavilux, which translates as 'light played by key'. His music would literally take shape in light form. He first showed off these 'light sculptures' (see my other blog for something similar) in 1922 in New York. After this he gave performances all over the world.

This, off the back of the book of postcards, explains Lumia Suite, Op. 158 in some more detail:

I have scanned in a few stills below, tried to remove the dust and scratches digitally and restored a bit of the colour vibrancy lost in the scan.

There is a little bit more of his work here. I think he would have liked the current light exhibition in London at the moment, Switched On London. Also, I think he would have liked BMW's 'See How it Feels' ad. (Or rather the creatives over at WCRS liked his work!). Here it is with UNKLE's sensational remix of Beethoven's 9th Symphony:

Endless Numbered Days

Endless Numbered Days (2007)

If Turner had painted Hubble images they might look something like Dee Ferris's dreamy and iridescent work, such as Endless Numbered Days (2007, oil and glitter) currently at Tate Britain. Much of the work is said to be developed from advertising messages, which apparently is supposed to be something about the language of commodity culture. I just like the painting.

Ants and Colour

Went to the Tate Modern today and was surprised at how unexciting the work was. Standing out in the mediocrity was this sweet little video called Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue by filmmaker Cao Guimaraes and artist Rivane Neuenschwander. Following the Carnival, the colourful confetti become the ants' treasure and we can watch them as they go about their labour (a little help was needed to get them excited by soaking the paper in either pork-fat or honey). There is also some nice tinkling added to the soundtrack.

Magnetic Curtains

What a great idea. Lots of little magnets allow you to manipulate the curtain. More here.

Cool Coffee Table

(Photo from here)

Shawn Lani swirls art and science in this mesmerising installation. Shards of frozen dry ice sublimate as they are released into a satisfyingly large and dark basin. The gas then propels them, leaving little wakes at they snake about. It's like watching from a plane lots of crewless boats with their engines left on randomly exploring the moonlit night ocean.

(Photo from here)