THE CENTURY

Cinthia Marcelle + Tiago Mata Machado | 2011 | video | 9’37” in loop

In a road, apparently quiet, something is seen being thrown from one end to the other, an object that is hit back and forth (from outside the square) and back again to the scene. Soon, other objects are thrown, filling up the square: rocks, boots, helmets, uniforms, broom sticks, a steering wheel, a wheel, a toilet pipe, tools, a tub, tires, buckets, domestic appliances, a whole world that comes to the surface in a stream that converts, immediately, in something similar to a ruin. From the opposite side, from where the objects where thrown, a strike-back is planned; gas bombs are thrown at the other end of the square, spreading smoke throughout the area. Soon, under the same fog, a new conflict is about to hatch in some other place, retaking the conflicts and human passions that life is about, the beauty and horror of a century.

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Patterned by Nature was commissioned by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (naturalsciences.org) for the newly built Nature Research Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. The exhibit celebrates our abstraction of nature’s infinite complexity into patterns through the scientific process, and through our perceptions. It brings to light the similarity of patterns in our universe, across all scales of space and time.

10 feet wide and 90 feet in length, this sculptural ribbon winds through the five story atrium of the museum and is made of 3600 tiles of LCD glass. It runs on roughly 75 watts, less power than a laptop computer. Animations are created by independently varying the transparency of each piece of glass.

The content cycles through twenty programs, ranging from clouds to rain drops to colonies of bacteria to flocking birds to geese to cuttlefish skin to pulsating black holes. The animations were created through a combination of algorithmic software modeling of natural phenomena and compositing of actual footage.

An eight channel soundtrack accompanies the animations on the ribbon, giving visitors clues to the identity of the pixelated movements. In addition, two screens show high resolution imagery and text revealing the content on the ribbon at any moment.

Patterned by Nature was created by
Plebian Design – plebiandesign.com
Hypersonic Design & Engineering – hypersoniced.com
Patten Studio – pattenstudio.com
Sosolimited – sosolimited.com

The Descriptive Camera by Matt Richardson “works a lot like a regular camera — point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene.”

The camera sends the digital image to Mechanical Turk, in about 5 minutes at an average cost of $1.25, an anonymous worker sends back a short description. The camera prints this text on a built-in mini thermal printer.

Although Richardson sees it as a prototype for AI-supplied metadata, it’s more interesting to me as an art object which produces poignant little interpretations, sometimes inaccurate or with very limited context, but with a kind of earnest innocence.

mattrichardson.com/Descriptive-Camera

“American artist Janet Echelman reshapes urban airspace with monumental, fluidly moving sculpture that responds to environmental forces including wind, water, and sunlight.”

www.echelman.com/site/portfolio.html

Dev Harlan – “Parmenides I”, 2011 from Dev Harlan on Vimeo.

Dev Harlan – “Parmenides I”, 2011
Foam, wood, plaster, video projection
Dimensions approx 8′ diameter

Light sculpture at Christopher Henry Gallery, NY. Presented as part of Dev Harlan’s solo exhibition “The Astral Flight Hangar”

Videographer: Dustin Cohen
Audio: USMILEAMBIENT by Shamantis

“SmartInversion is a helium-filled flying object that moves through the air by turning inside-out. This constant, rhythmically pulsating movement is known as inversion and gives the flight model its name. With the intelligent combination of extreme lightweight construction, electric drive units and control and regulation technology, inversion kinematics can be indefinitely maintained to produce motion through the air.

The shape of this flying object is based on the geometrical band devised by Paul Schatz: its middle section, in the form of an articulated ring of six members, detaches itself from a cube and constantly turns inside-out, taking on different geometrical shapes in the process.

With the geometrical band Schatz discovered that the principle of kinematics, which until then had been based on rotation and translation (linear motion), could be extended by a further mode: inversion. With SmartInversion, the engineers and designers are now investigating where and how geometrical inversion can be put to use in technology.”

www.festo.com/cms/en_corp/12748.htm

The Turntable Rider converts a bicycle into a musical instrument using various embedded sensors.
The bike wheels become jog wheels. The brakes become sound pads. Technical details hard to come by, but it looks like a gyroscopic sensor also works as a fader. Sponsored by Japanese bike sharing company COGOO.

More info: cogoo.jp/turntablerider

Making of:

www.duknoyoon.com

A system of animating the window lights of buildings. The first iteration was made in 2001, and had animations and an interactive low-res version of Pong.

The latest version from 2008 was considerably more advanced:

They’ve released free software and Processing libraries to create content for the system: blinkenlights.net/stereoscope/create. The hardware was built on wireless 2.4ghz dimmers, all based on open standards here: www.openbeacon.org/.