Friday, May 21. 2010
Via GOOD (is it, really?)
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Good/terrifying news! J. Craig Venter, the maverick geneticist, has created a new synthetic life form. Using an existing bacteria genome as a model, Venter's team created a new 1.08-million base pair genome and transplanted it into a natual cell, where it took over and started replicating.
As Venter described it during a press conference this morning, “This is the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.” Popular Science says this "opens the door to engineered biology that is completely manipulated by laboratory scientists." Venter wants to use synthetic life to create algae that can eat carbon dioxide and produce fuel, but potential applications include creating new foods, speeding up the production of vaccines, and of course, taking over the world with an army of engineered superorganisms.
The number of people writing about this online will far exceed the number who know what they're talking about. If you want informed opinions, this PDF provides a roundup of reactions from eight actual experts.
Friday, May 14. 2010
Via Information Aethetics
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IOGraph [iographica.com] is a little software application that turns the continuous tracking of computer mouse movements into a "modern art".
The basic concept is that people just "run" the application in the background, and then accomplish their usual activities at the computer. After a long day of hard work, a beautiful image is then created by cumulating all mouse movements and representing them as continuous paths. For people who work in a single application for a considerably long time, IOGraph could even provide potentially interesting usability data when overlayed on a screenshot of the actual window configuration.
You can check some past mouse-tracking art work at Flickr.
Monday, December 14. 2009
Digital agency Saint and Karsten Schmidt have created a generative marketing campaign for the V&A's new show of digital art and design, Decode. And you can make your own version...
V&A Decode generative identity from postspectacular on Vimeo.
Saint commissioned Schmidt to create an ever-changing open source artwork (above) that will be used for the exhibition identity (a detailed description of the process is on Schmidt's site here. Documentary pics here). Visitors to the Decode website can then interact with the piece and create their own version, either at a surface level by manipulating Schmidt's piece, or at a deeper level by downloading the open source code (here). The visitors' efforts can then be posted to the Decode site. Check out the Recode gallery to see the submissions so far – here's one by Austrian artist Lia who is also exhibiting in the show:
Recode Decode by Lia from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.
A selection of the best will then be featured on digital advertising screens on the London Underground.
A review of Decode will appear in the January issue of CR, out on December 18, but in the meantime here are a few highlights:
Daniel Brown’s On Growth and Form at the entrance to the show. An ever-changing array of exotic digital flowers is created using images drawn from the V&A’s collection
Decode’s exhibits are not confined to the gallery – Jason Bruges Studio’s Mirror Mirror (commissioned for the show) is located in the pond of the v&a garden. A group of light panels each contain a camera to detect the presence of visitors walking into the garden. The visitors’ movements are captured and displayed across the water
Also commissioned specially for Decode is bit.code by Julius Popp, which sits in the Museum's Grand Entrance. Rotating tracks form words drawn from a variety of websites monitored by the work
The sound-reactive Dune by Daan Roosegaarde (photo: Daan Roosegaarde) which visitors to Decode pass through on their way into the show
Daniel Rozin’s Weave Mirror uses 768 motorised laminated c-shaped prints which go from light to dark. The user stands in front of a screen: the shadow they cast behind them is then translated into a ghostly portrait on the Weave Mirror as each element whirrs and clanks into place acting as a mechanical pixel
Decode is at the V&A’s Porter Gallery until April 11
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Via Creative Review
Personal comment:
Je signale uniquement ce terme qui pourrait devenir intéressant: "generative open source identity" (car l'identité créée pour le V&A museum ne l'est que moyennement, par contre)... De laquelle d'autres créateurs peuvent donc s'emparer pour en développer des versions alternatives.
Et où on retrouve Karsten Schmidt et Postspectacular.
Thursday, November 19. 2009
McCann Erickson Manchester has created a poster campaign for a mental health organisation that combines photography and Processing to great effect
The two six sheet posters are for Leeds Counselling and will appear in doctors' surgeries, clinics, student halls and other suitable locations throughout Leeds.
They feature faces are made of ‘strings of type’ recounting the types of issues people need to discuss at counselling. The images were created by San Francisco-based ‘Scloopy’ using a piece of software he wrote in Processing.
"We supplied him with black and white shots (by photographer Steve Deer) and text," explains McCann creative partner Richard Irving. "The software takes the image and draws little lines all over it. The tips of the lines look for brightness in the image. It acts like a fungus and grows in real time to produce the finished result. No two images are ever the same, even if the same info is used."
Irving says that there are plans to create a 'live' version of the process for the web and possibly a cinema commercial.
See more of Scloopy's work here
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Via Creative Review
Friday, October 16. 2009
Swedish based designer Andreas Pihlstrom specialised in typography, code and movable and static shapes. The hugely talented designer is also responsible for Dropular as well as being consult designer and developer at Universal Everything.
A designer I am sure we will be hearing more of in the future, pictured is a contribution for something that hopefully will be released later next year. The meshes react differently on audible frequencies.
www.suprb.com
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Via It's Nice That
Wednesday, September 30. 2009
On September 29, Storefront for Art and Architecture will inaugurate a new exhibition showcasing research conducted over the past 3 years at ETH Zurich by Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler into full-scale digital fabrication in architecture using industrial robots. At the same time, construction work will begin on Pike Loop, the first architectural project to be built on site by an industrial robot in the US.
Located on Pike Street, the robot, R-O-B, will work for up to four weeks—in full view of the public— to construct a brick wall, a highly sculptural response to the specific identity of the site. The same robot unit recently built the award-winning installation, Structural Oscillations, at the 2008 architectural biennial in Venice. For the Pike Loop installation, more than seven thousand bricks aggregate to form an infinite loop that weaves along the pedestrian island. In changing rhythms the loop lifts off the ground and intersects itself at its peaks. The installation was coordinated through the New York City Department of Transportation’s Urban Art Program.
More images and a video after the break.
Developed through their research at ETH Zurich Faculty of Architecture, Switzerland, Gramazio & Kohler’s work explores highly complex architectural artifacts, built by industrial robots typically used to assemble automobiles and perform other high-precision tasks. The accuracy, strength and speed of these robots allow them to fabricate architectural forms of unprecedented complexity and intricacy. Gramazio & Kohler’s work represents the cutting edge of innovation in the field of digital fabrication in architecture. For many years architects have relied on digital manufacturing processes such as CNC milling or 3D printing as a tool for formal research at model-scale. For the first time, Gramazio & Kohler’s work explores the potential of mobile digital fabrication techniques that can fabricate at 1:1 scale on site.
The exhibition at Storefront Gallery will present the results of Gramazio & Kohler’s ongoing research into digital fabrication in architecture at ETH Zürich Faculty of Architecture. The same robot, R-O-B, unit recently built the award-winning installation, Structural Oscillations, at the 2008 architectural biennial in Venice.
Exhibition location: Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare St., NYC
Exhibition opening reception: Sept. 30, 7p.m. (Exhibition ends Nov. 14, 2009)
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Click here to view the embedded video.
Personal comment:
Projet similaire à ce que G&K avaient réalisés pour la Biennale d'architecture de Venise. Ici, la construction du mur, la cinétique du robot devient l'élément exposé.
Sunday, September 27. 2009
In the post-parametric era, one key challenge for architectural design is the acquisition, processing, and integration of data. Designers already have an enormous amount of computable data from building simulations, physical sensing, geometric form, construction techniques, cost and location of materials—and the mountain of numbers shows every sign of rapid expansion.
This debate will explore what might be done with all of this data, and more broadly, how we might be designing architecture ten years from now. Post Parametric 1 is the first in a series of discussions that aim to question, broaden, and re-frame the way we think about computation and design.
The debate will take place tomorrow Monday at 6:30 PM, in the Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, Columbia Unviersity. For more information, visit the official website.
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Via Archdaily
Personal comment:
Rentrons-nous dans l'ère du "post-parametric"? Déjà? (oui pour ce qui est du génératif pur, non pour le "data driven" je pense. Bien au contraire).
Thursday, August 27. 2009
Has anyone noticed the unfortunate trend of computer design where blobish, parametric perforated forms are becoming ubiquitous? The designs below have been presented recently by offices of varying quality, and taken together, they appear strikingly droll. While I am sure that some approaches and sites are well suited to such architecture, I am hard pressed to believe that so many qualify. The renderings are hoping to convince of quality, but instead, it reveals to me the lack of imagination currently gripping the biggest projects in the world. Offices are empowered by the computer in a way that was never before possible, but have not managed, in my opinion, to fully come to grips with this tool. Even Zaha, who is often at the front of quality computer designing, succumbs to some moments of ridiculous. Something new needs to happen.
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Via Jargon
Personal comment:
I agree. This has become boring and in the most cases (but not all) meaningful.
Tuesday, August 11. 2009
Andy Huntington/ Drew Allan: Cylinder (”Seahorses”, “Designed”, “Market”)
Cylinder by Andy Huntington and Drew Allan is an elegant series of data sculpture based on sound analysis. A mapping of the frequency and time domains produces cylindrical forms representing the spatial characteristics of the sound input. Physical versions of the digital 3D models are then 3D printed using stereolithography.
The idea of mapping sound to space is not unfamiliar. The Cylinder project shows similar strategies to those used in the exhibition Frozen, which showed sound represented as a continous space rather than as a one-dimensional signal. However, Cylinder is from 2003, predating Frozen and making it somewhat of an early example of the data sculpture genre.
There is a tangential similarity between Huntington’s pristine objects and Booshan & Widrig’s Binaural object. But in fact the spiky geometries of both works are a result of the numeric data underlying the form. Any data set will yield inherent patterns, and in the case of digital sound two “defaults” present themselves: The waveform (a 1D graph) and the spectral map found through FFT analysis, which represents a 2D map of spectral energies in the time domain. Any translation of these numeric representations into visual form must grapple with the fact that while they may be faithful representations of the data, they rarely give a good idea of how the sound is experienced by a human listener.
The Cylinder series show a range of different waveforms, some showing an apparent orderly structure with others suggesting a noisier sound input. Titles like “Seahorse”, “Design” and “Breath” imply the source sounds used to produce the forms. Their success as aesthetic objects derive from their complexity as well as from the clean quality given by the 3D printing process.
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Via Generator.x
Wednesday, July 15. 2009
Personal comment:
Je dirais "Architecture, art & code" pour fabric | ch! Communauté (et cycle de conférences) à suivre peut-être pour soumettre des approches plus orientées sur le code (Rhizoreality, etc.)?
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