perpetual storytelling apparatus
The “Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus” is a drawing machine illustrating a never-ending story by the use of patent drawings. The machine translates words of a text into patent drawings. Seven million patents — linked by over 22 million references — form the vocabulary. By using references to earlier patents, it is possible to find paths between arbitrary patents. They form a kind of subtext. New visual connections and narrative layers emerge through the interweaving of the story with the depiction of technical developments.
composed by the birds
filmaker and musician jarbas agnelli took something most people would normally overlook and turn it something sublime:
Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.
the result is this beautiful music video ‘birds on the wires‘:
A=P=P=A=R=I=T=I=O=N
a great sound installation set in hanging mirror/speakers and light-projected poetry of james merril.
The vocals of Genesis P-Orridge were subjected to a process of manipulation which involved extending the voice through various methods of extrapolation and time-stretching. The resulting sound was edited together with various samples and engineered to seamlessly continue and repeat over multiple channels, moving ‘through’ each of the sculpture’s ‘audio-spotlights’ in an ongoing sequential process. The polished circular mirrors present the viewer with a moving reflection of figure and ground that disconcertingly alternates with the shifting sound, evoking superimposition, polophony, layers and interstitial spaces.
a=p=p=a=r=i=t=i=o=n is currently on view until september 27, at tramway 2 in glasgow, scotland.
the physical weight of data
virtual gravity is the diploma project by silke hilsing at the university of applied sciences würzburg. the project explores physical manifestation of data via an analog scale in a beautiful tangible interface.
The basic interaction is to weight and compare the virtual weight of information. The kind of action reminds deeply of handling with a real beam scale. So the audience has the possibility to use his foreknowledge of everyday life, it knows what how to use a scale, how it reacts and how the relation between two weights is to be read and interpreted.
wide screen vs full screen
directors discussing the impact of “pan and scan”, a technique used to fit wide screen into full screen.
thinking about the play button
a wonderful piece by the multi-talented momus. using the play button as both symbol and pattern, momus pondered on the play button’s role of transitioning from present-to-future and all its disparate implementations.
I’ve been thinking about the play button. More specifically, the distinction between status display indicators and play buttons; the way they correspond with different tenses of verb (present and future), different states of action (actual and conditional), different forms of speech (telling and asking), and the way that lots of software today mixes status indicators and play buttons.
art by telephone
art by telephone is a conceptual art exhibition curated by chicago’s museum of contemporary art in 1968 that sadly never exhibited. the recordings of phone conversations (instructions) with artists such as sol lewitt, john baldessari, joseph kosuth, jan dibbets, hans haacke and bruce nauman, however, survived in the form of a record and lives on as documentations of a pure concept. listen to the entire recording at network research.
