Fulcrum by Richard Serra, London, England
NY Times Arts Dwell ARTstor Blog
Rhizome is an online community and publication “dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.” The site includes contemporary examples of works investigating the intersection of art, technology and culture, with an archive dating back to the early 1990s.
The Exhibit, Toward the Sentient City, curated by Mark Shepard and organized by the Architectural League of New York, has an admirable online presence. The exhibit investigates how ubiquitous computing and ambient technology have come to influence architecture and urban design. Shepard writes:
“We are now on the cusp of a similarly fundamental reconfiguration of physical space, one in which a vast and mostly invisible layer of technology is being embedded into the world around us. Using a wide range of complex technologies and devices — from microprocessors and electronic identification tags to sensors and networked information systems — buildings and cities are being transformed, imbued with the capacity to sense, record, process, transmit, and respond to information and activity taking place within and around them.” Read more here.
Stanford Researchers Marc Levoy and Andrew Adams with the Frankencamera.
In the future digital cameras may resemble iPhones with downloadable and customizable apps.
Researchers at Stanford are creating an open source digital camera (called Frankencamera) that may reinvent the way we take digital photos and expand or understanding of what’s possible. The Camera 2.0 Project will allow software developers to customize shutter speed, focus, and flash and to recombine multiple images to create more high quality photos.
Read more about the research project from the Standford Report or listen to the story from NPR’s All Things Considered, “Frankencamera: A giant leap for digital photos?”
Printing press by Kiel Johson, in “Publish or Perish” showing at Mark Moore Gallery
Painter and Sculptor Kiel Johnson constructed a working camera from only cardboard, hot glue and tape. Twin Lens Reflex, a functioning pinhole camera, is a whimsical commentary on digital technology and its ever-growing obsolescence. View a time lapse video of Johnson constructing the camera.
via Boing Boing
The California State University IMAGE Project has assembled almost 75,000 images for into its WorldImages database (formerly known as WorldArt). Organized into portfolios, the database includes a wide range of content from around the globe including images of cities and building technology, religious and cultural art and artifacts, architecture, material culture, and more. In addition WorldImages hosts a few special collections including faculty contributions, special exhibits and the Sourisseau Academy Clark B. Waterhouse Collection.
The Database of Virtual Art documents the rapidly evolving field of digital installation art, allowing artists to post material themselves. Including video documentation, technical data, interfaces, displays, and literature, the Database of Virtual Art provides a unique resource that assimilates the needs of the field. The ever-expanding collection combines immersive, interactive, telematic and genetic artworks with relevant links to exhibiting institutions, events and bibliographical references. This research-oriented site has been developed in cooperation with established media artists, researchers and institutions, and endeavors to extend its services to the preservation of virtual art.
Launched in 2002, Visualizing Cultures explores the potential of the Web for creating “innovative image-driven scholarship and learning.” With an emphasis on Japan in the modern world and issues as diverse as modernization, war, consumerism, and issues of self and other, Visualizing Cultures presents a dynamic interface for investigating once inaccessible visual materials.
UPDIG has published guidelines for the management of digital images to help establish best practices for photographers, designers and printers. The information is very tech-heavy but informative and the organization maintains a resource list to help you navigate through the treacherous waters of color management, metadata, software, color calibration, file formats, file delivery, web color, and work flow.
SkyFinder, a new research initiative from the Visual Computing Group at Microsoft, may dramatically change how we find images online. Researchers wrote algorithms and analyzed such attributes as color and location of the sun in images of the sky. When the project goes public, users can browse over half a million images online. Instead of scrolling through often irrelevant results, the SkyFinder interface can help you quickly locate photographs of a “landscape with the sun in the lower right and clouds in the upper left.”
Read more in the article by Technology Review or watch the Video Demo at SIGGRAPH 2009, the International Conference and Exhibition of Computer Graphics and Interactive Technologies.
Darpa is working on a project which will result in a type of matter than can assemble itself into complex three-dimensional objects on command. The Defense Science Office writes that,
“Programmable Matter represents the convergence of chemistry, information theory, and control into a new materials design paradigm referred to as “InfoChemistry”—building information directly into materials.”
Read more about the convergence of materials and computers in Wired Magazine and SIGNAL.
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