Archive for April, 2010

Panoramic Wifi Camera

Panoramic Wifi Camera at Light in Sight, NTT/ICC 2008 Curated by Yukiko Shikata

The Panoramic Wifi Camera takes 'pictures' of spaces illuminated by wireless radio signals, in much the same way that a traditional camera takes pictures through visible light. In effect, it is a camera which captures the invisible. Wireless radio networks are increasingly part of our daily lives throughout the developed world. The camera reveals the topology of this electromagnetic ecology, or 'Hertzian space', showing that even our own bodies cast their 'shadows'. Wifi uses wireless radio signals in the of 2.4 Ghz range which behave similarly to light waves, in that they are reflected off almost all solid objects. When we perceive colours, we see the light that is reflected off an object into our eyes. The Panoramic Wifi Camera allows us to perceive the radio environment in a similar manner. The Panoramic Wifi Camera is constructed from home-made directional antennae, which are placed in a careful array, each at a slightly different angle. This array rotates slowly, scanning, to build-up an image of a space. The work is a powerful example of how artists are creating new methods of visualising the intangible and atemporal environment which we exist within.

.:transmediale.de->

Stop Chasing Followers

Jeffery Zeldman on why its all about dialog, persuasion and influence in being successful on the internet- not about the millions of followers that don’t really matter.

Are you making a difference?

Tom Wujec: Build a tower, build a team

Quote of the day

"It is very similar to late Weimar Germany," Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. "The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over."

.:truthdig.com->

GURU RIP

July 17, 1961 - April 19, 2010

RIP

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard

.:lafayette.edu->

Chinese is hard because the writing system is ridiculous, Athe language doesn’t have the common sense to use an alphabet, the writing system just ain’t very phonetic, even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated, etc.

Read more here

Bonnier has introduced a working concept of the Mag+, a product that is seeking to understand the experience of reading magazines on handheld digital devices. MNP recently caught up with Pontus Schultz of Bonnier R&D and asked him about the concept and its recent success with Popular Science+

Continue on to the interview with Pontus Schultz

This week for theAA Dozen feature, we touch base withAKathleen Letts, Aa very talented artist from Chicago.AHow did you get your start in the visual arts? It all started with mud pies…my earliest memories are of making little pots from the mud in a wooded clearing near our house in rural Kansas. AI must have been 4 or 5. ALater I branched out to figures that I made out of cloth and wood scraps from my mother's sewing basket and my father's wood shop, which I sold to family and friends. AI remember that my most expensive art work at the time was priced at $ .50. AMom thought it was a little overpriced! I think that artists are born, not made, and the most critical component of the artistic temperament is the patience -or the compulsion-to work a piece through to completion.

.:myninjaplease.com->

Chi crederia che sotto forme umane e sotto queste pastorali spoglie fosse nascosto un Dio? Non mica un-["Who would believe that under human form and under this pastoral garb there would be found a God? Not only a…."]AAs of mid-May 2009, this phonautogram of the opening lines of Torquato Tasso's pastoral drama Aminta is the earliest audible record of recognizable human speech.

Check out this and other phonautograms