Photo-Break

Sceno Systematis Ptole

Data without borders

 

Data without borders seeks to match non-profits in need of data analysis with freelance and pro bono data scientists who can work to help them with data collection, analysis, visualization, or decision support.

Book: Globus Cassus

A gem, the book by Christian Waldvogel.

Angst kann man haben, wenn man will. Sie vergeht auch wieder. Es gibt keine Möglichkeit, durch die Verbreitung von paranoiden Gedanken Menschen zu manipulieren.
...
Träume und Trennung und Theorie wechseln sich ab, wie Jahreszeiten.

Yoou can be afraid. If you like. It will pass. There is no chance of manipulating people by spreading paranoid thoughts.
...
Dreams and separation and theory alternate, like the seasons.

Globus Cassus is an art project and book by Swiss architect and artist Christian Waldvogel presenting a conceptual transformation of Planet Earth into a much bigger, hollow, artificial world with an ecosphere on its inner surface. 

• Taschenbuch: 182 Seiten
• Verlag: Lars Müller Publishers, Baden; Auflage: Bilingual (März 2005)
• Sprache: Deutsch, Englisch (Französisch, Italienisch)
• Auflage: 2500

cao ni ma!

Dear Chinese Authorities: 

Don't leave us allone with Ai Weiwei!

Nach zweieinhalb Monaten in Haft ist der chinesische Künstler und Regierungskritiker Ai Weiwei offenbar gegen Kaution aus der Haft entlassen worden. Er soll gestanden haben.
Gegen den Künstler wurde wegen Wirtschaftsvergehen ermittelt und seine Verhaftung hatte nichts mit Menschenrechten oder Redefreiheit zu tun, sagt zumindest die chinesische Regierung.

Eine Geschichte wiewie erfunden: 

Vom kapitalistischen Kunstmarkt aufgefressener "Kritiker" des "kommunistischen" chinesischen Regimes wird wegen Steuerflucht festgenommen. 

Hurry...

Only 80 available:

"Save The Youth" Print from Sickboy.

Sickboy presents an A1-sized black and silver hand-pulled screen print, and a hand-finished special, bearing his prolific street slogan ‘Save the Youth'. Since 2003, the words ‘Save the Youth’ have been synonymous with Sickboy’s exterior activities.


SPECIFICATION
Description: One-colour hand-pulled screen print on 280gsm Somerset Antique black velvet paper with one deckled edge
Size: A1 / 59.4 × 84.1cm
Edition: 50
Authenticity: Signed, numbered and embossed with the temple logo by the artist
Year: 2011



RELEASE DATE: June 24, 2011
available here

Apropos Natural Gas Visualization

Stephen Few rückt wieder mal alles ins rechte Licht und vergisst dabei nicht allen mitzuteilen, was für lausige Datenvisualisierer David McCandless und Ben Fry sind. Recht hat er trotzdem.

Hier ein kleiner Auszug:
As Jayne (Steven Few's Ehefrau) began to read my review, she soon reached the place where I wrote that I’ve never seen an effective data visualization by McCandless and sighed. Her thoughts were, “Here he goes again,” fearing that my words might set off another firestorm of angry responses. Then she continued reading, and her attitude changed. Here’s what she said about the natural gas visualizations after finishing:

They make no sense whatsoever. I actually found myself getting angry as I reviewed them—primarily because it seems like a deliberate attempt on GE’s part to deceive—to make us think they care about an issue by posting pretty visualizations that, in reality, say nothing. GE and David McCandless should be ashamed! After reviewing these visualizations, it seems clear that GE doesn’t really care about the issue, they just want us to think that they do.

Read the full text here

Apropos Bucky:

«Gott, so scheint mir

ist ein Verb

kein Substantiv.» 

Robotic Percussion Band

Patrick Flanagan: Robot Drums from PopTech on Vimeo.

container architecture

Standardized, robust, stackable, and available all over the world, inexpensive, easy to erect and dismantle, cheap and sustainable—containers are all this and more: they are symbolic of our era. It is no wonder, therefore, that architects, designers, and artists in all four corners of the globe are excited by what containers have to offer. The ‘Container Architecture’ exhibition at the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf aims to offer a fascinating overview of what is possible.

Der Katalog zur Ausstellung/The catalogue:
336 Seiten/pages, 22,5 × 21,5 cm,
33,00 EUR

NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft, Düsseldorf (link)

Post Gravity

“What awaits us beyond constraints of time, form and place”

Last week one of todays most challenging magazines for the iPad launched its second issue. Post Gravity, an amazing publication full of moving images, beautiful sounds and inspiring articles focussing on fashion, art, architecture, cinema, music, science; what’s exciting now and tomorrow. This issue ‘explores what awaits us beyond constraints of time, form and place. Pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved on the iPad, Gravity opens with a groundbreaking, interactive 3D fashion story in which users can distort, bend and flip the dimensions of model Iselin Steiro.’

Download the magazine from iTunes

Ausstellung: Bucky Fuller & Spaceship Earth

Marta Herford in  Herford (11. Juni – 18. September 2011)

Ein vollständiger biografischer Überblick über die Arbeit von Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983), vom bahnbrechenden “Dymaxion House” bis zu seinen berühmten geodätischen Kuppeln.
Die Ausstellung wurde zusammengestellt von den Architekten Norman Foster, der mit “Bucky” in seinen letzten zwölf Jahren eng zusammenarbeitete, und Luis Fernández-Galiano, Professor an der Universidad Politécnica in Madrid. In zehn Kapiteln markiert die Präsentation die Schlüsselmomente in Buckminster Fullers Laufbahn und bezieht Originalwerke – Fotografien, Zeichnungen, Entwürfe, Modelle und Konstruktionen – ebenso mit ein wie einen spektakulären Nachbau seines futuristischen Autos “Dymaxion Car #4″.

Begleitpublikationen:

• Buckminster Fuller. Hrsg. Norman Foster und Luis Fernández-Galiano (span./engl.).
• AV Monografía 143/2010. 118 S., € 34.–. –
• Wir sind alle Astronauten. Universum Richard Buckminster Fuller im Spiegel zeitgenössischer Kunst. Hrsg. Marta Herford. Kerber-Verlag, Bielefeld 2011. 248 S., € 30.–.

und auch zu empfehlen:

Dymaxion Car: Buckminster Fuller

224 Seiten, Verlag: Actar D

Euthanasia Coaster by Julijonas Urbonas

Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetical euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely—with elegance and euphoria—take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness and eventually death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in aerospace medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and of course gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful.

Model:
Euthanasia Coaster

Application:
Euthanasia, execution

Dimensions:
Height: 510 m
Drop lenght: 500 m
Track length: 7544 m

Duration:
Lift: 120 s
Drop: 10 s
Exposure to 10 g: 60 s
Total: 3:20

Features:
Max speed: 100m/s
Inversions: 7
Max g-force: 10 g

Notes:
Cause of death: Cerebral hypoxia, lack of oxygen supply to the brain.
Additional effects: Greyout – loss of color vision; Tunnel vision – loss of peripheral vision; Blackout – complete loss of vision; G-LOC – g-force induced Loss Of Consciousness.

Scale model: 1:500

© 2010 Julijonas Urbonas

more info here

Da kann sich Dignitas mal eine Scheibe abschneiden...

very nice typo-work by Liz Collini: Bury 2009 (The Agency of Words)

And for all of those who are asking now: where can i get it? is a limited print available? i can put your mind at ease: it's already gone

Hans Richter & Jean Cocteau: Chess sonata

a good way to start this new week: with the first 2 minutes of  "8 X 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements"

for full cast and additional information visit here

Samuel Bianchini: all over

I love this one! strongly recommended to watch it here

All Over is an online artwork based on a series of images composed of typographic characters in the manner of ASCII art, that is using the display techniques of the first computers. In this case, however, the figures and letters composing the images are dynamic and keep changing: they are generated in real time following the rise and fall of stock market indexes around the world. The originally still images change according to the volume of financial transactions, which simultaneously feed and disrupt the photographs. The images are destabilized by the display system, and their meaning in turn becomes unstable. Caught between the digital and the financial, and between two forms of representation, these pictures without captions seem to be constantly struggling for their visibility and their uncertain reality. What is it that they show us? A demonstration, traders, supporters, a religious or political rally...?

Samuel Bianchini: niform

niform is an interactive installation. In a large darkened room, the whole of one wall facing an audience of viewers is taken up with a panoramic image; at first, the image is unchanging,  is unchanging and blurred in its entirety. The group, rendered uniform by the blurring, is rendered even more so by the uniform clothing of the twenty men who constitute the group: the picture is that of a cordon of policemen in anti-riot gear, life-size.
The viewers, as they move, change the focal point of the image: as they move towards the screen, and according to the disposition of their bodies, the section of the image in front of them becomes progressively more clearly focused. At a distance of fifty centimetres or less from the screen, a spectator is confronted with one of the representatives of the forces of law and order.
The image no longer has a single depth of field, but several: these are localised, spectator-specific and are different for each viewer.  From an initially fuzzy image, each spectator progresses towards a focusing-in on the image, onto a single man, toward the individual man with whom s/he stands face to face.

New Book: Switching Codes

Switching Codes

Thinking Through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Art

"At a moment when culture’s digital makeover seems to have induced epistemological vertigo in many, Switching Codes offers a timely and well-targeted intervention…. Bartscherer, Coover, and their authors take up the challenges posed by the digital arts and humanities, mapping their new contexts, defining their analytic repertoire, and compelling a fresh set of insights. More than a portrait of our times, Switching Codes exemplifies the very logics that it explicates."
William Uricchio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

via: The University of Chicago Press

Cool

“From the schoolyard kids to the marketers everybody wants to get close to the cool guy…so what defines cool?
R+I Creative presents “The Pursuit Of Cool”, a short series about hedonism, sharing and meeting cool people with stories.
It all started with one quote…’There is no algorithm to define cool, you just know it when you see it’.”

Trailer: "The Pursuit of cool"