A special project by Rankin “Eyescapes” at art-dept.

Via Marcus Trimble at Super Colossal.

Simon Garfield in The Observer

I dropped into Quinto, the second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road. Granta was about to celebrate its 100th edition, and I wanted some early copies - those classic ones with writing by Richard Ford, John Berger, Martin Amis and Angela Carter. The man at the counter wasn't impressed. 'What's Granta?'

I could have given him the usual: about how it was a river in Cambridge, or the upper part of one, and its name spawned a student magazine that began in 1889 and was revived in the late 1970s. I could have said that this magazine became home to some of the best writing in the English language, and was edited for half its life by a man, Bill Buford, described to me as 'a crazy, inspiring, absolutely absurd lunatic'. But instead I said: 'It's a literary magazine, but it looks like a book.'

Via Arts & Letters Daily.

A chest strap (corset) with high torque servo motors and a WIFI-enabled game-console are worn as fetish object. The higher the wireless signal strength of close encrypted networks, the tighter the corset becomes. Closed network points improve the pleasurable play of tight lacing the performer‘s bustier. Thus, constituting the aether as a space of possible pregnancy, filled with potential access-points to the networks of communication. Everyday walks between home, work and leisure are recompiled into a schizogeographic pain-map which is fetched from GoogleMaps servers with automated scripts. By wearing the straight-jacket, the artist not only writes, but is at once also able to read the city code.

Via MAKE: Blog.

Flash website :argh: so I won’t quote from it, but the gist is:

The skulls belong all to us. I wanted to bring a catacomb from the near future to the present, to show people that the tragedy of pollution is happening right now. I try to remind people of things they are trying to forget.

Via MAKE: Blog.

Via Monoscope and ReubenMiller.

Via Monoscope and designboom.

Via MAKE: Blog.

Via Monoscope.

Tobias Battenberg, from Germany, made a nice experiment with video projections in several buildings and structures in the city, about the font “akzidenz grotesk”.
Akzidenz grotesk is known as a font that tolerates a lot, that holds out a lot - my plan was to get a proof by the font herself. the font demonstrated her character at its best.

His website

Via Type for you via Monoscope.

Posted by Nicolai Ouroussoff to NYT > Arts.

This effect was amplified by the play of light and sound. By turning on and off the various floodlights outside, you could adjust the mood of the entire house. When the lights are dimmed, for example, the house becomes less theatrical, more tender. Voices too travel through the rooms, so that you are always faintly aware of the presence of the other.

It wasn’t until we arose the next morning, however, that we fully understood Chareau’s choreography. The bathroom floor is raised in certain areas so that as we crossed it, we could catch occasional glimpses of each other before suddenly dropping back out of view.

Via Bruce Sterling at Beyond the Beyond.

Electric contacts are mounted on the support block of the Machine, where the hand is situated. These contacts are activated as soon as the first "nervous sweat" appears that turns the skin into a conductor. Subsequently the computer becomes disturbed by the electric current that is now transmitted via the skin.

This has two effects: on the one hand, sounds are generated by the closure of the contacts (circuit bending) that can either be interpreted as warning or act as an additional source of stress. On the other hand, they can have an effect on the position of the knife which is controlled by the computer and thereby hurt the potential perpetrator of the disturbance.

By 5voltcore

[Dr. Strangelove’s] frightening absurdity was established in the very first frame of the main title sequence designed by Pablo Ferro.

Via Jim Coudal.

Posted by Bruce Sterling to Beyond the Beyond.

June 14, 2007 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS GO-EXPO Conference organizer fails to have Yes Men arrested.

“We need something like whales, but infinitely more abundant,” said “NPC rep” “Shepard Wolff” (actually Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men), before describing the technology used to render human flesh into a new Exxon oil product called Vivoleum. 3-D animations of the process brought it to life.

Posted to Economist.com News Analysis.

An art dealer sells his most beloved Cezanne

The body of the tower was made by a new technique called “ferrofluid sculpture” that enables artists to create dynamic sculptures with fluid materials. This technique uses one electromagnet, and its iron core is extended and sculpted. The ferrofluid covers the sculpted surface of a three-dimensional iron shape that was made on an electronic NC lathe. The movement of the spikes in the fluid is controlled dynamically on the surface by adjusting the power of the electromagnet. The shape of the iron body is designed as helical so that the fluid can move to the top of the helical tower when the magnetic field is strong enough.

Visit the page for the movie.

Via MAKE: Blog.

Posted by pk to Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed.

Lovely Gene Weingarten piece in the weekend WashPost on whether one of the nation's great musicians -- violinist Joshua Bell -- can make any money busking incognito in a Washington subway at rush hour.

Too bad the article is so long, just skim it.

If you can see this in person probably wait until then, it’s much more powerful as an experience.

Posted by Tim Bray to ongoing.

Caught in pixels for your, well, not pleasure exactly. I’m talking about the World
Press Photo Contest Winners’ Gallery. If you have any kind of a heart, there are pictures here that will tear holes in it. And some that are just insanely pretty.

This is mostly just a test to see if I got my publishing toolchain back up and running.

Posted by Warren Ellis to Warrenellis.com.

Jean Snow just sent me this. The few moments in the week that I call my spare time have just been obliterated. pdf-mags.com - an aggregator for PDF magazines.

I am utterly screwed. But isn’t it wonderful? I love that I can now pull down a free magazine stuffed with 56 pages of stencil art from Kiev.

(There’s also a smaller scrnmgs for Flash-driven online magazines.)

That they don't all do it like we do.