Salvador Dali

http://joox.net/cat/44/id/1606318

Richard Serra Old School Communictaion

I found these 2 videos from the early 70's about the television and the telephone.

Born in 1939, Richard Serra studied English literature at the University of California in Berkeley while working at a steel mill to earn a living. He went on to receive an MFA from Yale University where he studied with painter/theorist Joseph Albers. Living in New York, Paris, and Rome on the late 60s, Serra became acquainted with artists of the New York School: Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhart, and Frank Stella, as well as avant-garde composer Philip Glass. Associated with the emergence of post-minimalism and process art, Serra's lead splashing sculptures were included in The Warehouse Show at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1968, and Anti-Illusion: Procedures Materials at the Whitney Museum in 1968—both pivotal exhibitions that established a new discourse in the field of sculpture. Serra produced several films before making videotapes in the early 70s, including Television Delivers People (1973), Prisoner's Dilemma (1974), and Boomerang (1974), that examine the medium as a structure for communication.

The First Cellphone (1973)

Dr Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered the inventor of the first modern portable handset. Cooper made the first call on a portable cell phone in April 1973. He made the call to his rival, Joel Engel, Bell Labs head of research. Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cellular communications in 1947 with the police car technology. However, Motorola was the first to incorporate the technology into portable device that was designed for outside of a automobile use.

Does he look a little afraid of that phone?

The First Cellphone (1973)

Name: Motorola Dyna-Tac
Size: 9 x 5 x 1.75 inches
Weight: 2.5 pounds
Display: None
Number of Circuit Boards: 30
Talk time: 35 minutes
Recharge Time: 10 hours
Features: Talk, listen, dial

Sources
www.cellular.co.za.com
www.about.com

appropriate

kinda sad, but too awesome

The First Cellphone Commercial

post photographic processes

Well, it' my first scheduled post and I'm late.

So, I thought i would recap a little of the SL lecture at parsons, and particularly the opening discussion by NYU professor Fred Ritchen. He mentioned a number of new technologies being developed that use computational methods to process photographic source material in various interesting ways.

(if you've seen this stuff before, look again!)

Microsoft's Photosynth is a method of gathering many thousands of images from a photosharing site like Flickr  to create a sort of 3d projection of a particular place or thing.

 (by the way, if you don't know about TED, you should)

Carnegie Mellon University is also working on 2 projects, Scene Completion, and Gigapan.  If you haven't seen Gigapan, you have to take a look.  It's some sort of an armature for a point and shoot digital camera that creates these incredibly detailed panoramic views.

"GigaPan will help bring distant communities and peoples together through images that have so much detail that they are, themselves, the objects of exploration, discovery and wonder."

And lastly, a project from the University of Edinburgh called Spellbinder, which adds "invisible" graffiti to your cellphone images.

(geekriti)

It sounds much better when they say it;

"Spellbinder is a new interactive digital medium based on camera phones and image matching. Using Spellbinder, digital content can be embedded in the real world by taking a photograph of an object or place. The digital content can be released by another user by taking another photograph of the same location. Spellbinder does not require special markers or barcodes to be placed in the world. Unlike tracking technologies such as global positioning systems, the focus is on what specifically is being looked at rather than where the user is. The Branded Tribes research project is exploring uses of this technology for social interaction in city spaces using an approach of research by design. Graphics of real world brandscapes are used as placeholders for virtual computer graphics. We report innovative outcomes from the first phase of this research."

Looking at all of these also made me think about Google Street view.

View Larger Map

(click "view larger map" then hit back button....don't know why i can't get it to work right.)

Oh, Technological Elmo...You Crazy

The newscasters talk about this with a semi-cheerful tone.

I can't be the only one that finds this disturbing...



...in a funny way, of course

Word Salad

Today I learned how to turn a full length mirror into a full length table, that being a successful photographer relies heavily on confidence, and that Salt 'N Peppa are beautiful ladies.

On my way there I wrote:

07:09 am
Greetings from Planet Irina. Snow is to the ankles, and if you find yourself flaky and/or white just click your heels three times so your feet don't get wet and slap your arms against your body like a penguin so your wool coat doesn't smell like one.
I woke up at 5:10 am and wished I didn't have to come out of the warm womb that is my blankets...

This is where I get bored of copying the handwritten half-awake-on-train-ride-with-contractors-all-the-way-from-Bensonhurst-word-salad about dreams of green slugs and lizards and unidentified creatures which remind me of Korosten and my wonders of the day ahead assisting a photographer I scouted on the train the other night. It went well, by the way. I got to see Salt 'N Peppa on a white seamless back drop and was able to painlessly put together and take apart a soft-box...twice.

I was thinking of this project we're doing, this anything-we-want-as-long-as-it-makes-sense aka thesis and my question to myself was: "what was the first thing I wanted to do?" and "what embodies, is the essence and the whole of my idea? "What defines, explores, and can visually represent the Collective Unconscious?" and "What's up with my sleep habits?" Two words came to mind: surrealism and collage. Collage is collective, the joining of ideas to create one large Gestalt idea, and surrealism is a scene that the collage can create. If I have nightmares of parasite green slugs at night, how can I dream awake of kittens, puppies, sunshine, and happy thoughts? How can I communicate my persistent visions and the why rather than the why not? And the answer was objective questioning, without expecting answers, and free association, and sharing, and visually a female body with a television for a head lounging on a polar bear who is walking on clouds made of light. My politics is that I'm anti politics. There is no right or wrong. There is no right and wrong, just a perception of an illusion and organic life which is merely slow moving energy. Why ask why when you can ask why ask why?


Today I was a good cook. For breakfast I made three magnificent eggs sunny side up + heat fried buckwheat with shredded chicken cutlets and then when I got home I made sushi, hand rolled right at the table, just bite in and enjoy. I cooked brown rice with olive oil and salt to perfect tender nuttyness and filled my seaweed with rice, chunk light tuna (little mayo), cucumbers, avocado, and fresh scallions. It was so amazing that I ate way too much of it, and I recommend that you simmer your rice with olive oil in the water. The results are buttery goodness in a grain.

Canon's New Patent - The Eyes Have it

Canon patents iris scanning in digital cameras

<3 Jack

Photos

plrds.com
- Polaroid Photography Collection -


Another collection of great photographs that are off that site, but I found on another site.

<3 Jack

Do You Feel...

Just recently I had the pleasure of watching Dirty Harry - for the first time ever

If you haven't seen the movie let me give you a little background straight from IMDB.

"A San Francisco cop with little regard for rules (but who always gets results) tries to track down a serial killer who snipes at random victims."

The cop; Harry Callahan (possibly the sickest name ever) is played by Clint Eastwood. IN HIS PRIME.


--- Let me pause here for a second ----

I understand that some of you may be confused. Because the last movie you saw Clint Eastwood in was "Million Dollar Baby" - and he looked freakin jurassic, I mean older than your grandfather.








But there was a time when he had it all....




(****ing suave)








Long, long ago when Clint Eastwood wasn't giving boxing lessons.. he was a maverick cop with all the right stuff - he was dashing - a total bad*** - he had ridiculously awesome one liners - and carried a 44 magnum.

---

Basically the first thirty minutes of the movie this guy never misses a shot. In fact he single handidly stops a bank robbery and throughout the entire shootout he is eating a hotdog. If you dont believe me the scene is right here...



Now you might consider Harry Callahan the antithesis of what you would actually want a cop to be like. Throughout the film he is breaking the law to get the criminals. At one point he brutually tortures a surrendered criminal in order to get a confession.

But to put things into perspective the film takes place in LA during a time where crime was running pretty rampant. Whats interesting is that the film brings up two issues that are still relevant today -

Obtaining a confession through torture. Criminals having more rights then the victims.

I ran across some law article actually written about the movie (just the first page) so you can see that im not making this stuff up (though they might be).

Law Article

Clint Eastwood went on to have two sequels to Dirty Harry - Magnum Force and The Enforcer. You might wanna pick those up.. but only if you want adrenaline injected straight into your veins. But don't rent them for a hot date or anything cause you really want to pay attention to these masterpieces.

No, really there are some incredible feats of cinematography throughout these movies and they are pretty classic.

But anyway I just recently renewed my blockbuster subscription so pony up for some more movie commentary in the near future.

And ya, I know it is Friday.

1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial

Living in the future?

I just read a very interesting article on PC World entitled The Next 25 Years in Tech. I found it very appropriate for this blog since I believe last week in Allison's class we were on the topic of where technology is heading and someone (Evan?) brought up the idea of paper-thin screens; some were apprehensive about this especially when the conversation moved to the idea of chips implanted in humans, but perhaps this article will change some opinions.

Some points the article touched on were nanotechnology and computer chips getting smaller but quantum mechanics not allowing them to get smaller than a certain size which will lead to optical computers that run at the speed of light! In terms of technology the article mentioned the idea of paper thin displays, gesture based interfaces like the Wii, virtual sales people, ambient intelligence, and body computers.

This all got me thinking about 1984. With chips under our skin Big Brother will always be watching! It will be like we exist in real life yet there will be a virtual version of ourselves existing through the wires. This idea of Second Life is becoming all too real. It's scary. Is this what will become of us (see Apple commercial in next post- above)?

"Hello?"

Since we have been talking about networking (Second Life), I was reminded of this project that I saw a while ago.

http://generativesocialnetworking.com/

What they do is collect the contacts off ones phone and have people call each other from your contact list. They use bluetooth to collect info, which a lot of people will just leave on.

---

In searching information about bluetooth, I found this article in wired about this artist who draws out what radiowaves may look like in a project called "The Bubbles of Radio."






---

I mentioned this a little bit earlier to a few people on an idea I had for a project.
Since you can use bluetooth to search out devices within a short range (crowded subway),
I'm thinking about using the phone as a way to connect to strangers. With my phone you can forward a contact to another device. I was thinking of creating a contact, which the name would be something along the lines of "Hey there, tell me something about yourself." and an email address attached to it and then from there start having conversations over email with these people that are within 10 feet of me, but have no clue who they are.

It's just the start of the idea, I'd like to develop it a bit more.
What do you guys think?

<3>

Telepresence

So, on the way home today i was listening to this interesting podcast of an introductory computer class at Berkeley- IDS 110.  This particular lecture was about telepresence, and I thought it might make for an interesting intro article to the blog.

The lecture discussed the history and philosophy behind telepresence, and instructor Americ Azevedo showed a youtube clip about a CISCO systems project for a high def., suped up, teleconference system with individual monitors and cameras "seated" around a conference table for an interactive, life size telecommunication.  I looked around to find the video and found this one which demonstrates a system with a holographic avatar instead of monitor and camera:

After a little more looking I found an earlier version of teleconferencing:

What is the difference between talking to an image, an avatar or a person?