Art
sciencepunk | August 11, 2012
In 1949 LIFE magazine dedicated a huge part of their May issue to The Atom, including the gorgeous illustration shown above. As well as discussing the properties of the atoms, their internal structure and chemistry, the team produced a stunning series of images accompany the text. Science reporter Robert Campbell and photographer Fritz Goro spent a year trying to solve the problem of showing the intricate, invisible nature of atoms; going so far as to blow their own luminescent glassware, lighting candles in sealed containers with magnifying glasses and building models out of Christmas tree…
aardvarchaeology | July 24, 2012Reading Anund & Qviberg's new guide book on Medieval Uppland, I came across a great religious legend: "The Grateful Dead". (The band got its name from a dictionary entry on this family of stories.) The earliest version of the legend is found in the German Cistercian prior Caesarius of Heisterbach's 13th century book of miracle stories, the Dialogus miraculorum. This book was hugely popular for centuries, and though Caesarius is largely forgotten today, we do remember his chilling line about how to tell a Cathar from a Catholic, attributed by Caesarius to one of the Albigensian Crusade's…
jtoney | July 16, 2012
Actor Jeremy Jordan signs my daughter's program, as I stand crushed amongst hundreds of Newsies fans standing on tip toe begging for his attention (author's photograph.)
Don't judge me, ok? My daughter and I shared Father's day this year taking in the buoyant raucous joy of Newsies on Broadway. Real men don't love Newsies, right?
Broadway productions, to me, had brought to mind sanguine, syrupy sweet expressions of heart-felt stories spun with punctuations bursting in song and dance in a filigreed fairy land. Such performances are for the romantic, the Pollyanna, hearts all a flutter,…
sciencepunk | July 16, 2012Ai Hasegawa, a second-year student at London's Royal College of Arts, asks if women might consider gestating something other than human children in the future, for a project entitled I wanna deliver a shark.
Ai writes:
We are genetically predisposed to raise children as a way of passing on our genes to the next generation but we live in an age where the struggle to raise a child in decent conditions is becoming harder with gross over-population and difficult environmental conditions.
We must also eat, and we are equally facing growing food shortages as a result of over-fishing, land use…
sciencepunk | July 9, 2012
This three-story-tall mural was painted by international artist Josef Kristofoletti on the side of the ATLAS control room directly above the detector:
This project was inspired by the same questions that physicists are trying to answer; where did we come from, what does it mean to be human, and what is our place in the universe? The artist worked closely with physicists at CERN over the course of a year to create the mural. It depicts the artist's interpretation of what the Higgs boson might look like.
This short, time-lapse video was finished June 2012, using photos that were taken during…
sciencepunk | July 5, 2012All That I Am is an art piece which involves a transgenic mouse imbued with the essence of Elvis Presley in an effort to model the late great's behaviour.
Koby says:
A combination of three online services make this project possible. Hair samples of Elvis Presley, bought on ebay were sent to a gene sequencing lab to identify different behavioural traits (varied from sociability, athletic performance to obesity and addiction).
Using this information, transgenic mice clones with parallel traits were produced.
The genetically cloned models of Elvis are tested in a collection of various…
aardvarchaeology | June 28, 2012Vår Gård in Saltsjöbaden is a conference venue and training centre whose history illustrates political trends in Sweden over the past century and more.
1892. The Thiel brothers, two of Sweden's wealthiest art patrons, buy a property by the sea in the new fashionable resort of Saltsjöbaden and build two luxurious summer mansions. They name the place Vår Gård, “Our Farmstead”.
1899. The Swedish Cooperative Union is founded.
1924. The Cooperative Union buys Vår Gård and adds a number of buildings to the property to house its new training centre and its art collection.
1932. Sweden's first Labour…
sciencepunk | June 16, 2012Albert Robida was a French illustrator and author who produced a series of fantastical drawings to accompany three futurist novels he wrote in the 1880s. Often caricatured as derivative to Jules Verne's science fiction, the two are more fairly seen as contemporaries. Whereas Verne's adventures took place in the proximity of scientists and engineers, Robida built his technological marvels into everyday life, and studied the effects they would have on the public at large. La Vie Électrique includes a wonderfully French take on everything from videophones, flying machines, and functional…
milhayser | June 9, 2012Spring is in the air, and Clostridium tetani is in the earth. On Casaubon's Book, Sharon Astyk writes "with playing in the dirt comes minor injuries that you really don’t want to turn into anything nasty." Infection through open wounds can be fatal, as the bacterium releases a neurotoxin that causes uncontrolled muscular contractions. So if it's been ten years or more since your last vaccination, now is a good time for a booster. Meanwhile, Dr. Dolittle shares the amazing winning images of the inaugural Bio-Art competition on Life Lines. From the discharge of electric fish to the…
sciencepunk | May 20, 2012
In 1993, convicted murderer Joseph Jernigan was executed in texas and his body donated to science. It was preserved in gelatin and sliced into 1,871 sections. Scans of these sections were strung together into an animation, and played back on a computer screen as it was swept across the field of a long-exposure camera shot. The result is these strange and haunting images of Jernigan's ghost, floating in the twilight. More images can be found here, created by Croix Gagnon and Frank Schott.
Via Mo Costandi
cevans | May 7, 2012Last week, I wrote a piece for Motherboard about an android version of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The story of the android is truly surreal, stranger than even Dick's flipped-out fiction, and I recommend you pop over to Motherboard and mainline it for yourselves. For the piece, I interviewed the lead programmer on the first version of the PKD Android, Dr. Andrew Olney. Aside from bringing science fiction legends back from the dead, Olney is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis and Associate Director of the same university's…
aardvarchaeology | April 27, 2012
This 1976 piece of public sculpture is at the playground next to my house. It's titled Del av helhet - helhet av del, "Part of whole - whole of part", referring to its modular makeup.
I haven't really paid any attention to it since Juniorette became old enough to go out and play without grownups. But just now I took a walk in the sun and caught the piece with good lighting. It's taller than I am, a sturdy climbable aluminium structure as was en vogue in the 70s. It forms a slightly narrow double portal into the playground for people approaching from outside the Boat Hill housing area. Kids…
vlicata | April 8, 2012I recently read David Kirby's new book on science film consulting. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone even remotely or subconsciously interested in being a science consultant for the next Iron Man or Transformers, or smaller budget real-life dramas with real-life science in them. His book is both easy and interesting to read - and is filled with information. He explores the history of science-consulting, going all the way back to "Woman in the Moon" and of course the still canonical "2001: A Space Odyssey", and discusses a large number of recent examples. He does not glorify…
sb admin | April 4, 2012Portland artist Eric Franklin spent over 1,000 hours sweating over hot glass and noble gasses to produce Embodiment, a glass skeleton filled with glowing krypton.
Speaking about the process, Eric says:
Every glass seal has to be perfect, and this piece contains hundreds. Everywhere one tube joins another, or a tube terminates, glass tubes were sealed together. They have to be perfect in order to preserve the luminosity of the krypton. If one rogue molecule gets inside the void of the glass tubing it can eventually contaminate the gas and it will no longer glow. There are times when the…
sciencepunk | April 4, 2012Portland artist Eric Franklin spent over 1,000 hours sweating over hot glass and noble gasses to produce Embodiment, a glass skeleton filled with glowing krypton.
Speaking about the process, Eric says:
Every glass seal has to be perfect, and this piece contains hundreds. Everywhere one tube joins another, or a tube terminates, glass tubes were sealed together. They have to be perfect in order to preserve the luminosity of the krypton. If one rogue molecule gets inside the void of the glass tubing it can eventually contaminate the gas and it will no longer glow. There are times when the…
sb admin | March 20, 2012There is only one truly kosher sport when it comes to the Olympics: athletics. All those ancient Greeks did was run around in the dirt butt naked. It took over fifty years for them to add a second sport: more running, but in a wild twist, a race over twice the distance as before. Over the years more sports were added, including one involving running in full armour, which much have provided much-needed advertising canvas for Classical games sponsors.
After the revival of the games in 1894, various sports have been added, some successfully, whilst others fell by the wayside. Take a tour…
jtoney | March 5, 2012Ads of the World.
Can business cards evoke creativity, spark interest? Standard business cards seem outdated, dull, uninspiring. Liberate your shoelaces, your flexagons!
Consider shoelace business cards for Adidas employees, a highly creative approach to grabbing attention, and importantly, explaining what you do for a living.
A design colleague of mine, Prof. Rose Gonella, suggested that I use a flexagon business card, because my job involves so many facets - teaching, research, administration,...
It's easy to make a flexagon:
Give up those dull business cards! What's your design?
jtoney | February 29, 2012
"Air guitar" has taken on almost cult status in some circles. How about "couch guitar"?
This video is a clever application of robots, engineering and music.
From the University of Pennsylvania:
Quadrotors designed and built at the University of Pennsylvania perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of…
sb admin | February 26, 2012A cross posting from my Posterous space - a short imagining some implications of lab-grown meat.
He was a huge man, thick forearms dotted with burns and pale scars. He spoke in a dull monotone about the unique difficulties in preparing synthetic meat. Roscoe wondered how much he weighed, and tried to calculate how much that would be worth when sold in Longpig wrappers. As he spoke, Roscoe noticed the chef was absent-mindedly palpating his own arm, as if feeling for the texture of the meat under his skin.
Read Transubstantiation
jtoney | February 11, 2012
Photo source.
Such sad news today - Whitney Houston died at the young age of 48. I have always enjoyed, and admired, her soaring soulful voice. What will her legacy be?
Besides being a highly gifted artist, she has established a lasting legacy - a school devoted to the arts, just a few miles from my campus, based in East Orange, New Jersey.
Their mission statement is:
Whitney E. Houston Academy will strive to provide an environment in which every student learn and every staff member can grow. To achieve maximum success in this regard, we will provide challenging educational opportunites…