GENOMICON

A load more stuff etc. Bits and bobs.

1) 3D Printed Alumide Things

Quite impressive if you like that sort of thing.

But like, what’s the background? Is that a dead (or wintering) vineyard or something? It looks like an American version of what Russia looked like when no one had painted it for 20 years. The New Frontier.

2) Inflatable space-habitats

Apparently stronger than the existing ones – and has the added advantage that if it falls into the sea, it’s already a sort of massive water-wing. Just remember – these are the people who invented velcro.

3) A bunch of toy robot things

Light-seeking snakey thing

Spiderying thing obediently (for the moment) obeying a smartphone

Lego robot arm

4) That OK Go thing.

Everything’s raving about this, but I think it kindof sucks

Why do I think it sucks FFS? It’s the greatest Rube-Goldberg machine ever made.

It sucks because they’re piggy-backing on Maker Culture (aka what nerds do to get attention), not by making something but by just fucking buying it. Something that’s all about tinkering about and doing something for yourself – labours of love has just become a great big spend-fest.

It worked – that video has had over 2 million views already. But like… whatever. It looks to me like cool kids with money getting attention by nicking the uncool kids… thing. What Nike (and everyone) have been doing to Black Urban culture forever. Sorry. Once the mainstream gets hold of it, it sucks.

But don’t mind me, I’m just some twat shooting his gob off from the safety of the cheap seats.

This on the other hand is beautiful.

A labour of love – rather than something that someone’s bought so they can advertise their single, on behalf of EMfuckingI, who don’t deserve to live.

5) Beautiful Tilt-Shift thing of New York

I went to New York for a week once, and didn’t see daylight the whole time. It rocked.

6) Petri Dish Bacteria Soap From Etsy
(via)

AND YOU CAN GET GLOW IN THE DARK ONES!!!

There’s a nice circularity to de-bacterialising yourself with a petri-dish.

When Etsy first turned up it looked a lot to me like a load of tedious crafty tat, but the quality of the stuff (well, some of it) on there truly gob-smacks me now.

I’m not sure how it’s happened – whether it’s the community… or competition… or what, but there seems to have been a really radical bar-raising. In London in the 90s, Camden Market went from being a couple of hundred yards of knock-off Goth stuff (and hippie-wigs), to miles and miles of really high-quality, up-market… everything.

Etsy has done the same thing in a fraction of the time – except that instead of starting out as a goth thing, it started out as a 1970s local-church craft fair. Now it’s all boutiquey and designery. Well… some of it.

That Umair Haque bloke who I’m going to slag off in the next post once said that Etsy was probably going to be The Next Google. No one knew what he was talking about. And they still don’t… but… it’s looking a whole lot more convincing than it once did. He’s not just a pretty face.

7) Military Androids.

Looks like DARPA are attempting to make an “Apps Store” for military… applications. What could possibly go wrong?

Not much probably – if it introduces diversity/resilience into the mix of stuff being used – though I imagine the main reason to do it is to co-opt the collective intelligence of the great-geek-unwashed, and get them to dream up more stuff to sell to the taxpayer.

The problem isn’t imaginary enemies, or forn terrsts. The problem is the military itself. It’s destroying the country by taking about 1/2 of the tax revenues. Remember kids. Spending money on the military is like breaking windows in 19th Century France. When you need it, you need it – 50% of your tax? Come on. It’s out of control.

But forget about all that. According to the article, it’s specifically targeting Android phones. Which I find interesting.

8) The Bible

Have you read it? It’s mental.

Most Christians haven’t apparently, so it’s worth slogging through it to piss them off etc… but anyway, things I have noticed so far:

a) There are numerous references to other gods (eg: Exodus 18.11)

b) There is an incredible amount of Christian Lore that isn’t actually in it. Stories surrounding the Tower of Babel, and the Ark and whatnot. Still… that whole business surrounding Sodom and Gomorrah – did you know that the only “pure” person to escape, wound up procreating with his own daughters? It’s ok though – because (although) they were virgins at the time, he was drunk. The Bible does actually frame this as an excuse.

c) Any experienced programmer will immediately see it for what it is. Really badly written legacy code. It’s filled with bugs, contradictions, repeated code, lack of structure etc. It’s like an old version of Oscommerce or vbulletin or something. Nightmare.

If this is the source-code of the OS of the Christian Religion, no wonder it’s so fucked up. It needs more than an upgrade, or more patches (The New Testament was a patch, attempting to correct the hysterical bug-fest that is the Old Testament)… it needs a total rewrite from the ground up – starting with a a re-think of the core principles, because… well, let’s face it possums, the New Testament Patch didn’t really work. The world is still being fucked up by people employing Old-Testament morality.

d) It’s interesting from an historical perspective, but The DaVinci Code is easier to get into.

e) Don’t even think about reading anything other than The King James version. The others are for thick people.

9) Robo-thesp

LOL

Yours for $82,000

10) Yea, whatever, I’m not wearing that

Brain controlled pimball innit. Def dumman blinekid.

11) White House Cyber Czar: ‘There Is No Cyberwar’

“I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There are no winners in that environment.” – Howard Schmidt

Mon Dieu, the voice of reason. Where have you been all my life?

Similar logic ought to be applied to “The War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”. Whenever you hear the words “War on…” you know the originator is after one thing: Money. And manpower. And unquestioning political support. And a remit to attack the general population.

12) Google’s Auto-Subtitling (you’ll need to click through to get the actual CC controls)

LOL – in which google attempts to a) censor the Irish… language and then b) figure out what the fuck they’re talking about. No chance. Dylike Dags?

13) Ronald Searle

I’ve been a fan of this guy forever. Another 3rd Culture Kid. One of us. One of me.

14) At Last !!! An Instrument that sounds worse than the Stylophone

But which is kindof cool regardless. A lego sequencer.

My Brother used to make models for advertising/movies… everything from animatronic sheep to model cities, to Treebeard off LOTR to… Hellboy’s Gun…

… and something really noticeable about these things is that they only need to be used once – often only need to look good on one side. Miracles of invention happen, then they’re thrown away, or stored. The latex stuff doesn’t actually last all that long apparently.

Seems like a similar sort of effect, if not intent with a lot of this maker stuff. Someone goes to a huge amount of trouble to make something – and then… what? It’s “stored”? Because it sure as shit ain’t going to be used. Take a look at the stuff that people are making that’s getting attention – most of it will be shown off a couple of times… and then… next project. It’s an incredibly ephemeral culture. The life-span of the average Maker project is shorter than the life-span of a 20th Century pop-single – derided in the early years as “Wallpaper music”. A throwaway culture.

So much innovation is going into things who’s only purpose seems to be a) Because I can, and b) Awesome! Put it on Youtube!

I’m not complaining mind. But there is a weird strand of truth in Karl Pilkington’s assertion that “everything’s been invented… and now we’re just messing about”.

Check this out. Mega-Virii

Every once in a while I come across something that tells me “Nick, you have no idea what’s going on”. This is one of those things.

According to recently leaked documents, New Zealand is a lone voice of sanity in the ACTA negotiations – and apropos of that (or not) there’s been a request for “Submissions on Enforcement in the Digital Environment” – which closes on the 31 March 2010.

So this is what I said:

“We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress.

No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do” – Michael Foot. RIP.

Well Hackaday find it annoying, but I think it’s quite cool in a funny sort of way.

It’s a myspace page for this remarkable looking steampunk sequencer that someone’s made

taken to the typical myspace extreme of total unreadability – but it is quite pretty in a funny sort of way

Which is cool, because I think steampunk is kindof done. It’s turned into a free-ride – that http://makersmarket.com has just started up, and it seems like 1/2 the stuff on it is steampunk – but it’s devolved into a brass-clock-part variant of ash-trays with seashells stuck on them. It needs some sort of extrema to explore. Some geniune functionality or intrinsic value or something.

But anyway – this music machine looks like it could be… that… if you could actually see what was going on, which you can’t, because it’s on myspace… and maybe that’s part of the appeal.

Cool. More Atemporality. It’s live… but it could just as easily be taped, and it looks like a Victorian Moog… everything about it looks old – even FM Radio seems kindof retro now… everything about it looks old, but it’s sampling something that’s happening right now. It exists entirely in the moment.

Apart from the minor detail that you’re watching a recording of it over the web, and the original was made about 3 years ago.

He makes lots of batty things this guy, eg: noise bed

Art that you really can’t live with. A massive musical whoopie-cushion with all the humour taken out of it.

Sounds like an Edward Gorey story: “The Humourless Whoopie Cushion, and other stories”

Bruce Sterling was going on in that last post about Generative Art – how did he put it? Art bleached of human intent?

I’m not so sure – I think that in this case the art shifts from the execution to the interpretation – you can’t take the human out of the art. Like The Beatles on Acid… Sgt Peppers – what came back wasn’t A Trip To Cirrus Minor, but something even more Scouser than anything they’d done before, which was already fairly Scouser. The deeper you go, the closer you get.

Still, whatever, here’s a video of some flies milling about

idiots.

I’m the kindof guy that rescues worms off the pavement, but flies are a pest. They can fuck off back where they came from, which is Australia. That’s where my Sister lives at the moment. She works for Pet-Rescue. This is the bird that sits on her balcony scrounging honey

It’s a bit rowdy actually. If you click it, you’ll see the life-sized version, assuming you have a life-sized screen.

Anyway, for some reason that made me think of that thing that turned up recently where you can make art out of your mouse-movements…

(click for big version)

Which is great – that’s proper art that is, and weirdly, it does look a bit Russian, which is good, because it IS Russian – or… the software that makes it is. The art itself doesn’t really come from anywhere. Mice make it. You can do your own if you download a bit of software onto your (Windows) PC, which I don’t really use that much, so that’s me out*.

Because I use Linux. This is my desktop. If you click it you’ll get the life-sized version. You can pretend you’re me.

(omg, that’s so clever – he managed to get the screen-grab icon into the actual screen-grab! How do you do that? It’s like creating some sort of temporal loop – like having a photograph in a photograph of a photograph)

It’s a photo I took off the side of The Bridge To Nowhere – which is up the river from where I live.

Is that Generative Art?

Yup. All I’ve done is put a frame round it. It’s generative art, and it’s amazing. All of nature is generative art. All of it. Everything under the sun, and beyond. All of the trillion galaxies filled with billions of stars, exploding outwards – all rendered arty farty in the shutter of the beholder’s eye. The floating motes of dust in your living room, the yawning abyss specked with infinity-swallowing black-holes. Rainbows and Unicorns. Fwuffy Wuffy Fowest Cweatures.

You yourself are generative art, milling about willy-nilly like a fly in a fly experiment, knowing not what you do.

It’s ok. You are forgiven, LOL. You are forgiven.

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* actually it does use Linux.

Ok – this isn’t a film review (far be it from me etc)… it’s a loosely rotating bunch of (scrambled) satellite thoughts, revolving around Moon – which is a movie. It’s set on the moon.

But first watch this. It’s Bruce Sterling. He’s brilliant. He goes on for ages.

But more about that later. First the trivia.

1) My mate made this movie. Or had something to do with the making of it. Whatever. In my mind it’s my mate’s movie. My Mate’s Movie Moon.

2) I pirated it.

I had to. I live in a small town in New Zealand – the local cinema is never going to show it and the local video store probably won’t stock it either. They don’t even have City of God. They don’t have Paris Texas. Their Science Fiction Section is about 1m Sq shelving, filled with the major franchises/block-busters. Welcome to the suburban desert. It’s Wallmart with the roof come off.

I guess I could have bought the DVD over the internet… if I could trust that the import would be geographically band-fucked, or that Sony weren’t going to try to infect my computer with another root-kit virus etc… but that’s not how the process works, and everybody knows it. We don’t buy DVDs of movies we haven’t seen, we buy DVDs of movies we already love.

File-sharing is acting as free-radio. It’s not something you can control, and if you try, you will become ugly and people will hate you.

3) I’m a sci-fi fan. We don’t watch sci-fi movies, we have relationships with them. I will probably see this movie about once a year for decades to come – on TV when it’s showing, on aeroplanes, when I’m stuck in hotels, from DVD stores to share with other people when I can… maybe even at the cinema to see what it’s like on a big screen. And I will blog about it.

Watching a file-shared version is part of this process. It’s part of the culture. Get used to it. Use it.

If you’re lucky, people will copy you – they will make spin-off films. They will dress up as you and turn up to conferences looking like dipshits, and people will take photographs of them and go LOL, and more people will see the dance-remixes of the LOL-cat version than the original film. History is repeated as farce, but if you haven’t reinvented yourself or moved on by the time that happens… then you are (deservedly) part of the farce, or a forgotten backwater thereof.

4) The other day, this film-group I’m tangentially involved with pointed me to a list of all the movies for sale last year at Cannes.

There are fucking hundreds of them! And these are NOT actually all the movies for sale at Cannes, these are just the British ones. Moon is on the list. “For Sale”? What does that mean? Do they sell it to a distributor or something?

So you spend years, millions and… whatever, making something in the hope that someone might buy it? Notice a potential, unfair imbalance of power here?

So the third thought… distribution: You don’t really appreciate just how much the traditional distribution bottle-neck is choking the culture until you start pirating – and find out that the movies available are a tiny tiny subset of those made. I think it’s fucking criminal to be honest. This top-down control is impoverishing.

5) So enough about that, back to Moon and Bruce Sterling.

I think this movie is a classic piece of neo-paleo-futurism… ie: Something that’s been made to look like yesterday’s idea of the future.

It’s classic (it says so at the beginning) because it’s a classic period – the 70s… the computers and technology all look a bit like 70s technology – it’s got that whole Kubrick vibe going – Apollo Punk. In the future people will do their houses up to look like this – once the Favela Chic thing gets truly underway.

It’s a byproduct of what I call The Science-Fiction Singularity – a not entirely new notion… that we’ve hit a point where we can’t believably predict what the future holds because it’ become too unstable. Our trends have gone exponential – so this film has cloning… which is predictable enough, but the other technology is all very linear and uni/bi directional. The social constructs (such as they are) are all from the uni-tasking broadcast-era rather than the massively networked era that we currently creating. It’s a film from the 70s – which is (in my opinion) the period when movies were still art – before the whole industry turned into an exercise in selling Genre, then Franchise.

The movie industry appears to be in a Emmerson Lake And Palmer phase… and it’s badly in need of some Velvet Underground… as a culture we don’t need films like Avatar (which make billions, and make everyone go “oooooh”), we need films that make everyone think “I could do that”.

I’m not sure if Moon is one of these so much as a (classic) homage to a period when classics were… classics… and maybe that’s what atemporality is about… you can’t tell if this film is from the future or the past. You can’t really tell if it’s even set in the future or the past – though it claims be the future.

This film comes from an era (spanning future and past) when what made a great movie wasn’t special-effects (or being pinned to the ground while angry dishwashers shit on your face for two hours) – but intelligent… premises? derivations? It’s from an era when exploration of the vocabulary of film was fairly virginal territory, so could throw up surprises in its own right. Angry dishwashers are so yesterday.

I think gloss is a negative now. We’re post-gloss. Moon is a post-gloss film that is constructed from the sets of 1970s classic sci-fi. It’s historical.

I really do hope there are loads more like this. Whole worlds of them. Cool film. Makes you think dunnit. Makes you think “what if, what if…”.

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Now go back and listen to the Bruce Sterling thing again – and forget all this crap you’ve been hearing about “Free” destroying culture. It’s not – it’s just freeing us from the puppet-strings of middle-men… we haven’t figured out how to walk on our own yet, but we will. It’s getting easier.

Culture is like quicksilver – it will live. What you’re seeing now isn’t Culture being attacked by the Internet, but Culture itself using the Internet to attack the Yoke-Meisters. They protesteth, but then they would.

This is quite a neat little 3D thing…

Reminds me of… some sort of Victorian toy. Or a doll’s house.

If you click on that, there’s a big picture – they gave this to a little baby queenlet once. It’s in Windsor Castle, so it’s kindof like a doll’s house with pet people in it, inside another dolls house with pet people.

I quite like mad amounts of detail for some reason.

(from)

That last one reminds me of that Czech guy who made a version of Alice in Wonderland that’s even more insane that the one that just came out, with Johhny Depp in it, who was also in the 9th Gate, that I also quite like.

This is a bit from The 9th Gate, which is (apparently) someone else’s fav scene

In the comments someone has written:

I have seen women with eye’s like that (they glow a gold color). This movie is about the bible and the true religion of God. He knows the truth. I got a brown book like that. I means something. I know the book of revelation, what it means. The “matrix” is in the bible. Those are not just movie. Matrix means “womb” in greek. You are an apostle. You can heal, curse, not be poisoned, etc.

Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.

Now like most people, I find design concepts extremely annoying – but not as annoying as those vacuum cleaners that are basically the same shape as brooms rather than the elephant-nosed type… so you wind up having to heft the entire lump of machinery around every time you want to do the corners etc. Basically someone has thought. “It’s a thing that sweeps the floor like a broom, so we should make it look like a broom”.

This is deeply retrogressive and stick-in-the-mud thinking. It’s a bit like back in the Web 1.0 days where entrepreneurial types were always trying to get me to build “shopping mall” websites that looked like an actual shopping mall, where you could wander about and look at shops etc. This is where “Virtual Reality” went wrong back in the day – a term popularised by Jaron Lanier, who has just written a book in which he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

So here are these prosthetic arms.

(click for massive version, with descriptions etc)

from http://joehenney.com/ (via)

Things don’t need to look like the things they’re replacing – and they might even work a lot better if they don’t.

If I needed a replacement arm, I wouldn’t really want one of those tan-plastic ones that looks like it’s sculpted out of wax – I’d like something like the thing above, but with a dremel attachment and rocket launchers. Laser beams. A TV remote. A metal detector. A thing for squeezing oranges. A fishing rod. An MP3 player. Some sort of plugin thing so you could make weird attachments of your own. Lego maybe. Simply having a hand that could rotate at 30,000 RPM would be pretty impressive though.

Something that would make people think… not “Oooh, he’s got an arm missing. Mustn’t mention the arm” or even “Oooh… that’s cool”, but “Jesus, that’s so much better than my arm, that I’m never going to catch up, and I now realise that I’m a doomed species, permanently stuck in the past etc”.