Art
sciencepunk | March 25, 2009Artist and illustrator Nate Wragg has created this wonderful twisted homage to the charming How and Why Wonder Books of his childhood. Wragg says:
It's a book series that focuses on a particular aspect of science in each volume. The covers are so great and inspiring that I thought it would be fun to do a tribute / spoof of one of those covers for our book. So I refrenced one of the covers I really enjoyed and tried to stay true to the format, color, and typography styling. Obviously the edition that I did the cover to is a bit racy for the series, but I think it would be a best seller if it…
bioephemera | March 24, 2009
It's Ada Lovelace Day!
Ada Lovelace (1815 - 1852) is often referred to as the world's first computer programmer. The daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, and the admired intellect, Annabella Milbanke, Ada Lovelace represented the meeting of two alternative worlds: the romanticism and art of her father versus the rationality and science of her mother. In her attempt to draw together these polar opposites and create a 'poetical science' during the Victorian age, Ada collaborated with the renowned mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage. (source)
I'm betting famous names like Marie Curie…
bioephemera | March 24, 2009
The Sleeping Venus (1944)
Paul Delvaux
Observatory is a new collaborative art space located in Brooklyn, where it is reportedly sandwiched between Proteus Gowanus, Cabinet Magazine, and the Morbid Anatomy library. Its illustrious proprietors include Pam of Phantasmaphile, Joanna of Morbid Anatomy, and D&M of Curious Expeditions. And if that's not reason enough to be excited, tonight they are hosting a talk by Kathryn Hoffmann of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, entitled "Reveries of Sleeping Beauty: Slumber and Death in Anatomical Museums, Fairground Shows, and Art."
I saw Dr. Hoffmann…
aardvarchaeology | March 23, 2009
We've all had the same realisation: sooner or later somebody just has to make a series of several thousand short films of themselves smoking various tobacco pipes and listening to tango music, and put them all on YouTube. Well, fret no more: it's been done. And don't tell me this isn't an art project on a par with anything shown in up-scale galleries in the world's largest cities!
Thanks to Pär for the tipoff.
ddobbs | March 19, 2009Were the makers of that sheepherding-art video I put in an earlier post (and further below in this post as well) pulling the wool over our eyes? Can you really get sheep to do that stuff? My sister Ann, who sent me the link to start with and who has spent some time training sheepdogs and watched others do so, says Yes:
I think they're being true to "extreme sheepherding". Watch the tiny dots in the Pong game and you'll get a good idea; the tiny dots are the sheepdogs. The walking sheep is speeded up, but yes, it's great sheepdogs and great shepherds, hence the "extreme sheepherding". From…
ddobbs | March 19, 2009Who knew? You take a bunch of sheep, put LEDs on them, choreograph via sheepdogs: you can paint! I'm not fully convinced they're playing straight all the way through, but this is good entertainment regardless.
HT: My sister the sheepherder.
dmunger | March 18, 2009Take a look at these two pictures of the Mona Lisa:
They're derived from a series of images of the famous painting that had been obscured by random noise filters (like when your old analog TV wasn't getting a signal), like this:
Each picture appears to have a slightly different facial expression -- some happier, some sadder, depending on the random alteration of the image due to the visual noise. The two color pictures above are composites, made by picking the saddest (for picture B) and happiest (picture C) from over a hundred random images -- rated by 12 volunteers -- and combining them…
sciencepunk | March 15, 2009 In 2006, scientists discovered a 3D optical illusion that had never been reported before. Frederick Kingdom, Ali Yoonessi, and Elena Gheorghiu of McGill University noticed that when placed side-by-side, identical images of objects tilted and receding into the background appeared to have different angles.
So while one picture of the Leaning Tower of Pisa looks normal:
Put two copies of the same image next to eachother and suddenly one seems to veer off at an angle:
This effect, reported in Scientific American here, occurs because of the way that our brain constructs a three-dimensional…
bioephemera | March 15, 2009About two weeks ago I went to Politics and Prose for a great talk by the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik, who was in DC promoting his new book, Angels and Ages, a book of essays about Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. The words and actions of these two influential men - some would call them secular saints - still reverberate today. And coincidentally, they were also born just hours apart, on the same day: February 12, 1809.
Gopnik explicitly said that he did not intend to suss out any mystical or astrological significance to the shared birthday: it's a coincidence, and nothing more. But as he…
sciencepunk | March 14, 2009Musical parody duo Hard'n'Phirm are best known for their bluegrass medley of Radiohead songs, but also conjured up this nugget of surreal joy, a song about everyone's favourite irrational number, Pi.
amillikan | March 13, 2009
Yesterday, Seed Media Group was proud to launch a new and improved SEEDMAGAZINE.COM. The site is loaded with rich content, advanced navigational tools and display features where design and functionality are flawlessly combined to guide you through all the glorious science you could want.
From the editors of SEEDMAGAZINE.COM:
Science is changing our world. It is behind the transformations--social, economic, artistic, intellectual, and political--that are defining the 21st century. Through this lens, and with the newest tools of media and journalism, we aim to tell the fundamental story of our…
bioephemera | March 11, 2009
As of today, SEED has a new look and a new occasional writer. . . me! ;)
See my little essay on Christopher Reiger's Synesthesia #1 here, on the culture page. Then go explore the rest of the site. . . the new design is pretty sweet. They even have a SCIART tag for pieces like mine.
amillikan | March 10, 2009Pictures from the Building_Space_With_Words event:
The maze.
The venue.
The interface.
The Seed stand.
______
Photos by Sheila Prakash.
ddobbs | March 9, 2009I find these photos by Emma Livingstone -- onen of 30 photographers singled out in a recent "rising photographer" story (hat tip: Kottke) -- especially fetching.
Many more at her well-designed site.
Among other charms, they bring to mind the painting of Gerhard Richter:
September 11
amillikan | March 9, 2009
Last Wednesday I took a voyage into the blogosphere. Upon entering this physical manifestation of the place I spend most of my time, a mix of words and light swirled around me, illuminating my field of vision from every angle as thoughts, desires and observations rushed forward from the trenches of hyperspace and darted out of view again. Through my fingertips, my thoughts were instantaneously transfered to the space around me for everyone in the room to see. No, I wasn't on drugs and it wasn't a dream—I was at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University art exhibit, "…
awild | March 5, 2009This photo was ultimately rejected for a journal cover (it was the wrong shape!) but I shot it to accompany a research article that used museum specimens of midwestern bumblebees to compare current levels of genetic diversity with previous decades. Since this image won't appear in print anytime soon, I thought I'd share it here instead.
photo details: Canon 35mm f2.0 prime lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 200, 1/125 sec, f/5, indirect strobe
grrlscientist | March 5, 2009tags: Rautatientori Metroasema, Central Railway Station Subway Art, Helsinki Finland, Metro -- Friday evening, Sanna Karlsson-Sutisnas, subway art, photography
Metro -- Friday evening, right side (Installed: 23 November 2007).
Rautatientorin Metroasema (Central Railway Station) Subway Art, Helsinki, Finland.
Artist: Sanna Karlsson-Sutisnas.
Image: GrrlScientist, 19 February 2009 [larger view].
ksharpe | March 5, 2009Originally posted by Brian Switek
On March 1, 2009, at 7:42 PM
I don't quite know what to make of Richard Fortey's latest book Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret life of the Natural History Museum. When I opened my copy to the first chapter I was expecting something like Douglas Preston's written tour of the American Museum of Natural History, Dinosaurs in the Attic, but Fortey's book turned out to be something entirely different.
I enjoyed Preston's book because it used a motley collection of artifacts, both on display and behind closed doors, to tell stories about the AMNH and the people who…
grrlscientist | March 4, 2009tags: Rautatientori Metroasema, Central Railway Station Subway Art, Helsinki Finland, Metro -- Friday evening, Sanna Karlsson-Sutisnas, subway art, photography
Metro -- Friday evening, detail 4c (Installed: 23 November 2007).
Rautatientorin Metroasema (Central Railway Station) Subway Art, Helsinki, Finland.
Artist: Sanna Karlsson-Sutisnas.
Image: GrrlScientist, 19 February 2009 [larger view].
ksharpe | March 4, 2009Originally posted by Grrlscientist
On February 27, 2009, at 12:53 PM
I love art, birds and travel, and because Africa has such a huge variety of exotic wildlife that I've only ever seen in zoos and aviaries, it is high on my list of places to visit. Recently, David G. Derrick, Jr., the author of a new book that combines art and African wildlife into an unusual diary format, asked if I would like to read and review his new book, African Diaries: Sketches & Observations (self-published, 2008).
This slim paperback is an unusual travel diary because it is comprised of more than 140 of hand-…