Thursday, January 28, 2010

Precision CD Glitching

"Wounded" CDs have been prepared by artists like Yasunao Tone and Oval, encompassing the experimental and pop domains of music, respectively. In both cases, the music has to be re-recorded from the glitched CD to be heard (and in Oval's case, it is subject to further production). Why not use a laser cutter to make precision glitched CDs, allowing them to be distributed directly?

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Chocolate WTC

September 11th, 2001 memorial

This sculpture is a September 11th, 2001 memorial, designed by C. Boym. As best I can tell, it was cast in nickel. The color and texture gives me a wonderful, terrible idea: why not use chocolate? You know, the same way we have chocolate bunnies? The target market could be Al-Qaeda. Or, perhaps it would be cathartic for those who are still recovering to take a bite out of the past.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Connected Everything

Here are some things I'm going to be covering in my thesis.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I Am Sitting in a Google Ad

Set up simple web page with only the text of Alvin Lucier's famous composition, and Google text ads.

Visit the page, and take note of the Google text ads. Create a copy of the page, replacing Lucier's text with the text from the ads. Repeat this process indefinitely, or until Google starts repeating itself.

The Bucket Piece

At a popular contemporary art gallery in a large city, in a small white room, place a nondescript bucket on a centered pedestal with a single light above it. A guard is stationed outside, allowing only one person in at a time. Next to the bucket is a plaque reading:

At the end of the day, any money collected in this bucket will be given to the artist. You are free to add or remove money as you wish.

This is the most elegant manifestation of the piece, but a better manifestation will get others involved. For example, donating the money to a charity instead of the artist. Or multiple buckets going to different causes. Or some kind of system measuring the contributions in real time and reporting how many children have been saved from starvation for another day.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Big Wave Surfing

Why is big wave surfing so engaging?

There's something about huge waves that inspires fear. From the shore it's possible to write them off as passively destructive. But from the water, they can look positively evil. The wave itself can't even be identified — it's no specific body of water, but a general force. A collective action of the entire ocean. An unseen force manifest in a mountain of water.

The big wave surfer confronts this: an unidentifiable, shape-shifting, destructive force backed by the entire ocean. They collaborate, redirecting all of that destructive energy into a single creative action. They name the unnameable.

From the shore, the ocean has no scale. There is nothing to be compared. But when you see a surfer on a wave, you know exactly big it is. Big wave surfing is the humanization of infinity.

Friday, January 08, 2010

Flash Mob 3D Scanning

  1. Pick a local monument.
  2. Organize a flash mob via Craigslist.
  3. Instruct everyone to take photos of the monument.
  4. Everyone then uploads and tags their photos.
  5. These photos are then uploaded to Photosynth for 3D reconstruction.

As a variant, people can just record video and walk around. This relies on the videos being high resolution.