randform

image from CIANT’s project ETUDE

Just an announcement: The International Centre for Art and New Technologies CIANT in Prague is announcing a lecture about Vilem Flusser. Albeit if Prague is rather close to Berlin (in fact I know someone from Berlin who is going to school there!) I am not sure if I find enough time to attend this very interesting lecture, since I have an upcoming really heavy work load in the outside-media-art world.

But at this place it is very worthwhile to also have a look at the projects, which are presented on the site like e.g. D.A.N.C.E, ETUDE, the transISTor classes or the former project ALTERNE (Alternative Realities in Networked Environments):

Unlike traditional virtual reality that constructs visually realistic synthetic worlds the ALTERNE platform supports artistic exploration of such complex concepts as causality, alternative laws of physics or alternative forms of life.

Exhibiting net art /certain digital art etc. in a real (gallery) space is a difficult thing.

(more…)

update 22.02.2011: the above image is a still from the below referenced film.

From the SDSS homepage:

SDSS is systematically mapping a quarter of the entire sky, producing a detailed image of it and determining the positions and absolute brightnesses of more than 100 million celestial objects. It is also measuring the distances to a million of the nearest galaxies, giving us a three-dimensional picture of the universe through a volume one hundred times larger than that explored to date. SDSS is also recording the distances to 100,000 quasars — the most distant objects known — giving us unprecedented knowledge of the distribution of matter to the edge of the visible universe.

youtube link

Today just another interesting scientific link this time about common sense:

The MIT Media Lab has embarked on an effort to give computers and other modern devices “common sense”, the capacity to understand and reason about the world as intimately as people do. By giving machines common sense, they will finally be able to understand people, our goals and typical problems, and they will be able to better assist us in solving them or coming to terms with them–thus simplifying and humanizing the technology and tools of the digital age.

For those unfamiliar with the problem of giving computers common sense:
->the Newcomer’s Guide to Commonsense Computing will help
Also
->visit the Open Mind Common Sense web site to get a first hand sense of the problem!

Just a short link to a symposium organized by the European Science Foundation on Biological Surfaces and Interfaces.

This 3rd conference on Biological Surfaces and Interfaces addresses the field of interfaces between synthetic materials and biological systems – biointerfaces – a topic that constitutes one of the most dynamic and expanding field in science and technology.

Links of interest on that site:

• 51st Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, Baltimore, USA, 3-7 March 2007
• Biomaterials Network
• ICIAM07- 6th International Congress on Industrial & Applied Mathematics, Zurich, CH, 16-20 July 2007

I finally managed to translate my article for the conference proceedings of the NMI2006 conference from german into english. There are a few additions, which are not included in the german version.

The article is a description of our installation seidesein. It gives an account on our motivations for creating seidesein but it explains a bit also our motivation for other daytar works.

The article is for download >>here or directly via the seidesein page.

I am very grateful for any feedback on this article.

Today I am digging out a historical milestone in mathematical visualization.

(more…)

In my previous post I wrote about an experiment of looped sound. Today’s post is about an experiment with “looped” ( i.e. periodic) light…rather known under the term strobe light.

(more…)

I was yesterday linking to a project which is carrying out a study into possible future cultural utilisation of the International Space Station.

(more…)

->Just a short note: yesterday the Arts Catalyst announced that their report to the
European Space Agency for a Cultural Policy for the International Space
Station has been made public here.