12ozProphet

FamousAndrew is about getting famous, Internet Famous. Without any better ideas, Andrew Mahon is asking you to help him get famous. Andrew wants you to tell him what to do, and every week, he will make an episode of the most popular idea.

FamousAndrew was initiated as a project for Internet Famous class at Parsons School for Design. The class is taught by Jamie Wilkinson, James Powderly, and Evan Roth.

On Oct 3rd Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute opened the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, NY.

EMPAC is an unprecedented experimental center dedicated to the integrated pursuit of the performing arts and sciences. The 220,000-square foot building, designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, includes a 1200-seat concert hall with an adjustable fabric ceiling; a 400-seat theater with a 70-foot fly tower; two black-box studio spaces with tunable, tilting wall tiles; and acoustically isolated artist/researcher work spaces.

Linked to the university's powerful supercomputer (the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations, CCNI), which will enable complex modeling and visualization, EMPAC will be a platform for the Rensselaer campus, its academic partners, and visiting artists from around the globe to experiment in critical fields.

"EMPAC will enable human-scale interactive exploration of immersive/sensory environments," said John Kolb, vice president for information services and technology and chief information officer. "This will allow broad exploration in fields such as investigation of fluid dynamics, artificial intelligence, molecular design, financial modeling, nanotechnology, and gaming and simulation." via press release.

A main focus and major emphasis at EMPAC is the development and production of new works in the performing and media arts. Projects, residencies and productions at EMPAC will come from all domains of time-based arts, including but not limited to video, dance, music, theater, internet art, DVD productions, interactive installations, and multimedia art.



One of the more interesting currently commissioned projects is They Watch by Workspace Unlimited.

They Watch is an immersive installation that creates an ambiguous hybrid space where the virtual blends with the real, and where encounters with simulated characters challenge our ideas of presence, place, perception and identity. It takes place within an enclosed space formed by a large 360-degree projection screen. Upon entering, you see a projected, realistic simulation of the actual environment surrounding the installation, as if the screen weren’t there. But within this simulation are virtual characters (or “bots.”) Like you, they seem to be people who are exploring an art installation: they quietly wander around; you can hear them breathing, coughing, and shuffling their feet. But as the bots take notice of you, they come closer. When you move around in the space, they follow, keeping their eyes focused on you.

From this starting point, They Watch will evolve interactively as rules, conditions and scripts built into the underlying technology of the installation generate an unfolding scenario that culminates in a kind of revelation when the realistically rendered world disappears to expose a vast imaginary space. The installation places viewers in an uncanny place somewhere between the physical and virtual, where the act of observing and being observed arouses conflicting emotions: curiosity and self-consciousness, seduction and intrusion.

They Watch breaks new ground in sophisticated virtual and interactive experiences in several ways. Unlike most interactive installations, where interaction is either limited to a single “player” surrounded by passive observers, or is a vague collective experience, They Watch generates individual, parallel experiences for every viewer in the space. Individual actions move the scenario forward, while at the same time, the dynamics and number of viewers in the room also shape the experience. For example, the number of bots constantly changes depending on how many visitors are inside the space. (During quiet moments the bots walk through the installation from time to time to check for a human presence.) They Watch will make use of infrared tracking technology so that viewers are not encumbered by any kind of sensors or devices.

Rather than using high-end computer-assisted design tools to build their worlds, Workspace Unlimited has pioneered the appropriation and customized modification of the core software, or engine, of first-person shooter games such as Quake or Half Life. Workspace’s collaborative process often draws on the skills and support of the most accomplished artists and programmers in the gaming community.

The highly realistic architectural space and characters are generated in real time by the game engine and projected into a vast immersive setting: the projection screen is 16 feet high and creates an arena that is 40 feet in diameter. The end result for viewers is a visually rich and detailed but disorienting 3-dimensional space that is intensely personal yet can be shared with many others.

For the next three weekends, EMPAC will present a major festival of performances and installations by The Wooster Group, dumb type, Workspace Unlimited, Verdensteatret, Vox Vocal Ensemble and International Contemporary Ensemble, Per Tengstrand, Madlib, Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros, Richard Siegal/The Bakery, Robert Normandeau, Fieldwork, Gamelan Galak Tika + Ensemble Robot, and others.

Homeland Security is testing a body scanner that can read minds.

MALINTENT, the brainchild of the Human Factors division in Homeland Security’s directorate for Science and Technology, searches your body for non-verbal cues that predict whether you mean harm to fellow passengers. It has a series of sensors and imagers that read your body temperature, heart rate and respiration for unconscious tells invisible to the naked eye — signals terrorists and criminals may display in advance of an attack.

Read more
http://is.gd/3kZP
http://is.gd/31WG
http://is.gd/3kZL

An artist, dubbed “Pic-glasso”, in Stourbridge, West Midlands, England has been removing empty milk bottles from doorsteps and then returning them having etched elaborate pictures on them. The artist first struck a few weeks ago. Bosses at Dairy Crest, which supplies the Stourbridge and Wolverhampton area, said they were as keen as locals to find the person responsible. A spokesman said: “This seems to be a nice idea.” via Nick Britten @ telegraph.co.uk

Stourbridge glass is recognised as amongst the finest in the world. However, the glass industry in the area has been all but destroyed by the effects of globalisation, with the factories moving abroad where cheaper workers are available. ☞

Mycologist Paul Stamets believes that mushrooms can save our lives, restore our ecosystems and transform other worlds. In the below TED video he lists 6 ways the mycelium fungus can help save the universe: cleaning polluted soil, making insecticides, treating smallpox and even flu.

Large Hadron Collider in Google Earth

Scientists Activate Particle Collider

After 14 years and $8 billion, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, succeeded in turning on the most powerful microscope ever built for investigating the elemental particles and forces of nature.

At 4:27 a.m., Eastern time, the protons made their first circuit around a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underneath the Swiss French border, and then made a return journey.

via: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/science/11collider.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


The above image is from a Google Earth file which lets you view the LHC in Google Earth with a 3D model suspended above ground so you can see the layout.

It looks like Mayor Bloomberg is endorsing current Eyebeam resident Andrea Polli’s proposal (a project she began four years ago) to create wind turbines for the spires of the Queensboro Bridge. Working with the NASA Goddard Climate Research Group, technical designer Markus Maurette and videographer Morgan Barnard, Polli produced a short video promoting the installation of working turbines as an art project on the bridge that would provide enough power to light the necklace lights, which were turned off by Bloomberg a few months after 9/11 in order to save money. Polli’s project was inspired by the darkening of the necklace lights and by the Northeast blackout of 2003.


Polli’s project has been presented widely througout New York City, nationally and internationally. Looks like the inspiration is mutual-during the 2003 blackout, Polli remembers listening to the mayor speak of the need for innovative solutions to the energy issue on the radio, and began work on the project the very next day.


For more information visit: http://www.andreapolli.com/queensbridge

In development: An open source app that visually corrupts images & photostreams of idealized ‘nature’ images using dynamic air pollution and visibility data from selected U.S. national parks. Commissioned by Turbulence.


Co-founded in 2005 by Christine Nadir and Cary Peppermint, EcoArtTech works with digital, networked, and sustainable technologies and contemporary environments to create art about the environmentality of modern life.

Put this ad on the air


There was a vote to decide if $13.5 billion in tax breaks for oil companies should go into oil alternatives, like solar and wind. 60 votes were needed to prevail, and 59 of them were in. But John McCain ducked the vote. As a result, instead of powering millions of homes with clean energy and building next-generation solar technology, ExxonMobil and other companies are getting billions in tax breaks at a time when they’re already making record profits.


Source: “Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007,” U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote, December 13, 2007
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=1&vote=00425&long=1

International Artist Detained in Beijing for Planning Pro-Tibet Free Speech Exhibit
Students for a Free Tibet Notified of Detention by Twitter Message


Internationally known artist, technologist and co-founder of the Graffiti Research Lab, James Powderly, was detained in Beijing early this morning while preparing to debut a new work and technology of protest, the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil. According to a “twitter” message received today by Students for a Free Tibet at approximately 5 pm Beijing Standard Time, Powderly had been detained by Chinese authorities at 3 am. His current whereabouts remain unknown.


The image below was shot in New York City in July, shortly before James departed for Asia.





Learn more about this…
http://freetibet2008.org/globalactions/jamespowderly
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/19/grls-james-powderly.html
http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?p=161