1960’s
Ideas of Consciousness-expansion by De Es Schwertberger
1
Category Archives: Art
Software Helps Develop Hunches
Eric Bonabeau, founder of Icosystem, has introduced “the hunch engine,” software designed to enhance and refine human intuition.
When the user starts the hunch engine he or she is presented with a seed—a starting point—and a set of mutations. The user selects mutations that look promising, and the application uses that selection to generate another set of mutations, continuing in that fashion until the user is satisfied with what they see.
One of its first applications is a filter for images that allows a naive user to improve digital photos without understanding complex tools like Adobe Photoshop, by choosing from mutations of the picture to make it better.
Heavy Metal Drummer by Fred Tomaselli
“What Is , And Is, Is Endless” by Simon Haiduk – oil on canvas
Simon is a part of the podcollective.
Boy and the Bee Sculpture by Scott Richard
Oil Painting by Zdzislaw Beksinski
Art Therapy Can Reduce Pain And Anxiety In Cancer Patients
A study published in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management found that art therapy can reduce a broad spectrum of symptoms related to pain and anxiety in cancer patients. In the study done at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, cancer patients reported significant reductions in eight of nine symptoms measured by the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) after spending an hour working on art projects of their choice.
Lawrence mayor seeks to acknowledge Dadaism
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Mayor Boog Highberger wants to recognize Dadaism with by declaring a month devoted to the early 20th century anti-art movement.
Well, not exactly.
Highberger plans to proclaim International Dadaism Month on Tuesday during the city’s weekly commission meeting. But in the spirit of the Dadaists – who declared “art is dead” and rejected conventional forms, often making deliberately absurd works – the Lawrence mayor hasn’t picked a certain month to celebrate the movement. Instead, International Dadaism Month will be Feb. 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, Aug. 2, Aug. 7, Aug. 16, Aug. 26, Sept. 18, Sept. 22, Oct. 1, Oct. 17 and Oct. 26.
To choose the dates, Highberger rolled dice and pulled numbers from a hat.
As part of the proclamation, Highberger will utter a phrase from a poem by the late Hugo Ball, a founder of Dada: “Zimzim urallala zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam.”
“I just think it is good to acknowledge that there is a place for chance and nonsense in every healthy lifestyle,” Highberger said.
Candid Video of William S. Burroughs From August 1996
I came across this video on our town website, Lawrence.com, as Burroughs spent the last years of his life here in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s about 20 minutes of amature video of Bill just hanging out with friends (including Steve Buscemi and Allen Ginsberg), shooting the shit and being his charming self.
MorphoTower by Sachiko Kodama
MorphoTower, by Sachiko Kodama, is a kind of a dynamic sclupture made of mysterious black fluid. It’s conceptualized as an “organic tower” and its surface is dynamically morphed into varieties of textures ranging from spiky or hairy to goose bumps.
The black substance is called magnetic fluid (see also: “Breathing Chaos”) It was first developed by NASA early 1960’s as part of their space program and today used as a seal agent for hard disk drives and semiconductor manufacturing devices. It rests in a pool until it is stimulated by electro-magnetic fields, the ferrofluid then assumes various shapes depending on the field.
Here’s a catalog of Kodama’s works using this substance. Don’t miss the video clips [Pulsate, Protrude, Flow, Waves and Sea Urchins, Breathing Chaos, Pulsate – Melting Time, Dissolving Time]
via wmmna < Magnetic Fluid Art Project “Protrude, Flow” and Digital Stadium < DAF 2005
Swarm by Tessa Farmer
And a PDF about the exhibit. Via we make money not art
Private View by Dave McKean, Mixed Media
“Dean’s Back” Tatoo by Guy Aitchison
Earth Angel by Gil Bruvel
Ghost Diagrams
Ghost Diagrams is a program that takes sets of tiles and tries to find patterns into which they may be formed. The patterns it finds when given randomly chosen tiles are often surprising.
It turns out that tiling patterns are a form of computation of equal power to Turing machines, lambda calculus, and cellular automata. For example, here is a tileset implementing “Rule 110”, a cellular automaton known to be capable of universal computation. Considerations similar to the halting problem and Godel’s theorem apply. There is no upper limit to their capacity to surprise us. Furthermore, tiles have an intuitive quality that other forms of computation lack. You can see how they fit together.
An organism is more than the sum of its organs. When the organs are fitted together, the organism becomes something more. This surprising something more we call “spirit” or “ghost”. Ghost Diagrams finds the ghosts implicit in simple sets of tiles.