Sunday 19 March 2017

apotrope

 



James Bridle: What you're looking at is a salt circle, a traditional form of protection—from within or without—in magical practice. In this case it's being used to arrest an autonomous vehicle—a self-driving car, which relies on machine vision and processing to guide it. By quickly deploying the expected form of road markings—in this case, a No Entry glyph—we can confuse the car's vision system into believing it's surrounded by no entry points, and entrap it.

categorical

400. That’s an error.
Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request. That’s all we know.

Sunday 12 March 2017

Micro-Meteorites

Varieties of space dust, barely the width of a human hair. These photomicrographs were made with a special camera setup that magnifies the dust grains nearly 3,000 times. Credit Jan Braly Kihle/Jon Larsen

Wednesday 8 March 2017

searching by emoji



~: Population 1
Just you
In emoji town
Occupancy


 Super soft and cozy blanket with a hood featuring a fun glitter heart eyed emoji face
This wearable blanket also has open mittens perfect to keep your hands warm
Allover emoji design on blanket
This is the ultimate cuddle blanket!
Pair with your favorite emoji items!

 We're sorry, this item is out of stock.

stink bug

(fear) (worry)




is that an npc or a real person?

Monday 6 March 2017

alert("Hooray! You got a WebGL context")


Ur-Fascism

http://baltimore-art.com/2017/02/11/the-aesthetics-of-the-alt-right/
In his essay Ur-Fascism, Eco identifies themes and rhetorical habits that underpin fascism (although his interrogation is limited to describing what fascism looks and sounds like, as opposed to the mechanism by which it emerges).1 Some of the characteristics that I will refer to in my aesthetic survey include:

  1. the cult of tradition which idealizes a primordial past (think Make America Great Again, or Mussolini’s call to build a new Rome, a call recently echoed by White Nationalist Richard Spencer2).
  2. fear of difference, whether difference be sexual, gendered, religious, or racial.
  3. a cult of masculinity that, tends to manifest itself in an obsession with sexual politics (refer to online pick-up artistry and the heteronormative gender roles embodied in the nuclear family.)
  4. a hostility towards parliamentary politics, criticality, and reason.
  5. a belief in permanent warfare and a corresponding cult of action for action’s sake.
  6. a worship of technology, not in the manner of an Enlightenment-esque worship of reason, but faith in technology to conquer and to reaffirm inegalitarianism.

Friday 3 March 2017

Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones

On the mineralogy of the “Anthropocene Epoch”

Robert M. Hazen, Edward S. Grew, Marcus J. Origlieri, Robert T. Downs
The “Anthropocene Epoch” has been proposed as a new post-Holocene geological time interval—a period characterized by the pervasive impact of human activities on the geological record. Prior to the influence of human technologies, the diversity and distribution of minerals at or near Earth’s surface arose through physical, chemical, and/or biological processes. Since the advent of human mining and manufacturing, particularly since the industrial revolution of the mid-eighteenth century, mineral-like compounds have experienced a punctuation event in diversity and distribution owing to the pervasive impact of human activities. We catalog 208 mineral species approved by the International Mineralogical Association that occur principally or exclusively as a consequence of human processes. At least three types of human activities have affected the diversity and distribution of minerals and mineral-like compounds in ways that might be reflected in the worldwide stratigraphic record. The most obvious influence is the widespread occurrence of synthetic mineral-like compounds, some of which are manufactured directly for applications (e.g., YAG crystals for lasers; Portland cement) and others that arise indirectly (e.g., alteration of mine tunnel walls; weathering products of mine dumps and slag). A second human influence on the distribution of Earth’s near-surface minerals relates to large-scale movements of rocks and sediments—sites where large volumes of rocks and minerals have been removed. Finally, humans have become relentlessly efficient in redistributing select natural minerals, such as gemstones and fine mineral specimens, across the globe. All three influences are likely to be preserved as distinctive stratigraphic markers far into the future.

Thursday 2 March 2017

heritage futures


Turkeys circling a dead cat


In the last few years many other messaging projects have been initiated, most of which will send your message to space for a fee. This individualisation and monetisation is entirely in keeping with neoliberalism and with the increasing privatisation of space exploration. There have also been gifts to celestial bodies, such as the small aluminium sculpture on the moon sometimes called the ‘fallen astronaut’ . and the Lego mini-figures which are on board the Juno spacecraft which will crash into Jupiter soon.

*****

 RIP Gustav Metzger
 Computer Art Society Journal Archive
http://computer-arts-society.com/page?startidx42606=36