The Periodic Table of the Muppets by Mike BaBoon Design.

A comprehensive depiction of many memorable Muppet characters from throughout the years (and some not-so-memorable ones as well).

Each square represents a different character and indicates the primary Muppeteer(s) for that character, as well as the year and production in which the character made its debut. Borders align with hair/hat colour, background aligns with skin/fur colour, and colour of the abbreviated name represents nose colour (for characters with noses that is).

This Technology Has Been Disconnected by Dave Bledsoe.

Underneath the elevated West Side Highway at 135th and 12th Avenue I found this telephone graveyard. At least a one hundred old, battered pay phones were locked behind a fence near the Park’s Department building. I almost took these on my iPhone, but my irony levels are dangerously low these days.

is this good? were invited to create an interactive installation at Nuits Sonores, an electronic music and art festival in Lyon, France, in May 2013.

We worked alongside Lyon-based Architects lookingforarchitecture.com to create a huge interactive pyramid.

A matrix of 6 Kinect cameras tracked people as they moved across the pyramid, triggering DMX lighting in the structure and generative graphics on the screens above.

Special thanks to Pierre-Marie Oullion and Alexis Bergeron from Nuits Sonores, and to Robin Accard from Partizan for making it happen

Creative types are always exploring the boundaries of artistic expression, but in the case of one Japanese artist, his methods are a little unconventional even for the art world. 73-year-old Tatsuo Horiuchi uses a piece of Microsoft software to make amazing artwork, but it isn’t even paint. It’s Microsoft Excel.

Read more at Geek.com

paper torso (photos).

A torso with removable organs for the Science Lab of the International School Nadi, Fiji Islands built entirely from 200gms/sqm white card. The templates and instructions are now available free of charge from my website at: torso.amorphous-constructions.com/

Earth Structural Layer Cake.

A little while ago, my sister approached me with an idea. She’s doing an education degree, and her and her friends had to give a series of lessons on the geological sciences to a class of primary school kids. One of their lessons involved teaching the kids about the structure of the Earth. One of her friends came up with the idea of presenting a model of the Earth made out of cake. So my sister asked me if I could make a spherical cake with all the layers of the Earth inside it.

I told her I couldn’t do it. “How do you get a sphere inside a sphere inside a sphere?” I recall saying. “Oh yeah,” she replied, realising what it would involve.

Glitch Safari is a flickr and vimeo group moderated by artists Antonio Roberts and Jeff Donaldson.

From the group description:

Displays will glitch in our modern, urban landscape. These occurrences generally go unnoticed by society or are ignored as technological failure.

Glitch Safari is a group that sees the magical quality in these sometimes fleeting instances and celebrates this aesthetic as machine art.

Submissions are focused on public display errors (more so of the pattern variety than the common windows boot screen type) that are unprovoked or, natural:

We’re on the hunt for glitches from across the globe! Post pictures and videos of glitches found on displays, signs and machines.

Please geo tag your submissions and, for more points, add a description of where you found it*

Submit your found glitches to the flickr and vimeo pools today!

S H Λ ΛΛ Λ N I X from V5MT on Vimeo.

See more videos from V5MT here and head over to ani-gif.com for a current online exhibition of her animated gifs*

“Stolen skins, scripted environment, November 2007″:

“… In Save Your Skin Gaz has created a space where the skins of avatars are being put on display. Unlike objects like a chair, within Second Life an avatars skin – which in a very profound way designates ones identity – cannot be modified, copied or sold. Users have to buy a new skin every time they want to change it. In this work Gaz not only critiques this simulation of the open market ideology operating worldwide. But, at the same time, provides more freedom to the identities.”

Check out the website for a video preview.

About Maelstrom:

Over 48 hours of user-created audio is uploaded to the internet every minute, a figure that is increasing exponentially. Maelstrom is a sound installation that draws on this material in real time, constructing shifting walls of sound from thousands of audio fragments.

Maelstrom builds a tornado of tonal cluster chords around its spiral speaker system, engulfing the listener in the swirling mass of information that is now an integral part of our day-to-day lives.

Official site for Maelstrom

From the press release:

On the chance that someone will be out there, La Société Anonyme has approved the placement of 8 books on 8 locations on Earth. The book, called The SKOR Codex was placed on Thursday (July 12, 2012) aboard the first of eight locations to host the portrait of the diversity of life and culture at the Foundation for Art and Public Domain (SKOR). The 1156 gram book contains greetings from the SKOR staff in 4 languages, samples of artworks from different artists and eras, and field recordings of the SKOR premises. The Codex contains binary information that an advanced technological civilization could convert into diagrams, pictures and sounds, including a message from SKOR managing director Tati Freeke-Suwarganda.

Messages in the record were designed to enable possible decoding by future civilizations who might encounter the book in hundreds of years, hence the integration of some pictures of 21st century SKOR. “The book will be encountered and decoded only if there are advanced civilizations on earth,” said La Société Anonyme. “But, as the beautiful message from managing director Tati Freeke-Suwarganda and web curator Annet Dekker indicate,” Société Anonyme added, “the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about art.”

The book is available in PDF form along with more information at the official site of La Société Anonyme.

The image above is remarkable for several reasons. First, it is one of the earliest detailed pictures of a sunspot. Second, it was meticulously drawn by hand by astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley in 1873.

The image is now part of an exhibit at the National Maritime Museum in London, focused on beautiful and scientifically important astronomy images. You can check out more pictures here.

High-Low Tech @ MIT – Circuit Stickers.

Circuit stickers are a new medium for making electronics. These thin, lightweight, flexible and sticky circuit boards allow us to craft electronic interactivity onto new spaces and interfaces such as books, clothing, walls, and even our bodies.

Circuit stickers are created by adding z-axis tape, a conductive adhesive, to kapton-based flexible PCBs. Below are example circuits created using conductive paint, copper tape and conductive thread as connective traces.

Jie Qi
Andrew “bunnie” Huang

Drone Light Painting Giant Sequoias by nate bolt.

In Yosemite with a DJI Phantom and a flashlight. I’ve got a lot of work to do on my flying skills or getting pre-programed flight paths working, but it’s fun to experiment with this. Lottta potential options with light painting on a massive scale. Next up I’d like to do some more water or some sky-scrapers with glass exteriors.

“Anne Anderson in Whirlpool ‘Miracle Kitchen of the Future,’ a display at the American National Exhibition in Moscow.”Kodachrome by Bob Lerner for the Look magazine article “What the Russians Will See.”

Harper Row @ Batman Wiki & more.

Harper’s father had a habit of breaking things, then would disappear for stretches of time. During this time Harper would fix the things her father broke. Harper claims that her earliest memories are of watching the building super strip and graft wires, and fix things that seemed beyond repair. Harper soon developed a talent for fixing things herself. Her relationship with her father is stated to have been abusive, as she lists herself and her brother among the things he would break. Eventually Harper applied for emancipation. After achieving this, she moved out, taking her brother Cullen with her, and applied for a job with the city electrical engineer, and gets a job doing maintenance on the city’s electrical grid.

“A young, punky Gotham City electrical engineer who wants to assist Batman in repayment for protecting her brother and her from an assault, much to Batman’s frustration.

She makes her own taser. She’s not the official Robin yet, but likely in a few months, there is a lot of internet debate about that.

Instructables user itisyu writes:

This necklace is titled “Connected” and was created in 2008 with copper, nickel, guitar wire, glass. Its dimensions are 9” w x 5” h x 1/2” d. Each copper piece was made from an etched or hand stamped sheet of 18 gauge copper, which was hydraulically pressed into a acrylic mold/form and then cut, soldered with a backing, and oxidized. The center copper “on” button is set with a custom created glass piece. It is strung on a guitar wire and connected to a nickel 18 gauge wire.

iNecklace – Sophisticated. Elegant. Open Source. The iNecklace is a gorgeously machined aluminum pendant with a subtle pulsating LED. Perfect for the playa or with Prada. Made for women who celebrate art, science, engineering and great design. For any lady who loves technology and wants beautiful, geeky jewelry. Welcome to the future!

This is a new type of product for Adafruit, we want to create wearable electronics that are subtle, fun to wear and look classy.

Copyrights : Phil Thompson.

The Google Art Project (http://www.googleartproject.com/) contains several paintings which have had a blur filter applied to them so as to make them unrecognisable. Google explain this decison stating that they were, ‘required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.’

After collecting all of these images by taking screenshots and cropping out the blurred images, they were emailed to oil painting reproduction companies in China (chosen for its own issues with internet censorship and for its ongoing difficulties with Google), where they were painted to the scale of the original painting. These reproductions were shipped back to the UK and now become the art work.

I spy some Adafruit sensor breakouts in the flight of a high-altitude balloon carrying a slice of pizza featured in Anamanaguchi’s newest music video “Endless Fantasy.” Looks like a BMP085 Barometric Pressure/Temperature/Altitude sensor, to be precise, appearing at the 3:07 time mark. Good luck out on tour, guys!

BMP085 Barometric Pressure/Temperature/Altitude Sensor- 5V ready - This precision sensor from Bosch is the best low-cost sensing solution for measuring barometric pressure and temperature. Because pressure changes with altitude you can also use it as an altimeter! The sensor is soldered onto a PCB with a 3.3V regulator, I2C level shifter and pull-up resistors on the I2C pins.

NEW! We now have a fully 5V compliant version of this board – a 3.3V regulator and a i2c level shifter circuit is included so you can use this sensor safely with 5V logic and power

Using the sensor is easy. For example, if you’re using an Arduino, simply connect the VIN pin to the 5V voltage pin, GND to ground, SCL to I2C Clock (Analog 5) and SDA to I2C Data (Analog 4). Then download our BMP085 Arduino library and example code for temperature, pressure and altitude calculation. Install the library, and load the example sketch. Immediately you’ll have precision temperature, pressure and altitude data. We also have a detailed tutorial so you can understand the sensor in depth including how to properly calculate altitude based on sea-level barometric pressure

Dry Erase Whiteboard Paint.

IdeaPaint is proven on the walls of the world’s most innovative and successful companies. It amplifies creativity and collaboration, and accelerates innovation. It’s a catalyst for better results.

Ben Davis reflects on Bay Lights role as technological art via wired.com:

The Bay Lights is obviously a technological marvel. How can it not be, with its 25,000 individually controllable LEDs networked across 1.8 miles of the Bay Bridge, upon which an array of non-repeating algorithms appear nightly for the next two years? It is also unquestionably a work of public art: the world’s largest LED light sculpture, hung 500 feet over water at night on a public bridge that carries 100 million cars annually.

It’s even a testament to the maker ethos, since it was driven by a personal vision, a DIY spirit, and had a dramatic Oceans Eleven-like moment — where instead of a stolen pinch, a fastener 3-D-printed on a MakerBot may have saved the day. (Just watch the video below.)

In short, The Bay Lights has been heralded by many as the nexus of art and technology.

But is that really so? Given my experience and perspective as the originator of the project — having tracked it from conception and gestation to birth and beyond — I question whether “technology” is worthy of its equal billing with “art” here.

Read more!

Via evilmadscientist.com:

We’ve been watching the work of RoboGenius for quite some time. He has created some of the neatest non-geometric work anybody has done on the Egg-Bot. Recently, he uploaded a number of his designs to thingiverse, which means you can try them out, too.

Check out the RoboGenius website here!

Featured Adafruit Products

The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm). The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs. (read more)

From the website:

ROTGANZEN is a Rotterdam based artist collective formed in 2009 by Robin Stam (1981), Joeri Horstink (1982) and Mark van Wijk (1984).

Visit ROTGANZEN’s website here!

Jinha Lee, Rehmi Post, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2011. ZeroN: mid-air tangible interaction enabled by computer controlled magnetic levitation.

Processing.org 2.0 released.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Processing 2.0—the latest incarnation of the programming language, development environment, and online community that has grown dramatically since its debut in 2001. This new release builds on the versions of Processing that have been downloaded almost two million times. We invite you to download Processing 2.0 from www.processing.org. The Processing software is free and open source, and runs on the Mac, Windows, and GNU/Linux platforms.

giant glowing orb made from 200 pylons by woods bagot.

‘planet: under construction’ (PUC) is a giant glowing orb which is composed of a central metal spherical framework in which 200 bright orange traffic cones are strapped by bungee cord, giving the suspended lighting installation its powerful shape. the sydney studio of international architecture firm woods bagot created the massive hanging work, employing the humble pylons to symbolize their practice–the ubiquitous objects are a part of our everyday landscape, signposting alteration, creation and flux in our built environment. ‘PUC’ show as part of vivid sydney (may 24th – june 10th, 2013) – the southern hemisphere’s largest annual festival of light, and can be found near the corner of george and alfred street under the cahill expressway in the circular quay. its position makes it an important marker near the point of entrance to the event, standing as a temporary landmark for visitors coming from the train station and the city.

FTSI Presents The World’s Largest Dynamic Sphere Array
1008 synchronized axis of motion with coordinated projection, lighting and sound.
This installation was showcased at the Shanghai World Expo.

Glitch inspired digital art by Kaliptus Ohm. Visit the website here.

Via tokyotelephone.com:

Otaku influenced fashion doesn’t always lend itself to subtlety all that well, something that ironically goes against the “anything goes, as long as it is private” attitude of the previous, and not particularly fashion conscious generation. Mercifully for those looking for a more credible way to wear their hearts on their sleeves their exists people like J.S.Art for armor and weapon aficionados, and for the retro gamers out there – THUNDERBOX.

THUNDERBOX has experimented with a couple of geek/otaku references so far, but he seems pretty settled on the Nintendo Gameboy right now. The philosophy of creation taught by its creator Gunpei Yokoi actually fits very well in fashion and there is so much to draw out of the iconic design of the unit itself before you even begin to explore the games themselves.

Read more!

View more here!

The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales.

The primary structure was created of 26 polygonal panels made of silk threads laid down by a CNC (Computer-Numerically Controlled) machine. Inspired by the silkworm’s ability to generate a 3D cocoon out of a single multi-property silk thread (1km in length), the overall geometry of the pavilion was created using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density.

Overall density variation was informed by the silkworm itself deployed as a biological “printer” in the creation of a secondary structure. A swarm of 6,500 silkworms was positioned at the bottom rim of the scaffold spinning flat non-woven silk patches as they locally reinforced the gaps across CNC-deposited silk fibers. Following their pupation stage the silkworms were removed. Resulting moths can produce 1.5 million eggs with the potential of constructing up to 250 additional pavilions.

Permanent installation. DC-motors, cotton balls, filler wires, power supply, lighting system, bench foundation, toluene tank (1951). Dimensions: ⦰ 9.4m x 12.8m height / ⦰ 30.8 x 42 ft. Located in Dottikon, Switzerland.

Felt TV dinner by LeBrie Rich via CRAFT

An incredible example of what can be done with laser-cutting, Amanda Ghassaei’s project “Laser Cut Record” features music inscribed directly into cut discs of maple wood, acrylic, and paper, resulting in lo-fi but playable records. via bldgblog.

The Velvet Underground and Nico – Femme Fatale on maple:

Super-duper closeup of a vinyl record’s indentations:

This is a close up image of a vinyl record, taken with an electron microscope.  The dark objects in the grooves are tiny particles of dust.  The laser cutter cannot make such precise cuts because the width of the beam is too large, so the grooves on my records are about 1-2 orders of magnitude larger in every dimension than these grooves.

IRON MAN 3 : HUD + GFX PROCESS REEL (video) by Johnny Likens.

In late 2012 I joined forces with Cantina Creative to help deliver over 100 shots for IRON MAN 3.

Marvel tasked us with designing all the elaborate 3D head-up displays (HUDs) – a virtual graphical interface that Iron Man sees from within the helmet environment of his armored suits that communicate essential data and statistics ranging from his physical condition to weapon and navigational diagnostics – While putting strong emphasis on the new ultra-high-tech Mark 42 suit, we also delivered upgraded HUDs to match the new suits seen in the film. It was great fun.

All of the 3D elements, including a miniature version of the suit and the holographic helmet, were generated and rendered from CINEMA 4D. These graphics had true 3D depth, which heightened the stereo viewing experience as well as the interactive light qualities that are both photo-real and immersive.

This is a process montage that was created to give some insight into the development and design thinking stages of the work I was specifically involved with on the film.

If you haven’t seen it before, Mike Ross’ sculpture Big Rig Jig is worth a study– nice interview over on MAKE

London skyline recreated with sugar cubes via CRAFT

MC Escher-inspired parquet floor via Geekologie

Optical Ripple print by Simon C. Page via Colossal

Soo Sunny Park’s Unwoven Light (previously) interview and construction video by Walley Films– it’s the next best thing to seeing the exhibit in person! via Colossal

Crochet hearts from 26-gauge wire by Anne Mondro via Street Anatomy

New Vulnerability installation by artist ucnv for Cultivate, Tokyo 2012.

Camille Seaman first made her name photographing melting icebergs in her native Alaska, but her more recent set of storm clouds over the flat plains of middle America is just as compelling, via butdoesitfloat:

via prosthetic knowledge:

Drawing With Computers

The Artist’s Guide To Computer Graphics

1985 book by Mark Wilson scanned + PDF freely available from the author, with interesting examples of computer graphic history.

You can download it here

More images and download link for the PDF here.

Dominic Wilcox‘s Sound Bulbs:

I’ve created what I call ‘Sound Bulbs’ that combine a light bulb connector with music players so that it’s possible to screw in your music player into any light bulb socket. I was invited to take part in an exhibition during Clerkenwell Design Week called Design Exquis. The idea of the exhibition was a little like the game of Chinese whispers in that a first designer/artist was given an object (a stethoscope), they then had to find inspiration from that to create a new object of their own. That object was then passed to me and I was challenged to create something inspired from that. This continued for 4 people. The object I was given was a ceiling lamp by ‘Plant and Moss’. I started to think about ceiling lights and the question of ‘why do we only plug light bulbs into lamp sockets?’

Read more!