See the Complete Works of Vermeer in Augmented Reality: Google Makes Them Available on Your Smartphone

in Art, Technology | December 4th, 2018


No muse­um could ever put on a com­plete Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion. The prob­lem isn’t quan­ti­ty: thus far, only 36 works have been defin­i­tive­ly attrib­uted to the 17th-cen­tu­ry Dutch painter of domes­tic scenes and por­traits, most famous­ly Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring. But they all hang in col­lec­tions scat­tered around the world, not just in places like Ams­ter­dam and The Hague but Lon­don, New York, Paris, and else­where besides. Some have become too frag­ile to trav­el, and one, The Con­cert, was stolen in 1990 and has­n’t been seen since. But all of this makes a com­plete Ver­meer exhi­bi­tion the per­fect con­cept to exe­cute in vir­tu­al real­i­ty, or rather aug­ment­ed real­i­ty — a con­cept just recent­ly exe­cut­ed by the Mau­rit­shuis muse­um and Google Arts & Cul­ture.

“In total, 18 muse­ums and pri­vate col­lec­tions from sev­en coun­tries con­tributed high-res­o­lu­tion images of the Ver­meers in their pos­ses­sion, which were then com­piled into a vir­tu­al muse­um by Google,” writes Giz­mod­o’s Vic­to­ria Song.

“To view the Meet Ver­meer vir­tu­al muse­um, you can down­load the free Google Arts and Cul­ture app for iOS and Android. So long as you have a smart­phone with a work­ing cam­era, all you have to do is point your phone at a flat sur­face, wave it in a cir­cle, and voila — you, too, can have a vir­tu­al muse­um float­ing above your bed and night­stand. After that, you can pinch and zoom on each of the sev­en rooms to ‘enter’ the AR muse­um to view the paint­ings.” If you enter the vir­tu­al muse­um on a com­put­er, you can nav­i­gate a com­plete­ly vir­tu­al ver­sion of those themed rooms, of which you can catch glimpses in the GIF below.

Google’s aug­ment­ed-real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy, in oth­er words, allows not just the cre­ation of an entire vir­tu­al muse­um in which to view Ver­meer’s body of work togeth­er, but the cre­ation of such a muse­um in any loca­tion where you might pos­si­bly open the app. Those of us who tend toward fan­tasies of a high-pow­ered art col­lec­tion will, of course, want to give it a try in our homes and get a taste of what it would look like if we had the cash on hand to round up all the Ver­meers in the world our­selves. Whether the impe­cu­nious Ver­meer him­self — impe­cu­nious in part, no doubt, due to his lack of pro­lifi­ca­cy — enter­tained such dreams of wealth, his­to­ry has­n’t record­ed, though giv­en the unabashed domes­tic­i­ty of his sub­jects, he might well agree that, for an exhi­bi­tion of every­thing he ever paint­ed, there’s no place like home.

Again, to view the Meet Ver­meer vir­tu­al muse­um, you can down­load the free Google Arts and Cul­ture app for iOS and Android.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion)

Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep

Paint­ings by Car­avag­gio, Ver­meer, & Oth­er Great Mas­ters Come to Life in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Anatomy of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Painting by Jackson Pollock (or Any Other Artist)

in Art, Chemistry, History, Science, Technology | December 3rd, 2018

In the old days, deter­min­ing an art forgery was most­ly a mat­ter of nar­ra­tive deduc­tion, a la Sher­lock Holmes.

Thi­a­go Piwowar­czyk and Jef­frey Tay­lor, founders of New York Art Foren­sics, employ such tech­niques to estab­lish prove­nance, trac­ing the chain of own­er­ship of any giv­en work back to its orig­i­nal sale by research­ing cat­a­logues, title trans­fers, and cor­re­spon­dence.

But they also bring a num­ber of high tech tools to the table, to fur­ther prove—or in the case of the alleged Jack­son Pol­lock drip paint­ing above, disprove—a work’s authen­tic­i­ty.

In the WIRED video above, these experts, whose pedi­gree includes degrees in Chem­istry, Foren­sic Sci­ence, and Com­par­a­tive His­to­ry, a Visu­al Arts Man­age­ment text­book, and two Frick Col­lec­tion Fel­low­ships, break the sleuthing process down to five crit­i­cal steps:

1. Estab­lish prove­nance

Obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy has a place in the process too, in the form of a high­ly unre­li­able fax, alleged­ly sent in 1997. It pur­ports to be a pho­to­copy of a type­writ­ten let­ter from 1970, writ­ten by a gallery own­er who talked one of the artist’s for­mer girl­friends into part­ing with a num­ber of works after his death.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the painting’s cur­rent own­er, Piwowar­czyk and Tay­lor could find no proof that the gallery or its own­er ever exist­ed. The let­ter also botch­es Pollock’s death date and odd­ly, there’s a blank where the sender’s num­ber would nor­mal­ly be.

Due dili­gence reveals noth­ing resem­bling this paint­ing in the cat­a­logue raison­né of Pollock’s work.

2. Close up visu­al analy­sis

This can be accom­plished with tools as sim­ple as the flash­light and plas­tic caliper Tay­lor uses to exam­ine the sta­ple holes found at reg­u­lar inter­vals along the unsigned can­vas’ edges. In the 1940s, artists start­ed grav­i­tat­ing toward sta­ples over tacks as a method for secur­ing their can­vas­es to stretch­er bars, but would Pol­lock have done so? Like­ly not, to hear him tell it:

I hard­ly ever stretch my can­vas before paint­ing. I pre­fer to tack the unstretched can­vas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resis­tance of a hard sur­face.

Piwowar­czyk and Tay­lor draw on their oth­er sens­es, too, when per­form­ing this in-depth visu­al inspec­tion. A deep sniff reveals that teabags were used to dis­col­or the can­vas, in hope of mak­ing it appear old­er than it is.

3. Pho­tog­ra­phy with a mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing cam­era 

This camera’s abil­i­ty to see the Ultra-Vio­let spec­trum allows our foren­sic experts to spot restora­tions, under­draw­ing, and pen­ti­men­ti. Here, the cam­era revealed an under­ly­ing paint­ing whose geo­met­ric lay­out is unchar­ac­ter­is­tic of Pol­lock, as well as a sus­pi­cious­ly ama­teur­ish patch job on the back of the can­vas, anoth­er attempt to make the paint­ing appear old­er than it is.

4. Exam­i­na­tion with an X‑ray flu­o­res­cence spec­trom­e­ter

It looks like a cool Star Wars prop, and allows the exam­in­ers to iden­ti­fy ele­ments in the pig­ment. Here, our “Pol­lock” gets a pass. There’s tita­ni­um (as in Tita­ni­um White) in evi­dence, but that’s per­mis­si­ble for any­thing paint­ed from the 30s onward.

5. Mol­e­c­u­lar Imag­ing and Analy­sis by Raman Spec­troscopy

The forg­er might have got­ten away with it if it weren’t for those med­dling kids and their Raman Spec­tro­scope! The minus­cule sam­ples of paint Piwowar­czyk har­vests from the can­vas reveal all sorts of organ­ic debris that have no place in a Pol­lock, such as dry­wall dust and an acrylic that didn’t come into use ‘til the 1960s.

In con­clu­sion, exer­cise cau­tion and con­sult the experts before pur­chas­ing a high val­ue drip paint­ing this hol­i­day sea­son! Accord­ing to Piwowar­czyk, the fakes—over 100 and pre­sum­ably still counting—outstrip the num­ber of drip paint­ings Pol­lock cre­at­ed through­out his life­time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How an Art Con­ser­va­tor Com­plete­ly Restores a Dam­aged Paint­ing: A Short, Med­i­ta­tive Doc­u­men­tary

The Art of Restor­ing a 400-Year-Old Paint­ing: A Five-Minute Primer

How a Book Thief Forged a Rare Edi­tion of Galileo’s Sci­en­tif­ic Work, and Almost Pulled it Off

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC from Decem­ber 6 — 20 for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The First House Powered by Coffee

in Food & Drink, Technology | November 8th, 2018

Since 2006, Dunkin’ Donuts has used the tagline “Amer­i­ca Runs on Dunkin’,” pre­sum­ably allud­ing to the cof­fee and donuts that get mil­lions of Amer­i­cans through each morn­ing. But maybe, all along, they’ve had some­thing more in mind. Above, Dunkin’ presents a tiny home pow­ered by bio­fu­el made from spent cof­fee grounds, a process mas­ter­mind­ed by a com­pa­ny called Blue Mar­ble Bio­ma­te­ri­als. Work­ing with lux­u­ry tiny home­builder New Fron­tier Tiny Homes, they’ve cre­at­ed a process–notes a Dunkin’ press release–that works some­thing like this:

  • Step 1: Extract excess oils in the spent cof­fee grounds. There can be nat­ur­al oils left in spent cof­fee grounds, all depend­ing on the cof­fee bean type and orig­i­nal pro­cess­ing meth­ods.
  • Step 2: Mix and react. These oils are then mixed with an alco­hol to under­go a chem­i­cal reac­tion known as trans­es­ter­i­fi­ca­tion. This pro­duces biodiesel and glyc­erin as a byprod­uct.
  • Step 3: Refine. The biodiesel is washed and refined to cre­ate the final prod­uct.

When all is said and done, 170 pounds of used cof­fee grounds trans­lates into one gal­lon of fuel. From 65,000 pounds of cof­fee grounds, you got enough juice to pow­er a 275 square foot home, at least for a while.

Take a 360 degree inter­ac­tive tour of the tiny home here.

via New Atlas

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Make the World’s Small­est Cup of Cof­fee, from Just One Cof­fee Bean

A Rol­lick­ing French Ani­ma­tion on the Per­ils of Drink­ing a Lit­tle Too Much Cof­fee

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

David Lynch Directs a Mini-Sea­son of Twin Peaks in the Form of Japan­ese Cof­fee Com­mer­cials

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Hear How Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” Would Sound If Sung by Johnny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sinatra & 38 Other Artists

in Comedy, Creativity, Music, Technology | November 2nd, 2018

I con­sid­er Fred­dy Mer­cury and Michael Jack­son as the great­est per­form­ers of all time. Their vocal abil­i­ties are what I look up to as a vocal­ist.  — Antho­ny Vin­cent

Antho­ny Vin­cent, the cre­ator of Ten Sec­ond Songs, has a flow­ing mane, a lean physique, and the cock­sure man­ner of a 20th cen­tu­ry rock god.

He also spends hours in his home stu­dio, peer­ing at a com­put­er mon­i­tor through read­ing glass­es.

His lat­est effort, above, Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in the style of 42 oth­er artists, could seem like a gim­mick at first glance.

Con­sid­er, how­ev­er, all the research, time, and musi­cian­ship that went into it.

The YouTube star dis­ap­peared from the inter­net for a month in order to tack­le the beast that fans had long been beg­ging him for.

He emerged from this self-imposed sab­bat­i­cal refreshed, rec­om­mend­ing that per­haps “every­one should start pro­duc­ing songs in mul­ti­ple styles just so they too could take a vaca­tion from social media.”

Good idea, though I doubt many of us can mim­ic the wide range of vocal styles the large­ly self taught Vin­cent does, from  Muse’s lead singer Matt Belamy’s fabled high notes to the late Joe Strummer’s extreme­ly Eng­lish punk atti­tude to Janis Joplin at her most unfet­tered.

He also dis­plays an impres­sive facil­i­ty with a vari­ety of arrange­ments and instru­ments, though a cou­ple of off-hand­ed com­ments in the Mak­ing Of video, below, may not endear him to drum­mers, despite his obvi­ous respect for the essen­tial role per­cus­sion plays in struc­tur­ing his projects.

Var­i­ous ele­ments sug­gest­ed which artist to pair with each bite-sized sec­tion of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” includ­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty of lyrics, notes, and arrange­ments. (“Mama mia” was a no brain­er…as was “Mama, didn’t mean to make you cry.”)

By def­i­n­i­tion, the mul­ti-style “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” required him to look beyond his own per­son­al favorites for artists to high­light, a process he applies to all of his mash ups. As he said in a 2015 inter­view with Radio Met­al:

Obvi­ous­ly I don’t lis­ten to Enya in my free time, I don’t go and put on a Gre­go­ri­an chant and lis­ten to it to relax. If I’m going to put an artist in there, it’s because I have some kind of respect for them in some way… At first my inten­tion was to pro­mote my busi­ness and now my inten­tions are to show that there are dif­fer­ent ways that a song can be heard and that there’s noth­ing wrong with lik­ing dif­fer­ent things. You shouldn’t be afraid of what you don’t under­stand. Just because some­one is growl­ing doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s just a way of express­ing a song, there is real­ly noth­ing else to it.

His “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” trib­ute is com­prised of over 1800 care­ful­ly labelled tracks, an inspir­ing dis­play of dig­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion as well as tech­ni­cal prowess.

While some of Vincent’s cho­sen 42—David Bowie, Dream The­ater—did cov­er “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” in its entire­ty, an unfor­tu­nate side effect of his imper­son­ations are the way they whet our appetite for full cov­ers we’ll nev­er get to enjoy from the likes of John­ny Cash, Prince, Frank Sina­tra, Aretha Franklin….

Ulti­mate­ly, no one can hold a can­dle to the orig­i­nal, but there’s no harm in try­ing.

Read­ers, do you have a favorite from the line up below? Any­one you wish you could add to the list?

01. Queen

02. Me

03. The Chordettes

04. John­ny Cash

05. David Bowie

06. Ozzy Osbourne

07. Frank Sina­tra

08. Sam Cooke

09. Boyz II Men

10. Daft Punk

11. Janis Joplin

12. Scott Joplin (King Of Rag­time)

13. Skrillex

14. Hen­drix (Michael Winslow Ver­sion)

15. Ken­ny G

16. Bob­by McFer­rin

17. Star Wars

18. N.W.A.

19. Kendrick Lamar

20. Sys­tem Of A Down

21. Elvis Pres­ley

22. BOLLYWOOD

23. Bad Reli­gion

24. Bruno Mars

25. Death Grips

26. Chuck Berry

27. Michael jack­son

28. The Clash

29. Ray Charles

30. Aretha Franklin

31. Sog­gy Bot­tom Boys

32. Death

33. ABBA

34. Ghost

35. Muse

36. Vitas

37. Medieval Music

38. Frankie Val­li and the Four Sea­sons

39. Tool

40. Prince

41. Nir­vana

42. Dream The­ater

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s Bohemi­an Rhap­sody for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Played by 28 Trom­bone Play­ers

Watch the Brand New Trail­er for Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the Long-Await­ed Biopic on Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Novem­ber 12 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Art Institute of Chicago Puts 44,000+ Works of Art Online: View Them in High Resolution

in Art, Education, How to Learn for Free, Museums, Technology | October 25th, 2018

After the fire that total­ly destroyed Brazil’s Museu Nacional in Rio, many peo­ple lament­ed that the muse­um had not dig­i­tal­ly backed up its col­lec­tion and point­ed to the event as a trag­ic exam­ple of why such dig­i­ti­za­tion is so nec­es­sary. Just a cou­ple decades ago, stor­ing and dis­play­ing this much infor­ma­tion was impos­si­ble, so it may seem like a strange demand to make. And in any case, two-dimen­sion­al images stored on servers—or even 3D print­ed copies—cannot replace or sub­sti­tute for orig­i­nal, price­less arti­facts or works of art.

But muse­ums around the world that have dig­i­tized most–or all–of their col­lec­tions don’t claim to have repli­cat­ed or replaced the expe­ri­ence of an in-per­son vis­it, or to have ren­dered phys­i­cal media obso­lete.

Dig­i­tal col­lec­tions pro­vide access to mil­lions of peo­ple who can­not, or will not, ever trav­el to the major cities in which fine art resides, and they give mil­lions of schol­ars, teach­ers, and stu­dents resources once avail­able only to a select few.

We can’t all take the day off like Fer­ris Bueller and stand in front of Georges Seurat’s Sun­day After­noon on the Island of La Grande Jat­te. But thanks to the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, we can all view and down­load the 1884 pointil­list paint­ing in high res­o­lu­tion, zoom in close­ly like the trou­bled Cameron to spe­cif­ic details, share the dig­i­tal image under a Cre­ative Com­mons Zero license, and sim­i­lar­ly inter­act with an oil sketch for the final paint­ing and sev­er­al con­té cray­on stud­ies.

And if that weren’t enough, the muse­um also includes a bib­li­og­ra­phy, exhi­bi­tion his­to­ry, notes on prove­nance, audio and video his­to­ries and descrip­tions, and edu­ca­tion­al resources like teacher man­u­als, les­son plans, and exams. This goes for many of the 44,312—with more to come—digital images online, includ­ing such famous works of art as Vin­cent van Gogh’s 1889 The Bed­room, Grant Wood’s 1930 Amer­i­can Goth­ic, Pablo Picasso’s 1903–4 blue peri­od paint­ing The Old Gui­tarist, Edward Hopper’s 1942 Nighthawks, Mary Cassatt’s 1893 The Child’s Bath, and so many more that it bog­gles the mind.

Browse Impres­sion­ism, Pop Art, works from the African Dias­po­ra, Cityscapes, Fash­ion, Mytho­log­i­cal Works, and oth­er gen­res and cat­e­gories. Search artists, dates, styles, media, depart­ments, places, and more.

A per­son­al vis­it to the Art Insti­tute is an awe-inspir­ing, and some­what over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence, if you can get the day to go. You can vis­it the web­site, with full unre­strict­ed access, and gath­er infor­ma­tion, study, mar­vel, and casu­al­ly browse, at any time of day—every day if you like. No, it’s not the same, but as a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, in some ways, it’s even bet­ter. And if, by some awful chance, any­thing should hap­pen to this art, we won’t have to rely on user-sub­mit­ted pho­tos to recon­struct the cul­tur­al mem­o­ry.

The launch of this col­lec­tion comes as part of the museum’s web­site redesign, and it is an exten­sive, and expen­sive, endeav­or. The Art Insti­tute, which charges for entry, can afford to make its col­lec­tions free online. Some oth­er muse­ums charge image fees to sup­port their online work. Ide­al­ly, as art his­to­ri­an Ben­dor Grosvenor writes at Art His­to­ry News, muse­ums should offer free and open access to both phys­i­cal and online col­lec­tions, and some insti­tu­tions, like Sweden’s National­mu­se­um, have shown that this is pos­si­ble.

And, as Grosvenor shows, the suc­cess of open access online col­lec­tions has yield­ed anoth­er ben­e­fit, for both view­ers and muse­ums alike. The more peo­ple are exposed to art online, the more like­ly they are to vis­it muse­ums in per­son. Chica­go awaits you. Until then, vir­tu­al­ly immerse your­self in the Art Institute’s many thou­sands of trea­sures here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

25 Mil­lion Images From 14 Art Insti­tu­tions to Be Dig­i­tized & Put Online In One Huge Schol­ar­ly Archive

1.8 Mil­lion Free Works of Art from World-Class Muse­ums: A Meta List of Great Art Avail­able Online

Wikipedia Leads Effort to Cre­ate a Dig­i­tal Archive of 20 Mil­lion Arti­facts Lost in the Brazil­ian Muse­um Fire

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Laurie Anderson Creates a Virtual Reality Installation That Takes Viewers on an Unconventional Tour of the Moon

in Art, Science, Technology | October 24th, 2018

Next year, NASA will cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing, and as part of the cel­e­bra­tion will restore the orig­i­nal beige and green con­trol pan­els from the late 60’s Mis­sion Con­trol. “We want to take you back to July 20, 1969,” says direc­tor of the non-prof­it Space Cen­ter Hous­ton, the offi­cial vis­i­tors cen­ter for the John­son Space Cen­ter. “You’re going to expe­ri­ence the final few moments before Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin land­ed on the moon for the first time.”

But the agency isn’t only look­ing back to half a cen­tu­ry ago. It’s also look­ing for­ward to launch­ing more moon expe­di­tions—in part­ner­ship with com­mer­cial and inter­na­tion­al agencies—next year. And while those of us who aren’t astro­nauts or bil­lion­aires are unlike­ly to ever see the moon up close, Lau­rie Ander­son, NASA’s first artist-in-res­i­dence, can trans­port view­ers there for the cost of a tick­et to Den­mark.

Start­ing last month and run­ning until Jan­u­ary 2019, the country’s Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art fea­tures Anderson’s new moon-themed vir­tu­al real­i­ty project as part of its exhi­bi­tion The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Out­er Space.

Cre­at­ed with mul­ti­me­dia artist Hsin-Chien Huang—with whom Ander­son col­lab­o­rat­ed on anoth­er beau­ti­ful VR expe­ri­ence last year—this project trans­ports vis­i­tors to a vir­tu­al moon, where they can view con­stel­la­tions invent­ed by Ander­son, sym­bols of things that have, or that seem poised to, dis­ap­pear: a dinosaur, a polar bear, democ­ra­cy. “All of those things that you think are so sta­ble are so frag­ile, and can be lost,” she says in the video intro­duc­tion to her project above.

So, okay, it’s not the moon Arm­strong and Aldrin plant­ed their country’s flag on in 1969. It’s also pop­u­lat­ed by dinosaurs, birds, and oth­er crea­tures cre­at­ed from a lat­tice­work of DNA mol­e­cules.

Not only did Ander­son and Huang depict a thrilling fan­ta­sy VR moon, but they also cre­at­ed a “’hideous’ ver­sion,” reports CNN, “in which peo­ple had dumped all the radioac­tive mate­r­i­al from Earth. “We did dif­fer­ent phas­es of the moon,” says Ander­son, “dif­fer­ent aspects, looked not just at the roman­ti­cism of the moon but dystopias.” This isn’t her first for­ay into moon-themed art. As artist-in-res­i­dence at NASA since 2003, she has had some time to reflect on the agency’s mis­sion.

After her first year with NASA, she debuted a 90-minute per­for­mance piece called “The End of the Moon,” the sec­ond in a tril­o­gy she described as an “epic poem” about con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can cul­ture. She is not the obvi­ous choice to work for a gov­ern­ment agency. Her work has been fierce­ly crit­i­cal of the country’s wars and its repres­sion on the domes­tic front. “Frankly, I find liv­ing in Amer­i­can cul­ture at the moment real­ly prob­lem­at­ic,” she said back in 2004. “But when I think of NASA, it’s the one thing that feels future-ori­ent­ed in a way that’s inspir­ing.”

Look­ing both back­ward and for­ward, next year’s anniver­sary of the moon land­ing will give us all rea­sons to think about humanity’s past and future in out­er space. Will it include “unbe­liev­able aspi­ra­tions,” as Ander­son mused, like “the green­ing of Mars,” or the dystopi­an dump­ing of radioac­tive waste on the Moon? Giv­en the trash and trea­sure of our cur­rent rela­tion­ship with the cosmos—not to men­tion our own planet—probably both. See more 2‑D excerpts from Ander­son and Huang’s piece in the scene test above, and, if you can score a tick­et, enter the full VR expe­ri­ence at the Louisiana Muse­um of Mod­ern Art.

via @dark_shark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lau­rie Ander­son Intro­duces Her Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Instal­la­tion That Lets You Fly Mag­i­cal­ly Through Sto­ries

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

Lau­rie Anderson’s Top 10 Books to Take to a Desert Island

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Twerking, Moonwalking AI Robots–They’re Now Here

in Dance, Technology | October 18th, 2018

In a study released last year, Kat­ja Grace at Oxford’s Future of Human­i­ty Insti­tute “sur­veyed the world’s lead­ing researchers in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence by ask­ing them when they think intel­li­gent machines will bet­ter humans in a wide range of tasks.” After inter­view­ing 1,634 experts, they found that they “believe there is a 50% chance of AI out­per­form­ing humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automat­ing all human jobs in 120 years.” That includes every­thing from dri­ving trucks, run­ning cash reg­is­ters, to per­form­ing surgery, and writ­ing New York Times best­sellers. These sober­ing pre­dic­tions have prompt­ed aca­d­e­mics, like North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun, to write books along the lines of Robot-Proof: High­er Edu­ca­tion in the Age of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence which asks the ques­tion, How can uni­ver­si­ties “edu­cate the next gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents to invent, to cre­ate, and to discover—filling needs that even the most sophis­ti­cat­ed robot can­not”? It’s a good ques­tion. But a chal­leng­ing one too. Because it assumes we under­stand what robots can, and can­not, do. Case in point, Boston Dynam­ics released a video this week of its Spot­Mi­ni robot danc­ing to Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk.” It can moon­walk. It can twerk. Did the dance depart­ments see that com­ing? Doubt it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A 16th Century Book That Opens Six Different Ways, Revealing Six Different Books in One

in Books, History, Technology | October 16th, 2018

Tech­nol­o­gy has come so far that we con­sid­er it no great achieve­ment when a device the size of a sin­gle paper book can con­tain hun­dreds, even thou­sands, of dif­fer­ent texts. But 21st-cen­tu­ry human­i­ty did­n’t come up with the idea of putting mul­ti­ple books in one, nor did we first bring that idea into being — not by a long shot. Medieval book his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel points, for exam­ple, to the “dos-à-dos” (back to back) bind­ing of the 16th and 17th cen­turies, which made for books “like Siamese twins in that they present two dif­fer­ent enti­ties joined at their backs: each part has one board for itself, while a third is shared between the two,” so “read­ing the one text you can flip the ‘book’ to con­sult the oth­er.”

Not long there­after, Kwakkel post­ed an arti­fact that blows the dos-à-dos out of the water: a 16th-cen­tu­ry book that con­tains no few­er than six dif­fer­ent books in a sin­gle bind­ing. “They are all devo­tion­al texts print­ed in Ger­many dur­ing the 1550s and 1570s (includ­ing Mar­tin Luther, Der kleine Cat­e­chis­mus) and each one is closed with its own tiny clasp,” he writes.

“While it may have been dif­fi­cult to keep track of a par­tic­u­lar text’s loca­tion, a book you can open in six dif­fer­ent ways is quite the dis­play of crafts­man­ship.” You can admire it — and try to fig­ure it out — from a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent angles at the Flickr account of the Nation­al Library of Swe­den, where it cur­rent­ly resides in the archives of the Roy­al Library.

Four or five cen­turies ago, a book like this would no doubt have impressed its behold­ers as much as or even more than the most advanced piece of hand­held con­sumer elec­tron­ics impress­es us today. But when the inter­net dis­cov­ered Kwakkel’s post, it became clear that this six-in-one devo­tion­al cap­ti­vates us in much the same way as a brand-new, nev­er-before-seen dig­i­tal device. “With a lit­er­a­cy rate hov­er­ing around an esti­mat­ed 5 to 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, only a select few of soci­ety’s upper ech­e­lons and reli­gious castes had use for books,” Andrew Taran­to­la reminds us. “So who would have use for a sex­tu­plet of sto­ries bound by a sin­gle, mul­ti-hinged cov­er like this? Some seri­ous­ly busy schol­ar.” And he writes that not on a site for enthu­si­asts of old books, Medieval his­to­ry, or reli­gious schol­ar­ship, but at the tem­ple of tech wor­ship known as Giz­mo­do.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

Napoleon’s Kin­dle: See the Minia­tur­ized Trav­el­ing Library He Took on Mil­i­tary Cam­paigns

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

Europe’s Old­est Intact Book Was Pre­served and Found in the Cof­fin of a Saint

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study (1588)

The Assassin’s Cab­i­net: A Hol­lowed Out Book, Con­tain­ing Secret Cab­i­nets Full of Poi­son Plants, Made in 1682

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast