“Glitch” Artists Compose with Software Crashes and Corrupted Files

in Music, Technology | August 16th, 2012

A the­o­ry: one of the dri­vers of our cur­rent wave of nostalgia—lo-fi ana­log hiss and pop in music and ready­made vin­tage fil­ters in dig­i­tal photography—is the loss of imper­fec­tion. Increas­ing­ly pow­er­ful tech­nolo­gies ren­der sound and vision too slick­ly pris­tine, glossy, hyper­re­al, and thus imper­son­al and alien. The lat­est episode of PBS Arts’ “Off Book” series (above) fea­tures a trend toward dis­rupt­ing dig­i­tal over­pro­duc­tion by delib­er­ate­ly exploit­ing the weak­ness­es in new tech­nolo­gies. Glitch artists makes use of “nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring” (so to speak) cor­rup­tions of soft­ware, or cre­ate their own cor­rup­tions in a process called “data­bend­ing”—open­ing images as text files, for exam­ple, and adding and/or delet­ing infor­ma­tion from the image.

Unlike punk rock, to which glitch is com­pared by one of the artists above, some glitch art requires a fair­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed under­stand­ing of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies. For exam­ple, video artist Anton Mari­ni describes how he writes his own soft­ware to pro­duce glitch effects. But since vir­tu­al­ly any­one can access a pc and stan­dard text and image-edit­ing soft­ware, it remains a fair­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic aes­thet­ic, sim­i­lar to the bed­room tech­nolo­gies that enable almost any­one to pro­duce and dis­trib­ute their own musi­cal com­po­si­tions. There are sites offer­ing tuto­ri­als on how to cre­ate your own glitch art and even a Flickr account called Glitch­bot that will auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate glitch images for you, like Hip­sta­mat­ic or Insta­gram will con­vert your care­less snap­shots into intrigu­ing vin­tage arti­facts. Sound too easy? Maybe, but so was Duchamp’s uri­nal. Con­text, as always, mat­ters, and whether glitch art is “art” may ulti­mate­ly become a his­tor­i­cal ques­tion. At the moment, glitch images, video and music offer a way to human­ize all-too-inhu­man cor­po­rate prod­ucts and tech­nolo­gies.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? A Creative Use of Google Street View

in Google, Technology | August 14th, 2012

You know the archi­tec­ture of Paris when you see it. But what makes Parisian archi­tec­ture dis­tinc­tive? What visu­al ele­ments come togeth­er to pro­duce a par­tic­u­lar urban land­scape? Five schol­ars from Carnegie Mel­lon and the École nor­male supérieure are try­ing to give pre­cise answers to those ques­tions. And they’re tak­ing a nov­el approach. They’re run­ning a large repos­i­to­ry of geo­t­agged imagery from Google Street View through a pro­pri­etary algo­rithm and then iden­ti­fy­ing the dis­tinc­tive archi­tec­tur­al ele­ments for each locale — the street signs, win­dows, bal­conies that make a city unique. Their exper­i­ment (all summed up in a short abstract here) cov­ers Paris, Lon­don, Prague, Barcelona, Milan, New York, Boston, Philadel­phia, San Fran­cis­co, San Paulo, Mex­i­co City, and Tokyo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google “Art Project” Brings Great Paint­ings & Muse­ums to You

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

Tour the Ama­zon with Google Street View; No Pass­port Need­ed

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Serial Entrepreneur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Humanities”

in Education, Google, Philosophy, Technology | August 7th, 2012

Damon Horowitz, a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor and “ser­i­al entre­pre­neur,” recent­ly joined Google as an In-House Philosopher/Director of Engi­neer­ing. Pri­or to his work at Google, Horowitz co-found­ed Aard­vark, Per­spec­ta, and a num­ber of oth­er tech com­pa­nies. In this talk at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty’s 2011 Bib­lioTech con­fer­ence on “Human Expe­ri­ence,”  Horowitz explains why he left a high­ly-paid tech career, in which he sought the keys to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, to pur­sue a Ph.D. in Phi­los­o­phy at Stan­ford (the text of the talk is avail­able here).

Horowitz offers fel­low techies a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge, but a worth­while one. In say­ing so, I must con­fess a bias: As a stu­dent and teacher of the human­i­ties, I have watched with some dis­may as the cul­ture becomes increas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed by tech­ni­cians who often ignore or dis­miss press­ing philo­soph­i­cal and eth­i­cal prob­lems in their quest to build a bet­ter world. It is grat­i­fy­ing to hear from some­one who rec­og­nized this issue by (tem­porar­i­ly) giv­ing up what he admits was a great deal of pow­er and soci­etal priv­i­lege and head­ed back to the class­room.

Horowitz describes his intel­lec­tu­al jour­ney from “tech­nol­o­gist” to philoso­pher with pas­sion and can­dor, and con­cludes that as a result of his aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry, he “no longer looks for machines to solve all of our prob­lems for us,” and no longer assumes that he knows what’s best for his users. This kind of humil­i­ty and intel­lec­tu­al flex­i­bil­i­ty is, ide­al­ly, the out­come of a high­er degree in the human­i­ties, and Horowitz uses his own tri­als to make a case for bet­ter crit­i­cal think­ing, for a “human­is­tic per­spec­tive,” in the tech sec­tor and else­where. For exam­ples, see Horow­itz’s TED talks on a “moral oper­at­ing sys­tem” and “phi­los­o­phy in prison.” Com­pli­cat­ing Google’s well-known, unof­fi­cial slo­gan “don’t be evil,” Horowitz, draw­ing on Han­nah Arendt, believes that most of the evil in the world comes not from bad inten­tions but from “not think­ing.”

In a relat­ed Stan­ford talk (above) from the same sem­i­nar, Maris­sa May­er, for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Con­sumer Prod­ucts at Google, dis­cuss­es how she incor­po­rat­ed the human­i­ties into prod­uct inno­va­tion at Google. The first female engi­neer at Google (and its youngest exec­u­tive at the time of this talk), she has made head­lines recent­ly, becom­ing the new CEO of Yahoo.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Guide to a Ph.D.

The Ph.D. Grind: Philip J. Guo’s Free Mem­oir Offers An Insider’s Look at Doc­tor­al Study

Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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The Life and Times of Nelson Mandela Retold with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

in History, Media, Technology | July 18th, 2012

Back in March, we told you about the launch of The Nel­son Man­dela Dig­i­tal Archive, which makes avail­able thou­sands of papers belong­ing to the man who gal­va­nized the anti-apartheid move­ment in South Africa, before even­tu­al­ly becom­ing the leader of the nation. Part­ly fund­ed by Google, the archive lets you revis­it impor­tant moments in Man­de­la’s life — his Ear­ly Life, his Prison Years, and his Pres­i­den­tial Years.

That Dig­i­tal Archive offers one way to tell Man­de­la’s sto­ry. Now here’s anoth­er. The cre­ators of the web site Man­dela Sto­ry launched a short video yes­ter­day that looks at Man­de­la’s life through the lens of social media. And it’s meant to raise a seri­ous ques­tion: “Would Man­dela have spent 27 years in cap­tiv­i­ty if he (and oth­ers) had access to the same tech­nol­o­gy, social media plat­forms and tools as we do today?”

It’s short and cer­tain­ly cre­ative. And if it speaks to you, you should check out Rembrandt’s Face­book Time­line, a clip cre­at­ed by The Rijksmu­se­um that imag­ines the social life of the great Dutch painter.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarctic

in Google, History, Technology | July 18th, 2012

The dis­cov­ery of the South Pole is a sto­ry whose hero seems to change with every telling. Some­times it’s Robert Scott, some­times Nor­we­gian Roald Amund­sen, and, most recent­ly, Scott’s pro­tégé, Sir Ernest Shack­le­ton. All three—and geol­o­gist Sir Dou­glas Mawson—are essen­tial char­ac­ters in a series of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry expe­di­tions to a for­bid­ding ter­ri­to­ry near­ly inac­ces­si­ble to the aver­age human being. Now, Google has opened up the Antarc­tic for every­one to explore from the safe­ty of padded office chairs, com­fy couch­es, and cof­fee-shop seat­ing. Google Street View was launched in May 2007 and has since expand­ed its scope to give the aver­age user visu­al access to some fair­ly remote and exot­ic loca­tions. Google’s World Won­ders Project pro­vides aston­ish­ing views of an ancient Zen Tem­ple in Kyoto and the coasts of Dorset and East Devon in Eng­land, among many oth­er stun­ning sites. Most recent­ly, Google Street View has made avail­able 360-degree views of the wood­en huts used by Robert Scott and Ernest Shack­le­ton a cen­tu­ry ago dur­ing their Antarc­tic expe­di­tions. (Start your tour here.)

Both Scot­t’s and Shack­le­ton’s huts have been pre­served intact as his­tor­i­cal sites by New Zealand’s Antarc­tic Her­itage Trust. The explor­ers’ tools and sup­plies, in their orig­i­nal arrange­ment, are on full dis­play in detailed panoram­ic images of the huts’ interiors—a depar­ture from the typ­i­cal exte­ri­or per­spec­tives of Street View. Also view­able in the Antarc­tic series of views is the Cape Royds Adelie Pen­guin Rook­ery, the world’s south­ern­most pen­guin colony and home to many thou­sands of Adelie pen­guins. Like all Street View images, includ­ing the Scott and Shack­le­ton huts, the Rook­ery views are static—images of bygone moments frozen in time—but they are no less breath­tak­ing for it.

The image below shows the inte­ri­or of Shackleton’s hut and all of its belong­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tour the Ama­zon with Google Street View; No Pass­port Need­ed

Google Art Project Expands, Bring­ing 30,000 Works of Art from 151 Muse­ums to the Web

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Neal Stephenson, SciFi Author, Crowdsources $500,000 for New Sword-Fighting Video Game

in Literature, Technology | July 11th, 2012

Neal Stephen­son (Crypto­nom­i­con, Snow Crash, Anath­em) is a hard­work­ing man. In addi­tion to not get­ting any of his sci-fi nov­els made into movies, hang­ing out at Google, writ­ing some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing non­fic­tion in print or online, and being awe­some, he’s work­ing on a project called Clang, a first-per­son sword­fight­ing game, and he’s fund­ing it through Kick­starter. As of yes­ter­day he exceed­ed his goal of $500,000 with over 9,000 back­ers. And why not? Like most of Stephenson’s ideas, it’s bril­liant.

Stephenson—a self-described “swords­man­ship geek”—explains in the video above why he’s decid­ed to cre­ate a real­is­tic sword fight­ing game, in a gam­ing scene rid­dled with high-tech first-per­son shoot­ers. And even though Stephen­son admits to being only a “casu­al gamer,” as you can see, he’s dead­ly seri­ous about the devel­op­ment of Clang. Watch him test sev­er­al dif­fer­ent medieval weapon designs to repli­cate the weight and feel of a real blade and cre­ate the intense inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence of games like Medal of Hon­or and Met­al Gear Sol­id.

Stephen­son and his team are mak­ing use of a cut­ting-edge track­ing tech­nol­o­gy devel­oped by a com­pa­ny called Six­ense, which promis­es very low laten­cy and “unpar­al­leled pre­ci­sion.” The Clang team are con­fi­dent that their track­ing tech­nol­o­gy, embed­ded in the Raz­er Hydra game con­troller, will bring the thrills and chal­lenges of Medieval sword fight­ing into the hands of fel­low geeks very soon.

Josh Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Science Behind the Bike: Four Videos from the Open University on the Eve of the Tour de France

in Physics, Science, Technology | June 29th, 2012

Right in time for the Tour de France (which gets under­way tomor­row) the Open Uni­ver­si­ty has released a new video series called Sci­ence Behind the Bike. Dur­ing the past two decades, sci­ence has tak­en cycling to new places — some­times good, some­times bad. The intro­duc­tion of per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs near­ly dam­aged the sport beyond repair, and it cer­tain­ly destroyed the careers and rep­u­ta­tions of many lead­ing cyclists. But all along, some­where out­side the pub­lic glare, many well-inten­tioned sci­en­tif­ic minds have toiled away, try­ing to find legit­i­mate ways to advance the sport. Phys­i­ol­o­gists, physi­cists, engi­neers, soft­ware design­ers, techies from For­mu­la 1 rac­ing — they’ve all brought a new per­spec­tive to cycling.

In the video above, Sci­ence Behind the Bike looks at how sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy have influ­enced the mak­ing and break­ing of the pres­ti­gious World Hour Record first estab­lished in 1893. Then, below, Forces breaks down the physics of cycling; Phys­i­ol­o­gy explains, well, the phys­i­ol­o­gy that boosts per­for­mance; and Tech­nol­o­gy digs deep­er into the high-tech hard­ware that cyclists push along. If you’re a fan of the sport, you’ll undoubt­ed­ly appre­ci­ate appear­ances by Chris Board­man, Francesco Moser, Graeme Obree and Rebec­ca Romero.

Forces

Phys­i­ol­o­gy

Tech­nol­o­gy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brus­sels Express: The Per­ils of Cycling in Europe’s Most Con­gest­ed City

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

The Physics of the Bike

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The LEGO Turing Machine Gives a Quick Primer on How Your Computer Works

in Computer Science, Technology | June 25th, 2012

This past Sat­ur­day, we cel­e­brat­ed the cen­ten­ni­al of Alan Turing’s birth by pre­sent­ing two films that explore the life and achieve­ments of the great mathematician/father of com­put­er sci­ence: Dan­ger­ous Knowl­edge and Break­ing the Code. Today, before the anniver­sary fades into the back­ground, let us send one more film your way — this one a “short doc­u­men­tary” that brings Tur­ing’s famous com­put­ing machine to life. The device, as Tur­ing imag­ined it in 1936, was meant to sim­u­late the log­ic of com­put­er algo­rithms, reveal­ing the extent and lim­its of what can be com­put­ed. Tur­ing nev­er built the machine. He only offered a con­cep­tu­al blue­print. But two researchers at the Cen­trum Wiskunde & Infor­mat­i­ca in Ams­ter­dam have kind­ly recre­at­ed the Tur­ing Machine with LEGO, and then pro­duced a short film demon­strat­ing how the machine car­ries out the most basic func­tions of your com­put­er. Watch it go.

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the build­ing and inner-work­ings of the LEGO Tur­ing Machine here.

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:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty to Cre­ate a Lego Pro­fes­sor­ship

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego

New “Women of NASA” Lego Immor­tal­izes the STEM Con­tri­bu­tions of Sal­ly Ride,  Mar­garet Hamil­ton, Mae Jemi­son & Nan­cy Grace Roman

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