and the adjacent possible (12. 729)

OK Go continues its tradition of crafting glorious high-concept music video to accompany and complement their songs—previously—with the latest dazzlingly, chaotic animated Impulse Purchase being no exception. The maximalist collaboration with Blender Studios and the signature digital characters of artist Lucas Zanotto (see previously) with the help of Will Anderson (BAFTA award winning storyteller who struggles with the revival of his own, imagined best-known creation, Longbird, that once upon a time conferred him with legendary status) combines motion capture and three-dimensional rendering goes one further by making the endeavour open-source and models available to anyone to remix, adapt and share—a statement on the architecture of choice and algorithmically curated options which assertively reframes the dialogue by reseting the parameters. More on the making and a tutorial from It’s Nice That at the link above.

operation nougat (12. 728)

Begun on this day in 1961 immediately following the Soviet Union’s abrogation of a moratorium on testing, pressured by the American congress—who in turn was informed by a piece of investigative journalism (using a representative as the source) by the Miami News that the USSR was planning on exploding nuclear warheads on the Moon for scientific purposes with the end goal of landing cosmonauts on the Earth’s satellite by 1965, the US resumed controlled atomic explosions for the first time since 1958 with a series of forty-four underground and tunnel detonations at the Nevada Proving Grounds. The first shot conducted, Antler, in a tunnel four hundred metres below the surface lost containment right away, ruining sensors and losing data—a recurring problem for this operation, which also hosted tests for the British nuclear programme, caused by ground water above the blast zone which sublimated in the testing shaft with a force far more eruptive than expected, propelled by the shockwave. 

synchronoptica 

one year ago: Dresden’ Kulturpalast mural and Soviet Realism (with synchronopticæ), outsider artist Gottfried Mind, Mexico’s new president, Saks Fifth Avenue (1924) plus generating a podcast based on one’s notes

dykstraflex (12. 727)

Courtesy of Things Magazine, we are referred to a rather fascinating look at how a battery of psychological experiments conducted at the University of California’s Berkley campus Environmental Simulation Laboratory in the early 1970s to gauge public engagement and investment and equip urban planners and civil engineers with better tools of communication and presentation for projects for all stakeholders, which ultimately informed the special effects workshop of Industrial Light and Magic to produce the awe and immersion for audiences of the Star Wars franchise—particularly for those experiencing the spectacle in theatres for the first time.  Proceeding in a scientific and methodical way, graduate student John Dykstra who worked on the project deduced that buy-in required believability and designed the above eponymous computer-controlled camera system to imbue a new level of reality to scale-models. The technique was first used on a miniature mock-up of an area of Marin County as a showcase for trialling various public works projects and construction proposals. Of course such monumental and detailed representations cannot be created for every item under review but insights gleaned from this study give architects and the city council better ways of presenting scope and impact. The computer controlled cameras that pivoted perspective along dogfights of between TIE fighters and X-Wings, just as they swept over the model landscape (see also) ensured continuity of motion control for all elements, dynamic and static, and the seamless merging of frames into on screen action.

gakuponi (12. 726)

From the Japanese portmanteau for frame plus aquaponics (額ポニ), we enjoyed this rather lovely prototype by designer Keisuke Hatakenaka that creates a self-sustaining system of fish and plants with the ecosystems supporting one another—especially enjoying this correspondence, spotted first by Messy Nessy Chic, for a comparable arrangement in this circa 1880 combination of a bird cage, aquarium and plant stand. Of course a bit of intervention and caretaking is needed to keep the loop alive and healthy, but waste from the fish provide nutrients for the garden, which in turn purifies and oxygenates the water, and the installation is designed to educate in an aesthetic way (see previously) natural symbiosis. Much more from Spoon & Tamago at the link above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: eighty bangers from the 80s (with synchronopticæ) plus a novel wildfire detection device

thirteen years ago: Franconian churches 

fourteen years ago: a cosmological map 

fifteen years ago: Mount Athos and the Greek economy 

i’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife (12. 725)

Released on this day in 2013, the debut single from Irish singer-songwriter Andrew John Hozier-Byrne (professionally known by the mononym Hozier) is a soulful hymn that uses religious terminology to describe a forbidden relationship as an invective against discrimination with attendant shame and trauma promulgated by the Catholic Church. With the help of the music video that is somewhat of a departure lyricly and the recently introduced platforms of Shazam (as a cataloguer and registry to discover new songs) and Spotify, it became an international chart-topper, spending a then record twenty-three consecutive weeks at the top, tying with Imagine Dragons’ 2012 Radioactive. Written and demo recording made in the attic of his parents’ home in County Wicklow, it caught the attention of an independent label and turned the artist’s career prospects around. Hozier’s body of works all share social conscious themes and both his songs and continued advocacy have a strong message of justice and champion the poor and marginalised.

11x11 (12. 724)

out damn spot: the attempted erasure of a Banksy mural shows one cannot scrub away complicity in genocide  

free return trajectory: acting NASA administrator faces the space press on getting intriguing rock samples from Mars to Earth for further study 

canonically accurate: Spirit Halloween corrects the spelling on their Betelgeuse prop sign—see previously here and here 

jawsome: the promotional hyping of some thing as “awe dropping” connotes rather the opposite for me     

maternity ward: track new website launches by category in real-time—a lot of click-bait landing sites being cloned badly by AI but some genuine births as well—via Web Curios  

goodbye computer: a sad little send off from April Clucks about a machine she adored until they became unlovable

me＇te.o.ra: ambient music generated by local weather conditions—via Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, which also features a defence of the em-dash 

midway: the aesthetics of arcade game marquees 

cornutam: Moses’ depiction in art as having horns is a mistranslation from the Vulgate perpetuated by centuries of tradition

an asymmetrical curiosity: physicists construct a tangible demonstration of time-crystals  

what sophistry is this: at the advice of legal counsel, Jezebel pulls an article from early in the week about hiring some Etsy witches to curse a right wing influencers and conservative activist—see previously, see also

peephole (12. 723)

Via It’s Nice That, we enjoyed discovering these lovingly crafted animated vignettes from graphic design duo Plantopia that narrate little stories through shifting and privileged perspectives and fisheye effects. The creative collaboration began a decade ago when Maryka Laudet and Quentin Camus were students at art school in Arles and have since set up studio in Bristol. Unrelated to the image below, much more at the link above the artists’ website, featuring their full portfolio of GIFs, commissioned projects and links to their socials.

synchronoptica

one year ago: assorted links worth the revisit (with synchronopticæ), nights on Earth, the Ig Nobel prize, prayers vs spells plus Cloud Appreciation Day

fifteen years ago: the US Tea Party and the Social Contract 

collocation (12. 722)

Although it is justified to dismiss artificial intelligence and large language models as exalted extensions of auto-correct and predictive text—autocomplete—there is a danger is dismissing the analogy that a chatbot is a mere calculator of words. Albeit an adding machine has unimpeachable and unbiased output, AI too has by studying frequency a handle rather than an understanding of custom through patterns that even linguists have not been able to precisely pin down, which despite no understanding can through brute force pass the Turing test and even on a rudimentary dataset become convincingly fluent, just enough so as the technology and expectations advance.