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anthropology | media ecology | mythology | tinkering | visual literacy
Archive for July, 2009

The blues of Bloody Ol’ Mule

Haven’t heard of him yet but we have a feeling you will soon – listen to more here:

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Blur : Tender


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This is only the second largest aquarium in the world

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Sing for Joy

Thanks, Frank.

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Ah, Saturday Morning…

Turned onto this by a new friend, David Calvo:

Cheers, David.

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Murmur

[Showing at the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota now through August 23th, 2009]

Murmur Study is an installation that examines the rise of micro-messaging technologies such as Twitter and Facebook’s status update. One might describe these messages as a kind of digital small talk. But unlike water-cooler conversations, these fleeting thoughts are accumulated, archived and digitally-indexed by corporations. While the future of these archives remains to be seen, the sheer volume of publicly accessible personal — often emotional — expression should give us pause.

This installation consists of 30 thermal printers that continuously monitor Twitter for new messages containing variations on common emotional utterances. Messages containing hundreds of variations on words such as argh, meh, grrrr, oooo, ewww, and hmph, are printed as an endless waterfall of text accumulating in tangled piles below.

Murmur Study from Christopher Baker on Vimeo.

Yet another small lifeform outsmarting us every minute

thinfilms  45993904 megacolonyants Yet another small lifeform outsmarting us every minuteFrom the BBC:

We think we have big, sophisticated cities.

We are proud of our ability to organize and accomplish common goals.

Meanwhile, a single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.

What’s more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.

These introduced Argentine ants are renowned for forming large colonies, and for becoming a significant pest, attacking native animals and crops.

In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the “Californian large”, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.

Something about this is very reassuring.

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Metaplace: Embed Virtual Worlds

From Wikipedia:

Metaplace provides user-generated virtual worlds. As Metaplace is browser based, worlds made with Metaplace can connect to each other through hyperlinks. Every object in Metaplace has a unique URL. This character of Metaplace allows advanced users to use these URLs in setting up and reading RSS feeds, set up ad services within worlds, and access and show content from the web within their worlds. According to founder Raph Koster, Metaplace seeks to “make online world elements… part of the standard code which drives the web”

Metaplace uses a Lua variant called Metascript. Metaplace users can use Metascript to add functionality to any object in their world. These functionalities can be included in Animals and pets, doors, enemies with the ability to fight and attack, puzzles and games, artsy effects, vehicles.

Metaplace is currently in open beta testing and has created some nifty tools to embed these virtual worlds most anywhere, such as the demo I’ve been playing with below:

[mp2wp]shapahs_World,500,500[/mp2wp]

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