Loosely Assembled

Who needs gold plated cables?

(Via @kottke.)

Taryn Simon presents her thoughtfully constructed photographic investigation into the nature of photographic investigations. Critical Recursion?

via Dr. Shock

Crumple IV & Crease I by Tauba Auerbach.

(Via Crumple & Crease.)

During the Portland satellite version of iPhoneDevCamp this weekend, I was able to put together, with the help of a few actual coders, an app that Tracy Rolling and I have been dreaming about for over a year.

The app simply initiates a series of randomly scheduled noises to be played from your phone. You have no control over what the noises are (although i have to concede that we are not interested in “gross” noises) or when they will (or will not) happen. The sounds happen regardless of what app you are in, or even if the phone is asleep. It really brings a little bit of that “out of control” feeling into your life.

One of the best parts is something that we realized while building this, is that all random noises, since they are coordinated from a central server, will be synchronized! So imaging you are in the cheese aisle and your phone sneezes, but you also hear another person’s phone (or pocket, or purse) sneeze also. You are in a cafe, and you hear the sound of a modem coming from 5 different people. Etc.

Since it was a hack, there wasn’t a lot of time to really choose the best sound clips, I settled for about 20 pretty mediocre samples, but now that I have it actually working, I’d love to find a high quality selection of sounds that are really conceptually more interesting, and I know that asking for submissions will also bring out a wider range of ideas than I would ever have on my own. So I’d like to formally invite everyone to submit some sound files for this app. They should be less than 5 seconds long (although i may now be flexible on this limitation), in the aif or wav format, and free from any kind of copyright. Send them to fekaylius at the domain of this blog for consideration. I’m really hoping for some mind blowing stuff, from super high frequency (only teens can hear it) stuff, to bizarre juxtapositions of sounds that would normally not be heard together, and beyond. Selected sounds will receive credit and thanks and praise.

people who helped get the app up and running at the dev camp were

• carl sheppard
• justin miller
• greg stromire

thanks to dean for running the pdx satellite!!!

thanks for urban airship for being the pushers

Update: check out http://0009.org/bzzt for all the new version of these apps

An old story from 2007 still blows my mind. Lets get some artists working with this medium!

Here are a few snippets to get you to read this mind blowing article about Lene Hau’s work:

… slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.

… brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms.

… made a light pulse disappear from one cold cloud then retrieved it from another cloud nearby.

Light and matter united

Some of the best outdoor, building based projection I’ve seen around.

Touch screen mechanical turk tabletop pc performance artist!

(Via @caseorganic.)

Using lego bricks to illustrate ideas about a better world:

Take a closer look at some detail photos that really describe this piece.

(Via wrongdistance.com .)