Reading: Masters of Reality

Poeme Electronique - Le Corbusier & Edgard Varese

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poème_électronique

Seen: Future My Love @ RSA

documentary meets fiction

By Maja Borg

Ryan Gander

Yes -

http://youtu.be/aDJt2--AFM4

Your life in three acts, 2005. Off-set printed pads and a cardboard box, 

45cm x 30 cm x 60 cm. Photo: Ryan Gander. Courtesy of the artist and STORE, London and Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam

A reconstruction of a map of Sheffield City Centre - usually made freely available by the tourist information office - reproduced here to include twenty-six streets existing pre 1911, most of which mark locations where town planners have replaced the city’s organic structure with a formulaic interpretation of ‘civic economy’.

MONIAC

The flow of water between the tanks was determined by economic principles and the settings for various parameters. Different economic parameters, such as tax rates and investment rates, could be entered by setting the valves which controlled the flow of water about the computer. Users could experiment with different settings and note the effect on the model. The MONIAC’s ability to model the subtle interaction of a number of variables made it a powerful tool for its time.When a set of parameters resulted in a viable economy the model would stabilise and the results could be read from scales. The output from the computer could also be sent to a rudimentary plotter.

MONIAC had been designed to be used as a teaching aid but was discovered also to be an effective economic simulator. At the time that MONIAC was created, electronic digital computers that could run complex economic simulations were unavailable. In 1949 the few computers in existence were restricted to government and military use. Neither did they have adequate visual display facilities, so were unable to illustrate the operation of complex models. Observing the MONIAC in operation made it much easier for students to understand the interrelated processes of a national economy. The range of organisations that acquired a MONIAC showed that it was used in both capacities.

Spomenik

http://www.foto8.com/new/online/blog/1268-spomenik

smile

Can you spot a fake smile? In the 1860s, Guillaume Duchenne, a French physiologist, used electrical pulses to tweak patients’ faces, creating a map relating muscles to expressions. He found that truly happy smiles not only used the muscles of the mouth but also those of the eyes. 

White blood cells in action

Roman Sakin

Visited: Daniel Tammet Talk @ RSA

The Colouring

http://beckyandjoes.com/

I love this.

Space Mission Badges

Assess and Predict

Arts Festivals

Visited: Apollo @ Science Museum

System D

The Informal Economy

Kids and Technology

Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php

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"The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, including Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science in each academic year. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design."

http://www.raspberrypi.org/about

airborne drone tours London

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-11/02/team-black-sheep-video

Seen: Surrogates

Dissertation: DONE

Title - Scalar Ways of Seeing: Perspectives on Perspective.

Inspired by Charles and Ray Eames' Powers of Ten I was interested in how advances in technology have given us new ways of seeing ourselves for example the invention of flight allowed us to see our cities from above for the first time and spaceflight brought with it images of the whole earth. Also, the significance of vertical perspective and viewing things at different scales. I analysed the new types of media that came with these new technologies and how they reflected on socio-political issues of their time. I concluded by debating whether currently we have focused our attention on a microscopic perspective and all of our investigations into events on a micro scale e.g nanotechnology, human behaviour at a neuro level and synthetic biology are in a bid to make them more applicable to things on a human scale.

Project: Post-Apocolympics

Project Blog: http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/fictional-sports/
Project Brief: http://www.interaction.rca.ac.uk/fictional-sports/?page_id=2

Project launch with sports ethicist Dr Andy Miah and sports psychologist Dr Katie Dray.
Scenario building and quick film making workshop with Charlotte Jarvis and J Paul Neeley.
Noam took us to the Design Museum to see the new 'Designed to Win' Exhibition and meet the curator Alex Newsom.
Nina took us to see the post-Olympic site, Olympic Legacy, her project Abbey Gardens and meet DI alumni Oliver from We Made That at their newly design playground in East London.

My Project -
Games models are becoming more embedded in our everyday lives.
The Quantified Self community monitor and record their behaviours and actions in a bid understand themselves better and improve things such as sleep, eating habits and healthy living, through incentive and reward based behavioural models. As a result some of their decisions and actions are dictated via perceived patterns in the data they collect on themselves to try and reach goals they set. What if people start to analyse their relationships with family, friends and colleagues in a bid to try and understand themselves better or improve / alter / manipulate relationships with others? What effect will this have on physical interactions with others?

More of my Brain

From the MRI scans of my brain.

Where the Internet Lives....

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/10/where-the-internet-lives-the-first-ever-glimpse-inside-googles-data-centers/

Altered States Talk @ Whitechapel Gallery

La Jetee, Chris Marker
Narrator: "She asks him about his necklace. He invents an explanation"

+Alphaville. Set in an everyday City. Modernity is already uncanny. Political Fairytales.
"Ruin in Reverse" - Robert Smithson
Sounds of dying stars recorded by NASA.
Cinema automatically acts as a special effect that can portray science fiction genre. - Goddard
Faith in the future vs. a Grim Future
It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. - Fredrick Jameson
Any ideas of Utopia have been now disbanded.

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/1/product_id/1462

INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD WENTWORTH Benjamin Eastham

http://www.thewhitereview.org/interviews/interview-with-richard-wentworth/

"^QTHE WHITE REVIEW — So you come across things by accident? And then take possession of them?

^ARICHARD WENTWORTH — I need to believe it’s by accident, although what accident is, or whether there really is such a thing, I couldn’t say. I am nosy though."

Universal Everything

http://universaleverything.com/

Human Mammal, Human Hunter

Bart Hess

http://barthess.nl/

Stratos

It was immense.

Cheese

On camera, six actresses each try to hold a smile for as long as they can, up to one and half hours. Each ongoing smile is scrutinized by the computer perception system and whenever the display of happiness falls below a certain threshold, an alarm alerted them to show more sincerity. Empathy is allowed. The performance of sincerity is hard work. Christian Moeller, Los Angeles 2004

We Feel Fine

An exploration of human emotion, in six movements
by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Las Vagas Carpet Collection

Taken during the Design Interactions LA — Vegas trip 2011

Perspectivism

In so far as the word “knowledge” has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings — “Perspectivism.” It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.[1]

---

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche; trans. Walter Kaufmann , The Will to Power, (New York, USA, Random House, 1973), p.267

Perspectivism investigation

My Brain

I've been taking part in some psychology studies for students at UCL and I had an MRI scan of my brain taken.

Visited: Superhuman @ Wellcome Collection

http://www.revitalcohen.com/project/the-immortal/

http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/exhibitions/superhuman.aspx

Erik Nitsche (again)

absolute favourite

Visited: Bruce Lacey Experience @ Camden Arts Centre

Lots of crazy contraptions. 

And dressing up.

I really liked this homemade sunshine recording device.

And the posters.

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2012/08/the-bruce-lacey-experience.php#.UF9poGjGqfQ

http://www.camdenartscentre.org/whats-on/view/exh22.01#12

Vintage Computers