Firefox 6: Ok, it's still cool.

Sounds Like: the Weather in Nebraska

Nathalie Miebach: sculpture
I was chasing links around some sites of women in technology when I came across this gem: Nathalie Miebach uses weather data to generate musical scores and related sculptures. It's worth a look at her site. The playful colors and dynamic shapes are a new take on a complex data source. When we talk about data visualization the reasoning isn't always accurate and detailed analysis. Sometimes art will bring us a better sense of the gist of a thing, and in the long run, that understanding can promote better 'big picture' decisions.

Nerd Music

I found myself thinking recently about how to integrate science and art. Honestly, I think scientists do it better. Well, put it this way: I can forgive imperfect art better than bad science. If an artist wants to make art about science, they'd better know their stuff. Sloppy, goofy, off the cuff art is merely expressive, and that's an asset in the arts.

Radiohead cover with old hardware

Friday Fun With Hard Drives – Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

There's something very poignant to me about old hardware. Once it was the latest and the greatest, but technology moves so quickly, its all disposable long before it's actually falling apart. Still, it isn't a good idea to get sentimental and keep using an ancient machine as your primary. Better to repurpose your hardware into geeky performance art.

Fantastic Planet

Topless Robot - 7 Essential French Sci-Fi Films
This groovy article in Topless Robot brought up an old favorite. I remember coming across Fantastic Planet in the middle of the night on some odd TV station when I was in high school. The stylish yet clunky animation and ominous tone of the film was compelling. I didn't realize it was French, but I'm not surprised. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth the energy to look it up. The soundtrack is something too. So not Disney.

Xylophone Bicycle Bridge: Designboom Contest Entry

Fantastic Xylophone Bicycle Bridge Plays Music As You Ride | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
Inhabitat posted about this beautiful design for an environmental instrument. As a cyclist rides over the bridge the keys play a tune. The design was an entry in the Designboom's Seoul Cycle Design competition, and the article includes a map with the potential sites in Seoul. I love this not just because I'm a musician and a cyclist, but because it contributes to the sonic landscape in the city.

There's so much noise on the roads here in L.A. During the recent CicLAvia I was struck by the silence of the street full of cyclists. You could hear people talking as they rode along, children laughing, a quiet background of clicks and whirs as chains adjusted and gears shifted. Now and again a bell was rung. The Xylophone Bridge gives the bike and the river a voice to sing together. A crossing is celebrated, and  I think this is art because of the symbolism.

If You Don't Have Time to Knit...

Make: Online : Clock knits, tells time
Make magazine always has cool stuff, but the artist, Siren Elise Wilhelmsen, from Germany has a whole site full of cool. The clock knits a stitch in time (which I suppose saves nine) for a whole year. I love to knit. One of the reasons I find it compelling is the time it takes to make something stitch by stitch. Even though I'm not a slow knitter, the act always seems contempt for the clock. In fact, I often do some knitting just to thumb my nose at a deadline. Currently I'm working on a large shawl, and each long row takes about ten minutes. It's not much time really, but if I make time to work on it, I feel as though I've cheated the rush of modern life.

Kinetic Wall Sculptures

O, I love these things. They are decorative machines. They are witty and wooden. The craft of engineering divorced from function becomes art. In the digital age, I miss the gears showing, and I believe people more regress to magic as the mechanics shrink and hide.

The Lost Thing: I can't wait to see the whole thing.

Shaun Tan is an artist and author who recently made an animated short of his book 'The Lost Thing'. There is a wonderful interview with him online where he talks a bit about his process. He doesn't have children or know many, he says, and so pretty makes what he himself finds interesting. He goes on to discuss the politics of the day while he was writing 'The Lost Thing' and makes a point about bureaucracy and everything in its place. I need to post the trailer for the movie: it's beautiful, but the author is something, and I would recommend his site and the lovely flash site for the film, as well. I was struck by his wisdom: it's funny how we have a space for a certain intelligence in children's literature. It seems that something subtle, but dangerous, in his ideas is safer (though perhaps even more influential) in the context of a child's book.

The Award Winning Hell Creek Mural

See the Big One!
There's a very good article up at Lines and Colors, an art blog I follow, about Paleoart; Paleoart being the depiction of dinosaurs and the like. Link to the big image and check out the detail. Of course, this kind of thing is immensely challenging for the research alone: the foliage is gorgeous, but no doubt, accurate. If you were born before CGI these types of images were what hooked you on dinosaurs. I love the expressions of the reptiles, that's what makes it seem so live.

The Orwell Project: Be Your Own Big Brother

trackingtransience.net
Hasan Elahi reacts to his questioning and detention by the FBI by documenting and posting his every move on the internet. The Daily Beast has an article on the Orwell project as he calls it, and the site is pretty cool as well. The loving photos he takes of his meals speak for themselves, and you can see the 'Kiss my ass' to the FBI as photographs urinals around the globe.

Molecular Gastronomy by the Book

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking
Here we go. Just in time for the holidays, there's a 2400 page set of cookbooks on synthetic paper to cover every aspect of food science. At one time we had a quaint dirty little notebook called 'The Joy of Cooking'. Of course, the recipes kicked ass in that grubby pictureless tome. I'll wait until the library picks this up to pass judgement. Image is important on a plate: I refuse to eat ugly food; but neither will I judge a book by it's cover (even if I love to look at the photos!).

YouTube - Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles

YouTube - Sesame Street: Geometry of Circles
Once I took my mom, a former preschool teacher, to a Hawaiian music festival and a band got up and played the hokey pokey in Hawaiian. After she got up and danced around I asked if she had learned the Hawaiian words for body parts. She said she didn't need to, she already knew the dance. Then, with a scornful look at me lounging in the sun she said, "I'll never be too cool to do the hokey pokey." It probably explains a lot, the fact that my mother was a preschool teacher. I still love the avant-garde aspects of Sesame Street. This video has a soundtrack by Phillip Glass. Is it brainwashing? Is it math? Is it wonderful?

A Fairy Tale Ending, Sort of.

Here's a nice piece of work; not too long, not overworked, and the score is evocative. The sketchy technique keeps it light.

Nobody Here

You can choose your own bug. Chat, play, read poetry. At first, it seems just strange. The interface makes little suggestion.. Heremietkreeft was my favorite at Nobody Here.

Paper Animation

Part of me thought, he's cutting up a book! But it's worth it. Art begets art in this charming video. Check out other work by the artist at this site: 6 Die
I loved the interplay between the paper and the form. Elegant.

Bobby McFerrin Never Gets Old

It's hard to say whether the amazing thing here is the ingenuity of the presentation or the energy of the artist. Bobby McFerrin has had one of the most interesting careers in modern music. He pops up now and then in the strangest places, but I always look forward to what he has to say or sing. Inspiring.

The Joy of Vids on the Net

Here's a vid where the animator by far upstages the musicians. When the manatids hit it, you have to go along. Check out this beautiful collection of animated shorts:
10 surreal animated short films
I found on StumbleUpon. I'm liking that network quite alot, actually. It's like having someone steer my surfing, and I never come up dry.

Spacious Thoughts

I don't do much double posting, but I put this on facebook a few days ago. Tom Waits in a vid that showed up on Boing Boing; mad animation makes a brilliant display, and the tune is over the top. Rap and all, I loved this thing. The project is NASA, North America, South America: a collaboration. The interview with the animators on Boing Boing was a trip too! They used every technique they knew, and learned some new ones in an effort to animate the voice of Tom Waits as a dark cloud, a hollering spere!

Muto, by Blu

I started babbling about this at work: astounding animations painted on public walls like graffiti art. The artist has been traveling all over the world working on his projects. There's a groovy portfolio and flash site at his link.