killing anything they can get their jaws on
Posted on September 13th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, nano, biology, science.
This article on the use of swarm-based computational models to solve intractable optimization problems made the ants seem pretty beneign.
Tiny, mannered coprocessors sniffing out trails of synthetic pheromones with precision engineered carbon nanotubes. It’s really very civilized.
Real ant behaviour is generally brutal and efficient. In comparison with their algorythmic progeny, incarnate wetware components of swarm based computational systems have strict caloric parameters.
These are the simple necessities of daily life. Particularly if you are a tropical type ant subject to indignities.
The tiny parasitic fly visible above the leaf is attempting to dart down and lay an egg in the ant’s body. If the fly is successful, the egg hatches into a larva that will consume the ant’s internal organs.
Feynman - physics and the remix
Posted on September 10th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, music, images, web, science.
I don’t know anything about the province of this video other than what it says on the screen but hot damn is it ever the goods.
clean lines
Posted on September 8th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, words, web.
copper by artist Kazu Kibushi is really one of the best quick reads on the net.
It’s sporadically updated and a tiny bit cryptic, also drawn with rare grace. Brilliant.
Venomous fish
Posted on September 4th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, biology.
While the gallery of venomous fish is interesting, the best thing about this article is learning that:
Fish with a biting bite outnumber all other venomous vertebrates combined,
Vistered little wallpapers
Posted on September 1st, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, admin, CreativeCommons, images.
The wordpress theme I’m using [vistered little] is really nice. I’ve created 4 wallpapers for public distribution and use with the theme if anyone is interested.
They won’t tile perfectly, but reasonably well.
Visual Music
Posted on March 24th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, images.
In quick response to the days labour CG dropped news that he and his wife and mom attended the Hirshhorn Visual Music exhibition in DC.
Visual Music traces an alternative history of the abstract art of the past century, featuring artists connected by their explorations of ideas related to synaesthesia—primarily, a unity of the senses and, by extension, a synthesis of the arts. Including painting and photography, light art, cinema and video, as well as installation art and digital media
echoes and momentum… morphogenesis strikes again
-w.
recent snowshoe trek
Posted on March 15th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images.
I have posted some photos from a recent trip snowshoeing around the Grouse Mountain and points beyond in this Flickr set.
-w.
living science fiction
Posted on February 22nd, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, images, quantum.
There’s a computer that works better when it is turned off than turned on.
It’s a quantum computer, which means it can do several things at once, possibly in more than one location.
My favourite bit?
I like it because it so seems like cheating.
Though the bit about the “system of mirrors and optical devices” is very steampunk and cool. I somehow doubt that the scientists involved sported Mohawks and extensive piercings with corsets and tattered petticoats, Victorian suits with goggles and boots with large soles and buckles or straps.
image via.
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Imaginal Expression - bruised and scabbed dancing virtual flesh machine
Posted on February 20th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, images, biology.
The city of Surrey is not built for pedestrians. From the skytrain I walked 2 km along a wide highway bordered by walled suburban enclaves and strip malls to get to the City of Surrey Art Gallery. I was there to see an installation by by Winnipeg based artist Reva Stone.
This video clip of Imaginal Expression doesn’t really do justice to the exhibition. These still images better depict the scale of things.
From the Artist’s Statement:
When the visitor enters the gallery space, a large, constantly moving “soup” of molecular components is seen projected on the wall. Real time animation based on inverse kinematic physics causes this motion to constantly change with no repetition. As the visitor is sensed in the gallery space some of the components begin to coalesce into a complete molecule that follows themovement of the visitor. This response is initiated by a computer visioning system that was developed aspart of the software. In addition to responding to the movement of a viewer, a molecule also has thecapability to exchange its fleshy covering with another molecule when the motion of more than one viewer brings them into .proximity with each other. When a visitor leaves the space, that molecule will degenerate over time. As a result, the visitor participates in a continuous cycle of generation, mutation and dissolution.
Initially I was alone in the large spare white room where the work is installed. The projection encompassed one full wall - images of thickened oblong twisting forms texture mapped with scaned body bits [skin, bruises, etc] writhed among thin red undulating strands. All the shapes tended to cluster loosely around the centre of the display space, occasionally drifting off on some random trajectory, bending and changing shape as they moved.
Maybe it was that I was there alone, but the interactive element seemed lacking. The continual drift of the shapes on the wall was entrancing in its way but lacked order. I tried moving around to coax the display into some sort of reactivity but to no avail.
Still, the scope of the piece was impressive and the continually shifting mass of shapes was hypnotic in its way.
Insect Lab
Posted on February 12th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, biology.
Mike Libby is an artist from the East coast of the USA who makes really fantastically
beautiful insect sculptures.
-w.
Delft writ large
Posted on November 19th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, web.
This enormous photograph of Delft is really worth a look. It’s made up of 2.5 billion pixels.
Click the image, play with zoom.
You can see individual leaves on the trees.
-w.
apostle plant
Posted on June 19th, 2004 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images.
Cal’s Plant of the Week has some good photos.
The apostle plant is beautiful.
-w.