digitaldeities

paint in water

Mark Mawson from Sydney captures these beautiful shots by dropping paint in water. The colors and the lighting are simply amazing! Author said that in these color shapes everyone sees what they want to see.

dragon's blood tree

On my Hampton Jitney bus ride conversation yesterday, I learned of these fabulous succulent trees that are related to the agave plants.... wild looking. I was describing my love for agaves and my conversationalist friend mention these Dragon's Blood trees.  I had never heard of them before.  They are amazing looking.

original image here

original image here

original image here

original image here

The Dragon Tree is related to Agave and Yucca and makes a spectacular accent plant that blends well in either tropical or arid gardens.

The Dragon Tree is a rare subtropical tree that is endemic to Canary Islands, Madeira & Cape Verde, where only a few specimens can be found growing naturally on the islands of Tenerife and La Palma, in dry bush at the low elevations of the islands' rocky mountain ranges. Many ancient examples are 20 to 30 feet tall and believed to be up to a thousand years old.

Also known, as the Dragon's Blood Tree because when the trunk or branch is cut or scarred it produces red sap that resembles blood. The processed "Dragon's Blood" was believed to harness mystical powers and was used in the mummification process and other rituals. Because of its various medicinal and magical properties, it was sought by various cultures around the Mediterranean, Europe, and Africa. Today the Dragon's Blood is still in use to produce a hard, shiny furniture polish.

Dragon trees

• Dracaena americana - Central America Dragon Tree
• Dracaena arborea - Tree Dracaena
• Dracaena cinnabari - Socotra Dragon Tree
• Dracaena draco - Canary Islands Dragon Tree
• Dracaena ombet - Gabal Elba Dragon Tree

 

mine-sniffing plant (inspiration)

I would like to sketch and make some graphics about this idea of BioSensor plants that change color when they grow over buried land mines.

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Aresa – changing the strategic focus to investments in and development of mine-affected land - still with a humanitarian scope - read the press release

Aresa has been working within plant biotechnology. The company was founded in 2001 by Carsten Meier, who is presently the Chief Scientific Officer. Aresa has its scientific outset from the Institute of Molecular Biology and Physiology, Copenhagen University, that has supported the company since its foundation with consulting, facilities and scientific staff.

By February 2006, Aresa was listed on the First North listing of the Copenhagen Stock Exchange (currently Nasdaq/OMX-group).

Aresa A/S is situated in Symbion Science Park in Copenhagen. This Science Park houses approx. 100 small companies primarily within Biotechnology and IT.

As of January 2008, Aresa has 11 employees.

Aresa has been working on the BioSensor patent protected technology
Since its establishment Aresa has developed plant based technology platforms, and in 2002 we filed two international patent applications. 

The use of the the Company’s BioSensor technology, in the shape of the product candidates RedDetect, RedDetect UXO and RedScreen have been selected to be among the most innovative ideas in the World in 2004, by the New York Times. In 2005, the Company’s Chief Scientific Officer, Carsten Meier was awarded the Annual Innovation Price of the Carl Bro Group (Danish Consultancy Firm) for the efforts in developing the Company’s technology.
For a description af the Mine Action Plant and the technology behind it, please see the Landmine Plant section.

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the first article about this subject found here

XM Satellite Radio: 4/30/06
The Osgood File (CBS Radio Network)

Scientists are engineering plants to change color when they grow over buried land mines.

Left-behind landmines kill or injure about 10,000 people per year world wide, according to U.S. State Department estimates. Landmines also keep people from using large expanses of arable land. The United Nations estimates that nations spend $200 - $300 million each year on de-mining efforts. Getting rid of the mines is dangerous work; some crews probe the ground with sticks or rely on metal detectors or dogs to find the buried mines. A Danish biotech company may have a better solution: a plant that changes color when it grows over buried mines.

The plant in question is a small weed called Arabidopsis thaliana or thale cress. One of the most-studied plants on Earth, it is a member of the mustard family and grows wild everywhere in the world except the poles. It's an annual plant and a thale cress seed can sprout and grow into a mature plant in just six weeks. In some regions, there can be two or three generations in a single summer. In nature the green leaves turn red in autumn, or when the plant is subjected to stress such as cold or drought.

Danish biologists Carsten Meier and Simon Østergaard, co-founders of Aresa Biodetection in Copenhagen, are re-engineering thale cress to turn red when exposed to the presence of a land-mine in the soil. Researchers chose natural mutants of the plant that do not turn red in response to these natural stimuli and then re-engineered the mutant's genetic make-up so that it turns red only when the roots come in contact with NO2 (nitrous oxide)—a compound that leaks out of buried land mines.

So far, the team reports they have produced a plant that changes color in greenhouse lab experiments where NO2 is applied to the soil in solution. Aresa says this may be too general a signal (NO2 is often naturally present in the soil), which means there might be the risk of false positives, so they are working to make it more selective in its responses. The next step will be more realistic field trials with actual land mines (mines that lack detonators, however). In actual de-mining applications, researchers anticipate that seeds could be sown over a suspected minefield from an airplane, or spread with a handheld seed sprayer as workers walk along in de-mined corridors

Sean Burke, Program Manager at the U.S. Humanitarian Demining Research and Development Program, says the challenge is how high the stakes are. You have to have a hundred percent detection with the lowest possible false alarms. He says if you miss one mine that could be somebody's life.

Some scientists are also concerned that bioengineered plants could "escape" into the wild and confer undesirable traits on wild plants. In response Aresa has taken these concerns into consideration and has manipulated their plants so they can't sprout unless a growth factor has been applied to the seeds. In addition, they have created plants can’t set seeds unless supplied with another growth hormone. In addition, this plant naturally is a self-pollinator, so it doesn't cross-pollinate with plants growing wild nearby.

from - ecoutuerre.com - fascinating

 ecouterre.com

 Roadkill on Your Noggin? Hair-Raising Taxidermy Accessories

IMAGE: RP/Encore taxidermy accessories

Stay Chic + Safe With LFLECT’s Reflective Eco-Accessories for the Urban Cyclist

LFLECT, a range of high-visibility knit accessories by Lost Values that look like regular garb by day but become illuminated at night—without the use of batteries or complicated circuitry.

Carmel Walsh’s Nature-Inspired Shoes

Photo by Fernando Biagioni

Part footwear, part foliage, Carmel Walsh’s botanical-infused shoes were made for walking…and talking about. The Tuscany-based designer enlisted the help of a local wood restorer to carve the walnut mid-heel soles, which she then plied with a population of succulent-sprouting “barnacles” made from vegetable-tanned leather, organic cotton, linen, hemp, and cork.

Inspired by mountaintop terrace farming, coral reefs, and the colors of “decay and erosion of the earth,” Walsh sought to create a low-impact shoe with an afterlife beyond the landfill. “What is born from nature returns to it in the end,” she tells Yatzer. “It is my hope that in their second life they will decay and grow as an art piece.

 

golden ratio (up and coming fibonacci scissor series)

My goal this next few weeks is to draw a diagram in 3D (in solidWorks) of a sculpture I will build out of scissors ...  purposefully, this next concept needs to be at a level of complexity that is beyond the scope, time and measurement of my pen and paper skills.  Drawing a logarithmic spiral that has 55 clockwise spirals overlaed on top of either 34 or 89 counterclockwise spirals will give me a GOLDEN SPIRAL OF SCISSORS.  This I will build out of my confiscated recycled airport scissors.  I will use computer aided design and technology to envision and enable me to build quickly what would have previously taken months and months to calculate and create.

example of fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 601

1 + 1 =2,  2 + 1 =3, 2 + 3 =5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 =13, 8 + 13 =21, 13 + 21 =34, 21 + 34 =55, 34 + 55 =89

Here are some of the many patterns of the golden spiral that are all around us... macrocosm to microcosm.

inside of the ear 

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page954.html

The Fibonacci numbers are Nature's numbering system. They appear everywhere in Nature, from the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, or the scales of a pineapple. The Fibonacci numbers are therefore applicable to the growth of every living thing, including a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even all of mankind.

Stan Grist
 http://www.stangrist.com/fibonacci.htm (E)

The sequence, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers is known as the Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, ...  (each number is the sum of the previous two).

The ratio of successive pairs tends to the so-called golden section  (GS) - 1.618033989 . . . . . whose reciprocal is 0.618033989 . . . . . so that we have 1/GS = 1 + GS.

The Fibonacci sequence, generated by the rule f1 = f2 = 1 , fn+1 = fn + fn-1, is well known in many different areas of mathematics and science.   However, it is quite amazing that the Fibonacci number patterns occur so frequently in nature ( flowers, shells, plants, leaves, to name a few) that this phenomenon appears to be one of the principal "laws of nature".

text above from: http://www.world-mysteries.com/sci_17.htm

Planetary Mandalas

I found this man's idea and work tonight.  It is old school from 1990 .. a little pixelated... but a very cool idea. I especially like this one below. 

Planetary Mandalas

Mark Pottenger

Inspired by Neil F. Michelsen’s book which came out in the summer of 1990 (Tables of Planetary Phenomena from ACS Publications in San Diego, CA), I moved the idea of creating planetary mandalas forward from the back burner. I actually started writing a planetary mandala program the evening of November 6, 1990. I have spent (and am still spending) quite a bit of time adding options and playing with it since. Below is a sample, and more will be elsewhere in The Mutable Dilemma and in Asteroid-World.

Planetary mandalas are a way of enjoying patterns. The technique I have used most draws straight lines between the positions on a solar system map of a pair of planets on a series of evenly spaced dates. Think of it as the diagram someone would produce by setting a timer and drawing a line between the current map placements of two planets whenever the timer goes off. The diagrams use standard (heliocentric) astronomical coordinates in the plane of the ecliptic. From this simple principle, a large variety of striking mandalas appear. The mandalas depend on the pair of planets chosen, the time between measurements, and the number of measurements. The time between the first measurement and the last can be anywhere from a few days to several millennia. (When the mandala incorporates millennia of motion, precession is a significant factor.) The basic motions being shown are circular or elliptical. The circles or ellipses or partial arcs of the two planets’ orbits can usually be seen, but sometimes they are not both obvious and sometimes other circles are more visible. Many mandalas include star patterns with varying numbers of points, and several sorts of heart shapes also show up. Some mandalas are quite simple and straightforward, but many contain enough ambiguity or complexity to allow viewers freedom to interpret them like Rorschach inkblots. Others can contain interesting features in both figure (lines) and ground (spaces).

Beyond their visual appeal, I think properly chosen sets of mandalas can also be used as teaching tools to help illustrate points about planetary motion. Concepts like sidereal period (time to orbit around the sun), synodic period (time for two planets to return to a particular phase angle), the mutuality of retrogrades, the difference between heliocentric and geocentric returns, precession (movement of the coordinate system against a fixed backdrop) and more can all be illustrated.

http://www.ccrsdodona.org/m_dilemma/1990/sag/mandalas.html

.guest3 .guest4 .guest5 .guest6 .guest7

Number3 and final post about the different guest lecturers that Zach Lieberman brought into our Algorithmic Animation course- aka: makingthingsmove.org/blog this last semester at Parsons.  An amazing and inspiring selection of his friends and colleagues.  Zach was a fellow at EYEBEAM this last year and a creator of OF openFrameworks and regularly travels the world sharing his coding and artistic skills with the world.  He is an excellent teacher and mentor... and his guests re-inspired me each week.   awesome awesome awesome.

joel gathein lewis .guest3

www.joelgethinlewis.com

daito manabe .guest4

www.daito.ws
face sensors
I posted all his way cool videos earlier.. I couldn't wait until now. I was too excited about them.  search for daito in my search box.. you will find them all.. okay here are two other ones of daito's ..one that I did not post before and one that I did... he is worth sharing again.  he is even my facebook friend!

I used electric stimulus generators and myoelectric sensors. I tried to control my friends' face by using my face. I need more practice ,devices and time..

新しい楽器みたいなものだと思って下さい。 Experiment with myoelectric sensor.

theo watson & emily gobeille .guest5
funky forest 2007

Working together with the amazing Emily Gobeille, we created the interactive installation, 'Funky Forest' which premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands. 'Funky Forest' is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it. Made with openFrameworks.

videos and info here http://muonics.net

don paluska .guest6
absolut quartet

ABSOLUT QUARTET  (2008)
Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska
Part of the Absolut Machines campaign.

 As seen in the beginning of the video, the visitor enters a melody on their computer keyboard. The machine then uses this melody to generate an original and unique 2 1/2 minute piece of music.
Find more information at http://bea.st/sight/absolutQuartet

You will see this melody played by three instruments. The main instrument is a ballistic marimba, which launches rubber balls roughly 2m into the air, precisely aimed to bounce off of 42 chromatic wooden keys. The second instrument is an array of 35 custom-tuned wine glasses, played by robotic fingers. Finally, an array of 9 ethnic percussion instruments rounds out the ensemble.

Jeff's Site: http://bea.st .
Dan's Site: http://plainfront.com

 Fotron2000, A robotic sketch artist/photobooth [Fototron2000]
www.fotron2000.com
The Fotron2000 is currently installed at Christopher Henry Gallery in New York City.
127 Elizabeth St (Soho/Nolita)
11-6pm, Wednesday - Sunday.

from the fotron website:
ABOUT: The Fotron2000 is tomorrow's answer to today's mall photo booth. At its heart is a robotic sketch artist whose medium is LED light and whose canvas is long exposed Polaroid film. The robot draws quickly, rendering a line drawing of its subject which he or she gets to keep. This work was inspired by the classic time-lapse nighttime highway photography, the Photoshop "glowing edges" filter, and "drawing" with sparklers. The piece is a simple exploration of the ability of a robot and a computer to automate the creation of art. We are interested in the ability to provide visitors with a permanent record of their experience and engage robotic technology in an impractical way. The robot provides us with precision capabilities beyond our own, allowing us to create in ways not possible without technological assistance.

he also recommended us all to go see arthur gansen's sculptures exhibited at MIT museum

amrit pitaru .guest7

he created a digital drawing tool/musical instrument that is beyond an easy description.  this video might tell more.. but not much.  he was a very inspiring guy.  I will take a class him and zach lieberman will co-teach this spring about audio-visual systems.

Scissors Spider

on another google search for confiscated scissors.. I came up with this unexpected find...

Christopher Locke has made spider-sculptures out of scissors. Those scissors are bought from the TSA auctions, the confiscated scissors. The big spider is made from barber scissors and the smaller ones are from cuticle scissors. More pictures after the jump.

[via Boing Boing]

Cutevertisements .guest2

Number2 in a series of posts about the different guest lecturers that Zach Lieberman brought into our Algorithmic Animation course- aka: makingthingsmove.org/blog this last semester at Parsons.  An amazing and inspiring selection of his friends and colleagues.  Zach was a fellow at EYEBEAM this last year and a creator of OF openFrameworks and regularly travels the world sharing his coding and artistic skills with the world.  He is an excellent teacher and mentor.

The second guest lecturer was Jeremy Rotsztain.  He spoke about his projects Cutevertisements and his thesis project of computational paintings.  His website is www.mantissa.ca and lists all of his projects over the years at the ITP program at NYU.  The first image below is a cuteoverlaod puppy manipulated with OF (openFrameworks) and then printed out.

Obsesions (Flickr Pets) (2008)

Brief: A series of vector-graphic images generated from pet photographs found on Flickr.

Keywords: Cuteness, obsession, pets, vector graphics, gesture, form, vector fields, prints.

Media: Flickr Set

Description: These painterly images document the love and obsession that people express for their pets ... in the form photographs uploaded to the Flickr website. For this project, I collected pictures of dogs, cats, puppies (clearly, a different species than dogs), kittens, hamsters, and bunnies on Flickr.com and generated new images based on the features and colors of the originals. These high resolution images, which share a likeness to Gustav Klimt's work, are still images taken from animations that were made in C++ using the openFrameworks library.

Americana and Technology (2008)

Brief: Computational paintings of the American landscape before and after technology.

Keywords: Landscape, computational painting, science fiction, Hudson River School, Blade Runner, "The Oxbow", "Los Angeles, 2019", Thomas Cole, sublime.

Media: Flickr Set (research and work in progress)

Media: Thesis Paper (PDF)

Description: Americana and Technology is a media installation that contrasts two popular depictions of the American landscape - in the 19th century Hudson River School painting movement and in contemporary science fiction cinema - to examine the stories that influence our beliefs about technology's effect on society.

The installation is composed of two large-scale prints (approximately 60" x 40") and two small computer screens. The prints are computational paintings - computer-generated compositions - that show the American landscape before and after technology. On the screens, a customized software program demonstrates the composition process - sampling textures from digital reproductions of Hudson River School paintings and still frames from science fiction films - slowly constructing the two printed landscapes and revealing the visual language and symbolism of these popular forms in the process.

milk scanner .guest1

Now that I am on break (kind of) I have a tiny bit more time to make some interesting posts.  The expansion and amount of information that has been poured into me from graduate school is astounding!!  It has fully changed my life and it will take the next few years to full absorb, integrate and regurgitate all the ideas and creative juice that I have been given.. and paid well for!!

I am going to make a series of posts about the different guest lecturers that Zach Lieberman brought into our Algorithmic Animation course- aka: makingthingsmove.org/blog this last semester at Parsons.  An amazing and inspiring selection of his friends and colleagues.  Zach was a fellow at EYEBEAM this last year and a creator of OF openFrameworks and regularly travels the world sharing his coding and artistic skills with the world.  He is an excellent teacher and mentor.

The first week guest lecturer was Friedrich Kirschner .. this is what the eyebeam website says about him:

Friedrich joins Eyebeam as a fellow in the Production Lab. He is also a filmmaker, visual artist and board member of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences, and re-purposes computer games to create animated narratives and interactive performances. Friedrich’s work has been shown and performed at various international animation festivals and it occasionally spreads into the physical realm as well, where he investigates the impact of milk and other liquids on computer graphics.

http://www.zeitbrand.de

What inspired me most was his MILK SCANNER idea:

The Milkscanner is an easy way to scan 3D Objects using household devices like Milk, a tupperware bowl and some LEGO.  For more information on how to build one yourself, please visit the Milkscanner instructable!

Freidrich mentioned that he is not a great illustrator and needed a way to create digital 3D objects and so he took a long walk and came up with the idea of the MILK SCANNER.. quite brilliant.  The video shows the basics below. 

Friedrich also has created a tool that is a bit over my head.. but very interesting non-the-less.

The other project he presented is a drawing tool that gamers can use to create their own 3D characters and scenes in UNREAL:

Moviesandbox

Moviesandbox is a graphical filmmaking tool in progress for the Unreal Tournament engine. It allows you to easily create your own characters, sets and poses and direct them in the way you imagine.
Please visit the Moviesandbox webpage for more information, downloads, news, video tutorials and the development wiki!

Moviesandbox is an Open-Source graphical filmmaking tool in progress, formerly developed for the Unreal Tournament engine and now based on C++ and OpenGL.

It allows you to easily create your own characters, sets and poses and direct them in the way you imagine. It is also an open project, which means that all the code and tools are free and open for people to change or add to, and, where possible, licensed under the lesser GPL. Development started in early 2006.

new DOMAINS DIAGRAM

click on diagram to see it larger

Seyed Alavi makes very cool airport carpet

 Satellite Image on Carpet

 

Aptly named “The Flying Carpet”, this installation by Seyed Alavi takes satellite images of San Francisco and places them on a nylon carpet at the local airport.

Link to artist website  +  quote from website below:

A Site Specific Public Art Project for the Sacramento International Airport

This project consists of an aerial view of the Sacramento River that is woven into a carpet for the floor of a pedestrian bridge connecting the terminal to the parking garage. This image represents approximately 50 miles of the Sacramento River starting just outside of Colusa, California and ending about 6 miles south of Chico.

In addition to recalling the experience of flight and flying, this piece, by depicting the larger geographical area, also helps to reinforce a sense of belonging and/or connection for the traveler. In this way, the carpet can also be read and experienced as a “welcome mat” for visitors arriving in Sacramento. The siting of this piece on a bridge also helps to highlight a few other conceptual aspects of the work. A bridge is a connection between two destinations; it is not a destination in and of itself; it is neither here, nor there. In this way it is similar to an airplane, or a river connecting one place to another; here to there; a moment of flight frozen in mid air; a flowing river that takes us along with its current to another destination. In this way, the piece also creates a koanic relationship between a river and a bridge, since their ordinary position have been turned around, and it is now the river that is on/above the bridge.

By working with carpeting in this context, I have been able to transform something quite ordinary into an extra-ordinary aesthetic experience. This apparently simple gesture, integrates multiple layers of harmonious meanings and references, in order to stimulate a conceptual dialog. Ultimately, however it was my intention with this project to present a fun and humorous situation for laughter and play, where travelers will feel rejuvenated and reminded of the magic of flight.

 

With Special Thanks to Charles Nelson-Cal State Chico and Ulster Carpet

NANOMANDALA

I found this project today by clicking on some links from an email earlier today for Victoria Vesna, a candidate for Dean of the Art, Media and Technology School, who will be giving a presentation tomorrow in Wollman Hall - here at the New School.  I will try to go hear her speak tomorrow morning.  Friday, November 7, 10:00am  Wollman Hall, 65 W 11th St., 5th fl  Her projects looked interesting and so I went to her website http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/projects/current.php  and clicking on the link for Nanomandala, Fluid Bodies, Zero@wavefunction, Quantum tunnel at the Singapore Science Museum
THE NANOMANDLA HAS ITS OWN WEBSITE and caught my eye, of course.   http://nano.arts.ucla.edu/mandala/

It basically recorded the creation of a sand painting by Tibetan Monks and then a team of scientists recorded the magnification of the sand mandalas to tremendous proportions and then the exhibit projected the images of the tibetan mandala regular size and then close up and then regular size ..back and forth.. better description here:

The Nanomandala is an installation by media artist Victoria Vesna, in collaboration with nanoscience pioneer James Gimzewski.

The installation consists of a video projected onto a disk of sand, 8 feet in diameter. Visitors can touch the sand as images are projected in evolving scale from the molecular structure of a single grain of sand - achieved my means of a scanning electron microscope (SEM)- to the recognizable image of the complete mandala, and then back again.

This coming together of art, science and technology is a modern interpretation of an ancient tradition that consecrates the planet and its inhabitants to bring about purification and healing. The sand mandala of Chakrasamvara seen in this installation was created by Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Gaden Lhopa Khangtsen Monastery in India, in conjunction with the "Circle of Bliss" exhibition on Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhist Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This particular sand mandala had never before been made in the United States.

On a eight-foot diameter table covered with white sand, a sequence of a sand mandala created by Tibetan monks and imaged in the nanotech laboratory with an optical microscope and a scanning electron microscope (beyond the visual realm) is projected. These views vary in smoothly in scale, moving from actual size to microscopic views of the surface of a single grain of sand. An entire sequence lasts about fifteen minutes, which is looped to make a continuously changing piece. The ambient sound is made of the audio of monks creating the mandala and chanting mixed with sounds of ocean waves. A live overhead view of this mandala is sent to a monitor or projector at another location, to be decided depending on location.

NANOMANDALA:

The purposeful arrangement of individual atoms bears some resemblance to the methods monks use to laboriously create sand images particle by particle, however, Eastern and Western cultures use these bottom-up building practices with very different perceptions and purposes. This installation incorporates a mandala (a cosmic diagram and ritualistic symbol of the universe, used in Hinduism and Buddhism, which can be translated from Sanskrit as "whole", "circle" or "zero") in conjunction with LACMA East's "Circle of Bliss" exhibition on Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhist Art. Visitors watch as images of a grain of sand are projected in evolving scale from the molecular structure of a single grain to the recognizable image of a pile of sand. On the atomic scale the sand particles are like atoms, but a thousand of times smaller. From a bottom-up method of visual image building, a sand mandala slowly emerges.

After the 8ft sand mandala was completed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, one of the monks, Geshe Jengchub Sangye, went to Gimzewski�s Pico Lab at UCLA to recreate the center of the Chakrasamvara sand mandala. When he first arrived to the lab, the researchers told the monk who was going to do the work that the microscope was upstairs, in another space. He responded that he wanted to create it right there in the lab and they assured him that they are used to working with very delicate materials, much more so than sand. But, he insisted that this be created in the space where they do their research and so they moved the microscope to the monk.

The creation of the nanomandala at the microscopic level begins with a transition from the end of magnification obtainable with the digital camera to that of the optical microscope. Samples of the sand that the monks used were saved and mounted on an electrically conductive paste and mounted in a high quality scanning electron microscope where they were imaged and digitally recorded at resolutions that overlapped with those of the optical microscope.

Whereas the optical images haves color, scanning electron microscopes (SEM) use image contrast based on the reflection of electrons and have no color so it was necessary  to create a transition. Creating an even transition between images of two sets of sand grains in the SEM and optical images sets was quite a challenge. On the technical front, the scientists had to solve the issues with the lack of electrical conductivity of the sand without coating it with metal. The SEM was used to create images that looked like the optical ones in terms of grain size and morphology by looking at the different areas of the sample. The images were then recorded at different levels of magnification right up to the resolution limits of the SEM and beyond. The final images where wave patterns appear are on the nanometer scale.

TECHNICAL AND CONSTRUCTION SPECIFICATIONS:

even MORE rafael lozano-hemmer

I will go see this interactive art piece this weekend with my new art friend John Mclord.  This picture below is AWESOME.  I love that 200 pulses are taken from peoples finger tips and reflected in the yep -PuLsInG- lights.

As part of the Mad. Sq. Art program, on October 24 visitors to Madison Square Park in Manhattan will have the opportunity to see their heartbeats brought to life in Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Park light installation. The interactive event will be on view from sundown until 10pm everyday from October 24 until Nov 17. The large, park-wide installation will use the vital signs of passers-by, measured by two heart rate sensing sculptures installed at the North and South ends of the Oval Lawn. A ‘pulsating matrix’ made up of 200 spotlights will blink to reflect the biometric rhythms gathered by the sculptures.
http://www.psfk.com/2008/10/event-pulse-park-in-madison-square-park-nyc.html

Another posting says this:

When you walk up to Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s installation Pulse Park, you register at a kiosk—but instead of giving your name, you record your heartbeat. Two hundred individuals’ pulses then become 200 beams of light, forming a blinking, flashing scrim that parkgoers can walk through. Lozano-Hemmer (a Mexican-Canadian who has built such works before, notably Puebla, Mexico’s Pulse Room and Toronto’s Pulse Front) notes his mega-EEG is not to be used in the event of a cheese-fries-related infarction at the Shake Shack. “It’s meant to bring everyone together, to allow people to express some sort of agency in a public space. It’s by no means medical.” — Miranda Siegel
http://nymag.com/listings/art/pulse-park/

MIDTERM - PPT PRESENTATION in full glory