Optimus Keypad: Optimus Pultius is a Leaner, Meaner, 15-key LED Pad

I'm only slightly scared that I'm descending so far into the depths of dorkitude that this actually appeals to me.

Oh well!

Link

Aerican Empire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Check it out.

My favorite micronation replete with smiley-faced warhammer 40k figures!~

Reveille, by A. E. Housman

IV. Reveille
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.

Wake: the vaulted shadow shatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.

Up, lad, up, \'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
\'Who\'ll beyond the hills away?\'

Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.

Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.

Clay lies still, but blood\'s a rover;
Breath\'s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey\'s over
There\'ll be time enough to sleep.

Richard Foreman, Pancake People and the Ontological-Hysterical Theatre

I wanted to link to this great article by the Edge about historical perspectives on information technology.

Especially captivating is Richard Foreman's insightful comments about the vast expanse of information on the internet leading to the creating of "pancake people", those without the traditional depth that he describes as being so prized by Western Society.

Must read/see his latest play The Gods Are Pounding My Head, a.k.a. Lumberjack Messiah

Another interesting diagram depicts an early attempt to schematicize artifical intelligence and the ways that mistakes or error could breed ingenuity. To me this is one of the most interesting quandries of artifical intelligence. How to incorporate the beautiful mistake and the happy accident.

From Edge:
Lewis Fry Richardson's answer to the question of creative thinking by machines is a circuit diagram, drawn in the late 1920s and published in 1930, illustrating a self-excited, non-deterministic circuit with two semi-stable states, captioned "Electrical Model illustrating a Mind having a Will but capable of only Two Ideas."

praxis

I'm having trouble choosing between theoria, poiesis, and praxis.

three types of knowledge: theoretical, to which the end goal was truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action.

unfortunately elite as always.

Tony Kushner

Plays to know:

A Bright Room Called Day (1985)

Angels in America: A Gay Gantasia on National Themese (1991)

Only We Who guard The Mystery Shall Be Unhappy (2003)

Extreme Urbanization

Michael Wolf photograph of Hong Kong

Poets' Corner - Ezra Pound - Selected Works

The Lake Isle

O GOD, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn\'d profession of writing,
where one needs one\'s brains all the time.

Ezra Pound

Second Life Portraits

More bridging of the tangible/virtual worlds takes place with Eva and Franco
Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG.

Among a new generation of artists using second life as a medium this team stand out. They have recreated a number of happenings and famous events of modern art history in the second life environment.

Similar to W Delappe's Ghandi (post below), these artists are using the virtual environment of second life to explore their ideas. Perhaps finally frustrated with the limited environment of the virtual reality the final presentation is to restore the art from the virtual world into a tangible object for display.

These are among a new breed of artists bridging the tangible virtual divide and reexamining the necessity for an object to exist in reality for it to be considered art.

I would be interested to know if the final presentation is considered because of the limitations of working purely in a virtual environment or if they are really trying to reach a broader audience, one who might now be immersed in the second life itself.

Here we see a portrait of an avatar being viewed in a real life gallery space. The scale, lighting, and expression all seem reminiscent of celebrity fashion photography. What does it mean to be a virtual celebrity and what happens when we bifurcate our world into tangible and virtual?

Gandhi: 17' Tall Cardboard Avatar - Instructables - DIY, How To, art, games - The Instructables Book Contest Entry

Latest in Second Life Sculptures

W Delappe is an Art Prof at the University of Nevada - Reno

This is his 17 foot reconstruction of an avatar, MGandhi Chakrabarti which was created to revisit in the virtual reality of second life, Ghandi's salt march.

It took Delappe 26 days to complete the march using a custom rigged treadmill connected to the second life environment.

After completing this virtual salt march Delappe continued to ponder ways to reconstruct the virtual life of his avatar. The result: a 17 foot cardboard cutout that dwarfs its original creator.

This work was in progress at Eyebeam Gallery in New York when I was there in June. Its good to see the final product.

Is this the scale of Second Life!? Reminds me of Paprika a little.

Link to Original Work and instructions on how to create your own

Also, reminds me a little of some portraits of second life avatars done by a virtual photographer. More about this once my webmynd recovers.

Datamancer.net -- Steampunk LCD

wow.
steampunk at its finest.
retrofit oldcore/newcore mashup

flickrfind 2 - out of the blue

flickrfind - zebra wall

Queer Urinal Art in Chelsea Gallery

banapple gas

bibliocafe at UVic. I'm eating an apple raspberry cinammon bun that was bought only because it was the cheapest thing on the menu and it had a lime neon sticker that just so happened to alert me to that fact. Nevermind the fact that I'm stting in a fluorescently lit cafe attached to the main floor lobby of a library within which you can walk around in forever and never feel like you went anywhere. I've already asked the reference librarian for directions to the bathrooms, inter-library loan office, and most essentially the wireless internet.

But what I'm wondering most of all is why are we so infatuated with mashups. What is so desperate about the need to create new out of old. Architecture, design, performance art, it is all about appropriating the old and infusing it with the new.

I've recently read about cities with pronatalist policies, design shifts to anticipate shrinking urban areas in Western Europe with fertility rates approaching what is so aptly named the "lowest-low" fertility rate. In the face of this uncertainty about the future why are we preoccupied with regurgitating the past. Are we bored? Are we such a culture of neophiles? what is this dread of the future leading us to consume the past? Is this simply a mechanism of cultural memory?

Perhaps it is a product of our growing awareness and ability to preserve, replicate, and imagine the past like never before.

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