So today I learned there was someone, Steve Mann, who walked around in the 90s livestreaming their life wearing gear like this
The streams (of photos) looked like this
God I need a throwback found footage film from a POV like this so bad
The whole 90s lineup of the MIT Wearable Computing Project
Buckaroo Banzai vibes
I've been thinking about how the longer I go from spending time on social media, the more wide open my media diet is becoming.
A review of HG Wells’ most important work, Little Wars. The book that changed the way table top war games were played and paved the way for the development of role-playing and modern war games.
April 20, 2024 | Permanently Moved 🔊 | Review 📃
ambient.garden is an experiment that started with the question: can a composition be organized in space rather than time? Can it be experienced in space by the listener?
TBH this composition is organised by place rather than space. But it doesn't diminish how good it is!
"A Ceasefire isn't enough, I need to witness the collapse of American Imperialism"
Poster spotted in Ottawa, Ontario
What the fuck
This is absolutely fascinating. I've now been looking at Alex Colville's paintings and trying to work out what it is about them that makes them look like CGI and how/why he did that in a world where CGI didn't exist yet. Here's what I've got so far:
- Total lack of atmospheric perspective (things don't fade into the distance)
- Very realistic shading but no or only very faint shadows cast by ambient light.
- Limited interaction between objects and environment (shadows, ripples etc)
- Flat textures and consistent lighting used for backgrounds that would usually show a lot of variation in lighting, colour and texture
- Bodies apparently modelled piece by piece rather than drawn from life, and in a very stiff way so that the bodies show the pose but don't communicate the body language that would usually go with it. They look like dolls.
- Odd composition that cuts off parts that would usually be considered important (like the person's head in the snowy driving scene)
- Very precise drawing of structures and perspective combined with all the simplistic elements I've already listed. In other words, details in the "wrong" places.
What's fascinating about this is that in early or bad CGI, these things come from the fact that the machine is modelling very precisely the shapes and perspectives and colours, but missing out on some parts that are difficult to render (shadows, atmospheric perspective) and being completely unable to pose bodies in such a way as to convey emotion or body language.
But Colville wasn't a computer, so he did these same things *on purpose*. For some reason he was *aiming* for that precise-but-all-wrong look. I mean, mission accomplished! The question in my mind is, did he do this because he was trying to make the pictures unsettling and alienating, or because in some way, this was how he actually saw the world?
omf i never thought i'd find posts about alex colville on tumblr, but! he's a local artist where i'm from & i work at a library/archives and have processed a lot of documents related to his art. just wanted to give my two cents!
my impression is that colville did see the world as an unsettling place and a lot of his work was fueled by this general ~malaise?? but in a lot of cases, he was trying to express particular fears or traumas. for instance, this painting (horse and train) was apparently inspired by a really tragic experience his wife had:
iirc she was in a horrible automobile crash, as the car she was in collided with a train. i find it genuinely horrifying to look at, knowing the context, but a lot of colville's work is like that? idk he just seems to capture the feeling you get in nightmares where everything is treacle-ish and slow and inevitable.
Consumer Electronics Show brochure (1990)
(via Facebook)
😍
The other week in my review of Day One app I said that I was a bit of an Automattic fan boy. This week I’m going to row that back.
Some super great advice in this for people who are thinking about starting a blog and thinking in public on the internet
One way that I solved these doubts was by having a “thesis,” a sort of guiding question in my writing that I point to whenever I wonder why I’m doing what I do.
Like the Metaverse, history is repeating itself with zero contact with the last time a lot of smart people had conversations about AI Agents. AI 🤖 | Permanently Moved 🔊
I've said this before and I'll say it again: it's more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It's performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.
