Posts in Uncategorized
Theo Jansen - kinetic sculptor

That heart (previous post) reminds me of Theo Jansen. I first saw him on YouTube a while ago and have been obsessed ever since. He's quite simply the most amazing artist, engaging on every level. This film is a lecture he gave to TED in March 2007. Wish I'd been there, I'd love to see one of his machines working in real life - best of all, they're all about mechanics, not computer chips.

Here's his bio from the TED website:
Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who builds walking kinetic sculptures that he calls a new form of life. His "Strandbeests" walk the coastline of Holland, feeding on wind and fleeing from water.

Why you should listen to him:

Dutch artist Theo Jansen has been working for 16 years to create sculptures that move on their own in eerily lifelike ways. Each generation of his "Strandbeests" is subject to the forces of evolution, with successful forms moving forward into new designs. Jansen's vision and long-term commitment to his wooden menagerie is as fascinating to observe as the beasts themselves.

His newest creatures walk without assistance on the beaches of Holland, powered by wind, captured by gossamer wings that flap and pump air into old lemonade bottles that in turn power the creatures' many plastic spindly legs. The walking sculptures look alive as they move, each leg articulating in such a way that the body is steady and level. They even incorporate primitive logic gates that are used to reverse the machine’s direction if it senses dangerous water or loose sand where it might get stuck.

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Jansen's website is well worth a visit. There are other videos and images on it that do a far better job than I could do at explaining the movement of his machines. I have a feeling he has done some sound sculptures in Lancashire too...

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Ads from comic books

I AM CHARLES ATLAS!
From Boingboing: Here's a gallery of great old ads from comic books. The companies that advertised their shoddy, misrepresented products to gullible children should be commended for teaching the youth of America that there were people out there ready to lie to them in order to get their hard earned, paper route dollars.

The new "Testimonials" section containing "stories of sadness sung by the stung" looks promising. Here's one:

A neighbor and I sent away for the "Monster Ghost".
"Make him obey your commands even when you are secretly hiding as far as 100 feet away"

"A real terror, giant sized---" which, when it arrived, turned out to be...

A white balloon
A white garbage bag
Two glow in the dark circles
A string.

SUPERMARKETING: ADS FROM THE COMIC BOOKS

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Dad's biog

He's the coolest person I know. I googled my Dad and found this:

John Dyson is a "sea-journeyman" writer whose books and articles have covered a wide range of subjects. Mostly they concern adventure under sail, history, science, technology and lifestyle.

Sailing the high seas and roving the world on assignment, John has made remarkable voyages and journeys. He roamed much of the Pacific in South-Sea trading ketches and cockroach-infested copra cutters. His breadth of experience in both the polar regions is probably unrivalled in journalism. He worked in a British trawler fishing Arctic waters in winter and has voyaged in icebreakers, square-riggers, liners, tramps, tankers and warships. He has a coastal yacht-master's ticket, served as mate (ie, chief officer) in a British sail-training ketch, and now sails his own little ketch in English waters, often single-handed.

As one of Reader's Digest's top investigative writers, John has covered a wide variety of topical stories from genetic engineering and the drug-resistant Tb boiled out of Russian jails to the need for DDT to fight malaria and Uganda's dramatically successful stand against HIV/Aids. His documentary books and sea-adventure novels have been widely reviewed. One book, acclaimed by The New York Times, was an account of the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand. His last two books about Columbus have together sold more than half a million copies in sixteen countries. His NBC Special, Treasure at the South Pole, won an award for best TV documentary on the environment.

John Dyson is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society in London. He has lectured to that Society and also to the Explorers' Club in New York and to a number of U.S. corporations. He and his wife Kate, who runs a successful antique shop in London, have four children aged between 32 and 22. They live in a large old house on the banks of the River Thames. It was once owned by a French spy who, in 1805, was assassinated on the stairs by an agent of Napoleon Bonaparte.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Facial Fuzz

Ooh I'm in this too. Hilarious. I'd forgotten about it but then looking for the NHS bit (below) I remembered Jonathan interviewing me for this:

Lewis is in it too, about 4.26 in. His beard is beautiful.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Classic Instruction Manuals

When we first started Rubbish I always wanted to have a gents' section in it that would have real Boys Own stuff. Cutaway diagrams, maps, all that. There's an inimitable style to informative and instructional design, and... ah, it's all too easy to pontificate on it. Suffice to say, I love it. Here's a photo essay from Wired US.

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Big Rig Election

Touchscreen voting machines at the center of recent vote-flipping reports can be easily and maliciously recalibrated in the field to favor one candidate in a race, according to a report prepared by computer scientists for the state of Ohio.

Peb_emulation_on_ess_machine At issue are touchscreen machines manufactured by ES&S, 97,000 of which are in use in 20 states, including counties in the crucial swing states of Ohio and Colorado. The process for calibrating the touchscreens allows poll workers or someone else to manipulate specific regions of the screen, so that a touch in one region is registered in another. Someone attempting to rig an election could thus arrange for votes for one candidate to be mapped to the opponent... (continued here, on Wired.com)

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
The Godfather of Bangalore
Interesting article from Wired:

It's a little past midnight, and a lonely parcel of farmland not far from the new international airport in Bangalore, India, is soaking up a gentle rain. At the center of the lot is a house surrounded by a low stone wall. There's a hole in the roof and a bushel of ginger drying under an awning. Large block letters painted on the wall read: this property belongs to chhabria janwani. Inside, eight men—two armed with shotguns—confer in hushed voices as they peer out the windows. Is it safe for them to go to sleep, or should they stand watch another few hours? A guard wearing a dirty work shirt is the first to notice signs of trouble. In the distance, flashlight beams sweep the roadway. The lights advance, accompanied by a chorus of voices. Then the sound of people scrambling over the wall. One of the guards makes a break for the gate, sprinting toward a police station a mile away. Before the others can do much more than scramble to their feet, 20 attackers brandishing swords and knives emerge from the shadows. Some carry buckets of blue paint. It takes them only a minute to overrun the building. Three guards who stood their ground lie bleeding on the floor. The others surrender.

Firmly in control, the marauders shift gears. They pull out rollers and slather paint over Chhabria Janwani's claim to the land. By the time a police jeep pulls up, the sign is only a memory. The attackers have achieved their goal. Thanks to the convoluted rules surrounding land ownership, the removal of Janwani's lettering throws his claim into question. The dispute is no longer just a criminal matter of a gang of outlaws taking over a piece of ground; now it's a civil issue that will have to be mediated in the courts. This kind of legal battle, with its near-endless appeal process, could easily last 15 years. If Janwani hopes to develop or sell the parcel during that time, he'd be better off just letting his assailants have the property in exchange for a fraction of its value.

Bangalore’s Mobster Turned Mogul: Muthappa Rai is an Indian real estate power broker. He used to be a mafia don, wanted for murder by the Indian police. Wired's Scott Carney talks to the Bangalore land baron.[end caption]

Bangalore, the fifth-most populous city in India, is the tech outsourcing capital of the world. In the past decade, more than 500 multinational corporations have established office parks, call centers, and luxury hotels here. The arrival of US companies like Adobe, Dell, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Yahoo, along with the emergence of homegrown outfits like Infosys and Wipro, has transformed this sleepy outpost into a premier showcase of globalism. Bangalore accounted for more than a third of India's $34 billion IT export market in 2007. Upscale commercial spaces like UB Tower, modeled after the Empire State Building, and first-rate educational institutions like the Indian Institute of Science set the standard for what India could become.

But there's a dark side to Bangalore's rocket ride. City officials—at least those who aren't taking bribes—struggle to reconcile the gleaming promise of the information economy with the gritty reality of systemic corruption, a Byzantine justice system, and a criminal underworld more than willing to maim and murder its way into control of the city's real estate market. As tech companies gobble up acreage, demand has pushed prices into the stratosphere. In 2001, office space near the center of town sold for $1 a square foot. Now it can go for $400 a square foot. Janwani bought his 6-acre plot in 1992 for $13,000. Today, even undeveloped, it's worth $3 million.

[read the rest of this piece on Wired here]

UncategorizedJack DysonComment
Toothy bowl

Gallery D 76634-2 Img 2480
As an experiment, Steve Vigneau recently squirted more than almost two dozen expired toothpaste tubes into a bowl and stirred up the goop. He then brushed his teeth. Vigneau documented his experiment with some colorful photographs. 23 Tubes 1 Bowl

From Boingboing.

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UncategorizedJack DysonComment