Art from remote sensing

Data for decision

[via TomC]
The video’s about how they did GIS in the punchcard era.

Sensity by Stanza
[via anne]

This artwork visualizes the dynamic data around my environment as an audio visual artwork. I set up a wireless sensor network around my house in London. I live nearby a railway line, a factory, some trees and a mobile phone mast. (This is using real data).

The city is made up of bits of data that change. This artwork captures this change to try to understand the underlying fabric of city space. The artwork monitors the environment for change and relays these changes via the sensors.

Terminus, the god
[via blackbeltjones]

In Roman religion, Terminus was the god who protected boundary markers; his name was the Latin word for such a marker.

Ancient writers believed that the worship of Terminus had been introduced to Rome during the reign of the first king Romulus (traditionally 753–717 BC) or his successor Numa (717–673 BC). Modern scholars have variously seen it as the survival of an early animistic reverence for the power inherent in the boundary marker, or as the Roman development of proto-Indo-European belief in a god concerned with the division of property.

Incidentally, Terminus was the first name for the settlement now known as Atlanta.

Torque Control
[via jbushnell]
“This is the blog of the editorial staff of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association.”

Process blogs, custom cities & cozy airports

Doing science online

[via nielsen]
I’ve encountered several faculty members who have a low opinion of blogs, including academic blogs. I’m thinking about giving a presentation about what I call process blogs. These are blogs that present either one big problem (as I hope the The Daily Clique does) or several problems (as Terry Tao’s does) and work to solve these problems using the tools and communities that have developed around online conversations (comments, RSS, search, delicious). From Michael Nielsen:

You can think of blogs as a way of scaling up scientific conversation, so that conversations can become widely distributed in both time and space. Instead of just a few people listening as Terry Tao muses aloud in the hall or the seminar room about the Navier-Stokes equations, why not have a few thousand talented people listen in? Why not enable the most insightful to contribute their insights back?

You can also think of blogs as a way of making scientific conversation searchable. If you type “Navier-Stokes problem” into Google, the third hit is Terry Tao’s blog post about it. That means future mathematicians can easily benefit from his insight, and that of his commenters.

Customised city

[via anne]
This article’s take on the popular “city as open-source software” metaphor is backed by an exceptional collection of supporting examples, including Montreal’s Roadsworth:

Perfectly mimicking the colours and aesthetics of Montreal’s metropolitan street markings, Roadsworth plays with the visual language of the street itself – joining two streets by painting an oversized zipper head where their lines merge, or transforming a pedestrian crossing into a row of oversized birthday candles. The city’s visual grid no longer functions as a symbol of control but as a catalyst for expression.

In a post from Spacing a few years ago, Peter Gibson—Roadsmith’s given name—explained his motivation for playing with the city:

“Painting images on the street is actually a very innocuous gesture in the face of the problems that exist. We are living in serious denial if we feel that business as usual is going to ensure our continued survival and well-being.”

Documentary filmmaker Alan Koln premiered Roadsworth: Crossing the Line in Montreal late last year.

At home with the modern Goths: Richard Rogers, Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour

[via bldgblog]
Architects talking about coziness. I’m now fascinated by the Madrid Barajas Airport:

There was a deliberate decision there to go for warmth and texture - to do what airports don’t do. We asked - what don’t we like about airports? It was things like those greying carpet and ceiling tiles, finishes that made you feel uncomfortable. At Barajas the roof swoops down quite low, you almost feel you can touch it.

There are some great images of Madrid Barajas on Flickr.

Homogenizing the internet, criminalizing ornamentation, writing to learn & two blogs

We start with two rants, a hundred years apart. The first is concerned that internet search results increasingly favor a more homogenous bunch of information sources; the second argues that it’s criminal to add ornamentation to useful things.

All hail the information triumvirate!

[via migurski]
For the third consecutive year, Nick Carr reproduces ten Google searches of ten general topics. In 2006 Wikipedia held the top spot in two of the ten searches; in 2007 Wikipedia held the top spot in eight of the ten searches; this year Wikipedia held the top spot in all ten. Carr worries about the homogenization of the internet:

in a blink of history’s eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information, (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium, and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine.

I agree with Michal:  ”Google is the only one that’s an actual problem: its methods are secret, its data is proprietary, and its goals explicitly commercial.”

Ornament and crime

[via rodcorp]
Written in 1908, this essay by Austrian architect Adolf Loos argues that “[t]he evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects” and that because ornamentation often forces objects to go out of style it is a crime to waste resources adding ornamentation. The first few pages of the essay are available via Google Books.

Becoming writing, becoming writers

 [via mathemagenic]
I’ve recently finished reading a stack of articles about writing, particularly about writing literature reviews. They’ve helped immensely. The article linked here offers an idea of writing “as a learning tool which enables what researchers know about themselves and their topics” and suggests “that writing should be included more intentionally in our research methods courses” (from abstract).

Designculture in brief

[via anne]
A new tumblelog, centering on “the cultures of design and the designs of culture.”

Sunday is for sounds

[via mtchl]
An mp3 blog. His top five albums of 2008:

1. Fleet Foxes - Sun Giant EP/Fleet Foxes
2. Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
3. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
4. Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
5. The Walkmen - You & Me