Stavka

Andre Torrez has a cute and simple recipe for making your shell prompt into a hamburger (or other whimsical emoji character). Just type

export PS1="\w 🍔 "

into the terminal to try it out. Apparently some Macs ship with an Emoji font installed; if you need one, you can get a free, excellent one from the Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts page, by downloading the Symbola font (.ZIP file) and installing it with your font manager.

To make the change permanent, you need to add a line to .profile, .bash_profile or .bashrc (depending on your *nix flavor). There are lots of other ways to customize your prompt enumerated in the article, too.

happy notes* / april 2013 / put a burger in your shell

It was only a matter of time before 3D-printing and body “alteration” — two of the year’s biggest buzz-topics– collided. The result? Art.

COLLAGENE is a Kinect software application designed to create custom, adaptable face masks. The program digitally scans the user’s face, allowing them to edit their own detailed, perfectly-fitting design, which is then 3D-printed from collagen and other highly durable WINDFORM materials. Developed by DO THE MUTATION, the project “explores the border territory between physical and virtual, connecting computer code’s abstractions with the intimate, visceral dimension of body alteration’s sense brought by the mask theme.”

The creepy, Ent-like masks made their debut, quite fittingly, at this year’s Venice Carnevale. Here is a sleek, mondo-futuristic video showing how COLLAGENE works.

The post Hack Your Face With a Kinect-Mapped, 3D-Printed Mask appeared first on ANIMAL.

Year after year, i go to Kinetica with enthusiasm. I might find it a challenge to spot the real gems in a sea of (sometimes) artistically questionable works but that's part of the fun. Kinetica might not be the Mecca for art & science that some bloggers and journalists describe (too many holograms!) but it's certainly a good place to discover kinetic, electronic, and robotic art. It also has a friendly, open atmosphere that makes it surprisingly easy to have a chat with artists, art dealers and other exhibitors continue

From the Imperial War Museum in London, a couple of incredible photos of nurses testing out infant gas-masks: "Three nurses carry babies cocooned in baby gas respirators down the corridor of a London hospital during a gas drill. Note the carrying handle on the respirator used to carry the baby by the nurse in the foreground."

GAS DRILL AT A LONDON HOSPITAL: GAS MASKS FOR BABIES ARE TESTED, ENGLAND, 1940 (via Kadrey)

Paris even does rainbows better than the rest of the world. This is a photo of a horizon rainbow taken over the Parisian skyline last week by Bertrand Kulik.

What the heck is going on there? Astronomy Picture of the Day explains:

Why is this horizon so colorful? Because, opposite the Sun, it is raining. What is pictured above is actually just a common rainbow. It's uncommon appearance is caused by the Sun being unusually high in the sky during the rainbow's creation. Since every rainbow's center must be exactly opposite the Sun, a high Sun reflecting off of a distant rain will produce a low rainbow where only the very top is visible -- because the rest of the rainbow is below the horizon.

(via @DavidGrann)

Tags: Bertrand Kulik   Paris   photography

Stockhausen’s Surround-Sound "Oktophonie" Spellbinds at Park Avenue Armory Published: March 26, 2013

Sitting with other audience members in a circle on the floor of the Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall, bathed in a pale shifting glow from lights high above, with the electronic intonations of Karlheinz Stockhausen echoing around the space, it was hard to think of anything but a decades earlier visit to the Los Angeles Planetarium to experience Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” augmented by a laser show and a contact high from all the skunk-weed wafting in the air. Even without the pot — this is Bloomberg’s New York, after all — Stockhausen’s music did manage at moments to induce an altered state. The fluctuating lights and minimal scenography — Rirkrit Tiravanija placed the audience, shrouded in white cloaks handed out at the entrance, on a white circular platform — turned out to be more distracting than enriching, anchoring the work and the listeners in a specific place rather than setting them free.

Oktophonie is many things. Composed in 1991, when the father of electronic music was in his early 60s and had mastered a wide range of techniques, it is a coherent, mature work that still bristles with inventiveness. It is also the score to Dienstag (Tuesday), the fourth opera in a seven-work cycle written between 1980 and 2003, telling the story of an epic battle between Michael and Lucifer. So Oktophonie can be understood as an attempt to convert alchemically the raw force of war into art.

More prosaically, it is an hour-long piece of recorded electronic music played back over eight channels arrayed like the corners of a cube, four of them surrounding the audience at ground level and four set 45-feet above. This configuration allows Kathinka Pasveer, a longtime collaborator of Stockhausen’s who operates under the apt title of sound projectionist, to playback the tracks so that the sounds whirl about the great space and hover over the listeners heads. While the music is striking for way the complex sounds seem to morph from evocations of familiar instruments — you would swear at times that you are listening to a flute, an oboe, a violin — to the uncanny songs of whales, it is the sense of sound in movement that most defines the work. When the New York Philharmonic attempted to create similar effect while playing Stockhausen’s Gruppen in the same space last year, the outcome was hit or miss. Recorded music, and a projectionist of Pasveer’s talents, are clearly needed to make the music take flight. 

The weeklong run of Oktophonie concludes March 27.

In 1999, I wrote an article for the bOING bOING Digital site about the CONET Project, a multi-CD collection of mysterious "numbers stations" heard on shortwave. For decades, intelligence organizations have reportedly broadcast one-way messages to their agents in the field via shortwave, and the transmissions happen to sound weirder than any Stockhausen score or minimalist electronica you've ever heard -- a child's voice, or the obviously synthesized intonation on what's known as the "Lincolnshire Poacher" station, named for the folk song accompanying the numbers. Wilco's album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is named for, and samples, a numbers station. The CONET Project has been available for several years for free download from various places online, including Archive.org. Now, the original compilers, Irdial-Discs MMX, have re-released The Conet Project in a special CD edition that includes the four original discs plus a fifth CD containing recordings of very strange "noise stations."

"The CONET Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations / 1111"

"Spy vs. Spy: The Soundtrack" (bOING bOING Digital)

 

• CONET Project: spy "numbers stations" preserved at Archive.org ...
• Conet Project free online - Boing Boing
• Strange Russian "numbers station" - Boing Boing
• Who owns recordings of numbers stations?

On random days this month, Tilda Swinton (actress, Bowie-enthusiast, badass) will be performing her 1995 piece "The Maybe," which consists of Swinton sleeping in a glass box. In fact, at this very moment, Tilda Swinton is sleeping in a glass box at MoMa for your viewing pleasure. More »

The piano is a conventional grand, but with digital interface and camera, the composer is separated from it by air, playing without touching. It’s a Theremin interface for a keyboard instrument.

Piano post-modern? Gestural post-digital?

Whatever it is, in a work composer Benjamin Martinson composed for player piano, computer, and Kinect camera, the piano work holds up as musical content – compositional gesture, not just gimmicky digital hand-waving. Martinson himself looks oddly isolated and awkward, a man making rough mime gestures in unseen water, molasses, and wind. I can’t tell whether this is more about our expectations of human movement, or of the piano, or perhaps a combination, that makes these seem incongruous. But the modal rushes of notes from the piano, brash and bright, are confident. I found myself re-listening to the music with my eyes shut. Somehow, then, this strange camera interface allows Martinson to conduct his work, to more completely connect his brain to the musical output.

The music is somehow effortless, and the effort of the composer then becomes infinitely more satisfying than a player piano alone.

To put it another way – Benjamin Martinson’s music is beautiful, earnestly clear without being overly sentimental. (I enjoy his acoustic works.) The interface here becomes extension rather than impediment, as he continues to work across media.

Player pianos and cameras – old technology keeps colliding with new, in endless recursive loops. Here’s what Benjamin says about his work:

A Microsoft Kinect tracks the motion of my arms and legs, and sends this information to a Python program on my laptop. This program uses this information to compose musical instructions, which are sent to the MIDI-controlled piano.

Torrent attempts to find a new sonic world in the familiar piano, by playing it in a different way. Effects like echos or tremolos are applied to the outgoing notes to create a thick, sometimes almost electronic-sounding texture in a completely analog way.

The piece is composed of three main sections. In the first, the performer controls the music by playing an imaginary piano, and in the second he controls it by conducting. In the third section, the intensity of the music is calculated by the distance between the arms and the legs, and the speed of movement.

To check out my other work, please navigate through my YouTube channel, or visit my website at benjaminmartinson.com

Thanks, Benjamin – and Seth Boyer, for the tip!

Happy birthday, Lee "Scratch" Perry! The dub pioneer is 77 today. Here is an interview with Perry from the 1985 documentary "Jools in Jamaica," hosted by non other than Squeeze founder and TV/radio presenter, Jools Holland.

East Berlin, 1987

Polish artist Marta Klonowska uses shards of broken glass to create these elegant animal sculptures. The process of builing the sculptures begins with a metal frame and net mesh outline. Marta then carefully, one piece at a time, covers the outline with the shards of glass.

The Vine app has recently launched — allowing users to easily shoot and share six second video clips, effortlessly. Naturally, it’s been flooded with babies, puppies, penises and food. And penises. Also, boobs. The NSFW vines can be easily located and so, yesterday, the app slapped itself with an NC-17 rating, oooooh. And so, ANIMAL is proud to bring you…

Not associated with Vine. Now who wants to make some short video art and win $100?

Attention filmmakers, photographers, artists, amateur pornographers, vloggers and more net people: Here’s your chance to challenge yourself. Make us a 6-second video with Vine and tweet it at @ANIMALNewYork with the hashtags #XXX and #VeryShortFilmFest before Friday, February 15th. (Or email it to tips@animalnewyork.com, subject “Very Short Film Fest”). We encourage international submissions of any degree of salaciousness. Entries will be judged based on aesthetics, impact, creative use of the medium and bravery.

Casey Neistat is a New York-based filmmaker with an HBO show, no fear and hell of a lot to teach you.

Stoya is an International Porn Superstar, activist and an enigma wrapped in a mystery swinging off aerial silk, right into your heart.

Clayton Cubitt aka Siege is a notorious, possibly magical Brooklyn and New Orleans-based photographer and filmmaker, storyteller and eyebrow-raiser in the best way. Consider his orgasmic project Hysterical Literature.

Nate “Igor” Smith is Driven By Boredom. He’s a New York photographer, blogger, man about town, friend of the porn industry and maker of amazing images.

Zoetica Ebb is a Moscow-born, LA-raised artist, writer and photographer currently working on The Secret Guide to Alternative Beijing — a video travel guide series giving insight into the skyrocketing alternative art, fashion, music, and nightlife culture in Beijing — and beastly botanical art series Alien Botany. And she may be from space.

We select the finalists. Our fantastic jury decides the winners. First prize winner will get $100. Three runners up will be selected and receive $10 each and some ANIMAL stickers. Additionally, ANIMAL will curate an online exhibition/screening of the best film festival entries, if a theme organically emerges, and you will be #famous.

Embrace the app’s throwback in-camera editing! We’re mesmerized. The “vines” remind us of Jonas Mekas. Best social network ever? Maybe. And don’t worry. The internet police isn’t going after you. Vine’s Terms of Service do not explicitly prohibit explicit imagery, so do it to it.

ANIMAL’s Unofficial Vine NC-17 Very Short Film Festival is not affiliated with Vine, Twitter or Russ Meyer. CGI money does not reflect the size of the cash prize. Thanks to ANIMAL pigeoneer Allison Bagg for making it rain.

The post The Unofficial Vine NC-17
Very Short Film Festival:
Submit Now! appeared first on ANIMAL.

After 4.6 billion years of evolution, DNA's mission is complete. There is nothing left to do but sit around and wait for the heat death of the universe.

2-In-1 iPotty with Activity Seat for iPad

(Via This isn't Happiness)

[via Mark Frauenfelder]
We’ve narrowed it down to people who own or have access to a private jet and have been known to appreciate the birds of prey. So it could be Prince Alwaleed, and we want it to be because Team Citi could use a pick-me-up in the form of an impromptu falcon petting zoo day at HQ, but it could also be someone else.  Help us out here.

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Tags: blind items, falcons

Spend enough time in Portland and you're bound to come across someone who works at Nike. Poke and prod them enough and you're likely to walk away with some insider knowledge. More »

— Суки! Это же моя машина!

Underground explosions linked to an electrical fire caused several manholes in downtown Omaha to blow their covers yesterday evening, unleashing tall flames that illuminated the darkened neighborhood. More »

We went to Jonathan LeVine Gallery to check out the opening reception of New York based artist Aakashi Nihalani. Portal is the first solo show of the artist and ensembles a group of elementary shapes where vibrant color and spatial geometry creates an unexpected dialog between the pieces and the spectator.

A song about being a dog in a clip filmed by dogs.

Michael sez, "Someone has gone to the trouble (I don't know how but would suspect using Melodyne DNA or somesuch) of processing REM's minor-scale downer hit 'Losing My Religion' so that all the minor notes are now major. When I followed the link I thought it'd be a cover, but no, it's the original, processed. It's uncanny - the song is just as familiar as always but the impact is utterly different. Kind of like finding a colour print of a film you'd only known in black and white, or seeing Garfield minus Garfield for the first time. I like it."

Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion" (Thanks, Michael!)

Leave it to the DIYer. Alex Pleninger’s name isn’t just marketing. This is one monster of a synth creation, looking and sounding like it was ripped, circuits still humming, from a wrecked UFO.

Retro trackball, keyboard? Check. In-built computer display? Check. Makes … a mind-boggling array of sounds? Oh, yes. It’s retro-future goodness, powered by the legendary SID, Robert “Bob” Yannes’ synth-on-a-chip that powered the Commodore 64. (In fact, get Bob and Wolfgang together, and you have a fair amount of digital synthesis history – with Ensoniq and PPG represented. See today’s other story.) Thanks to Marc Resibois for the tip.

Skip through the demo above for some different sounds, then head on to other demos that Alex describes as “more pop-oriented” (might depend on your star system), and, in the third installment, a studio-style setup. In that third episode, you see “a bit more complicated setup – Lemur on iPad being used to control pitches of the SID and some other internal stuff. No external FX were used.”

Watch:

Noah Zerkin spotted Sergey Brin riding New York's downtown 3 train last night—and the man from Google happened to have a pair of the company's glasses strapped to his face. Quite why he needs to wear them on public transport is unclear, but combined with his outfit they make him look like he should feature in the next Mission:Impossible movie. [Noah Zerkin via TNW] More »

The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 have announced the winner of the 14th annual Young Architects Program.  Titled “Party Wall,” the design features an enormous set of walls incorporating repurposed skateboard wood, detachable benches, and an intricately designed water system to provide shade, seating and hydration for PS1′s Warm-Up series this summer.   [...]

Albino peacock