Scott Blake is an artist who plays with barcode; maybe one of his bets piece is this Jesus portrait made out of barcodes. In Scott’s words:

This is the Bar Code Jesus that I created using my first refined bar code halftone program. The bar code images used look like regular bar codes, but they go beyond the normal density allowed by the bar code technolgy. I created a bar code signature, in the lower left corner using the bar code from a Pepsi 2-Liter.

Why do I blog this? Using barcodes as patterns � la Roy Lichtenstein dots to create new structures seems to be curious. With all those folks trying to find the face of whoever in whatever, it’s strikingly curious to see artists taking it the other-way around: employing non self-revealing pieces like barcodes to create the face of Jesus. What’s next? This is about using everyday artifacts to creat higher-level representations.

Yesterday in the swiss countryside, I ran across that clock:

Any ideas?

Just ran across this concept (defintion by Urban Dictionnary):

The awkward scenario where one person goes to kiss another on the cheek and the recipient moves for the mouth (or vice versa). This results in a repeated back and forth movement where both parties keep moving to rectify their facial position, creating a kung fu movie visual.

Why do I blog this? in terms of coordination theories (I am interested in coordination as a collaborative processes with social and cognitive processes), this seems to be a failure. This Mutally Assured Destruction is interesting as the a potential miscoordination problem. And of course focusing on problem is a good way to understand how collaboration works.

More and more intriguing is the work of Pierre la Police, who is definitely my favorite french comic book writer. His last piece of work “Leisure Time” is an odd 50-pages foldable book. A bit expensive (200 euros), it addresses the notion of “leisure”, illustrating the leitmotiv “let’s have fun a bit” (”profitez un peu” in french) with diverse representations of modern world situations ranging from surfing to pressing a button that would deliver tea or putting little masks on one’s nails. He seems to be more and more into the same vein as Glen Baxter, which is worthwile too.

Why the hell do I blog this in a tech-oriented blog? because in my opinion Pierre la Police is one the most exciting thinker (with a cryptic humorous spin, at least to some folks) lately. The way he is depicting objects and artifacts is so representative of peculiar “technosocial situations”. For instance, here is an old story extracted from (scanned here) the adventures of “Les Frères Thémistècles”:

(captions: With his pager, Fongor contacts the mutant Chris Themistecle / But Chris is in Brasil and he’s playing Zorro with his nudist adopted uncle / And now his pager is ringing in the pocket of his little jacket / But the jacket is still in his room in the United States of America)

Besides, I also found the way he works very compelling, as described in this interview:

Do you work according to specific plans or do you rely on your intuition ?

The way I set to work is different each time. I often accumulate elements that I classify according to a personal logic. I have piles of pictures with crabs, boxes filled up with magazines specialized in the study of charcoal. Sometimes all that gets mixed up, and when looking at this chaos, I manage to extract stories from it. Just in the same way you would remove sausages from a barbecue. It often occurred that things I had imagined eventually happened in real life. That’s not really surprising, it happens to everyone.

This nicely expresses how connection between dots (knowledge, people, ideas, meme) can be done today.

WoW-addicted Mirweis sent me this WoW Fitness Program!:

Let’s face it, if you’re the typical WoW addict, you don’t spend much time outside or away from your computer desk. (…) For each exercise below, I’ve given a basic starting point for how many times you should do each exercise. Remember, you have plenty of opportunities to squeeze these in over the course of a several hour WoW playing session… without having to leave your seat!

The website goes on with the description of movements using WoW gifs:

I just had fun with this early version of a spime in the form of a dinosaur model. The recipe is quite simple (does not require some hardcore DYI capabilities), and I confront it to the spimes characteristics (from the Wikipedia).

1. Go to : Download a Dinosaur, select one of them, print it out. (one of the characteristic of a spime is “5. Ways to rapidly prototype virtual objects into real ones.” and I expect that “4. Tools to virtually construct nearly any kind of object; computer-aided design” has been used to design those dinosaurs).

2. Go to Kaywa QR code generator, create a QR code like the following one, print it out and stick it to the paper dinosaur (this is 1. Small, inexpensive means of remotely and uniquely identifying objects over short ranges;, ok normally it would be arphids, the canonical identificator but QR codes are cheaper and paper-based ). It will be the identity of my raptor (”Johnny Raptor”):

Here’s the final version:

(It also has another Qrcode on the other side that points to the url of the Wikipedia definition of spimes)

And yes it’s a cradle-to-cradle object, I only used recycled paper than can be recycled. What I only miss is “A mechanism to precisely locate something on Earth, such as a global-positioning system.” and “A way to mine large amounts of data for things that match some given criteria, like internet search engines“

3. Take a cell phone, install kaywa reader and check what the raptor says when you pass it close to it.

Why do I blog this? summer fun, this is just a quick funny thing done during lunch time because it was too HOT here. And not this is not a spime.

Recursive Instruments has superb pictures of what they call “Ink printing the primitive Metaverse” (prints from their current show at the Aho Museum in Second Life):

Entitled Recusions, the works depict situations you will find every day in Second Life, from play to punishment. The trappings of technology are both removed and exploited to examine the evolution of media’s effect on the evolution of self. Snapshots from Second Life are digitally altered to allow a Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) mill to sculpt their contours. The result is a woodblock used for traditional ink printing

Via Ektopia, this art project Jesus2.0

Just in case you need it: Portable Zebra Crossing:

The Pedestrian’s Best Friend: The tyranny of the automobile makes life increasingly tough for ecoconscious pedestrians, and finding a safe place to cross can result in inconvenient diversions and wasted time. Now the pedestrian can fight back. When you’ve found the crossing point that best suits you, simply roll out the the Portable Zebra Crossing in front of you and cross confidently and in safety at your own pace.

Warning: on busy roads where there is no break in the oncoming traffic, attempting to roll out the Portable Zebra Crossing can be hazardous.

Why do I blog this? do it yourself city reconfiguration (for your own pedestrian purposes) is an interesting phenomenon, from the “city user” point of view. It reminds me this story of a guy who, a few days ago, exchanged roadsigns because he drove too fast (he then exchanged speed limits signs).

The A machine to create new dishes is a project carried out by INRA (the french agronomy research institution) which is geared toward the production of a machine which creates new dishes or cocktails, not on the basis of the sentiments expressed by a tune but from formulae developed by Hervé This to describe the dispersed systems formed by foods (meringues, sauces, meats, fish, vegetables, etc.). Inspired by Boris Vian’s Pianococktail, it goes like this:

Hervé This1 presented a method to describe the complex dispersed systems applicable not only to food preparations such as mousses, emulsions, suspensions, gels, aerosols, etc., but also to other dispersed systems: paint, cosmetics, etc. However, an understanding that any food preparation is in fact only a “dispersed” system was only half of the battle.
(…)
In February 2003, the researchers set up a trial run with mashed potato, oil and water, and aligned two microreactors in series (see photo opposite), in order to demonstrate the formula (G+H+S)/E.

How Berlusconi keeps his face: a neuropsychological study in a case of a semantic dementia by Sara Mondini and Carlo Semenza, Cortex, 3, pp. 332-335, 2006.

Abstract: A patient (V.Z.) is described as being affected by progressive bilateral atrophy of the mesial temporal lobes resulting in semantic dementia. Vis-� -vis virtually nil recognition of even the most familiar faces (including those of her closest relatives) as well as of objects and animals, V.Z. could nevertheless consistently recognize and name the face of Silvio Berlusconi, the mass media tycoon and current Italian Prime Minister. The experimental investigation led to the conclusion that Mr Berlusconi’s face was seen as an icon rather than as a face. This telling effect of Mr Berlusconi’s pervasive propaganda constitutes an unprecedented case in the neuropsychological literature.

(thanks gaelle!)

Seen at the EPFL today, this RFID tag reader which has been recently installed (maybe to recently):

Why do I blog this? this is a nice example of a transition from the previous “ubiquitous” platform: from a barcode reader to a RFID tag reader. The tangibility of the reader makes the architecture more difficult to be changed.

I am always mesmerized by sort of attitude: 70,000 Beer Cans Found in Ogden Townhouse:

When property manager Ryan Froerer got a call from a realtor last year to check on a townhouse, he knew something was up. Ryan Froerer, Century 21: “As we approached the door, there were beer boxes, all the way up to the ceiling.”

Inside, he took just a few snapshots to document the scene. Beer cans by the tens of thousands. Mountains of cans burying the furniture. The water and heat were shut off, apparently on purpose by the tenant, who evidently drank Coors Light beer exclusively for the eight years he lived there.

The cans were recycled for 800 dollars, an estimated 70,000 cans: 24 beers a day for 8 years.

Why do I blog this? it’s a quirky but I am impressed by this sort of squalor behavior… Extreme user of cans…

Seen in Stanford University yesterday:

Is this what happen when a university goes wireless?