Malwarez

Artist Alex Dragulescu created these visualizations of worms, viruses and trojans, that resemble biological viruses under an electron microscope. Found via Rhizome.

posted July 25, 2010 | Comments (0)

Rapid prototyping with human ashes

image via designboom

Dutch artist Wieki Somers created this RP sculpture from the mortal remains of Anne Lindeboom…

posted July 24, 2010 | Comments (0)

Cut with the kitchen knife

The recent Instructables post on building a paper clone (also BoingBoinged) using Pepakura reminded me that I’ve been meaning to revisit these prints, which were outtakes from a larger sculptural project using Pepakura. It was started in the kitchen/studio of the Australia Council Studio in Tokyo during my three-month residency, and the prints are just photographs of the layers as I cut and pieced them together. As with much of my work they were made from data captured in multiple sweeps using a Polhemus 3d laser scanner, and I chopped them up further until only fragments remained.

If anyone wanted to make their own paper clone without modeling and texturing, they could do worse than to use the free DAVID Laser Scanner system we used for our video Body/Traces. DAVID will capture textures using the same webcam you use to scan, and then map them to your model automatically.

posted July 15, 2010 | Comments (0)

Reaction vase

image via Nervous System’s blog

I own several pieces of jewelry by Nervous System, a pair of designers who “create… experimental jewelry, combining nontraditional materials like silicone rubber and stainless steel with rapid prototyping methods. We find inspiration in complex patterns generated by computation and nature.” The beautiful patterning on their Reaction Vase, above, was apparently generated by reaction diffusion, and it was made exclusively with open-source software, including Processing and Meshlab. It was created for the Shapeways SIGGRAPH competition.

posted July 08, 2010 | Comments (0)

PhotoCity

PhotoCity is ” a game played outdoors, with any camera, even a cell-phone camera. By taking photos of buildings around your city or school campus, you can earn points, capture flags, and virtually own your favorite buildings, all while contributing to a large-scale 3D reconstruction.”

posted July 01, 2010 | Comments (0)

Sculpting in sand, with realtime data, to simulate terrain

This is a sandbox with false-color terrain maps and realtime data projected onto the sand, a new tool used by firefighters to create simulations. The clever aspect is that the projection allows them to ’sculpt’ the sand to model the terrain. (The article was a little unclear, but it seems they then re-scan the model in 3d?)

Something about this reminds me of Australian artist Geoff Robinson’s installations.

posted June 26, 2010 | Comments (0)

Body/Traces at The Smithsonian

I’m afraid this isn’t the best image, but here is my cellphone snap of our installation at the Smithsonian International Gallery. The exhibition was designed by Michael Graves. I went to a talk he gave before the reception, and it was interesting to hear his insights into designing for museum visitors of all abilities. If I remember correctly, the ‘wrapped’ space was inspired by an apartment Mies Van der Rohe briefly rented and decorated while scouting sites for the Bauhaus.

Here’s an article by the Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott, with a better image of the exhibition space.

posted June 21, 2010 | Comments (0)

Streetmuseum – historical photo AR iPhone app

I wish I still lived in London, if only so I could use this iPhone app. (I am currently trying to revisit a project I did several years ago, pre-iPhone, involving reconstruction from historical photographs. It’s strange to look back at projects that are only six years old and realize how much more I could have done with the technology available now…)

posted June 06, 2010 | Comments (0)

This website on Steve Lambert’s WPFolio blog

I used the terrific free, open-source WordPress theme WPFolio to put this site together, and Steve Lambert, one of the developers, recently did a post about this site. I really recommend WordPress and WPFolio to any artists looking to put together a portfolio site. Daniel Wiener’s WPFolio tutorials are great too.

posted May 26, 2010 | Comments (0)

Mt Rushmore gets 3d scanned

The various articles all say laser scanning, but that looks like a LIDAR scanner in the photo. (Which does use laser, but still…) Another dataset I’d love to work with!

The articles reminded me of this outtake, from one of our DAVID laser scanning sessions:

posted May 25, 2010 | Comments (0)