We don’t know much about VRNO. Supposedly he is from Michigan and his name might be Jamal… or Perry. His work ranges from 7′” x 7″ marker on paper pieces to 24″ x 24″ paint on wood. He has become known for his bright colors and highly detailed patterns in surrealistic situations. He stays a recluse to aid his creative process kind of like Banksy. What is interesting is you can see some of the street art style of Banksy in a few of his pieces. His work reminds us of doodles from an insane genius. But for all we know he could be a she. His flickr page was pretty popular and full of lots of great work but has since been shut down along with anything that is seemingly run by the artist himself.

Us drinkers often think that our ideas when we’re drunk are the best ever thought. Is it because we’re wasted that we think our ideas are better or are we actually more creative when we’re intoxicated? Well there has been some new scientific research to support that drinking does in fact help in creative problem solving and even the possibility of a “Churchhill gene” that makes some genetically more creative when their on a little of the sauce.

Many of the great thinkers in history have been known to tip back on grandpa’s old cough medicine. Beethoven, Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, Faulkner, Twain and Winston Churchill all we’re known to use some of the juice to conjure up they’re best ideas. Churchill vouched for the idea that alcohol stirs the muse but also said “Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.” Which is not the case for all drunk’n masters but using alcohol for a creative companion is all about moderation.

A new study by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago puts drunk vs. sober in a battle of insight/creative problem solving. The drunk students participating in the study we’re given enough booze to achieve a blood alcohol level of .075, which is just under the legal limit here in PA. As you can see they weren’t just taking sips. The insight puzzles look something like this:

Find the one additional word that goes with the following triad of word:

In this case the answer is “jack.” What the study showed was that drunk students were able to solve more of these problems in less time which added up to a 30 percent higher success rate in drunk students . What is also interesting is the drunk students were more likely to perceive their answers as a result of sudden inspiration (more of the light bulb going on type thing).

But why? In another study comparing the creative problem solving skills between normal people and people with prefrontal lobe damage, it revealed a jump of 39% in terms of creative problem solving for the people with brain damage. What is believed to be the key factor between drunk and brain damaged patients doing so well on creative problems is that when your focus is inhibited you are able to consider more ridiculous but possible solutions. The solutions when found are more of the light bulb sudden inspiration kind of idea but in the end those are usually the best.

Not all creative drunks are created equal though. In an article put out by Prospect magazine, there is evidence to suggest that 15 percent of caucasians have something called a G-variant gene.

This gene makes alcohol behave like an opiate that prompts the release of endorphins that instead of making the user drowsy, actually fosters the creative process. Called the “Churchill gene” for alcohol enthusiast and possibly G-varient Winston Churchill. One thing the Colorado study that Prospect Magazine references says very clearly though is that over consumption of alcohol always ends up destroying the creative process. Everything in moderation.

“Print is dead!” is what you hear from so many designers and industry types now a days because of the impact of the internet and ebooks. But with recent advancements in miniaturization and print electronics we can now make really real ebooks.

Archeology of The Future is an anthology of essays about visions of the future in the areas of science and technology. To create a more intimate experience with the book, creator Stijn Ossevoort integrated in the cover a series of printed heating elements which can change the color of the thermo-chromic ink used through out the book revealing a series of words and symbols as the ink changes. Several motion sensors as well as a microphone enables a small microchip in the spine to interpret and respond to human behavior so that the book is different depending on who’s using it. The book also keeps track of how it is being used over time so it can mold the behavior of the book in the future. It generates responses in the form of enigmatic statements or allegories making it somewhat of an oracle. Only 150 exist and there is very little information on where they reside.

As we evolve and modernize society there is one thing that seems to be the incurable STD that will just become more and more annoying as we ‘grow up’. What is this societal VD? ADDVVEERTIISING. It’s literally f*cking everywhere. New places on the walls for the suits to yell at us from seem to be popping up all the time. Well in Stockholm, Sweden they’ve had it. Taking the same philosophy that Adblock has of blocking advertisements online, Adblock AFK takes it to the street and under them. The group went down into the subways of Sweden and pulled out all the advertisements including disabling the lcd screens and even the framed ads on escalators. As you can see this greatly reduces the visual noise in public transportation and also brings out the brilliance behind the design of the cars and the architecture of the facility it’s self. One thing you probably noticed at the end of the video is how they zip-tied the dividers for getting on the train. This is not just sweet but also part of a initiative from planka.nu that is working toward free public transportation thats free of advertising. At first you’d probably say “well how is the subway going to make money?” Well the people at planka.nu actually have a plan on reform for the public transportation system, and to accomplish it with little pain. (at least in Sweden) Check out more on their plan.

I would consider this more of a proactive form of graffiti and you can see the power in such an act. This raises a question though, is it right for people to remove paid for corporate advertising or, in the case of classic graffiti, to paint over and manipulate these ads?

A couple things come to mind, first lyrics from a REFUSED song “capitalism is indeed organized crime and we are all the victims.” Which you can see the tangled web in this situation. Sure placement of ads on subways is a great idea for marketers because when people are waiting for a train they have little else to look at but would we be bombarded with constant visual noise if these businessmen weren’t greasing the palms of the people in charge? Not even a year after the Battle of Gettysburg, business men were graffiting up the rocks of Devils Den so that when people came and took a picture in front of the rocks they would have ‘sammy’s wrenches’ or some sh*t, in the back of the photo forever. Later the rocks were cleaned and the graffiti removed but it shows that just because it’s good business to stick an ad somewhere doesn’t mean it’s good for humanity.

Another thing to think about is a point driven home by Shepard Fairey and graffiti artist every where. We didn’t ask to be advertised to and can’t choose what is being advertised to us. In a public forum where you can’t turn ads down or off, it’s as if we are getting raped by capitalism. Most people can’t imagine life without ads and billboards and don’t really realize the oppression that ads have on our life until they are removed. Especially right now with $3.5 million super bowl ads we have to ask ourselves, are we going to keep working towards an existence of over advertising, over consumption and greed or can we curve it towards a more free and open society.

You know those burnt out musicians that are always like”…I like live to play music, it’s like all I do man.” Well for this robot it’s whole life actually does consists of finding stuff to make music on. With a set of ‘eyes’ mounted in front the robot, it seeks out objects, rolls over to them, and begins to beat on them. It first records a short sample and repeats it. Then as it’s listening to the sample it just made, it lays down another layer of drums on top again and again until it gets bored and wanders away to find something new.

The inventor of the Yellow Drum Machine is Frits Lyneborg from letsmakerobots.com. Since this first robot, Lyneborg has gone onto building the reincarnated Yellow Drum Machine II and it’s Ace-Ventura-When-Nature-Calls good. Lyneborg‘s mission at letsmakerobots.com is to help people start and have fun making robots. If your new to robotics, start with this link and you’ll be good.

Been working on some music but need some brains behind it? Add some science to what your doing with these sonified data samples from the Large Hadron Collider! The whatty watten? Ok so lets back up, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the worlds largest particle accelerator that resides in a tunnel, 27km in circumference, underground near Geneva, Switzerland. You probably heard about this the past couple years when there was all this talk about this science project that was going to cause a black hole and swallow up the solar system. While there is the potential for microscopic black holes we’re still here.

What it’s basically used for is slamming particles together at ultra high speeds to look for the smaller particles (Subatomic Particles) that make them up. As you can imagine these things they’re looking for are way to small to see but they are able to gather data on the experiment. A slew of ones and zeros can be a little hard to understand so in addition to putting this data into bar graphs or other visual representations, scientists have also turned the data into midi sounds to study with their ears. NASA uses this same process to listen to the sun and has proved very useful. If your curious to what each of these sounds mean read this, otherwise below are the sounds and a high quality download for you to get started with. Dig in

[ Download (LHC) sound library ]

Calorimeter Endcap Layers
Event Monitor
Higgs Jet Energy Gate
Higgs Jet Energy Profile Crotale
Higgs Jet Energy Profile Piano
Higgs Jet Harm Sig 2
Higgs Jet Motif
Higgs Jet Ryth Sig
Higgs Jet Simple
Higgs Jet Simple 2
sweep_tthclusters
sweep_tthtracks

One of the most beautiful marriages that can happen is between art and technology. One of the most striking examples of this is mechanical mirrors of Daniel Rozin. Each mirror has the warmth of analogue media and the brains of the digital world. If your not familiar, how you’re able to read this and view anything on the internet is by way of the thousands of little pixels in your monitor displaying 1 color at a time. When they are put together in the right order these pixels make up an image, the same idea behind Monet’s Pointillism. What Daniel does is define unusual elements to take the place of these pixels. In the first example, Wooden Mirror, he has thin pieces of wood on individual motorized swivels that move the pieces upward [ like this: / ] to catch the light and down [ like this: \ ] to mark a dark pixel. There is a barley visible camera in the center of the mirror that interprets the image in front of it into black and white and moves the wood ‘pixels’ accordingly to create a black and white image in real time.

Once he figured out the basic procedure of taking a black and white video feed and translating it into individual pixel motors the mirrors became more and more ridiculous. Weave Mirror uses C-ring prints and rotating motors to spin each weave element into the correct pixel shade. Peg Mirror is similar to Wooden Mirror but it uses, you guessed it, wooden pegs – 650 of them. Each peg is cut on an angle and spins individually to create the same light dark angles as the Wooden Mirror. Sticking with the spins he also developed Circles Mirror which have specially designed circle pieces with elaborate patterns.Many of his other mirrors use the same ideas of spinning/angular pixel elements but in unique ways. The featured image above is the Shinny Balls Mirror which actually pulls the silver ball ‘pixel elements’ in and out to create the shade. The collection of reflected surface mirrors are extra intriguing because you have the original mirror incorporated in the mechanical one which creates a striking alternative perspective.

For More of Daniel‘s creations check out www.smoothware.com/danny

This is something we’re calling the White-Sabbath Technique experiment. The what and why we’ll get to in a second. How the idea was inspired was by 2 old metal bands, Black Sabbath and White Zombie. What is interesting about these 2 bands other then both of them being named after old horror flix is that their music conveys the same feeling as the movies they are named after. This got us thinking about how music and film have a undeniable sexual tension for each other. They’re just better together, movies are better with music and MTV wouldn’t be polluting the world with reality shows if it wasn’t for the music video. The basic goal of any art piece should be to get the observer to feel something. Both music and film have a great ability to convey feeling and emotion. In the greatest songs you are always given a mood, whether it’s angry, happy, scared, excited, etc. An artist can communicate these emotions for the observer to feel as well. And when you watch a movie your emotions start moving with the story as well. Whether it’s hating the antagonist or scared for the protagonist you are taken on an emotional ride.

Now what is the experiment? Well it’s simple exercise in writing music to an emotion. Bluntly, try writing music to a movie. Old horror films and especially twilight zone work really well because they typically have less music throughout which gives you space to work. You can take your time and write a score to a movie like the Birds by alfred Hitchcock or you can do what we’ve been doing and just wanking around with instruments as your watching. In our example to the right you can tell it’s nothing special played in the background but what you do have is playing with emotion. If you continually every now and then pull out the guitar, piano or what have you and just jam to a movie your ability to write and play to an emotion will increase. To be honest this is just an educated theory with results that worked for us but we could use a bigger sampling. So if this works for you too, don’t be shy and let us know.

White Zombie: Sack of Hate

Black Sabbath: Supernaut

Artist Rashad Alakbarov from Azerbaijan is doing some crazy things with light. Using transparent and solid objects he’s able to create stunning shadow scenes. In the main scene above he bends the light with transparent paper airplanes to form the picture. He takes the scene with the mans face made from old dirty water bottles to the next level by the character of the room it’s projected in.

It tries to say despite our differences in culture around the world, people should remember we still share the same light source. Putting it another way, the city can be seen differently depending on the position of the viewer.