The other day, I was wondering what my mobile phone number might spell out—recalling when catchy eight hundred numbers were hot-properties—and being disappointed that there was no encoded, memorable message to be teased out of that string of numbers.
Even when aided by an “algorithm” that surely sells the contact information to marketers of those foolish enough to offer it up, there was nothing to be found. Undaunted and in a similar vein, Waxy brings us a project that parsed an English lexicon to determine what words might be translated into valid hexadecimal, web colours—those marked with a number sign on a cascading style sheet (CSS). Turning letter o’s into zeroes and ones into i’s and s’s to fives, etc. our vocabulary palette is much expanded but even dialling back the interpretation to a stricter setting still returns quite a spectrum. As the hues are defined as either three or six letters in length and the base-16 system only goes up to number F, covefe is unfortunately out of bounds.
Tuesday 13 June 2017
#c0ffee is the colour
6x6
bat-signal: rest in peace, Mister West
lobby card: expansive, international collection of vintage movie posters, via Kottke
stratum: peeling back three decades of graffiti in Nijmegen reveals a chronicle, like the growth rings of a tree
with the eyes of others: an exhibit introducing audiences to the neo-avant-garde art of Hungary of the 1960s and 70s
weather balloons: the cache of UFO photographs that the US Central Intelligence Agency recently declassified are laughably rubbish
Monday 12 June 2017
la trahison des images
Via Boing Boing, we are introduced to a pacifying, surrogate social network called Binky that fulfils every compunction, range of motions that one has come to expect from such a platform and delivers the satisfaction of being so engaged and focused on one’s device—except that the application is a meaningless one and the “content” streaming by that one can re-bink or otherwise endorse or scold (it doesn’t matter) is randomly generated before being cycled off into oblivion.
Communication and sharing is important but it’s not necessary to telegraph one’s fidgety compulsion to one’s future selves, perhaps, as indiscriminately as those we feel obligated to do for those in between times. Comment is encouraged but punching keys—deliberately or not—returns auto-complete gibberish for as long as one cares to type. What do you think? Two decades after Bill Gates declared that content was king, we have to wonder what it’s to signal when content becomes wholly optional and perhaps even too taxing sometimes. Meaning can be burdensome, obliviously, and our habits are surreal—ceci n’est pas une pipe.
twitch and tantra
Though I’d venture that the benefits of yoga don’t come in the form of a perfect pose and could even prove harmful (I embrace the fact that I’m an awkward mess and don’t get discouraged), a wearable technology clothier is introducing (with consultation by instructors) a pair of leggings—yoga pants and the athleisure industry comprise a multi-billion dollar market—that has a suite of sensors embedded within the textiles that can detect in conjunction with one’s mobile device the position that one is trying to assume and gives feedback with battery-powered pulses to correct one’s posture and stance. The company is designing other interactive sports apparel (which would be a potential leveller of handicaps for other games) and though I have a few reservations concerning the appropriateness of bionics in yoga, I’ll bet that the system would be beneficial for a beginner without the ability or means to seek out a yogi.
point source on a stick
Hoping to raise awareness of water pollution, a trio of art students in Taiwan collected sewage and wastewater run-off from a hundred different sites across the island, froze the samples in an ice pop mould and encased the results in resin. The display really has a bleakly beautiful รฆsthetic and is sure to heighten the profile of waterways in plight.
