The Treehouse + The Cave


The Treehouse + The Cave: January 2006 <body><script type="text/javascript"> function setAttributeOnload(object, attribute, val) { if(window.addEventListener) { window.addEventListener('load', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }, false); } else { window.attachEvent('onload', function(){ object[attribute] = val; }); } } </script> <div id="navbar-iframe-container"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> gapi.load("gapi.iframes:gapi.iframes.style.bubble", function() { if (gapi.iframes && gapi.iframes.getContext) { gapi.iframes.getContext().openChild({ url: 'https://www.blogger.com/navbar.g?targetBlogID\x3d9561264\x26blogName\x3dThe+Treehouse+%2B+The+Cave\x26publishMode\x3dPUBLISH_MODE_BLOGSPOT\x26navbarType\x3dBLACK\x26layoutType\x3dCLASSIC\x26searchRoot\x3dhttps://thetreehouseandthecave.blogspot.com/search\x26blogLocale\x3den_US\x26v\x3d2\x26homepageUrl\x3dhttp://thetreehouseandthecave.blogspot.com/\x26vt\x3d-2611371644715887499', where: document.getElementById("navbar-iframe-container"), id: "navbar-iframe" }); } }); </script>

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Quotations

"The future is now." - Nam June Paik

Blogger Gustavo Peña thought:

nice blog!

July 29, 2007 at 5:40 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Sunday, January 29, 2006

Digital Inkblots

Rorschach Generator

Images created using Tracy Hall's Inkblot Generator from the words andy and heather, respectively. As mentioned in my comments a few days ago.

I thought mine looked like a fat dragonfly, in flight, as photographed from above using a high shutter speed.

Heather thought hers looked like an owl about to strangle you.

Blogger Andy thought:

Mine might also be a closeup of a badger.

A.

January 29, 2006 at 5:58 PM - Comment Permalink  
Anonymous Anonymous thought:

What if I think both of them look like someone is trying to grab me? Interesting website guys.

February 21, 2006 at 11:26 AM - Comment Permalink  

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Excited Light

Aurora 2

After trying to define beauty for a reader who wrote, it's been on my mind. This animation of the Aurora Australis qualifies.

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Radio Babylon

Radio Babylon

When presented with an object like this--a home-brew portable device capable of scanning for shared iTunes libraries on open wireless networks, and then shuffling the available songs for its user--I have a hard time defining it solely as a gadget. It possesses the beautiful-yet-utilitarian aura of the handcrafted, like an Appalachian basket or hand-glazed pottery.

As the Make culture catches on, and the label Outsider Art shifts to include such creations, the larger category Art will have to shift as well. And while I'll admit that Andy McFarland's Radio Babylon (the device in question) does not meet my personal definitions of an art object, I can see that his practice mirrors that of the fine artist. He is driven to answer questions about the state of our society through the design and production of objects that speak directly to others. I believe that as information and ideas float faster and freely, the walls between disciplines such as engineering and art will fade. Hacking, designing, crafting, and art-making are already, in many cases, near-synonyms.

From the perspective of a consumer I might add, "If this dude can fit this functionality into his pocket, then Apple can fit it into an iPod. Where are the WiFi iPods, and where are all the shared "radio stations" being beamed from people's bags on the street and on the subway?"

Blogger Paige thought:

I want a thing on my iPod that will go off if I am near someone who has a simmilar playlist to me, or if someone is listening to the same song. Like a musical matchmaker.

I might use this post in a class presentaion I have to do on monday about the televisual, perception, and the technology-culture dialectic. As I was reading it, I kept being surprized that you kept referencing the same texts I was being lectured on today.! I will keep you posted Andy, thanks for inspiration.

February 2, 2006 at 3:17 AM - Comment Permalink  
Blogger Andy thought:

Paige,

I think your matchmaker feature is a great idea--one totally in line with the "personal radio station" capability that so many have discussed. It's like Meetro plus Dodgeball plus last.fm...

It's really amazing that it only took a miniature computer to get in a couple million pockets for so many distributed communications and communal media concepts to emerge. This is really a great time to be a culture-obsessed nerd.

Anyway, which texts have you been reading? Benjamin is the only real academic source I cited. Everything else is just Mac-zealot gossip...

Glad I'm still stimulating,

A.

February 2, 2006 at 12:40 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Saturday, January 28, 2006

Clippings

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Balloons

Jamie's Balloons

Image by Jamie Boud

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Sunrises

Cityrag Sunrise

Image by Cityrag

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Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Home Life

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Photocast Support in iTunes

Can I have iTunes subscribe to one of the new iPhoto Photocasts and then automatically sync my mom's new pix to my video iPod for mobile viewing? Will I be able to soon?

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Sunday, January 22, 2006

Eldert Trading

Eldert Trading - Small
Please view the full image as well.

The entry to 345 Eldert is caged in steel mesh--they never took it out when the factory shut down. So as you go down the last few steps to leave, you have to pass by the top of the cage, a large flat surface at arm's level. The cast of objects that sits there changes by the hour. It's an anonymous communal swap meet, our own little Sal-val. Whenever Heather and I want to toss something that we no longer need, but feel guilty because it still has value, we walk it right out to the cage.

I picked up this photograph there just now. Dating from August 2002, it's pitted--clearly brought in from the street. The full image at full-scale, is trippy as shit.

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Digital Inkblots

It dawned on me the other day, that if I knew Flash it would probably be pretty easy to design a lightweight app that uses a random number generator-based algorithm to create an infinite number of unique Rorschach inkblots. Each inkblot could be composed of black vector-rendered circles of varying sizes scattered randomly upon a white ground, then mirrored to produce a symmetrical image.

Digital Rorschach - Creative Casual Game.jpg

Working with the idea, I made a few sketches and then the comp above, with which I'm quite happy. I like these digital inkblots for their graphic beauty (they remind me of a piece I made freshman year in Elements of Visual Thinking for Nancy Roeder), and I like them for the very reason Rorschach (and later Warhol) did--when examined, they produce an internalized stimulation of our creative centers. We imagine, we dream.

As I stared more and more at my dots, making piles of PSDs, I began to enjoy them the way I do crosswords--or sudoku rather. The inkblot test, when self administered or casually shared between friends, is an entertaining and healthy mental exercise. I firmly believe that most folks--if sufficiently self-aware and intelligent--can teach their brains to do new things. Sometimes magical things. This self-programming necessitates tools and strategies, not all of which require rigor. I think simple mind-games like sudoku and my digital inkblots are easily embraced re-entries into this field of tools.

Digital Rorschach - Creative Casual Game - Device Implementation.jpg

I can see a digital inkblot generator integrated into many of the devices we already carry. People peck at flip-phones, bowling--but what about the people out there who would rather have slightly more intellectual and constructive experiences facilitated by their devices? Picture a new iPod game that takes the data generated as you scrub your thumb back-and-forth over the click wheel at varying speeds--feeds it into the random blot algorithm and then out of your own gestures, makes a miniature artwork for you to consider. Or a cameraphone that takes a quick picture of whatever--feeds that data into the algorithm and creates a blot from your surroundings.

This is the direction I want to see casual gaming (particularly the mobile variety) go. It will take both technology and art to shift humanity towards a climate in which advanced self-understanding of thought processes is considered a priority, then later a responsibility. Our personal devices and what we choose to make them do for us can fundamentally change the way our brains work, don't think they can't.

In fact, I'd argue they already are.

Anonymous Anonymous thought:

Hi--nice inkblots. I once wrote a program for making fractal-like inkblots myself, in PostScript. In fact, I still have it online: Tracy Hall's Inkblot Generator. Most people still have to convert the .ps to a .pdf; a Flash version would be nice, I agree.

January 27, 2006 at 2:19 AM - Comment Permalink  
Anonymous Anonymous thought:

hi there, :) its a good thing i was redirected to this site. :) i saw tracy hall's ink blot generator. and its cool because i can easily convert postscript file with adobe distiller. and its been great using the inkblots. i'm making an ezine that has no title but just the rorscach inkblot as its title. its pretty cool.

thanks again.

November 27, 2006 at 4:03 AM - Comment Permalink  

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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Near-Subliminal Advertising

Club Med.jpg
Please view the full-scale images as well - 1, 2, 3

Club Med's recently launched "Share the World With Us" campaign includes smiling faces layered into the background seascapes in a manner so subtle that it borders on subliminal advertising--which is to myself and many, completely unethical. I ride in this car a couple times a week, and no one is noticing.

Anonymous Anonymous thought:

wow i saw those last year around this time and did not notice the faces. I'm experiencing post subliminal victim creepout.

January 10, 2007 at 11:39 AM - Comment Permalink  
Blogger Andy thought:

Yeah, once you see them, they're impossible to ignore. Revealing, how oblivious to our constructed world most of us are...

A.

January 17, 2007 at 9:48 AM - Comment Permalink  

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Go-Sees Reduced

Juergen Teller.jpg

Go-Sees Pix

From Juergen Teller's Go-Sees:
A 'go-see' is a particular kind of vetting process in the fashion industry. Unlike a 'casting', the go-see is conducted without the prospect of a definite commission. As an open-ended yet structured encounter between the photographer and his subject, the stakes are nevertheless high, and the expectations intense. This is a model's testing ground, a trial of sorts, with the proviso that neither photographer nor model, who is also known as a go-see, is working to meet the requirements of a specific assignment.

In Go-Sees Juergen Teller chronicles a year of such meetings with women and young girls from all walks of life. Some of them are celebrated, most of them are not. The book is both a photographic journal and a record of the attendant pressures to find a 'new' face that dictate the form of the go-see itself. Shot in the doorway of Teller's London studio, this is a two-way exploration that recognizes the photographer's complicity in the framing of his subjects and in promoting a specific conception of the photogenic. The models in Go-Sees become much more than bearers of externally directed aesthetic values. While the photographic gaze is shaped by and reciprocally shapes the conventions of the go-see, Teller suggests that even within these parameters it is possible to find new ways of seeing.

These are photographs of arrival and departure, portraits of brief but loaded encounters that articulate underlying continuities and discontinuities. The changing texture of light registers the passing seasons, while the recurrent backdrop hints at an overarching narrative. The models become characters in a fiction that the viewer is invited to imagine.
I see go-sees often at work and all I could think after reading the book for the first time in years, was "where's the violence--how could they dare to ignore it?"

So I decided to remove everything Teller added and reduce his book back to the essence I see.

Go Sees Reduction
Please view the full images as well - Image 1, Image 2

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Gnats

Gnats 2

Image by Tonyz

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Holiday

Osuna 3

Heather continued napping as I left for lunch with her folks, behind plate glass poolside. Walking down the path from our room I noticed the scarred trees wore enormous leaves--a foot across easy, I now regret not having slipped my hand into the shot for scale.

Osuna 2.jpg

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Holiday

Osuna.jpg

Twenty minutes in Spain, we crashed.

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Thursday, January 19, 2006

The Gallery Wall

Nick Waplington Via Yasha Wallin

The reflection added to Nick Waplington's images by the blogger's point-and-shoot makes them a million times more interesting.

Nick Waplington Via Yasha Wallin 2

Image 1: Nick Waplington
Image 2: Nick Waplington

Via Yasha Wallin

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Another Born Inventor

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Laptop Light

Laptop Light 3 - Small
Please view the full-scale image as well.

Shutter: 10/1
Aperture: 4.5
Focal Length: 18.00mm
ISO Speed: 400

Anonymous ASUS Laptop thought:

If your laptop is always plugged into a wall outlet or docking station it is better to run the laptop without the battery installed for it is not necessary to leave the battery in a constant state of charging. Better to save your battery for when you need it, such as when you are actually mobile.

December 29, 2011 at 12:02 PM - Comment Permalink  
Anonymous ASUS Laptop thought:

Limit the exposure of your laptop battery to extremely high or low temperatures. Like humans batteries also have a comfortable operating temperature.

January 4, 2012 at 1:31 PM - Comment Permalink  
Anonymous ASUS Laptop thought:

If your laptop is very old it may have a nickel-metal hydride battery. If this is the case completely drain and recharge the battery once a month to maximize its capacity to hold a charge.

January 9, 2012 at 2:13 AM - Comment Permalink  

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Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Ex. 3

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Holiday

Air Plus Comet - Small
Please view the full-scale image as well.

Halfway between JFK and MAD. Much as we assumed from the name, Air Plus Comet was hell.

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Sell

We are pleased to announce that all CoverFlow technology and intellectual property was recently sold to Apple. It has been incorporated into the latest version of iTunes. Please visit www.apple.com/itunes.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Overlap

My Raymi/Jamie audience and my visual browsing audience just brushed up against one another. Even the internet is beginning to feel like a one church town.

Blogger heather thought:

darling, charleston may be a one *horse* town, but it is like a 4928657245767948506 *church* town.

January 14, 2006 at 8:37 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Friday, January 13, 2006

Quotations

Blogger Raymi Lauren thought:

i don't get it.

January 17, 2006 at 11:57 AM - Comment Permalink  
Anonymous Anonymous thought:

hey i wrote that and it doesn't make any sense to me anymore either, just at the time.

i didn't mean it in the sense that you can't do anything that i, in particular, haven't found.

i meant it as though writing seems simply to be an end in and of itself and that this causes a discovery process where recurrent themes identify themselves within.

it's not so much advice as just a scrap of experience from writing dreams.

glad somebody else got it.

January 18, 2006 at 6:03 AM - Comment Permalink  

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Thursday, January 12, 2006

Small Fracture

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Doane Paper

Doane Paper

"I was in a product design meeting and half the group was using legal pads, the other half was using grid paper. I combined the two paper designs and it turned out pretty cool." - Chad Doane

It's good ideas like this that help me keep faith that even at a standard nine-to-five, in a mid-day meeting--10 people there caffeinating--something might strike me, a small thing of beauty, or an innovation.

Waiting for those moments is how I spend most of my time.

Via Eyebeam reBlog

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Wednesday, January 11, 2006

CoverFlow Hits Diggnation

We are pleased to announce that all CoverFlow technology and intellectual property was recently sold to Apple. It has been incorporated into the latest version of iTunes. Please visit www.apple.com/itunes.

Demand Exists

Blogger Andy thought:

An equally homebrew solution.

January 11, 2006 at 11:35 PM - Comment Permalink  
Blogger Andy thought:

A sighting at MacWorld.

January 14, 2006 at 7:38 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Shake

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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Quotations

"Innovation is not an event. It's a process." - Guy Kawasaki

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Sunday, January 08, 2006

Lost Lake

Lost Lake 3

Blogger Andy thought:

One of those bottles, the small one hidden, is a 1996 Dom Perignon. An annual Christmas gift from a favorite vendor, we fought over equal portions again.

January 11, 2006 at 11:21 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Leaving

Phosphorescents

Image 1: S. Meadows
Image 2: S. Meadows

Blogger s. meadows thought:

wow, how did you find my blog?
thank you for the propers...
now I'm going to read your site...

January 11, 2006 at 2:57 PM - Comment Permalink  
Blogger Andy thought:

Hi.

If I recall correctly, I saw some photos by Andrea Longacre-White on Tiny Vices which I read regularly. I then went to her site, which has a link to yours in the sidebar.

I liked your photos--these two in particular. They disappear. Or they're losing something.

Anyway, I'm glad your cool with my use of your work--hope you enjoy mine.

A.

January 11, 2006 at 9:35 PM - Comment Permalink  
Blogger s. meadows thought:

It's totally cool, I'm honored. Frankly, my blog is such a small thing, I have no idea how people so far away from me are finding it!
Badly needed re-design coming soon...

this blog is great, great photos.

January 12, 2006 at 1:50 PM - Comment Permalink  
Blogger Andy thought:

Thanx.

The blogosphere (just like physical society) is much smaller than most realize...

A.

January 12, 2006 at 2:09 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Friday, January 06, 2006

White Noise

Today I rode the subway, alone and without headphones, for the first time in years. It was quieter than I normally assume through bass--just heavy breathing and hiss from other's ears.

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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Collective Screenshots

We are pleased to announce that all CoverFlow technology and intellectual property was recently sold to Apple. It has been incorporated into the latest version of iTunes. Please visit www.apple.com/itunes.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Home Lifes

Homelifes 2

Blogger Mick thought:

Nice ash tray...

January 3, 2006 at 8:42 PM - Comment Permalink  

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Balloons

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Two Weeks

This past Friday, the last of six flights landed--New York to Madrid, Madrid to Prague, Prague to Stansted, Luton to Alicante, Valencia to Madrid, Madrid to New York. The two weeks I faded from this electronic ether were my first in Europe.

Back home, we slept little before the last leg of the trip, the drive in tandem cars to a New Year on Lost Lake. Now back at my desk, behind keys and glass--jet-lagged, hung-over, heavy-bearded and sore (Co-codamol helps)--I'm spitting bits again, filling in an identity that dims.

Expect a stutter as I regain momentum and refine the moments collected traveling. 3500 frames edited down to 1125, scraps of paper and random leaves--all fragments of an experience still sinking in--now fight to find their way to the page.

Blogger pcenright thought:

Glad to have you back...I'm looking forward to what I'm sure will be a great slide show!

January 3, 2006 at 4:28 PM - Comment Permalink  

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