The Null Device
2003/9/23
A Softer World is a 3-panel comic strip (for want of a better word) made with digital photographs and overlaid text, and can be beautiful, poetic, poignant and at times twisted and disturbing. A lot like life, really. (via DPH)
640x480 digital camera on a USB flash drive; it has 64Mb of storage (accessible as the usual USB Mass Storage device) and recharges over a USB connection. And as it's from Philips, it's probably more reliable than the no-brand 640x480 digital cameras on the market. (via bOING bOING)
Interesting newcomers to the blogosphere: an old friend of mine from university, Toby, has recently got a blog (well, actually, a LJ), to which he posts various interesting links relating to topics such as biology, computer graphics and a bit of social issues; links such as this transcript of Andrew Denton interviewing Sir David Attenborough:
Andrew Denton: When you see this sort of stuff, do you ever get a sense of God's pattern?
Sir David Attenborough: Well, if you ask...about that, then you see remarkable things like that earwig and you also see all very beautiful things like hummingbirds, orchids, and so on. But you also ought to think of the other, less attractive things. You ought to think of tapeworms. You ought to think of...well, think of a parasitic worm that lives only in the eyeballs of human beings, boring its way through them, in West Africa, for example, where it's common, turning people blind. So if you say, "I believe that God designed and created and brought into existence every single species that exists," then you've also got to say, "Well, he, at some stage, decided to bring into existence a worm that's going to turn people blind." Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God. And I certainly find it difficult to believe that a God -- superhuman, supreme power -- would actually do that.
A writer named Shelley Jackson is inviting people to become participants in a work of art titled Skin:
Each participant must agree to have one word of the story tattooed upon his or her body. The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another. In the event that insufficient participants come forward to complete the first and only edition of the story, the incomplete version will be considered definitive. If no participants come forward, this call itself is the work.
(via DPH)
When you expose 9-to-11-year-olds to Radiohead and ask them to draw what the music suggests to them, you may get something like this. Some are surprisingly existential, others are somewhat prosaic, and one of them is of a 1,000-foot ice cream cone, reaffirming the adage that when children recount a story they often put correct it, adding the crucial missing element of ice cream.
For the first few songs, the kids hardly move, scarcely even changing facial expressions. One girl plants her head on her desk face-first. The "hold your head in your hands and look completely confused" look is extremely popular.
Jeffrey, 9 Easily the most disturbing of several you're-going-to-hell panoramas. The booth in the center reads "Free Suicides." Someone buy this kid a Coldplay CD.
(via Rocknerd)