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The Handbag
The handbag: a shrewd device to enslave women. The dead white male who invented it knew they couldn’t resist... Here for
2:00 AM 11/11/07 | UNBLOG


Cloned Beef+Pork+Milk
Dolly the sheep made headlines more than a decade ago, but a cloned steak has yet to make it to the American dinner plate. We visit with a rancher and dairy farmer who are ready to bring their cloned-animal meat and milk to the public, and talk to scientists about what being a clone really means. Here for
2:00 AM 11/11/07 | UNBLOG


How Market Fundamentalism Causes Hunger
Earlier this month, more than 150 countries celebrated World Food Day, whose theme this year is the right to food. The right to food may sound innocuous enough, but it’s a direct affront to the reigning market fundamentalism both guiding and obfuscating U.S. food, farming, and international aid policies. Here for
2:00 AM 11/11/07 | UNBLOG


GutHead - a fictional jam
Rhetorical Question: What do Sonic Youth, King Crimson, Babe the Blue Ox, John Lennon, Lung Fish, Björk, Memphis Slim, Michael Jackson, Fiona Apple, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Fela Kuti and Frank Zappa have in common. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Rothko Generator
Rothko Generator is a software installation which collects and stores pictorial data from the internet, alternates and reuses it to substitute pixels inside of CG images based on Rothko's work. The Rothko Generator Project has two main components, an image processing installation, which consists of a PC running a custom made software and a video installation, both displayed in the gallery space. This Maya Kalogera & CSDVU exhibition runs from September 27 till October 15, 2007 at Gallery SC, Savska 25, Zagreb, Croatia. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Meet Moaning Lisa, the orgasmic mannequin
At Arse Electronica, the sex and technology conference that took place in San Francisco this weekend, musician Matt Ganucheau showed off Moaning Lisa, a busty mannequin rigged up with a network of touch sensors, potentiometers, and light sensors that work together to detect the manual stimulation of love. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


The Video Game That Could Save Darfur
Gaming gets political in advergames, where you can help Hulk Hogan fight zombie Bush cabinet members or save a refugee in Darfur, all with the click of a mouse. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Poster Girl: Billboard Rhetoric
A cyclist's ruminations on Trócaire's Lenten billboard campaign for 'Third World' women's projects and the discrepancy between the language and the political effect of such 'charity' advertising. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction
Georgia O'Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction presents a remarkable survey of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, one of the legendary figures of twentieth-century art. The exhibition is comprised of a stunning selection of paintings that span the entirety of O'Keeffe's career from 1918 to 1977. This presentation is the first solo exhibition of O'Keeffe's work in Canada in more than fifty years. Through her landscape paintings and flower studies, the exhibition focuses on the central theme of O’Keeffe’s art — transforming nature into abstraction. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


How old masters are helping study of global warming
The English landscape painter JMW Turner said his work was not to be understood but "to show what such a scene was like". Now global warming experts are taking advantage of his prosaic nature to improve their predictions of the consequences of climate change. The scientists are analysing the striking sunsets painted by Turner and dozens of other artists to work out the cooling effects of huge volcanic eruptions. By working out how the climate varied naturally in the past they hope to improve the computer models used to simulate global warming. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Plastics: A Habit hard to break?
what to do about the alarming fact that plastic's chemical constituents are percolating throughout our bodies, apparently interfering with our metabolism, our sex organs, and our children's neurological and reproductive development? Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Istanbul
A transitory sound journey by Roger Mills with Visuals by Neil Jenkins. Istanbul is a soundtrack composed of trumpet improvisations and manipulated field recordings taken from a recent visit to the city which was originally performed live online and web cast at the Placard Headphone Festival in Regensburg, Germany in August 2007. Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Internet Outdated, Offer Remedies
In 1969, at the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, Larry Roberts oversaw a program of connected research computers called ARPAnet that became the foundation for the Internet. Four decades later, he has spent nearly $340 million trying to redo that same technology, which he now believes is far behind the times. "We can no longer rely on last-generation technology, which has essentially remained unchanged for 40 years, to power Internet performance..." Here for
4:44 AM 10/16/07 | UNBLOG


Debtor Nation
Consumerism is as American as cherry pie. Plasma TVs, iPods, granite kitchen tops: you name it, we buy it. And who finances this national pastime? The rising risks of the American Dream, on a borrowed dime... Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


World's Slowest Instant Messenger
How hard would the apparatus of connected things fight back? Would it be hard to write slow networked communications software? What is "slow" in the era of connected things? Can there be a slow instant messenger device? Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


Conveying Emphasis
Are quotation marks the new boldface? As with a cafe whose sign proclaims "Fine Food?" Yes, but don't expect such usage to creep into respectable English. Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


Blog of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
Most people know misused quotation marks can actually transform the poor, helpless noun they enclose into its anti-self, conveying the opposite of its intrinsic meaning. For example, how much protection can someone dubbed a "security guard" really provide in place of your classic old-style security guard? Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


Earth Speaker
A set of large solar-powered nocturnal acoustic sculptures for the Wave Farm in Acra, NY. The sculptures absorb solar energy during the day and re-radiate the energy as sound at dusk. A prototype developed through a residency at Eyebeam was installed in the summer of 2006, and the development of full versions was awarded a NYSCA grant for 2007. Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


God before Food
"The intellectuals, lackeys of capital, think they're the brains of the nation," said Vladimir Lenin. "They're not the brains, they're the shit..." Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


Concrete Dailogues
How do you imagine a city? Thousands of square kilometers of concrete crawling across the landscape, the population divided by administrative boundaries and distance. Density driving up neon- tipped spires, character invested in landmarks. The logic of street planning grown beyond any easy comprehension of the whole; short cuts, late night delis and free parking becoming matters of local expertise. Here for
6:09 AM 10/2/07 | UNBLOG


Unmarked Package: Case for Feeling Insecure
In May 2007, the Institute toted hundreds of unmarked packages (marked "Unmarked Package") around Chicago sites including the South Side, Daley Plaza, Millennium Park, Little Village, Douglas Park and Hyde Park. At each site, the Institute of Infinitely Small Things interviewed members of the public about anxiety, insecurity and fear in public spaces and produced a video research report with the results. Watch it now on YouTube:
3:23 AM 10/1/07 | UNBLOG


Every 14 Days A Language Disappears
One of the world's 7,000 distinct languages disappears every 14 days, an extinction rate exceeding that of birds, mammals or plants. At least 20% of the world's languages are in imminent danger of becoming extinct as their last speakers die off, compared with about 18% of mammals, 8% of plants and 5% of birds. Half of the world's languages have disappeared in the last 500 years, and half of the remainder are likely to vanish during this century. Here for
3:23 AM 10/1/07 | UNBLOG


Cure For Fear
MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears–including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here for
3:23 AM 10/1/07 | UNBLOG





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