Carnevale Costumes from Anamaria

I think that more holidays should be like this. The world would be a better place.
Here are some photos that Anamaria took at Carnevale de Venezia little bit ago.

Boxx Blog

Dain Oh has started a blog about boxes.

Cell Phone Drawings

Since my computer was stolen and I haven't found a new one yet, I have been making drawings on my old Treo over top of pictures I have taken. Here are some.







I am also on an Yves Klein kick right now.

Stolen Computer

I had my computer stolen from my house last week. It was only a Mac, so I get to buy a real computer now. But it is strange that someone has my passwords saved on their new computer now.
Also the whole thing was an epic fail. Whoever, just walked past several thousand USD in computer and video equipment to steal my laptop with a broken screen. They even unplugged a brand new Lego Lacie to steal it, and didn't even take the AC cable.
Anyhow. I'm using the computers at my school, so I may have updates soon.

Tropical Gothic

My roommate Pablo has just returned from his trip to Columbia and he brought back this cool tropical gothic mash-up.

Monster Hoodies

It seems everyone is finally selling their cloths online now. Monster Hoodies is a project by my friend Jen Dunlap (of course) and other people who I don't know.

Reset Couture on Etsy

A friend of mine has opened an Etsy shop called Reset Couture. She has wonderful and playful clothing for sale now.

Why, Arizona

Google Maps

Community Computing

Community is about a type of feeling. It is not about a collection.

I prefer this kindof community computing to the standard definition. We sit around in a friend's living room and show each other what we have found recently. Everyone is sitting and drinking, suggesting search keywords and five or six pages are loading at once.




Johnny Pantalici


The computer reading us a text on UFO landings on Mars


Brinton Holland

Texas Pictures

Space Palms at Blue Star Art Complex


A fake plant in a roadside wc


I made this in the entry way of my parent's house to accompany my mom's installation


Ghost of a Richard Serra


RIP Ettore Sottsass


A single work show by Gabriel Orozco


I forget who this is


Used to make the first art broadcast on television, by Lucio Fontana

Moon Museum

Moon Museum is a museum on the Moon. The collection contains works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenberg, John Chamberlain, Forrest Myers and David Novros. It was launched with Apollo 12 in 1969.
Andy Warhol drew a penis.

User Friendly versus Usability

When I looked up "user friendly" on Wikipedia, I was forwarded to the "usability" entry.

They sound like two different things..

Faces and Landscape Paintings

Huang Yan


Other


Other2

Options

Puce Moment, by Kenneth Anger, 1949.

Compiled Romanitcism

Here are two Wikipedia entries that seem to go together in a strange way.

• Romanticism
  
• Compiled Language
  

+

= ?

Second Life Exhibition

So I went to view art work today on Second Life for the first time. I don't use SL too much because I have slow computer right now.. But this show seemed to be advertised alot, so I thought that I would visit it and maybe take some pictures.
I found the show here at Lowstandart. Here is the link from Select Parks. The artist's name is Tommy Støckel, though I don't know his second life name. The show is titled Boom Pearls.

I'm not so convinced by the work in general. It seems that if you are going to work on a computer and you can start from zero, so to speak, maybe making things look like found objects isn't the best approach. Anyhow, the pictures are below.


Flying over the exhibition site.


A Close-up.


The sign for the show.

2008

No Click Interface

I was browsing around on del.icio.us and found Dontclick.it. It is a no click interface for web pages. It reminded me of this game for Windows 3.1 that I had when I was a kid, Jewel Thief. In the game the goal was to collect jewels without being touched by a variety of other objects moving across the screen. The user's avatar follows the mouse exactly.
In the web page and the game, annoyance follows when one mouses over the wrong object: the "enemy" avatars or an unintended menu.

Art is for Eating

Browsing Jen Dunlap's site last night I refound pictures of her wonderful cakes.
They are like little colorful islands of sweets

• Funlap dot com
  
• Art is for Eating
  
• More cakes for Fischerspooner
  

4chan Pavillion in Second Life

Current Favorite Wikipedia Entries and Reading

• Microexpression
  
• Invisible Wall
  
• Perfect Information
  

Responsibility to Symmetry

I was in Jon's class the other day for our final critique. This gentleman was up to bat. He demoed a Python program he had written for real time video manipulation. What was interesting about it was, that during the demo he played a sound file in the background. At each kick in the audio, he would alter the image.
I know alot of that has to do with traditions of VJing, but at the same time it made me wonder (probably because he described the program to be a video game) if there was a responsibility to symmetry in interactions normally.
Ofcourse this could be the result of watching too much Fischinger, but maybe not.
I was also playing with Leversgame.com, by Vectorpark yesterday and I noticed the same thing.

This may be only because the fiction of the game and the stigma of scales, but they do have that stigma for a reason.
I haven't found any info on it yet. Who knows.

del.icio.us

I was talking to Chris a few days ago and he thought it was strange that I didn't really use del.icio.us. So I decided to give it another chance, I even installed the Firefox plug-in, maybe I will update it this time.

here is the link, http://del.icio.us/natehitchcock

I just threw up a bunch of stuff that I had saved, so I guess there is new content there.

Also, I am getting rid of my Myspace account, it is only for music now. Talk to me on Facebook instead.

New Chicago People

I have found two new good people in Chicago recently.

• Chris Collins
  Chris work primarily with the Internet and technology. Here is a piece of his that was recently featured at VVORK: "Tribute to Nam June Paik (w/ Default Apple Screensaver)", 2007.
  
  
• Dain Oh
  I recently saw Dain's realtime performance at En3my here in Chicago. It made me think her computer had synesthesia. It was nice and simple display of sentiment. I think there are some videos running around of the performance, but I don't know where right now.
  Dain understands Occam's Razor.
  

::edit::

I also forgot, that Rowynn Michelle has started a blog. She is not new, that is that I have known her for a while now. but now she is online. Rowynn does Voodoo anthropology in Hatti, and is working now on a show about alchemy and magic for the Meat Factory Gallery in Prague. Row knows where real magic is.

On the Denial of Code: Video Games versus JODI

"The denial of code becomes self-justifying by its own inherent creative properties"

Three Illustrations

Juul_Sartre Mash-up


Liminal Until I Feel Like It

LOOk the Movie and Soft Cinema

Look Trailer

I just have watched the trailer for this movie Look. I don't know if it was actually shot with surveillance cameras, I think that the quality would be alot worse, and the issue of having all of those cameras with mics..
But it seems like a good idea to me, though the trailer dosn't make me want to go see the movie really.

When I first got a copy of Lev Manovich's Soft Cinema, this is what ran through my head. I was thinking though that the scripts and screen plays would be computer generated and that a room full of computers would just data mine all of the footage. That would be cool, anyone could star in a movie and not even know. It would be a great surprise to go to a theater one day and see that you've become a star!

I hung up Euler's Identity in our living room

Here it is: Euler's Identity in Payne's Gray



"'It is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means, but we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.'" (Wikipedia)

Video Games with Emergent Goals

Video Games with Emergent Goals
(I must be into lists this week :-P)

• Endless Forest, by Tale of Tales. It is supposed to be an art work, but it seems like a video game to me. Also, it is nice that you can run it as a screen saver. I just tried it for the first time the other day because I haven't had a Windows machine in a while. It reminded me of a work that Eduardo Kac had made in 1996, titled Rare Avis. The eyes of the bird are positioned like human eyes because it was built after a mythical bird from Brazilian folklore. I have heard also that the text The Animal Therefore I Am by Jacques Derrida was half-way based on Eduardo's piece. It is interesting because the deer avatars in Endless Forest have eyes which are positioned on the front of their faces, and the only way to communicate in the game is to use predetermined animalesque movements.
  
  
• flOw, by Jenova Chen. There is also a Play Station 3 version, but I don't think that it qualifies for this list because when you reach a certain level you return and unlock other avatars. I don't actually know if this is not the case in the Flash version, but because it is a Flash game, I don't play it long enough to find out (and that is story for another post). Also, Jenova's game Cloud may qualify for this list, but every machine I have tried to run it on has frozen.
  
  
• The Sims, ofcourse, by Will Wright. I have only played this game a couple of times, but I do identify with in at the level of a toy, which is what Will calls it. Interestingly enough, I think that this is a border line case, and for different reasons than Jesper Juul (and to borrow his term :-) thx!) does. I think this because there are certain social limitations that the gamer brings to the table during play. It is easy to think that there are more in-game goals in The Sims because there are social ideals that relate to real life, and to the players.
  

More on this topic later I think.