chalking

inspired by the first Processing tutorial

Ghosts of Republicans past & present

from NYTimes 3.9.2012

Aspirational biography 1

Jules Antoine Lissajous

Another French mathematician from the 1800s. Came up with Lissajous Curves, which are parametric plots of two sine waves against each other; one on the x-axis, one on the y-axis. 

He illustrated these curves using a homemade "Lissajou apparatus"; a device that bounces a beam of light off a mirror attached to a vibrating tuning fork. The beam of light is then reflected again off of a second mirror attached to another tuning fork, perpendicular to the first. Usually the two tuning forks are an interval apart; and the resulting figure traced by the beam of light is a Lissajou curve. Fucking awesome.

a lot of other great stuff came out of this like:

lissajou knots

harmonographs

blackburn pendulums; 

a pendulum hung on a "v" shaped string, creating periodic motion in 2 degrees of freedum

which, incidentally, also traces lissajou curves:

spirographs

Precession as a form of parallel transport

maurer roses

fire poi

also the math seems pretty well developed

p.s. speaking of dreamachines, how great do these look?

pps who can make it first?

Chew on this one

It from Bit

"... every it--every particle, every field of force,
even the spacetime continuum itself--derives its function, its meaning,
its very existence entirely--even if in some contexts indirectly--from the
apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices,
_bits_."

- John Wheeler

I want to go there

"In the Blink of an Eye: Media & Movement"

Media Museum, London

9 March 2012 - 2 September 2012

Forms Installation at the National Media Museum from Nexus Productions on Vimeo.

Tribute: Me-shirts

Fashion is advertising. What you wear says a lot about you, both implicit and explicit. Everything from musical tastes to political preferences to sexual availability can be predicted by your shoes, jacket, pants or hat.

The modern t-shirt pushes the fashion as advertisement to an extreme, often serving as mini billboards that people carry through their day. Emblazoned with band names, funny phrases, and full color portraits, graphic t-shirts expose personalities bluntly.

In this Tribute, our task push the boundaries of the graphic t-shirt to create highly personal advertisements emblazoned across our torsos. These "me-shirt" designs are to be one-of-a-kind homages to the self, toying with our own vanities and private thoughts.

Deliverable: One hi-quality mock-up of a me-shirt
Bonus deliverable: Explanation of the manufacturing process to realize your design

Documeat

Use a specialized toaster to roast meat such that legible words are roasted onto the surface of the meat. Can be used at restaurants to "print" poems onto the meat that the diners read & ponder while eating. Can also print agendas for business lunches; the diner can only eat portions of the meat whose topics have been addressed. Once bioprinters are mainstream, the meat may be printed onto the plate into the shapes of words.