from XKCD
Category Archives: computing
Close to the machine
The video comes from Matthew Sarnoff’s website and describes one of his projects: Sadly, I was born a couple years too late to grow up with an 8-bit home computer. (though I did use Apple IIs in elementary school.) In an attempt to compensate, and relive a childhood I never had, I’ve decided to design [...]
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Fract – “Indie Adventure Game”
FRACT – Indie Adventure Game from Richard Flanagan on Vimeo. “FRACT is an atmospheric adventure game set in an abstract forgotten world of analog sounds, samples and glitches. Myst + Rez with a heavy dose of Tron.” The game, designed by Richard Flanagan, “has been selected as one of the 2011 Independent Games Festival student [...]
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Runxt Life
Runxt Life – Introduction from Firma 103 on Vimeo. From Runxt: « Runxt Life is a generative music application created for the iOS® platform based on the cellular automaton theory “Conway’s Game of Life” by John Horton Conway. The ‘game’ is a zero-player game, meaning that its evolution is determined by its initial state, requiring [...]
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Dynamics and technology
By the early 1990s, remarkable advancements in two commercial 3–D modeling software packages, Alias/Wavefront and Softimage, offered revolutionary possibilities for architectural design. Alias, the forerunner of todays Maya, was developed for the automobile industry to model complex car parts, and it got architects talking when filmmakers used it to create the 3–D special effects in [...]
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Mechanics of thought
When one considers the structure of the Difference and Analytical Engines, their resemblance to living “computers” becomes even more apparent. Babbage knew little or nothing about anatomy or physiology, and before the articulation of cell theory in the late 1830s, the organization of the nervous system was poorly understood. By his own admission, however, Babbage [...]
Brian Eno, complexity and universality
Of Eno’s technology projects that have fallen by the wayside, the one he would most like to revive is the idea of self-generating musical systems, which he began studying in the 1980s. The premise is to create a music-making machine, whether it is as simple as a wind chime or as complex as computer software. [...]
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Semacodes
Found Conor McGarrigle’s work online and was amazed by the ways he applies the notion of hybrid space to his work. A hybrid space happens where the distinction between information space and real physical space collapses, while hybrid space is increasingly a reality it still requires access to the necessary hardware. One of the projects, [...]
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Computer Guts
I booted Ubuntu 10.10 on my netbook a few days ago. As I pressed ESC to start the procedure with my USB drive, codes erupted on the screen. Swift white on black alignments accumulated too quickly for my eyes to follow. The netbook’s hum grew as they appeared. I hadn’t witnessed a boot sequence for [...]
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9000: “Echo”
The work is signed by 9000, a “prolific Columbian artist about whom there aren’t much information”. For the little there is (including the source of this post) and for accurate source attribution, check Aphelis’ blog.
