Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

You've probably seen the Space Invaders mosaic art - it's become a global trend, with invasions in most world cities.

Yesterday I spotted one with a difference - it was a picture of Sid Vicious, on the side of a building on the edge of Fitzrovia, just north of Oxford Street, in that maze of lanes that meanders up to Charlotte Street.



As tanais said, it's amazing how the brain can pull detail out of a simple grid of black and white tiles.

London, England
September 2008

It's also the first time I've used Flickr's built-in image editing tools to crop a picture for display. Not bad - the Picnic integration works well.

The filled-in Shibboleth installation at the Tate Modern still grabs the eye - and the lens.

Tate Modern, London
September 2008

The CGSociety's annual competition took a different form this year: producing CGI trailers and concept art for a hypothetical film of Greg Bear's Eon.



There's some really fantastic stuff there, like the image I've linked to, and this mix of CGI and live action. Greg Bear was one of the judges, and comments on the images.

While I'm recommending neat stuff, our favourite glass jewellery designer has just updated his web site.

We met Kevin on his stall outside the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and go back to see him regularly. He makes beautiful pieces of lampwork glass, using coloured Murano glass, and has designed his own silver clasps. Each time we meet him he has something new, and often they're quite unusual and beautiful.

I took some photographs of some of his work a while back.





I regularly wear a couple of his pendants - they're beautiful work, and the red goes really well with the deep green of New Zealand jade. I also have a couple of bead earrings for special occasions. marypcb has a selection of necklaces, earrings and bracelets.

He'll do custom work and can send it to most places. Contact details are on his web site.

I hope the person who has the black pendant I lost in Seattle a couple of years ago has taken good care of it

Here's a piece called City Glow by Chiho Aoshima, the creator of the rather lovely City Glow, Mountain Whisper in Gloucester Road tube station.



It reminded me of something.

Here's Tim White's cover for Neuromancer.



Rather similar? No?

Even down to the bird!

I suspect this is pure coincidence...

In this twist on the familiar tale, a 419 scammer ends up carving Creature Comforts characters and a Commodore 64 for the man he planned to scam - and sent them to the UK!

More "conversations" with the scammers here.

Original link from BoingBoing

I saw this clock at the Design Museum a while back.


Solstice in South Kensington

An interesting idea, it's a piece of software linked to a web cam. Every second it stores an image, and displays them in a ring of 60 image slots. Every 60^th image is stored in a 60 slot minute ring. Every 360^th image goes to a 12 slot hour ring. The three rings add up to a view of the changes that take place over a day...



Now if only they'd make the software available, and take the hour ring up to 24 hours...

A wonderful tool for exploring the contents of the Visual Index Of Science Fiction Cover Art.

Hours of endless fun...

(link via BoingBoing)

Web Comics Examiner has put out the first part of its Artistic History Of Webcomics.

It's a cracking read, and well worth the time - there's plenty to argue with in its round table approach to criticism, but the overall result is an interesting look at some of the more influential web comics around. The participants are literate, and familiar with the medium as a whole, so are prepared to compare the web with print - and to show where things go right, and where they go wrong.

And if you're not reading web comics, it's a good primer, with pointers to many of my regular reads.

Artist Jonathon Keats is taking a photograph of a hotel room in San Francisco using a pin-hole camera - and a hundred year exposure!



[via Gizmodo]