tintank

"We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are."

Mon, 23 May 2011 10:36:18 -0400

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”

- Anaïs Nin.

On the eve of a new paradigm that demands radical behavioral...

Mon, 23 May 2011 10:30:29 -0400

On the eve of a new paradigm that demands radical behavioral change for humanity, Stuart McMillen presents this visualization of two of the best known futurist doctrines: ‘Amusing ourselves to death’. Aldous Huxley, who authored ‘Brave new world’ versus George Orwell, who authored ‘1984’.

The first specialized dental chair was invented back in the year...

Mon, 23 May 2011 10:16:00 -0400

The first specialized dental chair was invented back in the year 1790. Around 50 years later, Horace Wells discovered that nitrous oxide could be used as anesthesia, God blessed him. In a vintage ad, it was said:

Dental patients can now administer their own anesthesia. The gas […] is a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen. A tube leading to the tanks containing the gases is equipped with a pistol-like control. While wearing a mask, a patient with this control can release as much gas as she needs to overcome the pain. The patient does not lose consciousness but suffers not pain.

Quantum Parallelograph by Patrick Stevenson-Keating. An art...

Mon, 23 May 2011 09:57:50 -0400

Quantum Parallelograph by Patrick Stevenson-Keating. An art project that examines the scientific and philosophical ideas surrounding the theory of quantum physics and multiple universes. The device simulates the experience of users being able to glimpse into their ‘parallel lives’- to observe their alternate realities.

Lonely Planets

Mon, 23 May 2011 09:33:00 -0400

Free-floating planets had been predicted but now have finally been detected. Jupiter-sized planets float alone in the dark of space, without orbiting a star at all. Astronomers have discovered up to ten of these so called orphan planets while scanning the center of the Milky Way.

They are around 20.000 light years from Earth. Scientists estimate that there may be about as many of them as stars what make them as common as the orbiting planets we know.

"There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by..."

Mon, 23 May 2011 08:37:01 -0400

“There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven’t read, that we haven’t had the time to read. Who has actually read Finnegans Wake – I mean from beginning to end? Who has read the Bible properly, from Genesis to the Apocalypse?”

- Umberto Eco, for The Guardian Books.

Quantum Entanglement

Thu, 05 May 2011 15:02:26 -0400

Jonathan Keats, once described as ‘a poet of ideas’ by the New Yorker, is about to pioneer nuptial quantum entanglement at Art Currents Institute. According to quantum mechanics, when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were one and the same. Any change to one instantaneously and identically changes those entangle with it, even if they are a universe apart. Extreme romance, isn’t it?

In the picture: Particle tracks. wiki.brown.edu

The procedures are, technologically, as follows: the equipment is placed near a window where, exposed to solar radiation, a nonlinear crystal entangles photons. Pairs of these are divided by prisms. The photoelectric effect translates their entangled state to the bodies of the couple, entangling them in a quantum wedding. Mr. Keats, who is happily entangled with his wife, says that ‘it is even easier than getting an x-ray’. Paperwork is not required either.

The entanglement will have to be taken on faith because any attempt to measure a quantum system disentangles it.

A quantum marriage will literally be broken up by skepticism about it. Nuptial entanglement is a state of belief.

Josh Nimoy is behind the visual effects in ‘Tron...

Thu, 05 May 2011 14:28:00 -0400

Josh Nimoy is behind the visual effects in ‘Tron Legacy’. Nimoy is a software artist who likes working ’in the source of ideas’: he prefers algorithms to Adobe programs.

"Marshall McLuhan was a master of pattern recognition."

Wed, 04 May 2011 14:00:14 -0400

“Marshall McLuhan was a master of pattern recognition.”

- Writer and artist Douglas Coupland in his new book ‘McLuhan: you know nothing of my work!’

The future that was. ‘25 abandoned Yugoslavia monuments...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:52:40 -0400

The future that was. ‘25 abandoned Yugoslavia monuments that look like they are from the future’. The structures were commissioned by former president Tito to show sites where WWII battles took place or where concentration camps stood. Designed by sculptures and architects, they attracted the crowds, nevertheless they were totally abandoned after the dissolution of the former republic. With the help of a map dated 1975, Kempenaers toured the ex-Yougaslavia to take pictures of these monuments.

Tractatus Digito-Philosophicus

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:42:48 -0400

Tractatus Digito-Philosophicus:

Described by authors as “an odd venture: a translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus into the domain of software development”.

The software intellect – its basic conceptual forms – is rooted in the early 20th century, the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s. That is where the work of Church and Turing, lambda calculus and computability, comes from. And it is also the time of the Vienna Circle, logical positivism, and Wittgenstein’s early work, the ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’

A project named ‘Bureaucratics’ by photographer Jan...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:29:00 -0400

A project named ‘Bureaucratics’ by photographer Jan Banning that consist in a book and an exhibition. “The product of an anarchist’s heart, a historian’s mind and and artist’s eye”, says the author.

He has photographed some members in various levels of civil administrations in 8 countries, in 5 continents: Bolivia, USA, Yemen, Russia, China, France, India and Liberia.”The photos show what a local citizen would be confronting with when entering”.

In the picture: Typeroom in the Finance Department of the ‘Old Secretariat’ in the state capital Patna. Bihar, India. 2003

‘Dark Matters’ is a delicious animation...

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:01:51 -0400

‘Dark Matters’ is a delicious animation illustrated by PhD Comics. Physicists Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng answer the perplexities of the storyteller about dark matter and the blessing help of the CERN’s collider.

tin:tank is about inspiration, brains and dreams. The atom, the network, the Cosmos. Creativity, insights and discoveries

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:17:17 -0400

Carl Shoonover presents a book about the evolution of...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:09:36 -0400

Carl Shoonover presents a book about the evolution of humanity’s understanding of the brain, ‘Portraits of the Mind’. Image by Michael Hendricks and Suresh Jesuthasan of Axon Scaffolding Proteins (Photomicrograph, 2008). The arrangement of proteins forming the inner scaffolding of axons, captured thanks to genetically engineered antibodies that help researchers study the molecular components neurons like specific types of proteins.

‘On Human Networks and Living Biosystems’, by Chris...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:53:21 -0400

‘On Human Networks and Living Biosystems’, by Chris Arckenberg. A reflexion about a world increasingly defined by flat networks, where the design patterns of the Internet are challenging and changing the landscape of human civilization.

the emerging paradigm is much more about networks, messaging, feedback, and biology rather than hierarchy, control, power, and mechanization. Nature is the super-system, the ultimate controller enforcing the laws of physics and prescribing the design templates for fitness & adaptation. If we are, as Kevin Kelly suggests, the sex organs of technology, then our technology is born from the natural imperatives coded deeply into our DNA.

‘Wishing for the city: revolutionary architectures’...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:54:48 -0400

‘Wishing for the city: revolutionary architectures’ is a book compiled by Cristina García Rosales about young Spanish collectives that are thinking and practising the architecture in totally different ways and perspectives. The architecture is coming nearer to the people, connecting ideas and places in the public sphere. Urban innovation as a desire in a world of new technologies, networks and flows.

2080: A Golden Age of Informational Fluidity

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:30:40 -0400

An excerpt from an article at McSweeney’s, ‘The Future of books’, by author James Warner, whose new book ‘All Her Father’s Guns’ has recently been published:

For the benefit of those people at future-of-publishing panels—there’s always one, for some reason—who insist it’s really not about the text but the smell of the book, books will by this time be available exclusively as lines of fragrances. Subsequently, humans will modify themselves into a species with a powerful olfactory sense, able to read underwater by decoding strings of pheronomes. Aroma-bibliography will triumph, as vast epics are composed for newly developed scent receptors, transforming the rising seas into a giant bath of community-assisted transmedia content. Also around this time, the oral literature of dolphins will be deciphered and will turn out, inexplicably, to be all about vampires.

‘Autonomy and Control in the Era of Post-Privacy’ is...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 12:22:00 -0400

‘Autonomy and Control in the Era of Post-Privacy’ is an article by researcher Felix Stalder in which he analyses the loss of the key role of the concept of privacy. Privacy long secured the balance between the control of institutions and the autonomy of he citizen. But that role is disappearing. Stalder argues for a greater transparency of the back-end protocols, algorithms and procedures of the new, flexible bureaucracies. [If you prefer Spanish, you can find it translated at tin:tank]

‘The Postmedia Perspective’ is a chapter in the book...

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 09:37:00 -0400

‘The Postmedia Perspective’ is a chapter in the book ‘Media, New Media, Postmedia’ by art critic and curator Domenico Quaranta. An in-depth analysis of the current position of technology-based art within the main discourse of the contemporary art world. Turing Land meets Duchamp Land but, as the author states, both territories should be equally addressing the issues and questions of our times, instead of being that worry about the nature of their media.

Domenico Quaranta is co-founder and director of The MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts, has curated various exhibitions and is the author of articles and books on postmedia art.

Photo: Tissue Culture&Art Project. ‘Victimless leather’. Symbiotica, 2004