Hi - there’s been quite a lot of talk in Make Magazine about the CVS Disposable Digital Camcorder. It’s a “single use” digital camera that costs about 15 quid and can record 640 x 480 movies at 30 frames a second.
You’re supposed to send it back to CVS (the US equivalent of Boots) who send you back a DVD. However, people have hacked it and with a little soldering you can attach it to USB and download the movies! Once its stripped down it’s pretty light - just over 30 grams - so people have been using in toy rockets and kites.
As I’m in the States at the moment I’ve aquired myself one and I’m wondering if this would be the ideal thing for the “Ipswich at Odd Angles” project or Matt’s backwards video. If anyone would like one drop me a line before Friday.
Aram Bartholl’s Random Screen is really great - I want to build one right away! On first inspection it’s a random pixelated display, but there’s no electricity - all done with candles - great!
Reminds me of our discussions of sheds a while back - installations in a forest without electricity - I suppose there are issues with flames and trees…
Wide games involving random acts of kindness. Seems to link together some of the wide area stuff that Matt Iles has done, with some of the ideas for engaging people with Question Mark cards which we were discussing at the last meeting.
There are a lot of amazing things you can do with strobes.
Have a look at The Time Fountain (thanks Tom) - you can make a drop of water apparently freeze in midair or even flow backwards. It also reminds me of Jeff Lieberman’s Slink - where a vibrating spring to looks to be stationary, move or even split into parts.
I found these art pieces thought provoking. In the light of different experiments with projections which took place during the exhibit, these pieces make you think about combination of static (objects which don’t move) and dynamic (light).
Check out if it works for you.
The Curiosity Collective screensavers and visualisers, which were showcased at the recent Debut Show in St. Mary’s church, are now available for download, learning, editing, re-use etc (an acknowledgement or donation would be nice if you use them!). They are all implemented in Quartz Extreme and will run on any Apple Macintosh running OSX 10.4 or up, although the faster the graphics card the better (turn up the Complexity slider in the control panel)...
I found a very interesting article “The writing is on the wall: Carnivore and the World Wall Painters”
by Carine Zaayman. I really enjoy the idea of “virtual canvas”! See this link.
This kind of experimental stuff is worth a look. We could be experimenting all day with some of these very simple concepts. And look how spectacular it can get!
