Monday 28 September 2009

Artists and banner ads

I just noticed the work 'The Young Family' by Patricia Piccinini on one of those "quiz" banner ads.



Does this make for a new piece of net-art? The definition of real vs. fake is kinda grey. I mean, the work is real, but is the quiz asking if you think that the probability of a Dog-Human hybrid is real? Or if the image is real or PhotoShopped. Is it actually referencing the idea of an image itself? Is an image real or a representation? 22.3% seem to know the answer.

I clicked on the link, which naturally led to one of those lame SMS-based subscription services masquerading as an IQ test (with a link to a MASSIVE terms and conditions page). I didn't click all the way through, but the first question had nothing to do with Piccinini's work.

At the time of writing, Piccinini's Wikipedia page has "multiple issues".

Wednesday 16 September 2009

Copy: machine












Remember when the term 'copy' used to be derivative? Now it's a natural function, used every day. Personally, I prefer 'copy' over 'cut'. Copy is friendlier, I guess. Like this for example:

Plastics - Copy [3.4MB .mp3 file]
From Plastics' 1979 album 'Welcome Plastics' [buy].

Thursday 10 September 2009

Latest Mac OS X can take screengrabs of DVD Player!


Ehh, just kidding. Actually, in a way this is true. Under previous Macintosh operating systems the user wasn't even able to take a grab of the whole screen if the DVD Player application was running. Even if the window of the DVD playing was behind other things or you were selecting a quadrant of the screen not including the Player window you would get an alert and be unable to make the capture. Now, with OS 10.6 or Snow Leopard, whole-screen grabs are OK. Selection grabs are OK and even the Grab application can capture a DVD Player window. However, as you can see above, it sees only gives you a lovely grey grid. Luckily, my latest experimental film is 98 minutes of a grey grid formatted especially for the DVD Player application.

It's a love story.

Thursday 3 September 2009

Nobi Nobi Stills

I was playing Nobi Nobi Boy with a friend last night, the latest game directed by Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. The game has a feature where you can take video of your gameplay. We ended up using this as a technique in an attempt to create abstract digital art. Here are the results:












I plan to upload some of the video material one of these days.