coin-operated

Saw the funniest thing today on my walk to the library - this sign posted on a few street light poles: “Missing Canon Powershot Camera” with a “Reward” offered for its return. Hmm I wonder if the reward is more than the camera or vise versa? Maybe the camera will be able to get some AI and find its own way home…poor thing.

The OwlProject’s “iLog” is a wooden iPod-like MP3 player that is sure to give you a musical “splinter”. From the description: “At just over 3 inches thick, the iLog fits comfortably in the palm of your hand and slips easily into your pocket — and your life. The super-slim iLog defines what electronic music should be. Now you can sync with Log1k, Mac and Windows at blazing speeds. Without lifting that trusty thumb of yours from the switch, you can easily perform improvised sets, scroll through sounds, and start the music playing.” This is a companion to their “Log1K” project which is essentially a computer built into a tree-trunk! Nice - now all they need is a “Tree” House Music compilation to go with it…

Also - this reminds me a lot of the WoodPod project - which recreates the iPod with a varnished wooden shell.

RSG and BEIGE’s newest unusable hack is a new file compression system called Total Asshole Compression (TAC). Drag and drop a file into TAC and it will make your file exponentially BIGGER than what it used to be. I dropped a 15k HTML file in there and it compressed (expanded) to 7.2 MB! The project emphasizes the fact that with hard drives and memory getting so cheap and expansive in space, that compression formats might not be needed in the future! Why not just expand instead of trying to make everything so small! Hasn’t the advent of broadband made us realize this yet? Anyways, TAC only runs on MAC OSX currently and I wouldn’t advise dropping a DIVX movie into the compressor or you might end up crashing your machine… wait a minute, I think I just discovered the point of this project.

What’s with the reports of cell phone guns, ie. hollowed out mobile phones with .22 caliber handguns inside? This is a getting bit out of hand. A few months ago I wrote a short piece for Wired on cell phone stun guns that shock muggers and other assailants, but not enough to kill them. This on the other hand is taking it to the extreme.

The improvised cell phone guns — digital phones that harbor .22 caliber handguns capable of firing four rounds in succession with a standard telephone keypad — were apparently not used in the hijackings of American aircrafts on Sept. 11. But many airports are jacking up security against them anyway.

Here on the last day at Ars Electronica - currently sitting in on the last conference with Alexei Shulgin, Christiane Paul, Amy Alexander, and others… talking about art and software. So far the fest has been a wide array of talks and some interesting installations - mostly discussing how art and code can co-exist. The Maywa Denki beat machine (pictured above) that switches 100 volts with every switch and controls an automated drum machine is truly inspiring..

Main questions: Is code a viable language? Is the art the code or vise versa? Despite the emphasis on creation of code, there seems to be little dialog on people who actually use the code or resulting artwork that has been created. Is this not as important as the code itself? In my opinion this is the most important aspect and hopefully as the discussion continues, this dialog will surface.. I’m in the process of writing an article for Rhizome on the whole festival and will post a link to it soon up here…