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You really cannot trust a word from Wikipedia on any topic that is more controversial than 5+2 = 7. And this entry reads like some sort of Healthy at Every Size trash. Not surprising since interest groups have taken to group-editing Wikipedia to further their own propaganda (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-feminist-edit-a-thon-seeks-to-reshape-wikipedia, https://www.moma.org/calendar/..., https://hclib.bibliocommons.co...) etc

... and that is why I personally won't consider donating whenever Jimmy Wales goes on his BIG BANNER-O-THONS.

You really cannot trust a word from Wikipedia on any topic that is more controversial than 5+2 = 7. And this entry reads like some sort of Healthy at Every Size trash. Not surprising since interest groups have taken to group-editing Wikipedia to further their own propaganda (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-feminist-edit-a-thon-seeks-to-reshape-wikipedia, https://www.moma.org/calendar/..., https://hclib.bibliocommons.co...) etc

The whole of dieting can be summarized in "Energy in, Energy out".
Eat less, burn more, and you will lose weight. That's it. How you go about that (upping metabolism or reducing calorie intake) is uninteresting, any way works. The body is built to adapt and evolve, and that also includes weight and consumption. Very, VERY, few people have disorders that cause the weight, it's almost entirely a lack of discipline and willpower that is the cause of the obesity epidemic.

Don't get me wrong, there are absolutely quirks of the body, such as fat cells hanging around a while after being emptied which makes it easier to gain weight after losing it (meaning you have to keep the weight burning routine for longer than you think). We also have different metabolisms (rumour has it Ian Thorpe had a metabolism of 10k calories per day), but unless you are part of that 0.00000001% with super special genetics you can and will lose weight if you work at it the normal way, same as everyone around you.

The rest is just excuses. Nothing worth worth having ever comes easy.

A painting of a soup can is art. Rap is considered music (by some, not me).

Good thing then that you are here to tell them what it really means.

Snide remarks don't turn an invalid use of a statistic into a valid one.

Yes, it did as interpreted by the courts at the time.

Wow, you just keep making things up.

Of course, people were prosecuted and convicted under these laws in the Weimar Republic. Some of these cases are part of the parliamentary record. Some of them are even art history:

http://www.moma.org/collection...

However, if it's in the public domain, there is no monetary incentive to locate, digitize, and restore such a film. It either sits in a vault somewhere, decomposing (maybe even on nitrate film - egad!), or maybe it was transferred onto videotape before its copyright expired. So, it's either not available at all, or maybe isn't available in the best possible quality.

This is why we have public repositories like the Library of Congress. It should be their mandate to preserve and make available works that have passed into the public domain. We also have museums and non-profit organizations that do similar things for movies.

Basically, there are a number of entities that exist for the public good that would be more than happy to get their hands on works that have passed into the public domain, restore them and get them transferred to digital media so they can be enjoyed for many generations to come. Of course, these organizations require people to know about them (or to bother to use Google to find them) and help fund their efforts.

Does talking to "God" involve having an epileptic seizure?"

No, but it does involve pattern recognition behaviour that is suppressed in "normal" people.

Much early personal computer design was dominated by the "where do we put the back part of the CRT" problem. You see that in the article's pictures. Once screens became flat, and electronics became small, there was more design flexibility. Not much is done with it, though.

Organic designs have been tried over the years. Olivetti did some beautiful designs in the 1960s and 1970s, and most good museums of modern art will have a few Olivetti objects on display. Bang and Olufsen designs are much admired by designers, but the reaction of most people is "what's that?" There are limits to what consumers will accept.

Phones seem to have ended up as bricks, for now. For a while, flip phones were mainstream, but we now seem to be back to bricks, just thinner ones. Slightly larger devices are either flat bricks or big flip phones. There's little curvature in mobile devices. What matters is what's on the screen. (And the ability to fit the thing in a pocket or bag.)

The same thing happened to movie theaters decades ago. Movie theater auditoriums were once built in fanciful styles ranging from Moorish palaces to "atmospheric" theaters with the illusion of an open sky. Theaters had elaborate curtain systems, with both horizontal and vertical curtains. All of that is gone. Today the auditorium is a lightly decorated box with a bare screen. But the seats are better, the aisle lighting is better, and the projection and audio are much better. Function has triumphed because what matters is on the screen.

The next thing is supposed to be headwear, in the form of glasses with displays. It's not clear if that will catch on. Bluetooth headsets as jewelry never did.

Some art is very bad: merda d'artista, or the dadist urinal, for example. Blank canvases of a sort do exist. They are a trope because they exemplify negative aspects of conceptual art.

It is one thing if you think 'art' should be defined broadly, as "act of creativity" or something similar: but you must accept, with that broad definition, a dilution of esteem, and jokes at your expense. Cans of shit? We are expected to keep a straight face? Correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of the works like medra wer made to challenge the definition of art: didn't the creator therefore leave open the possibility that merda and its ilk are _not_ art?

If engineers took that approach, and defined engineering as "the application of science" with no conditions regarding safety, practicality, economics, or usefulness, you would end up with half-built bridges and crumbling roadways, with a satisfied-looking fellow at the end saying "I am an engineer. Admire my work or do not, but at least accord me some respect". It is the restrictions that the discipline puts on itself that helps it create such wonderful works. The same can be true about art: define it narrowly, or at least give it some bounds, and you will get better quality.

Having said what I have said, though ... what is a "cup of fur"?

It's a reference to this famous piece, hence the saying that surrealism isn't everyone's cup of fur.

There was an art piece at the MOMA's Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit titled "Victimless Leather" which involved growing a batch of stem cells into the shape of a tiny jacket. The piece eventually had to be "killed" when it grew out of control... as stem cells tend to do (and why their promise is over-exaggerated because they give you cancer).

I appreciate people working on innovations like this, but we are decades and decades away from getting anything practical out of it. The meat we get from mother nature has billions of years of natural selection going into it, making it grow more efficiently. We co-evolved with it, meaning we are selected to make to the most efficient use of its nutrients. It's going to take a lot of time in the lab to match the nutrition and efficiency of muscle meat produced from 3.5 billion years of evolution.

Could be worse. In 1969, the Museum of Modern Art in New York deployed Pulsa, an exhibit which included many strobe lights arranged to flash in sequence. There was a long line of strobes not only on the museum, but extending to adjacent buildings.

Pilots reported runway lighting in midtown Manhattan. The "moving ball of light" strobe system for runways was chosen because, even in cluttered urban areas with many parallel lines of light, there's nothing which looks like that. The FAA made them retime the strobes so that it didn't look like a runway.

I'm sure any epileptics walking down the street weren't amused either.

Could be worse. In 1969, the Museum of Modern Art in New York deployed Pulsa, an exhibit which included many strobe lights arranged to flash in sequence. There was a long line of strobes not only on the museum, but extending to adjacent buildings.

Pilots reported runway lighting in midtown Manhattan. The "moving ball of light" strobe system for runways was chosen because, even in cluttered urban areas with many parallel lines of light, there's nothing which looks like that. The FAA made them retime the strobes so that it didn't look like a runway.

I am the only one who was imediately reminded of the Jenny Holzer truism?

"The Variable Media Network proposes an unconventional new preservation strategy that has emerged from the Guggenheim's efforts to preserve its world-renowned collection of conceptual, minimalist and video art and that is supported by the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology. The aim of this affiliation is to help build a network of organizations that will develop the tools, methods and standards needed to implement this strategy."
http://variablemedia.net/

"Matters in Media Art is a multi-phase project designed to provide guidelines for care of time-based media works of art (e.g., video, film, audio and computer based installations). The project was created in 2003 by a consortium of curators, conservators, registrars and media technical managers from New Art Trust, MoMA, SFMOMA and Tate. The consortium launched its first phase, on loaning time-based media works, in 2004, and its second phase, on acquiring time-based media works, in 2007."
http://moma.org/explore/collection/conservation/media_art
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/mediamatters/

"From March to December 2003, the archive team of V2_Organisation (a center for culture and technology in Rotterdam, the Netherlands) has conducted research on the documentation aspects of the preservation of electronic art activities -- or Capturing Unstable Media --, an approach between archiving and preservation."
http://capturing.projects.v2.nl/

"DOCAM's main objective is to develop new methodologies and tools to address the issues of preserving and documenting digital, technological and electronic works of art."
http://www.docam.ca/en/?cat=17

"Inside Installations: Preservation and Presentation of Installation Art is a three-year research project (2004-2007) into the care and administration of an art form that is challenging prevailing views of conservation."
http://www.inside-installations.org/home/index.php

In an aside to the audience on her Miles of Aisles live album, Joni Mitchell says to the audience, "Nobody ever said to Picasso, 'Paint A Starry Night again, man!' ..."

Be kind of hard. "Starry Night" is Van Gogh. Oh, and he actually did a later version of it as a pen drawing.

Egotist. Whoever heard of Rob T Firefly? This MMO is about your uncle Rufus.

That would be the same Museum of Modern Art that proudly displays cans of shit in its collection? Gee, I'm not sure that says much. This is modern art you're talking about, which pretty much represents the purposeful antithesis of pleasing aesthetics (to the point that I'd say it supports the GP's position; ugly is ugly).

There's an excellent article here on the Arial/MS font bastardization issue.

Agreed .. I would much rather see the licensing and control flow back to the foundries like linotype who have a much better feel for layout and design than microsoft. If you're ever in NY, there's an excellent exhibit at the MoMA on Helvetica that has a 5 minute loop from Michael Price's excellent film.

The problem is 2-fold:

1. If an animation studio is spending resources making the crappy sequel, then it's spending resources making a crappy sequel. If they make a good sequel, whatever, they're making a good movie. But if they're spending *any* resource on making a crappy movie, then that's a resource they don't have to spend on a good movie. Also, especially in the case of animation, it screws up the flow of talent. Normally you have older, experienced animators taking a young animator as an assistant. The older animator does the creative work, the younger one fills in the in-betweens and learns a lot. When you start stretching to make that crappy sequel, you generally start pulling someone who would be an assistant and making them a full animator, short-changing their education and lowering the quality of every movie they produce in the future (and eventually they'll be moved to the high-quality department, which won't be quite so high-quality anymore).

2. Once you put a management into place that sees it as ok to produce the crappy knock-offs as a way to make a little extra dough on the side, you've put a management into place that sees itself as making money first and foremost, rather than making art (or, if not art, then great cinema). "Oh, we made a little extra money by making this crappy made-for-dvd movie. Well, to keep my job, I have to save/make us more money. I know, we can get rid of ______(fill in the blank) that I, as a number-crunching manager, don't see as important." I don't know if you saw it, but there's an exhibit at the MOMA of Pixar production art. It's made up of all the background work that went into making these films. Once you start teaching execs that they can make films without this background work, they start getting rid of it anywhere they can, because they've seen it work without it elsewhere... Truth is, even though Pixar makes computer animated films, less than half the artists (not half the employees, half the ARTISTS) ever actually work on the animation that goes into the final product. To an executive (like, say, Michael Eisner), that's half a company that isn't working on the final product (I mean, the guys doing the animating are artists, they can do what those other guys can...) and could, therefore, be reassigned (like to the paint division...WTF DISNEY?!?! DISNEY WALL PAINT??!?!?!?!?!!? WTF?!?!?!?!)

So yes, there are markets and reasons for the crappy movies, crappy sequels, etc. It's when a company that makes good movies gets forced by executives to start making the crappy movies that I (at least) have a problem, because that's the death-knell for anything truly good from that company. Yes, we should put our best minds on the high-quality stuff, and everyone else on the franchises, but more than that, we should keep those 2 groups so completely separated that they never, ever, ever have to deal with each other (or, more importantly, each other's executives). Sorry, I just had to rant. I grew up long-after the great days of Disney but right during the peak of Pixar, and, as a movie-goer and as an aspiring animator/filmmaker, I can't bear to see Pixar and it's films turn into what Disney has become, and part of that comes from people who are ok with the mediocrity it currently stands for. Luckily, with John Lasseter as creative head and Steve Jobs as eccentric ass-hole/perfectionist, along with Steve Iger (who seems pretty true to what Disney should be), I think we might be looking at a strengthened Pixar and maybe even a revitalized Disney. Or maybe I'm just delusionally optimistic...

There are still some Linux users reading this blog, right? (I'm using Mozilla with Debian Sarge)

http://www.moma.org/visit_moma/podcasts/feed.xml

"This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below."

I claim he was just painting angular, childish drawings requiring no particular talent

I respectfully beg to differ. When you or any child can paint something as nice as Les Desmoiselles d'Avignon, I'll admit that Picasso was without talent. Sure, a lot of 'modern' art these days is bunk, but Picasso shouldn't be classified with that junk.

Doesn't everybody know that MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art?

True.

It may sound weird, but there were even wooden airplanes. Beechcraft used to build airplanes out of plywood.

I recommend an excellent Princeton Architectural Press book called "Bent Ply", check it out;

Bent Ply

And about the parent. Well, the case doesn't look that good to be frank. I mean, the lines don't match, there are too much branches and stuff. And it's almost an insult to mix and match plastic and wood. If you want to make something out of wood, start from the scratch. A good example can be found from here (lots of pictures, text in Finnish);

Wooden Handmade Case

The case is made out of Finnish plywood (birch), which is also used in the famous chairs by Alvar Aalto. Like this one, for example, dating back more than seventy years to the early thirties;

Paimio Chair

Anyways, I like the idea of wooden cases. And not only from the aesthetic viewpoint. The resonance is radically different in wooden cases than in metallic ones. Instead of nasty "brrr", it's more like "mmmm", which is always a good sign :)

If you enjoy this stuff have a look at the master of large format photography, Andreas Gursky. Gursky, for me, adds the 'art' to the photography that Mr GigaPixel somehow misses. Im impressed as hell by the scale and detail of Gigapixels work, but theres something just ... better about Gursky.

If you hear of any of his work near you go and see it - viewing on screen doesnt do it justice.

If I had any advice for MrGigaPixel (as I hope he will now be named) it would be to find the printing mix which best displays his work, and to ONLY release as exceptionally high quality art prints - not cheap posters. It might be easier to make a buck with posters, but its possible to earn a mint with print. (as my old art teacher used to say)

• Using your knowledge and expertise to help other people. Not least, it's easy to show your support to various worthy causes and help get the countries decision makers to do some good. Here are some ideas:
• • Fed up of car alarms (especially in New York)? Then check out these people and some background. They have useful information that can be used to support a car alarm ban and show that there are much better ways of preventing car theft.
  • Everyone knows nerds are fueled by coffee - And most people are kinda aware that coffee-growers are getting ripped off by the big coffee buyers, causing them to face job loss and starvation as well as environmental degradation - Shoot Procter and Gamble an eFax asking them to invest in 'Fair Trade' Coffee.
• Start a new hobby!
• • Go Running! or blading
  • Cook something Southern
  • Take up abstract painting - Try recreating your own version of famous exhibits!
• Otherwise.....
• • Plan a holiday to France
  • Get a date - there's plenty of possibilities out there!

;) dave

Of course, the argument is centuries out of date. The examples are decades old. Let's make it more relevant! Art and Technology has been around for a long, long time. Incidentally Art Technology Group (ATG), which among other things created Dynamo which is now a huge application server product, is from the MIT Media Lab.

For example,
1965: Sony introduces the first monochrome half-inch tape Video Rover portapak-used almost immediately by New York video artist Nam June Paik.

And the contemporary media art scene is not about using photoshop. Even if you just count using digital technology, this has been around for years and it is vibrant. One well-known artist (Ingo Gunther) has used satellite transponders in his work, and one project (Kanal X) involved setting up a pirate TV station in Leipzig the transmitter of which was a sculpture. Ars Electronica has been going on for 20 years. DEAF has been held since 1986. ZKM has been open since '97 though many of its exhibitors have been active for far longer. The Getty has a collection of art and technology works from 1966 to 1993. Japan has one of the best media art infrastructures (hurt by the economy to be sure) which draw artists from Japan and overseas to places like the ICC, the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS), and other spaces. Often the artists are in fact visiting professors who teach technology students (especially programmers) in universities.

Not only have artists always sought to make use of the latest media, but media artists often have to develop the cutting edge themselves in order to get their message across. This is true now that we use supercomputers like the Silicon Graphics Reality Engine, as it was when bromides and daguerrotypes took advantage of advances in industrial chemistry. Art drives science and vice-versa. I don't think you can point to any time when art and technology were not closely related.

While I don't usually have so much trouble with Mr. Katz' work, this time I'd have to say that sweeping generalizations without any enlightening examples must be hurtful to slashdotters' potential enjoyment and participation in some of the most exciting art in the world. Where's the beef? Many cutting edge artists work with very talented programmers and need their help badly. In particular, people who have a flair for networking, opengl, and hardware setup/troubleshooting (oh don't forget circuitry and wireless!) are really needed. Linux is extremely relevant now that machines have gotten so powerful, and the preemptive kernel sounds great for art! Artists who are interested in technology might like to check out MAX which is a great MIDI music and device controller.

It would be useful to point this out with substantial explanation of what this means for this site's users. Art gives context and meaning to budding researchers. And talented artists often come up with the new concepts that drive innovation. A public artwork can drive personal study and honing of one's technological skills like nothing else.

I think the reason it seems new now is that we've got so darn many computers now but little funding for artists (in the U.S.). There are also some very talented young artists who are taking advantage of the latest technology. More about them on Slashdot might be fun! How about a new icon and a media art section? Here are some neat online exhibits at the NYC MOMA.

Here's my problem, if Expressive Speech is more protected than Functional Speech, what exactly is the difference? I've tried looking at it philosophically, and I get "All speech has both Expressive and Functional aspects to it, there is no pure speech". If there is a legal distiction, can someone (preferably a Lawyer, but not necessarily) please elaborate what it is?

Barring that, there are some programs that, in my opinion, just plain qualify as art. For example, in the 15th International Obfuscated C Code Contest, I'd put the programs Glicbawls (bmeyer.c) and TomX.

Glicbawls goes beyond compressing an image, it talks about ongoing research in the field, demonstrating a routine at the heart of the author's research. It has a clean interface which will do the right thing when confronted with a compressed or uncompressed file. It has a visual representation that is small and artistic. It is programming poetry, a statement about beauty.

Tomx is poetry as well, but poetry of a different kind. Rather than showing beauty, it talks of communication; "All language is fundamentally one". This is a truth we learn when learning to program, but we often forget it as we move into the real world from the abstract. TomX brings this truth into the real world for us to hold, touch, play with. It's even maintainable code (unlike most of the IOCCC entries), so it can grow.

Another example of the expressiveness of a program is in the metaphor it uses to interface with the user. Robert J. Sawyer (Author of Calculating God and Flash Fowrward) wrote an excellent article on the design of Wordstar, and how much more joyful it is for him to use, because of the design metaphor, than other designs that perform the same function.

The Museum of Modern Art has an entire department of Architecture and Design devoted to the art of things that many people think of as purely functional. While they do not yet include software, there is no denying that the software process has much in common with Architecture, Engineering and Design, and the same aesthetic and artistic choices get made during the process.

These are just some examples off the top of my head. I'd really like an answer to my first question tho.

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