Slashdot Mirror
DNA Sculpture Constructed with Shopping Carts
Roland Piquepaille writes "The U.K. supermarket chain Somerfield decided last year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA in an original way. It commissioned British artist Abigail Fallis to create a sculpture of a DNA double helix made of shopping carts and to display it during the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign of 2004. The sculpture, named DNA DL90, is 31 feet high and weighs more than three tons. It is on display since April 2004 at "Sculpture at Goodwood," the 21st century British sculpture park in Surrey. This photo gallery contains several pictures of this original artwork."
That would be awesome!
"Never tell me the odds"
Yes, obviously they built their webserver out of shopping carts too.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
I believe this might be an all time low.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
is there going to be a slashdot article on every blog entry for this jack ass?
And who said modern art isn't worth a dime!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
"That looks like human DNA!"
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Man, the safeway down the road must be really pissed...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Is this guy the new JonKatz? Two of his stories on the front page pimping links to his weblogs where he has his own advertising. And he submitted them himself!
John.
There's this big ravine near where I live that the kiddies like to push shopping carts into. Looks a lot like this "sculpture" except ours is a longer sequence...
This is truly amazing. Maybe I should submit my project to Slashdot - a giant diagram of the Linux filesystem... made out of old mayonaise bottles and ketchup packets.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Shopping carts have no need for them? :)
I hate to be picky (well - I love it really), but Goodwood is in Sussex, not Surrey. I live about 5 miles from this exhibition so I should know.
With the commercialization and patents of DNA, it is symbolically appropriate to make the sculpture out of shopping carts.
I believe it's a default theme on the software (geeklog?) that's used for both sites.
That reminds me of the scene following an incident in which I was involved. The police report identified that particular factors contributing to the accident included too much coffee, a trolley with a wonky wheel, and a special offer on pork pies at the far end of a crowded aisle..
You are so right. But then, by the number of posts I see here by you bitching and moaning about the "quality" of the "news" here, I would guess you have a very very sad life made up exclusively of viewing bad slashdot sories...
Gonzo on an old Muppet show banging on a brick with a hammer.
About sums it up.
Does this piece challenge our materialistic preconceptions of the world of science and commerce and force us to re-evaluate our relationship with that which forms the core of our self-determined being?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Because shopping is programmed into core biology...
They should take pictures in the morning of the mutated DNA straind that is Homeless Erectus. I am sure all those shopping carts are a magnet for the vagrants.
Seriously though, how much money was wasted on this. I don't even think it looks like DNA. It looks like a double helix of shopping carts. It was a complete waste of time, shopping carts, and my break.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
What's next, a giant buckminsterfullerene of laundry baskets?
If you post it, they will read.
Who here couldn't have designed this? The pictures really don't seem to demonstrate any originality on the artist's part IMO if that really was the commission given to him.
Beyond that, I'm not sure I'd really call it "artwork". It's certainly a feat of engineering and construction, but it appears to have been commissioned entirely by the supermarket, and it's not clear what the point of it is supposed to be (unless it's a sly commentary, which I rather doubt).
Ramming two concepts together at high speed does not an artistic statement make. I guess it's just another example of the oxymoron of "corporate art"...
The chemis spent his teen years in this house; the sculpture is located right outside his bedroom window where he had his first lab.
When I have mod points I never mod down posts just because they're first posts...what a waste of mod points. If they're that assanine, just leave them a score 0 where they're most likely to get lost in the shuffle.
What kind of flaming retard wastes a mod point on a dull post that was already posted at score 0?
BTW, s/the/she/ on my first post. Sorry bout the typo.
I don't know art, but I know what I like, and this, I don't like. Honestly, why take something that is naturally beautiful and represent it using something so ugly?
--Paul
Unixpunx
Then again, it appears she may be more savvy than her patrons. Either that or cultivating some spindoctoring skills herself.
Wait. You're saying youwouldn't want to see that??
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F Scott Fitzgerald
And pardon me if you think that comments about submissions are off-topic, but once again, there are way too many hyperlinks in the submission. I do not need to know the web address of the supermarket chain's corporate headquarters, or the charity's corporate headquarters, or the event campaign's home page, or the sponsoring gallery's home page, or even the artist's home page. I just want to see the damned shopping cart helix. Pardon me for sounding like a curmudgeon, but nine times out of ten, I am only interested in one link: the link to the subject of the submission, not every related entity (which I can ferret out from the aricle if I really want to). Am I the only one who thinks so?
what the hell do shopping carts have to do with DNA?
someone has quite a bit of time on their hands, eh?
Homeless Erectus makes me think of waking up on a sewer grate with a boner.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
you are a dipshit.
Oops, forgot to post anonymously.
Well, you win this time GI Joe! Cobra will return to fight another day!
I'm posting here, aren't I?
I was looking forward to being really impressed by her skills as an artist, and to see something clever done with shopping trolley's. It's just a frame with the trolley's hung off it! That's lame!!
Wow, I thought... DNA sculpture & shopping trolleys, this might be interesting. Then I get to the sculpture images and it's about the most unimaginative uncreative version of such a sculpture I could possibly imagine. A total waste of time and metal.
I think she needs more to do. Anyone who designs a Double Helix out of shopping carts, A) has to be a woman, and B) needs more of a life. Of course on the other hand, here I am writing a note about her.. online... and there you are reading it
OMG that was funny! It never fails -- I squander my mod points on *informative* and *insightful* stuff and then one of you jokers comes up with a truly laugh-out-loud ringer like this.
Red-Red-Red codes to only a single protein, as does Blue-Blue-Blue. Worse, I'm not sure Blue is the valid opposite base-pair to Red. This renders the whole structure genetically useless!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Just wait before the thing is loaded with garbage trown in,
.. Ahhh modern art .. full of hidden sides.
and no one wil ever want to walk past it.
However I still prefer the clasic 'brick' art... one word: 6.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Call me a troll, but I find this "work of art" to a freakin' waste of the artist's time as well as my own. Congrats.. You took some shopping carts and linked them up. (..in an unoriginal way, I might add.) I'm suprised this made it to the /. frontpage. But hey.. If you thought that was impressive, you should see strand of DNA built from soda cans!
What is your penile percentile?
This is a single helix with two sides. DNA is a double helix, which is different.
Mike
Look at that thing! It's just a giant leaf collector waiting for fall to come around. I don't want to be the one cleaning it every two weeks.
Does this piece challenge our materialistic preconceptions of the world of science and commerce and force us to re-evaluate our relationship with that which forms the core of our self-determined being?
Yes.
I mean seriously, she was given an interesting project (DNA representation) and certainly an original and interesting medium, and all we get is shopping carts welded to a stick-figure style double helix frame. It's boring and unimaginative as hell.
On the whole, yes it came out nice and it is engaging visually, but I feel like there could have been a lot more interesting variations on this. Perhaps build the helix itself out of carts, rather than just stick them on a prebuilt frame. Maybe use cables to create a self-supporting tension structure. Actually cut up some of the carts with a plasma torch and use the pieces to create individual molecules (G T C A) on the helix, there's lots of interesting structures to be built with the steel grids and wheels and legs, etc.
To me it seems like the end-result of this project was something that could have been built by any welder given the task "make a DNA helix from shopping carts." It was interpretted 100% literally by the artist and doesn't seem to convey any sense of insight, elaboration, or conceptual development.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
'I am not just an artist who makes a load of old pants', insists Abigail Fallis with characteristically double-edged humour. '
underpants by Abigail Fallis
That is meant, of course, to represent the protein alpha-helix structure (which Pauling discovered), and not an artistic impression of the DNA double-helix.
Did anyone else notice that this is a double-sided single-helix DNA model? It's not really a double helix!
Damn, European (erm, british?) shopping carts look funny.
...spike
Ewwwwww, coconut...
Really?
yeah, but we call them TROLLIES this side of the Atlantic you insensitive clod!
Great idea... beautiful art...
But who the hell calls shopping carts "shopping trolleys?"
I mean really...
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
STOP FLOGGING YOUR BLOG !
stop flogging your blog !
i have read more interesting things in those ads they have in the stalls in the restrooms at the mall.
I can generally appreciate art, especially sculpture. It genearlly takes quite a bit of skill to produce a large outdoor installation like this even if I don't like it.
But this? This is shit. It's not so much that it's made of shopping carts, but it's more that it looks like a jungle gym and the baskets are just going to fill up with leaves and trash. I can hardly believe that such a work was actually *commissioned* without seomeone thinking of this.
It's kind of like how the city I live in has recently taken to painting all of the new highway overpasses an earthy red color. I can appreciate that lots of people think that it looks nicer than bare concrete, but for what it costs, the only thing it really buys you is the need to repaint it again in 5-10 years at an equivalent (or greater) cost. If they really wanted red overpasses, they should have done it properly and dyed the concrete red to begin with.
Its not "his site"
Its Radio Userland's site AKA radio.weblogs.com AKA the company that Dave Winer founded. Winer is the RSS / OPML / XML guy who is now at Harvard.
Piquepaille == spammer. Instead of using email to spam, he spams sites like Slashdot (and many others) using his blog.
Piquepaille == scammer
Here is a direct quote from Piquepaille's Blogads advertising entry:
Why doesn't he just say "So if you want to associate yourself with a spammer, give me your money."?
Ignore the fact that he has no "stories" of his own, offers no original content and zero insight.
Like most spammers, he has no incentive to stop because it's profitable for him to spam Slashdot and other sites.
Make it unprofitable. Stop visiting his weblog. Express your displeasure to the editors. Express your displeasure to Radio Userland (they are a quiet participant in his spamming since Userland has a small ad on the blog). Express your displeasure to the advertisers. Let them know you won't buy products they advertise there. Last of all, express your displeasure about his spam to Piquepaille himself.
You make Piquepaille's continued spamming possible with your traffic.
(As for all the spam references in this post, some might call it poetic justice. Maybe Google will pick it up and let everyone know.)
now that's a last name.
The pure arrogance of the commission beggars belief...
- not only are UK supermarkets pushing all the local grocers out-of-business so we only have one place to go to for all our essentials (supermarkets!)
- not only are they forcing us to have 'loyalty cards' (secret tracking cards to you and me) so they can track what we buy and then use it to shove junk mail through our letter box and put up the prices of our favourite goods and make secret pay-offs to jam jar poison
- but now they're trying to imply that supermarkets our part of our DNA!
I had expected better of Somerfield ... sounds like the sort of thing Tesco's would do ...
In fact, come to think of it, Somerfield's latest UK marketing campaign is all about implying that supermarkets are the essential thread in our very existence - they have a man and a woman bump into each other in a supermarket - and after a couple of coy looks a baby drops from the sky into the woman's shopping *trolley*
Personally I prefer the Asda (now with added Walmart) adverts - all that bum slapping makes me feel all warm inside.
"Sculpture of DNA using shopping carts" is an interesting idea, but this is about as boring an implementation of it as I could imagine. In particular, the shopping carts aren't doing anything - it could have equally well been a scuplture of DNA using rocking chairs, old tires, washing machines, small bushes, whatever.
Shopping carts slide into each other, so they have a natural way of connecting. Add some extra twiddles so you have four types, such that only some pairs can slide into each other and you can use the shopping carts as the nucleotides.
This sculpture is supported by a single central column (absent in DNA) but is missing the two helical backbones. It isn't so much that this is less accuate, but it is also less interesting (but undoubtedly cheaper and structurally simpler.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Some bum is gonna try to steal a cart and will take a bottom one since those are easier to get to. Then the whole damn thing is gonna fall over.
DNA has a major groove and a minor groove. This doesn't.
It's obviously a trans-Boschian representation of how static this Keynesian-capitalistic society has become in terms of how it considers scientific breakthroughs (like shopping carts and DNA structures). The artist seeks to draw out this flaw in a meta-psuedo-Westian manner by satirizing it in the form of an 'unimaginative' pre-post-modern sculpture, the semi-ante-Colleiran nuance of which will be missed by the present-day proletariat. Frankly, I don't know why the artist bothered with such an uneducated audience. It reeks of Panasonian Cronkitism to me.
...
Did you like that? It's my impression of a pretentious art student. It's like filling out a Madlibs with as many "artsy" names as you can manage to drop. I have a theory that this is the only thing they teach in art school aside from "how to act like an artist" (Beret Presentation 101, anyone?)
I wanted to make a sculpture of a shopping cart out of DNA.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Speaking of DNA, and gametes, and protein strands..
In Massachusetts two guys can get tax credits and social security benefits for banging each other in the butt...
And I still can't smoke a doobie legally. WTF?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Shopping trollies are fugly.
I know you are psychotic, but please make an effort.
by the number of posts I see here by you bitching and moaning about the "quality" of the "news" here
Well, call me old fashioned, but as a paying subscriber I think I have the right to complain about the quality of the product I'm paying for.
Casual Games/Downloads
... yet again that people have too much time on their hands. That, and Germans love David Hasselhoff.
Gee, I'd think he'd have come up with the alpha-helix structure a lot earlier if he grew up with a sculpture of it right outside his damn house.
Of course, I read on Wikipedia that his father was an "unsuccesful druggie", so my thoughts have very little bearing.
Slashdot has lost it. It amazes me what is considered news worthy.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
DNA's role in passing along genetic information was discovered ten years earlier by Osgood Avery - who should have received a Nobel prize, but the committee was to timid to award him one.
That depends on whether you have ever smashed a shopping cart to pieces with a sledgehammer for the sheer satisfaction it can provide.
In short, No.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Okay - I'm really trying to see the point here.
The best I have come up with in my two or three minutes of pondering is the idea that life has become cheap - essentially that DNA is now like a commodity at a supermarket.
If that's not it - I'm stumped.
People are always looking at modern art and saying " I could have done that!" Well the answer is: but you didn't. That's the difference between you and an artist, and why we need artists.
BTW, the artist in question here is female.
FWIW, I think it's pretty cool, but then, I tend to like modern art anyway.
As long as there are absolutely no follow-up questions, yes. Yes it does.
The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something; for the box might even be empty.
I guess my point is that given the problem "create some sort of helix -- like DNA -- made out of shopping carts" you couldn't hardly do anything other than what she did. I mean, really, did this require much skill or creativity on the artist's part? I'm not saying the result was bad, just (very) predictable.
My main gripe with most modern art is that it often seems like anyone could have done it, compared with past portraits and landscapes which clearly took much time, patience, skill, and artistry (and which can clearly convey a message, unlike "oh, it means anything you want it to"). To me, it would be like writing a book in stream of consciousness, absolutely no skill required with, typically, banal results.
PS: I do like some modern art, such as Picasso, MC Escher and Paul Nash.
Dear Anonymous Coward,
This is not the first time that someone like you writes a virulent comment about myself and my blog. I decided today it was time to answer, even if my comments are buried in the middle of many others, and if I doubt it can change your point of view.
First, you say there is no original content. on my bog. You really chose the wrong day to say this. Where in the press have you read about this DNA sculpture made from shopping trolleys? Do your own search and you'll be surprised.
Second, let me explain my publishing process. I usually find every single day several items of interest in the press or in news releases from universities around the world. I then select one for publishing on my blog. I add my comments and other references, such as links to other technical papers of pictures which don't exist in the original material. And when I finally publish an item on my blog, I ALWAYS include a link to this original material. You're always free to read this material only without ever going to my blog.
Third, it is true that Slashdot has published many references to my blog. But why? I'm not affiliated with any of the editors. So I guess that the Slashdot editors find that my posts bring some value to their readers.
Fourth, you say that I want to bring more traffic to my blog in order to sell ads. The first reference by Slashdot to my blog is from November 2002. And I began to accept ads in March 2004. And at a price of $30 per week, you'll agree with me that it's not enough to make a living. This is just to cover some costs, such as my $50 monthly cable connection. This is far away to cover the time and efforts I put into my blog to bring something interesting to other people.
Fifth, you mention the Radio UserLand software I'm using. Everything is public with this site: the readership, the comments, the trackbacks. And more recently, you also can check the links to my posts from other blogs thanks to Technorati. This is a total *open* process, dear Anonymous Coward.
To summarize, I think I'm bringing something useful to the world at my own humble level. If everyday, even a single person gets a new idea after reading my daily post, it's good enough for me.
That's all. Roland Piquepaille.
No, I think that's it. -Except I somehow doubt the commissionaires saw this creepy little metaphor. I can't imagine that they did; why advertise such a horrific thing unless they were deliberately trying to force the public into submitting to the idea?
Somehow, I don't think the fine gents in charge of grocery store chains are entirely tuned into such things. Just pawns. Probably with brain suckers attached to the backs of their necks.
-FL
Think about it.
I mean, where other than the grocery store giants does the average 'consumer' (and what a delightfully disgusting word) come in contact with more genetically messed-with stuff? Nowhere. If you are alive, then you've probably ingested a Monsanto product or ten over the last week!
DNA modified for the purpose of selling bullshit, ugly product to bullshit, ugly consumers.
I'd love to talk to 'Abigail Fallis' about her sculpture. I wonder if she realizes what she has created.
Side note;
Abigail Fallis???
Is anybody else finding it weird that there are so many dead-giveaways in words and names these days? Consider. .
George Bush. (Big pussy.)
Dick Cheney. (Big Penis)
Colin Powell. (Sceptic Ass Tank.)
Condolezza Rice. (Condole: To offer sympathy and support to) (ezza - with ease?) That's her job description, pretty much. Advise and support the Prez.
Donald Rumsfeld (Felled by Rum? -Booze, an escapist substance; drunk on escapism?) (A stretch, but it jumped out nonetheless. .
Hell, I don't know. I'm just playing. But you just know they're going to stick in your mind!
-FL
I like the cutting idea. You could cut the cart one way to produce the two molecules for a GC pair and another way to produce a TA pair. So if the left half of a cart represents G and the right half of a cart represents C, you've got a visual reminder that the two molecules are always paired up. Ditto for using, say, the front half of a cart for T and the back half of a cart for A.
Since when did Slashdot moderators turn into a bunch of patriotic numb-skulls? The Bush clan is KILLING America! --And Americans, for that matter. How many kids have been murdered and mutilated in Bush-boy's idiotic, false war which the world begged him not to jump into? People with brains KNEW it was going to turn into this, -and worse.
The American death toll is climbing into the 1000's, and if you damned fools don't pull your heads out, the Middle East is going to make the Viet Nam war monument look like a grade-school sculpture. And the moderators support this??? Sick. Sick. FUCKING Sick!
Man! I'll have to remember this and poke harder in the future, because this is obviously where it hurts. --People can deal with all sorts of my posts, but when you start in with a little harmless word-play, the nerves get pinched.
But that's okay. You'll just make my worrisome words go away, and when they are out of sight, you'll feel all warm and snuggly once again.
Pathetic.
-FL
Am I the only one reminded by this of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man ?
For those not familiar with the story, Death gets outsourced. In the ensuing chaos, shopping trolleys appear as the larval stage of a city-eating mall.
But you're not paying for articles or news, you're paying to avoid seeing advertisements while viewing incidental(and free) articles and news.