Friday, November 18, 2011

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Want to see something vanish right in front of your eyes?

Simply stare at the centre of the image and it will slowly vanish.

Illusion

Amazeballs!

Via Richard Wiseman

Infinity Water

Infinity Water - Case Study from KORB on Vimeo.


“Infinity water” is a journey through physical properties of the most abundant compound on Earth's surface. Exploring the interaction between colorless, odorless liquid and music, discovering the infinity encoded in water's memory.

Infinity Water - Case Study from KORB Infinity Water - Case Study from KORB Infinity Water - Case Study from KORB

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Frontier Is Everywhere



From The Sagan Series – an online project, by Reid Gower, of videos based on Carl Sagan's audiobooks, using modern images to provide an updated, and still relevant, context for his words.

Vintage Tate

How cool is this!?
Taken before the Tate Modern opened, it's the Turbine Hall as it once was...

Turbine Hall

Via Tate

Monday, November 7, 2011

Architecture of Immanence

Mega church images by German photographer, Christoph Morlinghaus – like something from David Lynch's Dune:

Christoph Morlinghaus Christoph Morlinghaus Christoph Morlinghaus Christoph Morlinghaus Christoph Morlinghaus

Best viewed whilst listening to Brian Eno's "Prophecy Theme"...

The Spirit of Enquiry

Remarkable images of the Large Hadron Collider by photographer Simon Norfolk, commissioned for the New York Times Magazine:

The LHC: The Spirit of Enquiry

"Seeing the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, and I was amazed that it resembled the view one has bending one's neck back and looking up into the cupola of an English cathedral, or the domes of the mosques I once photographed in Isfahan. In vast, columned chambers, the blades of the LHC were being assembled in an atmosphere of methodical, industrial piety. But when I made the final prints, they seemed to resemble crop circles or Tibetan mandalas. One of the disks is even fronted by a massive, stonehenge-like monolith."

The LHC: The Spirit of Enquiry The LHC: The Spirit of Enquiry The LHC: The Spirit of Enquiry The LHC: The Spirit of Enquiry

Sunday, November 6, 2011

The Exploration of Space

Vintage NASA photographs from the collection of Victor Martin-Malburet were recently sold at London's Bloomsbury Auctions. Wish I had a spare couple-of-hundred quid!...

Wide-angle view of the hidden side of the Moon, Lunar Orbiter 5, 6 August 1967

James Irwin David Scott photographs samples on the Moon, Apollo 15, August 1971
This is astronaut David Scott from Apollo 15, August 1971. Scott is on the slope of Hadley Delta, some 10.5 miles from the base of the Apennine Mountains seen in the background.

Copernicus crater and its mountainous landscape, Lunar Orbiter 2, November 1966
Copernicus crater and its mountainous landscape, Lunar Orbiter 2, November 1966. The remarkable clarity is attributable to the absence of atmosphere.

The CSM in lunar orbit, seen from the LM, Apollo 15, August 1971
The CSM in lunar orbit, seen from the LM, Apollo 15, August 1971

The Agena Target Vehicle illuminated by the Sun in Earth orbit, Gemini 10, July 1966
The Agena Target Vehicle illuminated by the Sun in Earth orbit, Gemini 10, July 1966. Mission pilot Michael Collins earned the dubious honour of becoming the first person to lose a camera in space during his spacewalk.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Semantic Satiation

The thing that happens when you say a word over and over and then it doesn't sound like that word anymore...

From Wikipedia:
The explanation for the phenomenon was that verbal repetition repeatedly aroused a specific neural pattern in the cortex which corresponds to the meaning of the word. Rapid repetition causes both the peripheral sensorimotor activity and the central neural activation to fire repeatedly, which is known to cause reactive inhibition, hence a reduction in the intensity of the activity with each repetition.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Semiconductor: 20Hz

A Semiconductor piece by Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

Audio Data courtesy of CARISMA, operated by the University of Alberta, funded by the Canadian Space Agency.

"20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception."

20Hz 20Hz 20Hz

Via It's Nice That (and Ruth)

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