Thursday 30 October 2008

Through the Labyrinth with Cildo Meireles


Visionary artist Cildo Meireles is currently showing at Tate Modern in London. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1948, Meireles has since the late 1960s, created sculptures and installations that function as open propositions in which the audience is invited to become acutely aware of the experience of their bodies in space and time--not only as physical beings, but as psychological, social, and political ones as well.

Here he pays tribute to the 'War of the Worlds', fitting as this months it celebrates its 70th anniversary:
"The War of the Worlds is an example of an art object that worked perfectly, in the sense that it seamlessly dissolved the border between art and life, fiction and reality ..." Cildo Meireles

Source: 
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/

Thursday 23 October 2008

Physicists Find New State Of Matter

Science Daily have published a fascinating article outlining how McGill University researchers have discovered a new state of matter, a quasi-three- dimensional electron crystal, in a material very much like those used in the fabrication of modern transistors:

"We decided to tweak the two-dimensionality by applying a very large magnetic field [...] something totally unexpected popped." The "pop" was the startling transformation of a two-dimensional electron system inside the semiconducting material into a quasi-three-dimensional system, something existing theory did not predict.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081021185213.htm

Tuesday 21 October 2008

Small worlds



Here's a beautiful gallery of microscope photography, including diatoms (plankton with glass-like silica shells ... taken using darkfield and polarised light photography).

Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn14971-small-world-gallery

Monday 20 October 2008

Do you think it was like this in 1929?

Great article from the Guardian about the hideous excess of art fairs:

"We don't yet know how Frieze 2008 and its parties and dinners and rococo excess will one day be viewed, but at the art coalface - pressed hard up against a nicely chilled glass of champagne - it felt like the beginning of the end."

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/19/friezeartfair-art

Friday 17 October 2008

Ghostly Glow Reveals Galaxy Clusters in Collision

A team of scientists have detected long wavelength radio emissions from a colliding, massive galaxy cluster. 

The discovery implies that existing radio telescopes have missed a large population of these colliding objects. 

The discovery implies that existing radio telescopes have missed a large population of these colliding objects.

Monday 13 October 2008

Virgin Birth by Shark Confirmed

Scientists have confirmed the second-ever case of a “virgin birth” in a shark, indicating once again that female sharks can reproduce without mating and raising the possibility that many female sharks have this incredible capacity.
Shark scientist, Dr. Demian Chapman, and his collaborators, have proven through DNA testing that the offspring of a female blacktip shark named “Tidbit” contained no genetic material from a father.


Wednesday 8 October 2008

Dark Designs

Dark Designs will explore the notion of art, technology and conspiracies in a series of events taking place in venues across Yverdon-les-Bains in Switzerland.

Organised by Maison d’Ailleurs, the museum of Science Fiction, Utopia and Extraordinary Journeys, and the University of Art and Design in Geneva (HEAD), Dark Designs includes a symposium featuring acclaimed science fiction writer, Norman Spinrad, director of transmediale, Stephen Kovats, philosophers Pierre Lagrange and Daniel Pinkas, scientists Herbert Keppner and Jérôme Charmet, and many others. Dark Designs also includes an exhibition of digital art by students, located in Yverdon-les-Bains’ historic 13th century Savoyard castle, and an evening of extraordinary performances by artists Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand and Gaspard Buma, hosted by the picturesque theatre, L’Echandole, situated in the caves of the castle.

Source:
http://www.dark-designs.net

Sunday 5 October 2008

The party is over for Iceland

Iceland is on brink of collapse as inflation and interest rates soar, while the krona is in freefall. Almost overnight, its population became the wealthiest on Earth. Tracy McVeigh of the Guardian finds that the credit crunch is making the cash disappear

Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/iceland.creditcrunch