Via scaryideas.com.

If you love futuristic musical madness, then these bizarre charts and mathematically-transformed pieces of sheet music from artist Marco Fusinato will delight you. Think of them as the abstract underpinnings for a movie like Darren Aronofsky’s Pi.

Fusinato brings together avant garde music and art in his work, creating imagery that looks like the results of a mad scientist’s musings on how sound functions. In this series of drawings, called Mass Black Implosion, he’s transformed scores for avant garde works into suggestions for what he calls “free noise,” by changing the order of the notes and suggesting new relationships between them. Basically he’s suggested a way to make something abstract even more abstract. In the process, he’s created charts that are gorgeously strange.

Link via io9.com, which contains a gallery of more fantastic images.

Outlaw Biology, present by the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics and Art/Sci, presented a symposium, workshop and exhibition this weekend.

A symposium exploring new forms of public participation in biological research, raising questions and cultivating ideas about how life could and should be studied. Panelists will address issues including do-it-yourself biology, open source science, at home medical genetics, bio-art, and novel ethical engagements with science at the cutting edge. Event schedule includes: Friday, a panelist discussion with artists, scientists and normal people; Saturday, workshops and an open-house exhibition throughout.

A tentative list of workshops and exhibitions included:

1. Bioweathermap, Jason Bobe. With field-trips to the UCLA Arboretum and Hammer Museum (in cooperation with Machine Project

2. Learn to Design a DNA-based nanostructure using cadnano software, Philip Lukeman

3. Paint colorful microbes – luminescent, fluorescent, and pigmented – on do-it-yourself solid media. With a little time and luck, we’ll preserve the painted results in epoxy, like microbiological paintings in amber, Mackenzie Cowell

4. SKDB: Learn to use software tools for open source manufacturing and bioengineering, Bryan Bishop and Ben Lipkowitz

5. Use of Acinetobacter calcoaceticus strain ADP1 as a DIY bioengineering platform, David Metzgar

6. Ars Synthetica: Have an informed, ethical, and open dialogue on the emerging field of synthetic biology, Gaymon Bennett

7. Extract DNA from Strawberries, CSG Staff

8. Lactobacillus Plasmid Recovery and Visualization for fun and profit, Meredith L. Patterson

9. DIY Webcam Microscopy. Join us for a worldwide webcam hacking event and make your own 100x USB microscope for less than $10. We’ll provide the webcams and a live internet feed from other workshop locations across the world, from Bangalore to Australia. Find out more at diybio.org/ucam

10. Velolab, See the first Bicyclized Mobile Biology lab, Sam Starr

Any future Beethoven’s in the house?

Oh my goodness this is cute. The design you’re about to experience is called “Original Sound Track” and it’s basically a sound box flipped inside out and turned into a train on tracks. Set up your tracks, which have pins in them in just the right places, wind up your train car and set it on the tracks, and wowie! You’ve got your own little sound compilation! Made for kids, but who am I to say you adult figures can’t have one for yourself.

When this train makes it to production, it will come with 10 pieces of track which can be arranged in any number of different ways, allowing for the kid who runs it to make lots of different fresh songs! Then, just like any good modern toy, this train has song tracks you can buy separately. I’ll be in line the day they release the Chemical Brothers tracks! Or the Kraftwerk tracks – how awesome would that be?

This toy is basically GOING to inspire creativity and growth in cognitive ability in any child that uses it. Arranging music is intense – this is by far the simplest way to get a child excited about creating real amazing songs. Who DOESNT want their kid to become a composer!?

Video and link via yankodesign.

A video of the 70+ images that were submitted was created:

Link via medgadget.com. Photos of all the top thirty winners can be found here, but I liked this one the best.

In Bangladesh, people routinely stack mountainous piles of bricks onto their heads when loading and unloading the boats and Bedford trucks used to transport clay-fired bricks from the kilns where they are made to the construction sites where they are used. These feats of endurance and equilibrium look near inconceivable to blinkered Western eyes, but for the brick carriers it’s all in a day’s work.

That stack of some 20 bricks is almost as tall as the man carrying it, yet he still has room to flip a few more on top and walk the plank onto dry land. After this initial effort, workers often have to carry their precarious piles some distance, and when on site climb several flights of stairs to the rooftops where the bricks will be laid. Without wheelbarrows, single-minded stability is all that stands between a slip and tens of kilos of bricks falling – and perhaps even a snapped neck.

Words and link from environmentalgraffiti.com.

Designed by artist Harold Hoy:

The works of Harold Hoy have centered on the complex relationship between mankind and the natural world. Hoy’s current body of work is constructed of galvanized steel and pipe hanger material and is based partly on an erector set. He uses the child’s toy as a platform to work around larger issues of man’s predilection for claiming ownership of the natural world and our desire to manipulate and re-form it.

From makezine.com.

One of many, via we-make-money-not-art.com.

Persona. Ritual Masks and Contemporary Art features 180 ritual masks brought side by side with contemporary works by African artists or African diaspora members, which explore the question of identity, self-respect and representation of the Other.

The Guards Chapel, spiritual home of the Household Division of the British Army, is host to an installation that looks at some of the present-day thoughts on heroes. Complete Hero is a projection-based artwork by Martin Firrell.

From mocoloco.com.

Gorgeous animation about a viral infection:

NPR’s Robert Krulwich sat down with David Bolinsky of XVIVO, a firm that makes amazing animations for medicine and life sciences, to explain to the general public how viruses infect cells and reproduce themselves. For demonstration they used animation XVIVO produced for Zirus, a company developing novel methods to fight pathogenic viruses.

Link via medgadget.

A little information and interesting facts, via textually.org.

Performers Katelyn Clark and Xenia Pestova will play multiple toy pianos and portable percussion instruments, placed strategically throughout the cave’s winding passages. Canadian Music Centre Associate Composer Erik Ross will provide an electroacoustic soundscape, which will be played back by loudspeakers, creating an intricate sonic tapestry. According to the composer, the audio material will be based upon Canadian environmental themes and use sounds directly inspired by the cave setting, such as running water, as well as spoken text.”

Photo via Veronika von Volkova’s photostream, from the Cave Music project.

A rare textile made from the silk of more than a million wild spiders goes on display today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

To produce this unique golden cloth, 70 people spent four years collecting golden orb spiders from telephone poles in Madagascar, while another dozen workers carefully extracted about 80 feet of silk filament from each of the arachnids. The resulting 11-foot by 4-foot textile is the only large piece of cloth made from natural spider silk existing in the world today.

“Spider silk is very elastic, and it has a tensile strength that is incredibly strong compared to steel or Kevlar,” said textile expert Simon Peers, who co-led the project. “There’s scientific research going on all over the world right now trying to replicate the tensile properties of spider silk and apply it to all sorts of areas in medicine and industry, but no one up until now has succeeded in replicating 100 percent of the properties of natural spider silk.”

Via wired.com.

After five years of correspondence with glassblowers and virologists, artist Luke Jerram has created unique glass sculptures of viruses and bacteria, presented in a visually dramatic way:

Smallpox Virus:

SARS coronavirus:

Escherichia coli bacterium:

The work is on display at the Smithfield gallery in London, from September 22 through October 3rd.

Link and photos via from guardian.co.uk.

We touched on the same program in March of 2008, and now they are back with a new one this month, via we-make-money-not-art.com:

You might remember that back in May i was throwing seedballs all over Amsterdam along with Adam Zaretsky, the Waag society and other eco-enthusiast.

The VivoArts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd. comes back to town in September and this time the focus will be biology and bacterial transformation. VASTAL is a temporary research and education institute that Zaretsky has created in Amsterdam following an invitation by the Waag Society. The lectures and workshops aim to show the public what it means to work both artistically and scientifically with living organisms and materials. VASTAL also aims to make this form of art-science accessible for a broader audience and invite them to discuss the ethical and aesthetic issues at stake.

Topics include:

• Alt-Biology: Solar Transgenics, Synthetic Biology, Nanotech Biomimicry, Post-Natural History and Green Biofuel

• Tissue Culture Lab

• Growing Politics: Tissue Culture and Art meets Urbanibalism

• (De)Mystified DNA: Sequencing Lab

T-shirt via geekologie.com.

Canstruction, whose motto is “one can make a difference”, is an annual international design/build competition in which architects, engineers, designers, and students compete to create and build gigantic structures made only from full cans of food. Post contest, the cans and money raised are donated to local charities.

Link and photo via inhabitat.com.

Food for thought on public tweets:

Those 140-character “microblog” posts to Twitter don’t constitute much more than links, dinner recipes, and bitching, right? Be careful with the bitching, though—a property management company in Chicago has filed a lawsuit against a tenant who tweeted an off-the-cuff comment about the company. The company, Horizon Group Management, says that the Twitter user in question sent the message maliciously, and is now asking for $50,000 in damages.

There are several reasons why this lawsuit is breaking new ground, not the least of which is its Twitter origin. There is much debate as to whether people’s Twitter streams are more like blogs—which are increasingly being held to the same legal standards as regular media when it comes to defamation—or a giant chat room, where most people presume “anything goes.” It may actually be somewhere in between, but the one problem with trying to hold tweets to a higher journalistic standard is the hard character limitation—it’s difficult to back up your comments within 140 characters (or even within several 140-character tweets), plus links to sources or pictures of evidence.

The other question is: did Horizon make any effort to sort out this issue with Bonnen before filing the lawsuit? It doesn’t seem so, given Bonnen’s immediate deletion of her Twitter account after the lawsuit was filed, but we admittedly don’t know the answer (and Horizon did not respond to our request for comment by publication time). The lawsuit makes no mention of the company making any effort to ensure that Bonnen’s apartment doesn’t have mold or to work with her to address her concerns.

Either way, the company has now managed to position itself as one that a lot renters and prospective homeowners wouldn’t want to do business with, unlike those that monitor their reputations on Twitter to address customer service issues. Zipcar, Boingo, one of my local pizza places, and even Allstate and Comcast have all swooped in to help out Ars staffers in need after we have aired some complaints. Even if Bonnen really had no mold and Horizon was technically innocent, the bad PR from this move will surely do more damage than Bonnen’s message to 20 of her best Twitter friends.

From arstechnica.com.

From MIT news:

The ubiquitous barcodes found on product packaging provide information to the scanner at the checkout counter, but that’s about all they do. Now, researchers at the Media Lab have come up with a new kind of very tiny barcode that could provide a variety of useful information to shoppers as they scan the shelves — and could even lead to new devices for classroom presentations, business meetings, videogames or motion-capture systems.

The new system, called Bokode, is based on a new way of encoding visual information, explains Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar, who leads the lab’s Camera Culture group. Until now, there have been three approaches to communicating data optically: through ordinary imaging (using two-dimensional space), through temporal variations such as a flashing light or moving image (using the time dimension), or through variations in the wavelength of light (used in fiber-optic systems to provide multiple channels of information simultaneously through a single fiber).