Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Francoise Gamma







Estas son las ultimas obras de Francoise Gamma. Ya lo he dicho alguna vez, pero lo repito de nuevo; me encanta su estilo! :) Más info en ComputersClub.org.

Ujin Lee & Tom Edwards





La serie de fotografías "Dust"" es una colaboración de Ujin Lee y Tom Edwards. El proyecto muestra escenas de nubes de polvo, en lugares como un museo, parques o una imprenta. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

The photo series "Dust" is a collaboration of Ujin Lee and Tom Edwards. The project shows footage of a dust cloud in deserted places like a museum, playground or a print shop.







Ben Weiner





Ben Weiner (1980), artista contemporáneo estadounidense. Se graduó en 2003 de la Wesleyan University. Sus óleos hiperrealistas muestran ambientes macroscópicos de sustancias no naturales como gel para el pelo, perlas y pegotes de óleo. Ha expuesto en Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, también en Winkleman Plus Ultra y Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts entre otros en Nueva York. Weiner también trabaja con vídeo. Diseñó unas proyecciones para la producción teatral interdisciplinaria de La Historia de Llorar por El de Ignacio Apolo, que ya demostró en la Ciudad de México en el verano de 2006. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

Ben Weiner (born November 10, 1980) is an American contemporary artist. He is a 2003 graduate of Wesleyan University. His hyperrealistic oil paintings depict macroscopic still life environments of unnatural substances such as hair gel, pearls, and oil paint globs. He exhibits with Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, and shows with Winkleman Plus Ultra and Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts, among others, in New York. Weiner also works in video. He designed video projections for the interdisciplinary theatrical production of La Historia de Llorar por El by Ignacio Apolo, which showed in Mexico City in the summer of 2006.






Video


Video of hair gel evaporating and reconstituting.


Video of pigment, linseed oil, varnish and turpentine being mixed together to make oil paint.


Video of monosodium glutamate (MSG) crystallizing.


Video of pixels of an LCD display at increasingly greater magnifications.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Anthony McCall





Anthony McCall nacido en Gran Bretaña (1946). Artista norteamericano especializado en el cine, en película proyectada. McCall fue una figura clave en la vanguardia del cine londinense en la década de 1970. En Nueva York, 1973, desarrolló una serie de películas con "luz sólida", "Line Describing a Cone". Estas obras son simples proyecciones que hacen hincapié en las cualidades escultóricas de un haz de luz. Un proyector de 16 mm proyecta una película en la pared, o suelo. Comenzando por un punto, lentamente, se va formando un arco u otras formas para finalizar siendo un circulo. Con la ayuda de polvo o con máquinas de humo, se aprecian en el aire las lineas que están siendo proyectas formando un cono. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

Anthony McCall is a British-born (1946) American Avant-Garde artist, specializing in cinema/projected film. McCall was a key figure in the avant-garde London Film-makers Co-operative in the 1970. After moving to New York in 1973, McCall developed his ‘solid light’ film series, conceiving the Line Describing a Cone. A 16mm projector is projecting a movie on the wall. At first, the movie seems to be just a white point on a black background. Very slowly, it starts expanding, first to an arc, and after 30 minutes, a circle. The magic happens not on the screen (or wall), but in mid-air. Shown either in a naturally dusty area, or with the help of a haze machine, the line from the projector to the dot becomes a cone, visible in air.















Friday, August 27, 2010

Hylozoic Groun





Hylozoic Groun, espectacular instalación por el arquitecto Philip Beesley, Toronto. Un bosque de hojas acrílicas se mueven a modo de respiración dentro del pabellón de Canadá en la Bienal de Arquitectura de Venecia, que se estrena esta semana. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

Hylozoic Groun by architect and sculptor Philip Beesley was selected through a national juried competition to represent Canada at the 2010 Venice Biennale in Architecture.











"Hylozoic Ground, an immersive interactive environment that is part of the Hylozoic Soil Series of works, will be presented by PBAI, a Toronto-based interdisciplinary design collective associated with the University of Waterloo, led by architect and sculptor Philip Beesley.

Hylozoic Ground is a uniquely Canadian experimental architecture that explores qualities of contemporary wilderness. The project will transform the Canada Pavilion into an artificial forest made of an intricate lattice of small transparent acrylic meshwork links, covered with a network of interactive mechanical fronds, filters, and whiskers.

Tens of thousands of lightweight digitally-fabricated components are fitted with microprocessors and proximity sensors that react to human presence. This responsive environment functions like a giant lung that breathes in and out around its occupants. Arrays of touch sensors and shape-memory alloy actuators (a type of non-motorized kinetic mechanism) create waves of empathic motion, luring visitors into the eerie shimmering depths of a mythical landscape, a fragile forest of light."

Saturn





Dione es eclipsada por Titán, la mayor de las lunas de Saturno de 3200 kilómetros de diámetro , el doble del diámetro de nuestra Luna, y más grande que el planeta Mercurio. También es la única luna conocida que tiene una atmósfera densa y superficie líquida. Esta imagen fue tomada 20 de abril 2010. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

Dione is overshadowed by Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons at 3200 miles across, twice the diameter of our moon, and larger than the planet Mercury. It is also the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere and surface liquid. This image was taken April 20, 2010.















Thursday, August 26, 2010

Major Fraud Ring Busted in Largest Chinese Cybercrime Operation

Yesterday Taiwanese Criminal Investigation Bureau Commissioner Lin Teh-hua announced the largest cybercrime operation in the history of his organization. (The Criminal Investigation Bureau's report, in Chinese, is here). 548 Taiwanese police officers and 2,720 Chinese police officers took part in the operation which resulted in 450 fraudsters being arrested throughout Taiwan and in the Chinese provinces of Fujian, Huanan, Hubei, Anhui, Guangdong and Guangxi. After a joint operations agreement was signed between Chinese and Taiwanese authorities, more than 16 joint raids have been conducted leading to more than 1,000 arrests.

In this case, the activity particularly focused on telephone fraud and internet auction fraud. The arrests come close on the heels of the break up of a similar fraud ring in Ho Chi Minh City where 99 fraudsters from Taiwan and China were arrested. In the Vietnamese fraud, where 76 Taiwanese and 23 Chinese citizens were arrested, fraudsters would take over entire hotels, booking as many as 30 to 40 hotel rooms for their fraud. They would place randome phone calls, posing as telecom officials, police officers, or prosecutors, and urge people to wire money to specified accounts. Some individuals lost millions of dollars in that fraud. The Ho Chi Minh case made note that on July 1st there had been a related raid where 32 Taiwanese and 14 Chinese were arrested. Major General Huynh Huu Chien of the Ministry of Public Security called it the largest foreign hacker ring ever in Vietnam, saying that they also had been doing ATM fraud, hacking into foreign banks and using ATM card readers to steal from more than 200 foreign bank accounts and financial institutions.

The Vietnam case continued on August 13th, when police arrested eleven Taiwanese men and two women in Can Tho. In that case, the police seized laptops, phones, walkie-talkies, and most intriguingly more than 50 "fraud scripts" that guided the fraudsters through the "play" of imitating a police officer or state agency official in order to further their fraud.

The Taiwanese-Chinese arrests this week seem to be more of the same, as police explain that the groups formed temporary "Telephone Fraud Centers" where the scammers placed calls following elaborate scripts that helped them to perpetrate their frauds. In Taiwan, in addition to the seizure of laptops, cell phones, and fraud manuals, fake courier uniforms were found.

This raid began to be built after a large meeting in China's Fujian Province where police from across China came together in Ningde to address illegal telecom operations, money laundering, impersonation of public agencies for fraud, and online shopping scams, but the case actually originated with the arrest of "Rong Yu" who was arrested back in April when police discovered he had been operating a fraud from the Taizhong Emperor Hotel, pretending to be a Shen Fuwen law clerk. By tracing the criminal contacts of this phony law clerk, more than seven other similar groups were identified, including the identification of the group's headquarters in Hunan Province.

The group was also found to be related to a fake online auction group - the Wuhan Pride network (www.dey100.com). This group, which claimed to be an online trading company, was involved in both the sale of goods that were never actually delivered, but also ATM fraud conducted after stealing banking information from the buyers of those fake goods! Some of the victims report getting very strange deliveries, such as ordering goods online and receiving an empty CD box or a package of soap instead of what they ordered. When they called to complain, this allowed the fraudsters to gather additional personal information about them that allowed further fraud to occur.

I hope more details of this fraud will be revealed in the next few days, but for now, I want to offer congratulations to the investigators who are helping to clean up online crime throughout China and Taiwan!

David Baskin





Este proyecto realizado por David Baskin aborda el aspecto fetichista de los coches y la cultura del automóvil mediante la transformación del diseño de la carrocería original de un Jaguar E-Type de 1968 con una entidad zoomorfa erotizada. Se hizo un molde directamente del vehículo y este se rellenó con espuma de uretano y mas tarde se forró con una piel de cuero acolchada. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

This project addresses the fetishistic aspect of cars and car culture by transforming the original body design of a 1968 Jaguar E-Type into an eroticized zoomorphic entity. A mold was made directly from the vehicle and the sculpture consists of urethane foam with an upholstered leather skin. By David Baskin.





Sculptural Musical Scores





Me encanta la idea, la ejecución y el resultado.
"Recientemente, he comenzado a traducir los datos meteorológicos recogidos en las ciudades en las partituras musicales, para más tarde transformarlas en esculturas, además de ser una fuente para colaboración con músicos. Estas piezas no son sólo elementos que se asignan las condiciones meteorológicas de un determinado tiempo y lugar, sino que también son funcionales partituras para ser interpretada por músicos. Mientras que los músicos tienen la libertad de interpretar, se les pide no cambiar la relación de las notas esenciales para asegurar que lo que todavía se escucha sea la relación de los datos meteorológicos del tiempo" Nathalie Miebach. Ver más dentro del post;

English info after the jump;

"Recently, I have begun translating weather data collected in cities into musical scores, which are then translated into sculptures as well as being a source for collaboration with musicians. These pieces are not only devices that map meteorological conditions of a specific time and place, but are also functional musical scores to be played by musicians. While musicians have freedom to interpret, they are asked not to change the essential relationship of the notes to ensure that what is still heard is indeed the meteorological relationship of weather data." Nathalie Miebach.