Why Knot? by Seth Goldstein

:) I don't know who would take longer to tie a tie, me or this kinetic machine by sculptor Seth Goldstein. See video;

via | Make

Michiel Van Der Zanden

Oil paintings from video games and 3D environments by Michiel Van Der Zanden.

"In my work, I import the world of digital media into painting and vice versa. I’m using images from videogames and ‘3D computer graphics’. For years I’ve been fascinated by games and their specific visual quality.

As a starting point, I used to extract images from existing games, more like a tourist or reporter. These images were combined in collages, which functioned as sketches for my paintings. Nowadays I mostly use Blender 3D software to model my own (game-) settings. " - Michiel Van Der Zanden. See more;

"Ideas, stories and concepts coming from gaming and 3D culture, combined with situations and environments from my personal life, are converted to the intimacy of painting. And because I like to work in a collage-like way, the videogame is an ideal starting point: a game is a 3D (photo-) collage in its essence. I adjust my way of painting to the chosen subject. Sometimes very precise, to overemphasize the kitsch quality. Sometimes almost expressionistic, to enlarge the contrast between the different image elements." 

Painting LargeFlatMap100 (The Sims 3)

"In a self-created empty world (using 'Create-A-World-Tool'), I made a senior Sim paint the landscape. This landscape painting is a screenshot I captured within the same world. I replaced the original Sims 3 painting with my screenshot, using the 'S3PE' modding editor."

via | pietmondriaan

Anonymous DDOSers Arrested and Searched

Back in December we shared a couple blog stories about a cyber attack being called Operation Payback. In the first, Internet Anarchy: Anonymous Crowds Flex Their Muscles I discussed with UAB Justice Sciences Chair, John Sloan, some of the sociology behind these actions, especially the ideas of Diffuse Crowds and Convergence Theory. In the second article, Operation Payback Origins we dug deeper into the activities of the group behind Operation Payback, a group tied back to the internet forums at 4Chan who call themselves Anonymous. On Friday, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the world began to show their hand.

In a January 27th FBI press release, the FBI announced that they had conducted forty search warrants around the country to gain evidence to identify some of the key US-based actors behind the DDOS attacks. They also revealed that IDS signatures had been shared with many of the key Internet Service Providers in the country to help them identify which of their subscribers were using a DDOS attack tool called LOIC. The press release contained a warning as well:

The FBI also is reminding the public that facilitating or conducting a DDoS attack is illegal, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as well as exposing participants to significant civil liability.

The LOIC, or Low Orbit Ion Cannon, is a tool reminiscent of the tools distributed during the controversy surrounding the Iranian Elections. We wrote about those in an article called Armchair CyberWarriors, Twitter, and the Iran Election. In the DDOS tools of ancient days (five to ten years ago -- "ancient" in Internet years), DDOS attacks were performed primarily by hacking many home computers to form a botnet, and then instructing those computers to overwhelm a target by generating massive amounts of traffic towards that target. These attacks are called a "Distributed Denial of Service" attack, or DDOS. What changed with Iran was that many individuals were being invited to join the attack by intentionally installing DDOS software on their machines.

So, who are the forty FBI search warrants served against? We won't know for a while. In the United States, a search warrant is an investigative tool, used upon demonstration of "probable cause" to gather further information that will be used to create an indictment. While law enforcement agencies typically do not identify who search warrants have been served upon, it is quite often the case, especially in protests such as this, that those served may choose to share that information to begin rallying public support for their upcoming case. If the search warrant and other information gathered provides sufficient evidence to conclusively identify a criminal and document the crimes they have performed, the law enforcement agency will ask the prosecutor's office for an indictment. (In Federal cases, this would be a prosecutor at a United States Attorney's Office, usually chosen because a significant victim or a significant number of victims are located in their jurisdiction.) Even once the indictment has been issued, it is not unusual for the indictment to be "sealed" until the accused are arrested and have had a chance to appoint an attorney and to be "arraigned" when their charges are formally presented to them in a court setting. In some other countries, such as England, the law enforcement agencies are not allowed to name the accused so early in the case.

Speaking of England, they executed their own action against the Anonymous DDOSers of Operation Payback this week. The UK's Metropolitan Police released a statement about the arrests that shared the following details:

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Service's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) have arrested five people in connection with offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. The five males aged, 15, 16, 19, 20 and 26, are being held after a series of coordinated arrests at residential addresses in the West Midlands, Northants, Herts, Surrey and London at 07:00hrs today (27 January).

Anonymous responded in an Open Letter to the UK Police saying

Not only does it reveal the fact that you do not seem to understand the present-day political and technological reality, we also take this as a serious declaration of war from yourself, the UK government, to us, Anonymous, the people.

and continuing:

So our advice to you, the UK government, is to take this statement as a serious warning from the citizens of the world. We will not rest until our fellow anon protesters have been released.

These were not the first DDOSers arrested in this case. The Dutch were the first to make an arrest. First, one of the AnonOps spokespersons screwed up and left their name embedded in a PDF that they used for a press release. Alex Tapanaris and his website both disappeared the same day, as reported by Open Topic which shares a PDF showing the properties and the text of that press release. The website "TorrentFreak" posted speculations about the online monicker of the next Dutch hacker, also arrested back on December 10th. These arrests lead the AnonOps attackers (Anonymous Operations = AnonOps) to then attack the Dutch Ministry of Justice.

How This Will Go Down

Obviously no one can say exactly how these cases will go down, but a brief look at history should help the current miscreants understand what they are likely to face.

AnonOps conveniently forgets to tell people about others in their little cyber protest army who have been arrested for DDOS attacks in the past. Dmitry Guzner, age 19, was the first. New Jersey-based Dmitry Guzner received a 366 day sentence for his involvement in DDOS attacks sponsored by 4Chan's Anonymous against the Church of Scientology. Right on his heels was Brian Thomas Mettenbrink of Grand Island, Nebraska. Brian pleaded guilty to also being involved in the DDOS, and as part of his guilty plea "only" received a one year sentence. (Thanks to @lconstantin of Softpedia for reminding us of those prior examples.)

To put this in perspective, that's two hackers getting a year in jail each for attacking the Church of Scientology and causing "approximately $5,000 in damages." How much do you suppose the damage was for taking Mastercard and Visa offline?

Those who are choosing to involve themselves in this criminal behavior should take a look at the record of those who have gone before them before choosing to pick up their own criminal records.

Here's some more reading for those interested in becoming criminals, spending a year in prison, and paying between $20,000 and $37,000 of their own money by participating in an AnonOps DDOS:

Dmitriy Guzner's Guilty Plea

Dmitriy Guzner's Sentencing Documents

Brian Mettenbrink's Indictment

Brian Mettenbrink's Guilty Plea

Brian Mettenbrink's Sentencing Memo

Brian Mettenbrink's Sentencing documents, Attachments A-E including Brett having to pay the $20,000 fee that Scientology paid to Prolexic for DDOS protection.

Got Updates?

As we learn more about the forty search warrants from public sources, we'll add them here.

The Atlanta Progressive News shares that one of the Search warrants was executed at a Georgia Tech Dorm room belonging to Zhiwei "Jack" Chen.

Drifters Bar in Dixon Illinois was also searched during this investigation. The bar's computer was disassembled and the hard drive imaged, but it is believed the computer sought probably belonged to a patron who was taking advantage of the free WiFi to participate in Operation Payback.

The Guardian reveals that the UK 20 year old mentioned above is Chris Wood, who uses the AnonOps alias ColdBlood.

Alexander Peverett

Alexander Peverett is member of the great club for computers, Computers Club where I found his latest cool work. Peverett (1976) is a multi-disciplinary artist from Wigan, England. He is currently residing in Japan and his personal work explores the fields of electronic audio, video art, multi-media installation, generative art and computer graphics.

He works as a freelance Art Director, Computer Artist and Sound Designer. He is currently employed by W0W (JP) developing projects for their AppArt series of application artworks for mobile devices. See more;

Alexander Peverett (2010) 

JAM by MIRAI MIZUE

Wooha..! Very impressive this chaotic world animated by Mirai Mizue, a representative figure of the new generation of abstract animation in Japan. His rhythmical animation overwhelms viewers. Recently he has been trying to step into new territory: minimalistic abstract animation using linear figures. See more about him on Calf.

"The idea of JAM was conceived while I was attending the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2008.After returning to Japan, I soon began making the film and completed it in four months.This film is based on a very simple idea: the increasingly varied the sounds, the greater is the number of creatures. I wanted to rid myself of the frustrating experience of making Devour Dinner, which was highly unsatisfactory from the viewpoint of the movement in the film. My intention in this film was to fill the screen with chaotic movements." - Mirai Mizue. See video;

This film won Artistic Achievement in Animanima 2009, was nominated at Zagreb 2010, Hiroshima 2010, Screened out of competition at Annecy 2009.

Infinite Glitch by Ben Baker Smith

Before yesterday was the official release of Infinite Glitch, a project developed by Ben Baker Smith around almost two years now.

Every day an incomprehensible number of new digital media files are uploaded to hosting sites across the internet. Far too many for any one person to consume. Infinite Glitch is a stream-of-conciousness representation of this overwhelming flood of media, its fractured and degraded sounds and images reflecting how little we as an audience are able to retain from this daily barrage. See more;

Infinite Glitch is an automated system that generates an ever-changing audio/video stream from the constantly increasing mass of media files freely available on the web. Source audio and video files are ripped from a variety of popular media hosting sites, torn apart, and recombined using collage and glitch techniques to create an organic, chaotic flood of sensory input .

Infinite Glitch was built entirely with free/libre/open-source software (FLOSS), and was made possible by a stipend from .

Click images to see the project;

Nervous Structure

Nervous Structure is a series of site-specific, interactive installations and sculptures made collaboratively by Annica Cuppetelli and Cristobal Mendoza. The installations generally consist of two elements: a physical structure and a software-driven video projection. The structure is composed of either strings or elastic, and they tend to be parasitic to their “host” space; that is, our physical structures tend to become extensions of the existing architecture rather than standalone structures in their own right. The video projection at first is used to illuminate the structure, but the movements of viewers when near the installation influence this illumination. Thus, when a viewer moves, the piece’s software interprets the motion as forces that affect the projection. See videos;

Stefan Kübler

"Through his collages and paintings, Stefan Kübler, 1968, demonstrates in an aesthetic that uses the deconstruction of the motif, how the image can distance the viewer and seduce him at the same time. His work is a challenge to the production of the work by playing with the conditions of information access and the different modes of cognition.

Kübler paints widely and finely in acrylic on a glass plate by superimposing many layers of paint. He takes off the dry paint layer and mounts it on a canvas, reversing the direction of reading. By literally inverting the paint layer, he plays with the mode of classical perception of the work. He surprises his own eyes by condemning the chimeric gate to the original subjectivity, the primitive image, the creative eye." - (see more at) Hamish Morrison Galerie.

CIRCLE ONE DIRECTED BY CESAR PESQUERA

Circle One is a short film written and directed by César Pesquera and produced by Bus Productions and Reform Communications.

René lives a dull, uneventful life in a subterranean and futuristic world. He is about to be promoted and transferred from Circle One to Circle Six, when a series of mysterious mounds start to appear systematically in his apartment.

Circle one's starting point is Dante’s Divine Comedy combining the notion of Michael Haneke’s thriller with Andrei Tarkovski’s intimacy, albeit clearly influenced by pioneering movie directors like Stanley Kubrick or George Lucas. See the exclusive full version of Circle One just for Triangulation's readers;

César Pesquera is a director, graphic designer and audiovisual artist. He has directed and designed innovative moving image work across a broad spectrum of both commercial and non-commercial strands of the visual arts. His work is a reflection on the grammar of cinema and the relation between visual art and the cinematic experience. His films are screened worldwide on both visual art platforms and film festivals.

Cesar Pesquera will be at OFFF 2011 speaking about Circle One. You can find him there from 11th to 13th June in Barcelona.

Trailer:

Luminous Earth Grid by Stuart Williams

Luminous Earth Grid is the massive-scale personal project created in 1993 by the american designer Stuart Williams.

Luminous Earth Grid, an array of 1,680 energy-efficient fluorescent lamps, swept over 10 acres of undulating landscape, 50 miles north of San Francisco. Said the artist, “I see the project as a poetic statement on the potential harmony between technology and nature.” Over a five year period, Williams launched a rigorous fund raising campaign throughout Northern California, and raised nearly half a million dollars to realize the massive project. It was widely acclaimed by critics around the globe and drew tens of thousands of visitors. See more;

“The glowing green grid can be seen as an icon of computer imaging technology, which in this ‘real life,’ incarnation, gently melds with the flowing shape of a lovely landscape... a dream-like vision of symbiotic unity.” - Stuart Williams 

The array covered an expanse equal to 8 football fields. For a sense of scale, note the herd of cattle grazing just above the grid. 



12 miles of electrical wiring were required. In addition, a temporary extension cable, which was strung down the mountainside, hooked into existing power lines along the freeway and brought power to the grid. That cable weighed 6 tons, and was the diameter of a man's forearm.

via | designboom

Phil Defer

Cool organic reliefs by Phil Defer who is 21 years old, and is currently studying refined Cabinet-Making in Paris.

"What seems as a normal 2D picture, is actually a cut-out relief through an ordinary high gloss magazine. The final work is built up of about 50-60 layers, which gives the piece the special relief optic into the depth of the magazine pages. It takes me about 15hours to cut through the pages. This remains the most creative part of the process, before that choosing a picture is the only difficulty."  - Phil Defer. See more;