One of the latest and greatest scams is the biofeedback device “AuraCam.”  By connecting a subject’s body to an electronic device which interacts with the camera, supposedly an individual’s aura can be captured in a photograph.  The end result is pretty unspectacular — it looks like overexposed film that has been photoshopped with rainbow colors.  Visiting AuraCam’s website, I felt like I was watching an infomercial.

Nonetheless, despite the uninspired packaging of this product, there are interesting questions about the nature of photography that arise from this concept.  What is the nature of the photograph?  Why do we feel it to be “authentic”?  And, how can we measure what kinds of energy are being transferred from the body to the lens to the paper (or screen)?

[via Wired.com]

Maureen Gubia takes the qualities of photographs themselves and turns them into intelligent and provocative studies of light and shape.  By looking at the medium in abstraction, she is able to bring out very strong compositions with what you might call “painterly” aspects.  Check out her flickr site to see an impressive, challenging body of work.

[via Lost at E-minor]

Therefore, I am somewhat impressed that the Museum of Modern Art has done a decently good job with their online, interactive exhibit of Picasso’s Guitars.  His work building a cardboard guitar and collage was groundbreaking in the 1910s, opening new possibilities of abstraction for artists.  High quality photos, videos, and audio commentary make this site a very complete experience, truly bringing you to a deeper understanding of the legend’s method and intentions.

We all know that Picasso was a master at playing with dimension, color, and shape.  This charming exhibit might get you closer to the how and the why of it all.

Enter 3D Printing technology.  A technique that uses computers to scan and then “print” replicas of a three dimensional form, this process has become more refined and powerful in the past few years.  The Singer Laren hired a Belgian company to use 3D printing to recreate missing pieces in resin, which could subsequently be placed in the sculpture and retouched to hide their material difference.  While this is not quite the reality of STNG’s replicator, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

[via Readwriteweb.com]

This year’s exhibition, entitled ILLUMInations, is curated by Bice Curiger and will include participants from many first time countries (such as Saudi Arabia and Rwanda).  The show is truly international, and seeks to bring together artists of the world in a sort of art summit which tackles cultural, political, and aesthetic questions.

You can check out the press release for the latest show, as well as view the archive of the previous exhibition “Making Worlds,” on their website http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/.  The site has photos, video, and discussions about the event.  Beyond just the show, LaBiennale.org has links to workshops and further education in art, dance, theater, and more.

The time has come:  the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) wants the FCC to strictly enforce existing copyright and trademark laws in order to prohibit Google TV and similar services to provide pay TV content.  As things stand, big cable companies have a virtual monopoly on cable television content; Viacom is even in the process of suing Youtube for $1 billion over disputed video content.  Sony and Google want to open up the playing field, and so far seem to have support from the FCC.  They see great incentive to promote content over broadband.

Follow this debate, as it will shape the future of how we see television and movies for decades to come.

[via Wired.com]

Until 2005, the gallery Electrohype in Sweden showcased computer based art.  From 2003-4, one such exhibition was based on the Macintosh Classic II (first sold by Apple in 1991).  With the CPUs mounted on podiums of varying heights, the original “all-in-one” design is showcased like a piece of modern sculpture.  Screens are activated with various black and white images — driven by a graphics driver written over a decade ago.  Though I was not able to see this show before it disappeared, I think the concept is brilliant:  it allows us to consider that the appeal of art, even though we are firmly in the computer age, does not rest in the raw power of processor speed or memory capacity.  Art exists outside of such temporal constraints.

A good place to get familiarized with street art from Southern California is Graffiti LA.  The gallery section is a very comprehensive collection of decent to high-quality photographs of graffiti in Los Angeles, circa 1991.  Due to the often illicit nature of the practice, it can be difficult to track down the correct artist for a piece — however, Steve has done a good job at this…which leads me to believe he knows his stuff.

The site is a basic, down-scrolling layout.  You click on the pictures and they appear in the window, nothing fancy.  You must use your browser’s back and forward buttons to navigate.  Don’t go to this site because you want to be wowed by a media-heavy, interactive experience with graffiti culture.  Go here to get a somewhat personal and very interesting snapshot of a particularly proud moment in the history of this unique art.

Oweis is bringing this age-old practice of calligraphy into the digital realm, using computers to manipulate the Arabic script into patterns and shapes.  As with those patterns seen on the walls of early Middle Eastern mosques, you often must look at the piece for a minute before the characters pop out (similar to a magic eye picture).

His website, http://www.oweis.com/art.html, only gives you a taste of what is possible.  Perhaps that is because he is occupied with activism and teaching in addition to his artistic aspirations.  But what is done is done well — it is worth checking out the site just to see a QR Bar Code turned into a calligraphic decoration, something you likely haven’t happened upon before.

Google posted a new blog entry in which they provided 2 standard templates and some UI libraries for D-Pad remote controls. This should make it a lot easier than reading the cryptic documentation for designing your website for TV. Now if only they make a good browser detect…

[via Google Blog]