This is pretty amazing looking - a bass photographed at a high shutter speed:
stunning bass-string shot from urbanscreen on Vimeo.
Here's the caption at Vimeo:Frequency of the bass strings and high shutter speed of the camera led to this surprising string-wobble footage. There is no slowmo applied to the take. Sound is original. Video was filmed with a Canon 5D MarkII, Nikon 50mm lens on 1,8f.
This really is quite a collection of unusual and sometimes stunning photos.
"How do our computers see us?"
"Maybe if we could see what our computer sees, we would stare differently."
Here's a fascinating article by Kyle McDonald at Wired: "When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers.'" McDonald secretly loaded up his custom-made app onto numerous computers displayed at a Manhattan Apple store in order to create an art project. He was fascinated with the expressionless faces displayed while people use computers. McDonald is a programmer, and using his automated app, he gathered faces of Apple customers (check out the video he created based on people staring at their computers). Eventually, Apple figured out what McDonald had done. Next came the knock on McDonald's door by the U.S. Electronic Crimes Task Force, and a lot of inconvenience. What started out as an art project expanded to include a discussion of privacy and snooping, including corporate and government snooping. What did people think of his project? Here are a few of the hundreds of comments he received:Interesting how he as able to capture a truly expressionless face. It made me think about how too much computer time may make us retract from social interactions. Weird .
Facial expressions are partially reflexive but partially social. It’s not a surprise that expressions get bland when there is no one around to non-verbally communicate with.
We ARE social animals and we can only guess at the long term effect of computers on our species.
I like the idea of “how does a computer sees you” any Asimov reader would daydream after such sentence.
McDonald has written a long article, but it's extremely thoroughly engaging throughout. Also consider McDonald's work on Blind Self-Portraits. And here's a somewhat startling piece called "Face Substitution." Here is McDonald's website.Last year I expressed great frustration with corporations who have no compunctions hoisting their own profit-tool logos on the same flag poles as American Flags. And they choose to do this on America's most holy of civic holidays. I first noticed this crass display last year at the biggest Fourth of July celebration in Fair St. Louis. What's the problem with allowing corporate logos to flap in the wind right next to Old Glory? I can't think of a bigger insult to the People of the United States at a time when big money, mostly corporate money, has essentially purchased Congress, divesting ordinary people of the ability to run their own country. If there is anything that the Fourth of July is supposed to represent it is the notion that the governed should be self-governed (but do also check out this excellent recent article by Mark Tiedemann, who considers what it really means to be patriotic).
My 11-year old daughter and I are on vacation in the San Francisco area. Today we visited Muir Woods, an enchanted grove of coastal redwood trees less than an hour north of San Francisco. Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt, for saving this natural treasure.
Today, I worked hard to try to capture the immensity of these trees in a photo. Here's the best I could do:
