Video — Ballerina Rotoscope: Algorithmically-Generated Geometries

I so love this piece — so beautiful! — I developed a similar method to create my static-structure series back in 1998–99. m.


euphrates — a japanese collaborative of artists, researchers, and designers led by masahiko sato at keio university — has created an experimental short film that mesmerizingly follows the movement of a ballerina using a rotoscope animation method. the technique is ordinarily applied to trace motion picture footage, frame by frame. masahiko sato + euphrates’ interpretation builds on the approach to accurately shadow the step-by-step motion of the ballerina as she dances across the room.

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Video — Breaking Wave

very cool kintic work in my old stomping grounds of cambridge. m.


Breaking Wave is an anamorphic kinetic sculpture created for Biogen-Idec’s new headquarters in Cambridge, MA by Plebian Design and Hypersonic.

Breaking Wave tells the story of the search for patterns, and the surprising results that come by changing our point of view. 804 suspended spheres move in a wave-like formation. When the wave crests and breaks, the balls hover momentarily in a cloud. From almost anywhere in the room, this cloud is purely chaotic, but step into one of two hidden spots, and this apparent chaos shows a hidden pattern. From the first, a labyrinth hints at the search for knowledge, and from the second, a Fibonacci spiral inspired flower reminds us of the natural order and patterns found in nature.

Scientists search through billions of experimental data points in order to find patterns to develop new drugs, to treat Multiple Sclerosis, Cancer, and other diseases. Without a particular framework or perspective, these are just 0’s and 1’s, with no form or information. But with the perspective of an understanding of molecular dynamics, these data points create a clear picture about the hidden dynamics within the body, and allow scientists to craft drugs to successfully treat these diseases.

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Labor Pains: Michelangelo’s Poem

a direct window into the mind of one of the greatest. m.


Michelangelo: To Giovanni da Pistoia — When the Author was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel — 1509

“I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water’s poison).
My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s
pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine’s
all knotted from folding over itself.
I’m bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I’m stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place — I am not a painter.”

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Jack Whitten, Beloved Painter of Abstract Cosmologies, Dies at 78




Some artists use their long careers to perfect a style by creating variations on a theme, while others try to keep up with the times by continually doing something new. Jack Whitten was the latter kind of artist. By the end of his life, he had experimented with formalist painting, abstract portraiture, and even mystical visions of current events. “I want a worldview that will teach me how to conduct myself in this new world order,” he told ARTnews in an interview for a profile on the occasion of a traveling retrospective. “That’s what I’m working on” — and it was something he continued doing up until the end.

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