I've built myself a framed set of imaginary software. This is not available to buy in the shops. Mostly because some of the artwork is not my copyright. All the parts are listed if you want to build it yourself. Parts Floppy Disks Printer Labels Frame Background As part of my Floppy Disk Walkman project, I asked my friends to send me a couple of floppies. Alistair and @gas_liverpool both sent me loads. So I needed something to do with them! Close Ups Note! What a "classic" floppy…
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I've just built this magic floating record wall on the cheap. I think it looks great during video calls. Here's how I did it: Step One - Stalk eBay With lockdown, I couldn't exactly go to my local record store. And I didn't fancy rummaging through bins of second hand items trying to find exactly what I wanted. So I decided to buy a job-lot of records from eBay. Beatles collections are regularly sold. Some are designed for people who want pristine records, and some who want original…
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A few weeks ago, I picked up 20 NFC tags. But what to do with them? I know, let's make something impractical! I had this gorgeous Barret Biggers - Link Blot poster which had lain in a drawer for far too long. So I turned it into an Amiibo. Nestled in the corner, sandwiched between the print and the glass, is an NTAG215 chip. Using the open source TagMo app for Android, I've written the data of one of my Nintendo amiibo to the chip. Now, in the middle of an epic battle on Breath of the…
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I have a vivid memory of my school days. I'd completed a pencil sketch in art class. For once, I was impressed with my dexterity. Then the teacher demanded that I colour it in. I was terrified that I would ruin it. I begged to use the photocopier - but to no avail. So the drawing remained uncoloured. I've been like that ever since. I have a crippling fear of doing something artistic which cannot be undone. That's why I prefer computers to the corporeal world. Mistakes are only ever a CTRL+Z…
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One of the problems with buying a house, is that you're inevitably stuck with someone else's taste in decor. Our new place isn't too bad - it's just a little dull. With lockdown in full-force, some of the boring bits of the house have been annoying me more than is reasonable. I'm not a big fan of net curtains. They always look a bit ratty, and are a dust trap. So we decided to get some "stained glass" privacy film. We found this beautiful Mondrian-style sticker It brings me joy every…
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One of my favourite works of art is The Great Bear by Simon Patterson. At first glance, it appears to be a normal London Tube map. But look closer... Cool! But there is something about it which has always bothered me. Each Tube line represents a theme - therefore, a station at the intersection of multiple lines should be represented by someone who matches all of those themes. For example, here's Baron's Court - the intersection of the Explorer line and the Saint line - represented by…
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Yesterday at the CogX conference, I sat in a room listening to companies pitch their blockchain based startups. Because I hate myself. One in particular caught my attention. On the surface it seems to solve an important economic problem - art forgery and provenance. By putting your artwork on the "BitCoin Blockchain", Verisart will ✨hand wavy magic✨ increase the trust in art dealers and reduce fraud. That's a pretty neat idea. A distributed public ledger of who I have sold my art to. And, if …
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Nestled in a sleepy corner of a 12th Century church in Iffley, is this delightfully modern sculpture. A large knot carved out of stone and placed upon a plinth. Look carefully and at the top of the base you'll see a series of strange runes hewn into the rock. It was a soggy day - as they all are in Oxford - when we discovered it, so we didn't hang around too long to see if there was any information nearby. Nevertheless, I felt sure that these carvings held a meaning. Well, time for a…
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There are plenty of QR generators which will render the code in ASCII, but I wanted to try something a little different. Is it possible to hide ASCII Art into QR Codes? Errr.... yes... It's pretty damn simple! I was surprised I couldn't find anyone else doing this. (_/) (='.'=) (")_(") Becomes: Which, when scanned, renders as: Now, there are limits as to what you can put into a QR code - about 4,000 characters. Different devices have different screen widths, which limits the…
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I was wandering round The Henry Moore Foundation last Friday - thanks to the delightful wedding of my good friends Mike and Nikki. Looking at the abstract statues and carvings, I was struck not only by their beauty, but by how easy they would be to reproduce with a 3D printer. Ok - ok! I'm a little obsessed since building a RepRapPro for work - but hear me out. Wikipedia has been collecting high-resolution scans of famous works of art - although not without controversy - and providing them…
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While we were in New York City, we went to see Nathan Sawaya's The Art of The Brick. The artist uses Lego as his medium, and the art he produces is breathtaking. The mixture of 2D and 3D is incredible. But there are aspects of the exhibition which left me with questions about the nature of art and creativeness. Take, for example, these statues (click to embiggen). They are magnificent to behold, and they are stunning "in the flesh", yet - to me - they seem like slavish copies. …
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I spend yesterday wandering around London and, as is my wont, spotted some QR codes which I think may interest readers of this blog. Tracey Emin The Hayward Gallery are having a Tracey Emin retrospective. At the start of the exhibition is this rather odd QR code. Why odd? Three main reasons. It leads directly to a 14MB MP3 file. The code is really quite small considering it's a low-lit gallery. Rather that being printed directly onto the wall, it appears to be a separate…
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