Not to lift posts from VBS/Vice, but the video of artist and designer Ernesto Oroza is worth watching if you’re at all interested in DIY culture and technology.

From VBS -
In the 1970s, a group of scientists and mechanics inspired by Che Guevara formed the National Association of Innovators and Rationalizers (ANIR) as a way of organizing and strengthening this homebrew culture, uniting the ethos of the hacker with the needs of an isolated economy and the call of a socialist revolution. Oroza showed us his meticulous collection of these machines, which he has contextualized as art pieces in a movement he calls “Technological Disobedience.”

“The work, which is shaped like a place of shelter, is a symbolic representation of the human search for protection against the elements. The anatomical figure and the landscape were borrowed from an illustration in the book Humani Corporis Fabrica which was authored by the Sixteenth Century Flemish artist and anatomist, Andreas Vesalius. The billowing backdrop was modeled after the pleated robes that can be found in renowned sculptures from the Italian Renaissance.”  - www.skor.nl

Debra Baxter, Crystal Brass Knuckles (I am going to realign your chakras motherf*****), 2009

debrabaxter.com

NASA’s robot will be destroying boarding the ISS soon.

It would be interesting to hear the designers of R2 discuss the project, I wonder how they came up with the face plate design.

via gizmodo.com

See Saw Bike has a clever accompanying postcard design as well, see below.

Via Found Shit

“The characteristic feature of Bujnowski’s working method is a large number of failed or discarded paintings, rejected by the artist. In order to avoid the unpleasant feeling of squandering large amounts of materials (paint and canvas), Rafal has ordered a special press which he uses to perform this peculiar kind of artistic recycling. Hundreds of discarded canvases are pressed together into a new object - a heavy bar of canvas being both symbolical and literal record of his artistic failures.” - raster.art.pl

I’m also happy to see my current Chicago neighborhood given as an example.

These antique machines are absolutely stunning in their complexity, patina, and operation. The engineering involved in creating such a tool is mind boggling. Most are directly hand or foot powered with a gear reduction system similar to what milling and lathe equipment still use today.

After seeing the video below, I almost want to move to France for a year and ghost some old watch makers.

Listen for the sounds that emanate as the machinist operates it’s controls. And at the 4:20 minute mark: the spinning plates that act as cams, pushing the cutting bit away from the brass piece creating the surface patterns.

This afternoon I received an e-mail notification that the PCB for color swim‘s programmable video switcher has just been shipped. I put this design together a couple weeks ago, and if all goes well, it’ll be our first draft for an ongoing electronics/video project.

Video switcher #1 will be a functional and professionally printed circuit board featuring; four composite video inputs, a micro-controller, toggling switches, and a linear potentiometer for minute control. Programmable loops can be uploaded to board sequencing the four inputs, as well as fully manual and semi-automatic switching modes.

color swim is an experimental video collective that I, along with Ronen Goldstein and Jessica Arche-Pappalardo, participate and perform in. One of color swim’s goals is to develop open-source video equipment based around easily accessible technologies. We hope we can bring some lo-fi projects to the table that, hopefully, enable other artists and foster collaboration.

Radius from rAndom International on Vimeo.

I’m a sucker for light and color based installations. I find work that combines digital processing with physical and spatial qualities to be captivating. rAndom International’s Radius installation is a great example of this. Although the lighting is derived from fixed rods saturated with LEDs that are processed and sequenced through software, the visual strength lies within the spacing and arrangement of each light against a white background. The physical throw of each light creates a gradient, and together patterns, that produces a visually rich display. If Dan Flavin was still alive he might be creating work that was similar to this.

The conventional use of LED technology is in discrete pixels displays, accomplished by connecting multiple LEDs together on a 2D plane. Instead Radius effectively emphasizes space as a component to it’s composition. Again the arrangement of each light in 3D space provides a unique physical aspect, one that I feel is often neglected in digital works.

See also Swarm Light, another installation by rAndom International, and on display at Art Basel. Although not new concept, it’s almost flawles in it’s implementation. Hack A Day has some info on the hardware and software used in the piece’s production.