Make: Online: Culture jamming Archives

Archive: Culture jamming

March 8, 2010

Altered thrift store art: Some personal faves

Unknown, via Reddit.

Banksy, via Flickr user goldenticket.

It's a simple idea: Find some bad art, whether original or a print, for a song at a thrift store, then modify it to make, if not "better art," then at least something that's more entertaining to look at. (Is it the same thing? Yeah, that sounds like a productive argument.)

Anyway. To quote a great sage, "there's a lot of guys doing it, but only one guy can be the best." That title probably goes to pseudonymous British graffiti artist Banksy. Most of the work presented below is his, but there are one or two gems from less-notables. I especially like the bland mountain landscape improved by the addition of an apocalyptic-scale katamari...

February 25, 2010

Major hackers to infiltrate Rhode Island

How big is Rhode Island? Well, it's about the size of... Rhode Island! Sometimes I feel like part of a strange joke living in the national yardstick. So it is with great excitement, yet great concern that I noticed several major hackers will be descending on Little Rhody for QuahogCon. Is the state big enough to contain celebrity hackers Jimmie P. Rodgers, Mitch Altman, and Matthew Borgatti?

I can't wait to find out. Maybe there will be a hacker showdown at high noon! Maybe we'll all survive the genius onslaught long enough to hear Matthew Borgatti give the closing keynote and hopefully explain how he got so many snakes on that plane.

I'll be sure to share whatever stories I'm able to escape with, but you might just have to experience it firsthand. I recommend bringing a bicycle with lights and an open mind, prepared for talks like gender hacking and maybe a late-night secret bicycle adventure through the streets and alleyways of Providence, led by yours truly...

February 24, 2010

Read an RPG Book in Public Week

Read an RPG Book in Public Week is an event that happens three times a year, during the weeks surrounding March 4th, July 27th, and October 1st (starting on the Sunday on or before, and ending on the Saturday on or after). During these weeks, roleplaying enthusiasts are encouraged to take their favorite RPG rulebooks out with them and read them in public -- on the bus, in the coffee shop, at lunch, at the park, or anywhere (as long as it isn't disruptive to work, school, church, or any other functions).

The point is to make the roleplaying hobby more visible, to get it "out of the basement" and into public areas where more people can see it. This will make others more aware of the hobby - some may ask you what your book is about, giving you the opportunity to explain the hobby to them. A few of those may be interested enough to try it themselves. Former gamers may see what you're reading and think about the great times they used to have with roleplaying, and possibly even try it again.

[via Boing Boing]

February 15, 2010

How-To: Build a fake Google Street View car

My favorite pranksters in the Fatlab (Free Art & Technology) visited Berlin for the Transmediale festival, during which they replicated a Google Street View car and toured around town filming skits like asking for directions and lurking in front of the Chinese embassy. Check out the site for a video of it in action and PDF instructions for building your own Street View car.

February 12, 2010

Next Barbie is an engineer

Assets Images 4 2010 02 500X 2010Computerengineer
Computer Engineer Barbie via Gizmodo...

This is actually wonderful. Barbie's had 124 careers since 1959, ranging from Stewardess to Paratrooper. Today she gets her 125th: computer engineer. You can tell she's smart 'cause she's got glasses, and reads nothing but binary.

Barbie's latest career move is also significant for being the first decided entirely by online vote. Though maybe it's not so surprising that the internet community was especially inclined to see a Bluetooth-rocking geektastic Barbie.

"All the girls who imagine their futures through Barbie will learn that engineers - like girls - are free to explore inﬁnite possibilities, limited only by their imagination," says Nora Lin, President, Society of Women Engineers. "As a computer engineer, Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into realities that have a direct and positive impact on people's everyday lives in this exciting and rewarding career."

Thoughts? What Barbie would you like to see for kids to celebrate?

February 6, 2010

Safety (beer) glass

With 87,000 bar fights a year in the UK, with a combined health care cost of over 2.5 million pounds per year, the British Design Council saw a need for better bar glassware. Design agency DesignBridge stepped up with these concepts. What do you think, readers? How would you redesign the classic pint glass to to make it safer, while keeping it glass? [via Core77]

February 1, 2010

Giant metal 12-sided die sculpture

The crazed DIY artisans and mischief makers at Philadelphia's Tango Echo have a new video showing one of their members, Paul Carson's, giant 12-sided die he welded together and then deployed in a vacant lot.

More:
12-sided die as big as your head!

January 17, 2010

Erector sculpture

Artist Harold Hoy makes sculptures out of Erector girders.

The works of Harold Hoy have centered on the complex relationship between mankind and the natural world. Hoy's current body of work is constructed of galvanized steel and pipe hanger material and is based partly on an erector set. He uses the child's toy as a platform to work around larger issues of man's predilection for claiming ownership of the natural world and our desire to manipulate and re-form it.

January 16, 2010

Music made of Terminator 2 sound effects

Skynet Symphonic, music composed entirely of audio FX from the movie Terminator 2, Judgment Day. [via io9]

January 14, 2010

In the Maker Shed: New 3rd Gen TV-B-Gone

Turn any TV on or off with a click of the button! With the new and improved 3rd Gen TV-B-Gone, even those new big-screen LCD TVs aren't safe anymore! New features include instant reactivation with the press of a button, a bigger battery, and a flashing LED that indicates the unit is sending out its signal. If you don't want the LED on, simply double-click at the beginning of a new sequence for "stealth mode"

January 13, 2010

Robotagger

A cool use of GML by Golan Levin and Jeremy Ficca, called Robotagger:

GML (Graffiti Markup Language) drawings from 000000book.com are converted into DXF via a small Processing utility. Motion paths for a robot arm are planned from this DXF using Rhino and MasterCam. The ABB 4400 series arm is wielding a 2" Montana Hardcore marker.

[Thanks, Jamie!]

More:

January 12, 2010

Fat Tag Graffiti iPhone app

Theo Watson writes:

The long awaited update to the original Fat Tag – The Deluxe Edition co-created with NYC graffiti legend Katsu is now available in the App Store. Features include:

Multiple default backgrounds

Additional background selection from camera, photo library

Scale, rotate, angle, opacity options for realistically overlaying tag onto camera image.

Multiple pen/brush tips and colors

Full accelerometer based drips

Speed based thickness

Upload gml and screenshot to FAT’s 000000book.com

Save tags to photo library

Graffiti Markup Language week at Fatlab

Evan Roth at Free Art and Technology writes:

Welcome to GML week @fffffat! Graffiti Markup Language (GML) is a new XML file type specifically designed for archiving graffiti tags. Gestural graffiti motion data of a tag created in GML-supported software is saved as a text file with a “.GML” extension…. a new digital standard for tomorrow’s vandals.

FAT members have been hard at work standardizing various open source graffiti-related software packages, including Graffiti Analysis, Laser Tag and EyeWriter to be GML compliant.

Please stay tuned to FAT all this week as we publish new GML related projects each day. There will be multiple new free software releases, open data repositories, iphone apps, robots, guest bloggers and more. GML week is now officially open for business.

December 2, 2009

Kindle etching and DIY adventures (video)

The Engadget Show: Kindle etching and DIY adventures with Adafruit Industries. Some footage and a tour of the show at Adafruit, I hang out there quite a bit :) Josh writes -

If you'll recall, some months ago we held a little competition for readers to submit artwork destined for laser-etching on the backsides of Amazon's Kindle. After everyone voted on the top five out of the mountain of selections, we took the gaggle of readers down to our friends at Adafruit Industries (headed up by the lovely and delightful Limor Fried and Phil Torrone) for some time under the laser. While we were there getting our etch on with their massive laser, we convinced Limor and Phil to show off some of the other crazy kit they've got in the labs -- and we've captured it all on film... er, video. Take a look at our excursion into the world of dynamic DIY'ing -- we think you'll like what you see.

Adafruit posted some additional photos of the etched Kindles here - and you can also view the Engadget show M4V here...

Command signs

These signs (stickers? graffiti?) use simple computer commands to address elements of the urban environment. Love that these can have both a positive or critical message. If only you could command-z IRL... [via @alexislloyd]

November 23, 2009

Make: Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Mischief Maker's Gift Guide

Here are some gift ideas for your favorite creative skeptic, guerrilla artist, or depressed teenager. I'm trying to keep it fresh, so if you're looking for some more ideas, check out last year's Culture Jamming Gift Guide too. You have plenty of time before the holidays take hold, so set some time aside to MAKE something awesome for that artist friend or relative, or supply him/her with awesome tools and inspiration for creative deviance.

AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE: Selected works by Evan Roth 2003-2008 ($free download or $20 in print)

Evan Roth is a groundbreaking artist who uses lasers, computers, and graffiti, and this book celebrates his most awesome projects. AOFF is an inspiring full-color look back at the last few years of Roth's work.

November 13, 2009

The EyeWriter

I'm thrilled to share the EyeWriter with you all:

Behold the latest ocular assault weapon from the Graffiti Research Lab, openFrameworks, The Fat Lab and The Ebeling Group: The EyeWriter. It is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus + custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes.

The goal of the hardware component of the EyeWriter project is to make the most simple and inexpensive eye-tracking head-set possible to use with the "EyeWriter" software suite. Obviously, there are numerous ways to make eye-tracking hardware. Many of these designs, especially those produced for academic research projects (Open Eyes ), have already been published openly on the internet.

Our functional design specifications are as follows:

1. The EyeWriter should be as inexpensive as possible
2. The fabrication and assembly of the system should require only common hand tools
3. Whenever possible components and parts should be available for purchase locally versus online
4. The camera should produce 640 x 480 NTSC video
5. The camera should be sensitive to near-field IR light
6. The camera should not auto-iris (or auto-iris should be disabled in the camera's driver).
7. IR LEDs should be used to illuminate the pupil

Beyond that its up to you... this instruction set details a solderless variation of the EyeWriter that uses a hacked PS3 Eye and a pair of stunnas we bought on Venice Beach and suggests other possible EyeWriter configurations.

Yes, that's right, watch TemptOne tag buildings (with light) even though he can only move his eyes. We live in the future, and this project makes me feel so warm inside. The whole project is open source.

November 12, 2009

Ego search visualizer

Pretty much everyone has googled themselves to see what the internet has to say about them. However, if you're particularly active on forums, blogs, twitter and so on, you'll end up with so many hits you can barely process it. A web application called Personas created by MIT doctoral student Aaron Zinman attempts to generate a visual representation of those hits, creating a bar chart breaking the subject down by interest. At the same time, the project doesn't merely create a pretty picture, it raises awareness of the capriciousness of algorithm-driven data mining.

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

Try it on personas.media.mit.edu/.

Via

November 11, 2009

How-To: Pirate TV

Jon Cohrs writes:

Tired of the blocky, JPEG-like resolution of digital television? Do you long for the days of RF modulation and regulated-yet-unregulated content? Do you simply have the desire to toss your converter box out the window and make use of those rabbit ear antennae that are just lying around? If so, then you might be interested in becoming a savior of analog television! This Instructable will show you how to create your own fully-fledged low-power analog television channel, with any video source(including your computer) as a source of content.

We created one that went live the minute analog tv went dead. We're still the only analog station in NYC, but please join us in making more!!