Michael Ang

Quickie… Check out this new service that lets you send greetings spelled out by buildings in the shape of letters found using Google Maps.

Here’s my message to the world.

Objects made out of sugar and other fully biodegradable materials designed by Emiliano Godoy. Inspired by Cradle to Cradle.

The presentation slides and notes are interesting (but only work in IE).

Via Aichen Lin.

I took some pictures at the Biology and Art: Two Worlds or One? conference presented by the New York Academy of Science.

I hadn’t realized that Theo Jasen had used a genetic algorithm to get the lengths for his beach animals. There are 11 sections in each leg that contribute of the shape of the motion. If he had tried 10 possible lengths for each of those sections the possibilities exponentially rise. So he wrote a program to try some different possibilities, see how well they met the criteria, then use those as the basis for a new generation of possible solutions. The net effect was to navigate through the space of possible solutions in an evolutionary way. All this on an Atari!

A lot of thought provoking discussion in the talks. Awesome to see some of the scientists presenting their work and having some of the same enthusiasm as the artists. The talks on animal locomotion and how visual representation affects the teaching of science were standouts for me. Michael Joaquin Grey kind of blew my mind with his combination of conceptual, aesthetic and entrepreneurial work. Still processing…

I started a page detailing some of the projects I’ve worked on since starting ITP. Also I’m really starting to dig DokuWiki.

Via Suzan Eraslan