Fear not, folks – Elton John is here to save us from the impending degradation of culture! Because, you see, the reason there’s so much rubbish music and art about these days is because we all spend too much time on the internet. It’s a relief to know he’s worked out why his own contributions to global culture have been so unilaterally appalling over the last decade or so … though I can think of numerous artist and musician acquaintances whose work has been enhanced or expanded for the better by their use of the internet, be it for networking or acquiring new tools or ideas. Clay Shirky agrees, too – destroying limits liberates creativity, as opposed to stifling it. But it also destroys the culture that went before it … which is probably what has Sir Elton so worried.
Tag Archives: art
How the future looked in the past – gallery of old Interzone covers
Take a trip back into the early eighties – here’s an archive of scanned covers from old editions of Interzone. As far as graphic design is concerned, we’ve come a long way, baby. [Full disclosure: I am Interzone‘s reviews editor.]
Digital Cameras See Better Than You
Digital cameras are capable of capturing colors in areas of the spectrum invisible to normal human sight. Kameraflage is a technique for creating designs that incorporate elements that only show up in digital photos. Get this into the hands of that bong hits for Jesus kid, quick. [engadget]
Where art meets science – the pickled frog webserver
It’s all there in the title, basically. “Experiments in Galvanism” is an art installation that consists of tank of mineral oil containing a dead frog … which has been rigged up with a miniature webserver, so that you can control the twitching of its limbs from anywhere in the world. [BoingBoing]
Throwing Off The Shackles of Reality
When you think about it, Drew Harry’s got a point. Developing a virtual world that slavishly apes the real is kind of stupid. His meeting spaces arrange people based on their allegiances, representing a person’s expressed opinions by aligning them physically in a wide open space. I don’t know if that’s what I’d choose to emphasize, but giving up the virtual Aeron chair makes sense. [kurzweil]