Category: art

How skidding works

I’m happy to say that this is pretty much how skids work in Burning Rubber. Also, you see how, on a lot of these corners, the dude is laying down tread? That’s where he’s skidding. He’s still in control of the car, but he’s skidding. And you see how all of a sudden, the car snaps and the tire tracks stop and suddenly he’s accelerating? That’s where he’s lined up his car with his vector.

The Lancia Stratos Is The Coolest Car Ever

lancia stratos ralley

I’m pretty sure I had a Matchbox Lancia Stratos as a kid. It’s an astonishingly cool car. Apparently, it was pretty dominant in the mid-70s as a ralley racer, which is really neat, given its street car looks. I guess it held on to the corners as tightly as the other top racers, then took off on the straights and pavement.

The only thing cooler than the Lancia Stratos Ralley, though is the Lancia Stratos prototype. Holy crap.

… and the only thing cooler than that is the Kraftwerk knockoff music followed by actual Kraftwerk.

Humans Are Pretty Good People

tweenbots

From The Viscous Platypus comes this link to a study in empathy. Robots (using the term very loosely) are built to these specifications:

  • Roll forward
  • Have the body proportions of a 1-year-old
  • Have a flag that says where they would like to go, asking for help

… and people help them. To date, no robots have been lost or damaged.

To me, this shows not only human empathy, but the incredible processing power available to the world by interfacing with that empathy. Think about the distributed processing we could perform but withhold because to use it puts us in jeopardy to use it. And we’re usually right. But somehow, by assuring us that we are not being endangered through our evolved social senses, that processing is tapped.

Perhaps the future is not the Modern ideal of total autonomy, but one of free giving through the robust and extremely high bandwidth interface we’ve slowly developed over the last four million years. It’s given us open-source software, it’s given us a method of donating meaningfully to political causes $20 at a time, and it’s given us the tremendous power of social networking on the Internet. Maybe that power can be tapped for future endeavors of humanity, as well.

A Trip to Europa

The Artist And His Subject
From a photograph of the arist at work, studying a Europan Whale.

In 1998, as part of a drawing class, I made a book called A Trip to Europa in which I “edited” the works of a Dr. Kesling Frankh about his exploration of the oceans and life forms of the vast world-ocean of the Jovian moon Europa.

Europa is covered in ice and has a small rocky core. Tidal forces of Jupiter cause constant shifting of the ice, which releases heat and keeps liquid the vast world-ocean 2 kilometers beneath the surface liquid.

Click images to see closer.

Europan Life Cycle
The Europan life cycle. Clockwise from the bottom left: Spores, Plankton, Fox, Wolf, Whale.

There is only one “species” of life on Europa but its stages of life fill all available niches. Life “starts” as small, striated Spores that hatch into mineral-consuming Plankton. They become and are consumed by Foxes, small predators that, in turn become and are consumed by Wolves, the next phase. Wolves, when their local population becomes too great, are consumed by scavenger Foxes, Plankton, with the remainder becoming Whales, who consume minerals, Plankton, and any other organic detritus in the water. They lay Spores that eventually hatch into Plankton, restarting the process.

Europan Plankton
Given the very low gravity of Europa, the life forms tend to be large. “Plankton” in this case are several centimeters long.
Europan Fox
The Europan Fox, like all of the mobile stages, is jet-propelled, swallowing water through three sphincters in the front of its body and squirting it out behind.
Europan Wolf
Europan Wolves alternate between cooperation and cannibalism, depending on the situation at the moment. They will band together to attack Whales or to corral Foxes, but when resources are scarce, will turn on each other, consuming each other until some of them can become Whales.
Europan Whale
The Europan Whale, often as much as 100 meters long, consumes all it can, straining the water free of the waste of the carnage that led to its existence. It releases spores constantly, though they only hatch when in the presence of particular nutrients.
Size Comparison of Europan Life Forms
Size comparison. From the upper left, a Whale, a Wolf, Fox, Plankton, Jacques Cousteau.

Building An Electronic Drum Kit

I’ve been setting myself up with an electronic music studio in the basement built around some old gear. This project will include some found sound materials both from the freesound project and from me walking around with my iPod and a recorder dingus. I want to use not only ambient street sounds, but also percussive ones that might be good for drums, so I need some sort of drum controller. And here I am.

I’m using an Ensoniq SD-1 as a keyboard and Garage Band as a sequencer. I’m using PolyPhontics to assign notes to the pads, rather than fucking around with the 90s-vintage controls. I’m also not using any of the remarkably awful sounds these old synths come with.

Eventually, there will be music!