Thomlex - Art

Bill's Art

bill — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 14:33:23 -0400

Another shameless plug for Bill's art. This one's called Warren 5. I made it shortly after the great Warren Zevon passed away, though frankly I don't see any connection.

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DIY High-Speed Photography

bill — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 03:39:54 -0400

Quaketronics is two brothers who make an inexpensive ($99) rig for shooting your own high-speed photographs. I met them at the Maker's Faire this last weekend (which was extremely cool, btw). This picture is of my son Alex popping a balloon.

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Earthquake Art

bill — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 22:56:26 -0400

This image in sand was made by a hanging pendulum that shook during a 6.8 earthquake which shook for half a minute.

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Robot Chair

bill — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:25:00 -0400

Raffaello D'Andrea built this robotic chair that falls completely apart (the legs and back detach and fall away), then crawls around and puts itself back together. Go to the link and check out the video. Not to be confused with the walking chair.

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Dawn through the Year

bill — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:17:00 -0400

The picture, taken near Ajo, Arizona is a multiple exposure, each shot taken ten days apart, at 8:30 AM for a year. The sun's seasonal shift forms this figure 8, known as the analemma. Because of this effect, sundials can run ahead of clock time by as much as 16 mins 33 secs or fall behind by as much as 14 mins 6 secs.

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When I saw this picture, it reminded me of an elderly gentleman named L. Gordon Plummer. He was retired, but volunteered time to come into my sixth grade class and teach us physics once per week. He'd teach us interesting things like basic concepts in relativity and quantum mechanics, or about hyper-cubes (four-dimensional objects). He invented a sundial that is always correct, by incorporating an analemma-shaped object into the design. It's still standing (I think) in Balboa Park in San Diego. I'm sure he's passed on long ago now. He was an interesting person, one that made an impact on me.

Bill's Art

bill — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 02:01:00 -0400

Another shameless plug for Bill's art. This one is called Globes 2.

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Origami Masks

bill — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 03:27:00 -0400

Joel Cooper created these masks, each from a single sheet of paper. The technique is called an "origami tessellation", because the original intent of it was to create tessellations, i.e. interlocking polygons and such. Very impressive.

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Bill's Art

bill — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 19:08:00 -0400

Another shameless promotion for Bill's art. This one is called Intersection.

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Bill's Art

bill — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:14:00 -0500

Time for another shameless plug for Bill's art. This one is called Bubbles 3.

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Kinetic Sculptures

bill — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:32:00 -0500

David C. Roy builds sculptures that are wound up like a clock, then various pieces spin to make visually-interesting patterns.

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Bill's Art

bill — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 16:56:00 -0500

Another shameless plug for Bill's art. This one seems to be making the rounds on a bunch of other blogs and websites, so I figure I'll put it here too. I took this photograph in the desert in Pakistan about five years ago.
It's a bit washed-out; it was hotter than hell at the time.

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Q. T. Luong Photography

bill — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 03:14:00 -0500

Great nature pictures shot by Q. Tuan Luong. This one is of the Delicate Arch in Arches National Park.

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Photography by Abelardo Morell

bill — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:16:00 -0500

Great photography by Abelardo Morell, including this picture of Laboratory Glass (link from Miriam87).

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Floating Paperclip

bill — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:12:00 -0500

A paperclip will float on water due to surface tension. This picture is photographed through a grill, and the deformation of the water can be seen.

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Egg Sculpture

bill — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 13:36:00 -0500

Giant scuplture made entirely of eggs. (Link from sadboy).

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Ice Hotel

bill — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 04:07:00 -0500

Stay in Sweden in a hotel built of Ice and Snow. A new hotel is built each winter. Price around $260/night.

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Go

bill — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 03:14:00 -0500

Go is one of my favorite board games. It's very well-known in China, Japan and Korea, but not as much so in the west.

One of the things that I find particularly appealing about it is that the rules are extremely simple (you can learn to play in a half-hour), yet the number of possible positions is enormous, astronomical compared to chess for example. As a result, even though there are computers that have beat the world's best chess players, a computer program has not yet been written that can beat even a mediocre professional go player.

Also, it has a very simple handicapping system, such that a very advanced player can play a beginner and if the handicap is set up fairly, you'd expect each to win half the games played. My six year old son and I play this way, and it's a lot of fun because we're evenly matched.

(This image is an art piece I made called (see if you can guess...) "Go").

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Weather Photography

bill — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 16:00:00 -0500

Photographs of the weather by Roland Vanbrabant. (link from Pumpkin606).

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Kite Photography

bill — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 00:13:00 -0500

Scott Haefner suspends a camera from a kite and takes some great aerial photography.

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Bill's Art

bill — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:06:00 -0500

Yet another shameless plug for Bill's art. This one is called Microcosm.

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Corn Mazes

bill — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:25:00 -0500

Mazes cut into corn fields.

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Photography by Dan Baumbach

bill — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 22:00:00 -0500

Great photographs by Dan Baumbach, including this one of a sunset.

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Photo-Realistic Scenery Rendering Software

bill — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 19:42:00 -0500

Terragen is open-source software that generates high-quality nature scenes. On startup, it looks daunting with a ton of parameters to tweak and no clear usage path. But after following the tutorial for five minutes, I was creating scenes on par with this one.

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Bill's Art

bill — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:03:00 -0500

Time for another shameless plug for Uncle Willy's Art. This one's called Inroads.

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Ice Sculptures

bill — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:09:00 -0500

Amazing large ice scuptures. Link doesn't give any indication of who made them or where they are from. (Link from ferretsgames).

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Synapse in Action

bill — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:40:00 -0500

Illustration of a neuron preparing to send a message to it's target.
Graham Johnson won LiveScience's award for Best Science Illustration of 2005 with this entry, "The Synapse Revealed". Mr. Johnson based his work on several ultra-thin micrographs of sequential brain slices. With highly detailed shape and scale, this synaptic millisecond is as accurate as it is artful.

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Your DNA as Art

bill — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 14:47:00 -0500

Spit in a test tube and these guys will generate some art based on your DNA.

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Bill's Art

bill — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:06:00 -0500

Yet another shameless promotion for Bill's art. This one's called Hell, though I don't know why.

susanad of the Wonder Revolution stumble group has been kind enough to propose this as the groups official art piece.

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Photography by Don Ellis

bill — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:04:00 -0500

Cool photographs by Don Ellis. Many subjects including nature ones, including this of a praying mantis.

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Evolving Art Screensaver

bill — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 16:58:00 -0500

Electric Sheep is a free screen saver run by thousands of people all over the world. When these computers "sleep", the screen saver comes on and the computers communicate with each other via the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations.

Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over.

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