Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Timewarped uncanny art from Zohar Studios

Zohar Studios offers two types of inspired, weird art. Ambrotypes , like this example, mix nineteenth-century styles with moden objects.  And the installations are fine intrusions of art into daily life (I really like the quietly steampunk surveillance camera).

Zohar should be fine fodder for Ms. Wurzel Tod.

(thanks to Andy Havens)

More on infinite zoom

There's a fine meditation on Steven Johnson's October infinite zoom and digital design note, over at the Leo Bernett blog.  Jason Oke connects Johnson's insight to transmedia storytelling, gaming, contextual design, and chaos theory.  I'm glad someone is running with this - it's a fascinating way to rethink an awful lot of recent history.

NB: I'm now reminded of this infinite zoom image project.

Gaming engineering and armadillos

Armadillo Run is a fun, educational, and insidiously alluring game.  A free download, Armadillo teaches basic engineering principles by posing design problems to solve.  You assemble ropes, metal sheets, cloth, and other pieces between preset positions, in order to let the Armadillo escape into the next dimension (and puzzle).

Armadillo reminds me of the fabulous Soda Constructor, that classic Java game teaching physics of tensile strength and gravity.

(thanks to Richard Liston)

Merry Christmas from Infocult

All best wishes for the holiday!

And the Web passed by this HTML

Obscure Tags aggregates lesser-known HTML, often bypassed by history.  A fun way to glimpse the Web's history.  ruby, acronym, keygen, bdo, and more.

(via MetaFilter)

Infocult recognized as edublog by OEDb

Infocult has been named a "Top 100 Blog" in education, by the Online Education Database.

Is this a good thing?  Some folks think so.  Is it a troll?  Other folks deem it so.  I hope it's the former, and, if so, am pleased.

Time tries to probe Second Life's underbelly

Time magazine explores Second Life in an article this week, and it's all about SL as the land of unleashed desires.  Furries, attachable penises, sexual orientation changes, and too much free time all appear in rapid succession.  The piece even begins with a lunge into our collective underbelly:

I thought I'd want to have lots of sex. Meaningless, multipartnered, degrading sex.

Joel Stein makes the classic Gothic argument, seeing SL as a place for uncapping the Freudian gusher:

But Second Life is different enough (flying! teleporting! cloning!) that it functions as a therapist's couch on which you learn about yourself by safely exploring your darkest desires.

If Time has covered this, SL has clearly entered the mainstream with a red light district attached, a rep for the forbidden, and a broad avenue to haunted spaces. 

Summary of this past week's uncanny Second Life discussion coming soon.

(via GigaGamez)

Collaboratively discussed Iraq Study Group report

The Institute for the Future of the Book has launched a fine project, a collaboratively annotated version of the Iraq Study Group's recent report.  This is intended to enable reflection and discussion about the document.  And, of course, it's another piece of the Institute's exploration of networked books.  Good thing on both counts.

Mary Poppins as horror movie

Mashup for today: "Scary Mary," a horror movie remix of Mary Poppins (1964).  It's short, just over a minute, which lets the creators pick perfect clips and built up a healthy sense of dread. 

My wife has always thought Mary Poppins was an anarchist, anti-work movie.  Which it is.  People should listen to Ceredwyn.

(via Ten Zen Monkeys)

Anthropocentrism in Second Life

Ton Zylstra writes about an interesting Second Life experiment, wherein he removed his avatar's human shape in order to present as... a glowing orb:

As you might expect, people treated him differently.  He lost the expectation of speech, for one. 

At a different level, I wonder about this as a case of going against SL's expectations about bodies and body types.  When we see a school of fish in a river, for example, do we check to see if there's a player's av in there?