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One of the complaints about Playboy centerfolds is that they’re oddly homogenous — the same big hair, the same inflated breasts, the same frozen Joker-like smile, over and over again. Does this really represent the average American woman?
Now the artist Jason Salavon has produced a set of images that riff wittily on the culture of the centerfold. Salavon’s known for taking “found” images and using algorithms to manipulate them in interesting ways. For his installation entitled “Every Playboy Centerfold, The Decades,” he took all the centerfolds for each 10-year period and smooshed them together — producing a single image that is the statistical average of the lot. That picture above? It’s “the 80s.” But you knew that, heh.
On his site, Salavon also notes that he’s become interested in “abstract board games,” and intends to post a few when they’re developed. I love love love the idea of artists creating games as a vehicle for their work.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”
“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912
“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex
» visit the Collision Detection archives
May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM
From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.
July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S
July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM
My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.
June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM
On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.
June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM
I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives.
According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable!
» see all of my photos on Flickr
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