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Man delivers marriage proposal as 113-page publish-on-demand book
MillionArtists is fundraising project with an interesting way of gathering donations: Everyone who gives money can choose the color and placement of single pixel on a massive online canvas. In theory, as thousands or millions of people donate, it’ll take shape as a picture.
But a picture of what? Heh — interesting question. A story in the Globe and Mail points out that at the moment, there are only 88 donations, so the pixels are so insignificant on the sprawling digital canvas that they “could easily be mistaken for dirt on the screen.” (That’s a possibly lovely, if dispiriting, metaphor for the philanthropy’s always-heroic but never-enough attempt to solve the world’s problems.) You can check the painting out in real-time here; a snapshot of the current pic, shrunk down to 1/10th size, is above. The guys running the project describe the aesthetic of the project thusly:
I see the point regarding the “meaningful and pleasant look” and have to agree that our picture may become just “white noise” … On other hand I’d compare this “random pixel location” method to Jackson Pollock’s method of “dripping paint from cans with holes in the bottom”, but I must agree that mine is ever more extreme: when Pollock used his own senses to make what he believed reflects his art vision, I’m going to use sense of color of a million different people. Will I get the “meaningful and pleasant look” at the end? I do not know. Will it show the feelings of the million people? I believe it will.
A while back, I wrote a piece for Slate about whether “collaborative art” was possible — hundreds or thousands of people working, hivelike, on a single project, each unaware of the intentions or desires of the others. I think it is indeed possible that a hive can produce art, but it all depends on the framing device. The device here is so open-ended that it’s likely to produce an entropic beige sludge. But hey — it’ll be an entropic beige sludge that has raised a bunch of money for charity!
(Thanks to Jonathan Kotcheff for this one!)
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!
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September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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