Author Archives: Egg Syntax

World building 301: some projections

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World building 301: some projections

Right now, over at the venerable discussion board known as the WELL, Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky and having their regular annual State of the World pow-wow, this time for 2012.

I always find these fascinating, because Chairman Bruce is the pre-eminent thought leader of modern near-future SF.

He’s been one jump ahead of the pack ever since the early 1980s (when I avidly subscribed to his pseudonymous crit zine Cheap Truth, the house self-criticism session of the early cyberpunks), then the mid-1980s when he basically invented the New Space Opera and moved on before anyone else had time to notice, and then the early 90s when he got the implications of the internet and climate catastrophe in Heavy Weather … seriously, if I’m ever at a loss to know what the big near-term global issues are, I look for his footsteps and follow them. (It’s no accident that a few years ago he seemed to lose interest in dying media and high-tech environmentalism and went after industrial design and 3D printers.)

Anyway.

I’m going to use some of his mojo as a jumping off point for asking: what is the world going to look like in 2032? And in 2092?

It’s an important question. I expect to be around in 2032, albeit somewhat more creaky (I’ll be 68) — the state of the world in 2032 is a matter of personal interest. By 2092 … well, if I’m still alive in 2092 there will have been medical breakthroughs, because I’d be 128 years old, and that exceeds the current boundary with which human life expectancy converges (which is roughly 121-122). My grandfather died a couple of months short of his 70th birthday; my father is still going strong at 87: a straight line extrapolation would peg me at making it past 104, although I don’t think I’m as healthy as dad. So it’s a matter of rather more theoretical interest to me, but nevertheless worth worrying about just in case the next 20-80 years bring us some massive breakthroughs in life prolongation.

What do I predict for 2032?

Climate: the current remaining question marks over climate change will have been answered, and the answers won’t be anything pleasant. Climate change denialism will probably be about as respectable as Lysenkoism is today — an intellectually corrupt pseudo-science emerging at the behest of a bankrupt ideology. Chunks of the world will be suffering heat stress with damaging effects on agriculture (notably Australia, where imported European-style agricultural prac…

Untitled flower scan, Katinka Matson

Untitled flower scan, Katinka Matson:

An untitled work by Katinka Matson, via John Brockman and EDGE.org. The artist’s site is here, and you can view a larger-size image here (fun to gaze at on an iPad, I think).

Update: Boing Boing reader Jennifer Forman Orth, Ph.D., who is an Invasive Plant Ecologist, says, “That’s actually a scan of the seedheads of a Clematis vine. So not a flower, not anymore – already pollinated and gone to fruit. But a small technicality for that beautiful image.”

Macoto Murayama’s incredible digital flower diagrams

Macoto Murayama’s incredible digital flower diagrams: Macotooooo

Macoto Murayama’s exquisite “Inorganic Herbarium” diagrams will be on display at Frantic Gallery’s booth in the Art Stage Singapore Art Fair next weekend, January 12-15. I first posted about his work back in 2009 and its evolution is nothing short of breathtaking.

Wp-Content Uploads 2012 01 Murayamamamamama

This time we present exclusively large scale Botanical Diagrams by Murayama with a vast explanatory material on both botanical and technical context of his digital flowers. We will also show how the artist creates his works, beginning from vivisection of a real flower, photography, sketches and then software for 3-Dimensional drawings. For the first time, the original flowers used for the Botanical Diagrams will also be shown inside transparent vessels filled with formaldehyde.

Macoto Murayama: Botanical Diagrams

Nathan Richard Phelps’s oil pen marvels

[Yum. -egg]

Nathan Richard Phelps’s oil pen marvels:

Site Home Files E61-Filtered

Tompkins Window

One evening this week, my wife and I were walking on Market Street in San Francisco when we were awestruck by the painting at left leaning in the window of the E6 Gallery. The artist, Nathan Richard Phelps, was inside hanging his work for a solo show opening this Friday. He must have noticed our stunned expressions because he opened the door to chat for a bit. A delightful guy, he explained that this huge (7 foot tall!) oil pen painting, titled “Tompkins Window,” was commissioned by a couple living in a Manhattan apartment. Makes sense, as the piece has an architectural/city planning vibe to it but also evokes memories of early computer drawing programs that, as my wife said, might run on a 1980s Atari. Several of Phelps’s paintings are in this angular style while others are all about organic curved forms in almost op art patterns. They are all marvelous.

Nathan Richard Phelps

E6 Gallery


Year-end mix 2011

[2011 mix from someone whose taste I really love and respect. -egg]

Year-end mix 2011:

Well, you probably thought I was never coming back, eh?

For awhile, I thought maybe I wouldn’t have the time to either, but then I told myself I’d set a hard limit on the amount of time I could spend working on a mix and end up finishing it in half that time. Working through the transitions in my head prior to sitting down at the computer helped a bit, and while it isn’t nearly as involved as the 2009 mix that I did, I feel pretty happy with how it turned out.

The artwork is at right, and you can download it by clicking on the artwork or this link right here.

Names of artists involved is on the artwork itself, but here’s the full tracklisting. It runs just over an hour, for those keeping track at home.

  • 00:00 | Colin Stetson – “A Dream Of Water” (from New History of Warfare Vol. 2: Judges)

  • 03:04 | Bill Callahan – “America!” (from Apocalypse)

  • 08:28 | The Drums – “Days” (from Portamento)

  • 12:53 | Panda Bear – “You Can Count On Me” (from Tomboy)

  • 15:20 | Sandro Perri – “Love & Light” (from Impossible Spaces)

  • 18:55 | Rustie – “Surph” (from Glass Swords)

  • 22:55 | Battles – “Wall Street” (from Gloss Drop)

  • 27:35 | Sepalcure – “Eternally Yrs” (from Sepalcure)

  • 32:20 | The Weeknd – “Initiation” (from Echoes of Silence)

  • 36:24 | Machinedrum – “U Don’t Survive” (from Room(s))

  • 41:00 | Robag Wruhme – “Pnom Gobal” (from Thora Vukk)

  • 46:15 | Andy Stott – “Posers” (from We Stay Together)

  • 50:52 | Tim Hecker – “In The Fog III” (from Ravedeath, 1972)

  • 54:52 | Leyland Kirby – “They Are All Dead, There Are No Skip At All” (from Eager to Tear Apart The Stars)

Now, I just need to get motivated to post some sort of year-end list in the next couple weeks. All of the artists featured above are on it (as well as some others). There’s a hint, I guess.

Fish mimics mimic octopus

Fish mimics mimic octopus:

This is a great find by Not Exactly Rocket Science‘s Ed Yong. A tourist and a couple of researchers from the California Academy of Sciences have documented an instance of Pacific-dwelling jawfish hiding from predators by blending into the stripes of well-known camouflage guru, the mimic octopus.

This relationship is probably a rare occurrence. The black-marble jawfish is found throughout the Pacific from Japan to Australia, while the mimic octopus only hangs around Indonesia and Malaysia. For most of its range, the jawfish has no octopuses to hide against. Instead, Ross and Rocha think that this particular fish is engaging in “opportunistic mimicry”, taking advantage of a rare chance to share in an octopus’s protection.

Video Link

Thanks, Atvaark!