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Slime Mold Macro Gallery

Slime molds are so close to being both plant and animal... that it's like they can't make up their minds... and they're thinking now that maybe it's this, is who's been running the earth all this time. -David St. Hubbins

An amazing gallery (don't miss the animated one at the end!) of macro photography of Slime Molds. Related: they can solve a maze (more). And for those, like me, who didn't get the joke, Mr. Hubbins is no ordinary person: he is a fictional character.

Note the connection to Ernst Haeckel and the use in spotworks halfway down this.

tip from nix.

Art Career Documentary Gallery

I haven't put captions in yet but I don't want to delay any further the release of this collection of images and photos documenting my artistic career. These are the assets I used to make the documentary that was recently posted to BoingBoing by Douglas Rushkoff when he was guest blogging there (thanks!). Everything from the video and more that didn't fit should be here.

Finally Printing

After many years of resistance and fear, I finally bought a laser printer. I resisted because I hate the idea of wasting paper when I should be able to keep my files digitally, without physical waste, backed up forever, amen. I was afraid because my primary computers run Linux, and though it's great for networking and programming, consumer device drivers are one of its weak points, and I hate that configuration init file tweaking nonsense. In fact it drives me insane. So I just kept going to Kinkos, mooching off of friends, and making due without... until now.

I bought a cheapo Samsung laser printer and it kind of sat around my apartment for longer than I would like to admit. I didn't have any space in my home office. And I was dreading that installation nonsense. But eventually I got my shit together and set it up and plugged it in... to my Mac. Yes I have a minimac because sometimes I just need After Effects and Photoshop. And I figured it would be easy... didn't Apple invent the category with the LaserWriter?

The Mac recognized the device, but when I tried to print I got a strange error. So then I tried Linux and boom! It worked like a charm, out of the box, zero configuration. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. Thank you Linux. I am so happy!

3LD Party Friday

3-Legged Dog's annual party is this Friday in downtown Manhattan and I am pleased to report that they chose to bring back my tunnel-filling High Fidelity installation for the night (see the video).

It starts at 7pm with a VIP champagne toast for philanthropists and politicos ($100 minimum admission). But then at 9pm DJs come on, the hoi polloi come in ($10 admission), and the fun kicks into high gear (open bar till midnight!). Expect this to go all night. "Alter egos and extravagant attire welcome".

What: 3LD Annual Party
When: October 17th 2008
Where: 80 Greenwhich St, downtown Manhattan

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UIUC Report

The conference was well run, the talks were cool, and I had a blast palling around with my old friend Ari Gordon-Schlosberg who was returning as a recruiter after speaking last year. Since he had gone to UIUC years ago and his brother Bigs lived in town, they had the low-down on the house-party madness.

The talk was recorded and I'll post the video when it becomes available.

Shout-out to Tara Roys for "handling" me and especially for getting me to the airport on-time early Sunday morning after that late Saturday night. Check out her Apophysis tutorial, perhaps the best I've seen. It has a detailed graphical explanation of the fundamentals, plus a smattering of advanced topics. I disagree with the section on copyright, but that's a topic of its own. Thanks ACM!

Speaking at Reflections|Projections

This weekend I'm speaking at the 14th annual Reflections|Projections conference run by the ACM at UIUC. It's free to attend so if you are in the area and want to see the Dreams in High Fidelity and hear me talk about how I made it and why.

Electric Sheep Found in Wild

Magnetic Warp (Hypotrochoid) describes itself as

a novel technique for the visualization of magnetic fields. Two ferrofluid Hele-Shaw cells have been constructed to facilitate the imaging of magnetic field lines. We deduce that magnetically induced photonic band gap arrays similar to electrostatic liquid crystal operation are responsible for the photographed images and seek to mathematically prove the images are of exact dipole nature.

It sure looks like the Electric Sheep for example 165.29720, 198.07654 and many more. What's your favorite "magnetic" sheep?

I've always wondered if there were a physical process that modeled the sheep algorithm, for example fractal laser modes have another aspect, but I haven't seen the real thing yet...

Props to Iz.