Monday, November 26, 2007

Look into the eyes


Okay, just do as the title suggests.
See how long it takes to notice whats special about this image :)

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Going Camel

Okay, the theme for this week is camels. . .
Another one of those random things I've stumbled upon while looking for something totally unrelated. . .

This is George Steinmetz's website. I originally started looking at the image on his homepage. Look closely - the camels aren't the black shapes. The camels are the little white lines - the black shapes are merely shadows.

http://www.georgesteinmetz.com/

According to his biography,

"Best known for his exploration and science photography, George Steinmetz sets out to reveal the few remaining secrets in our world today: remote deserts, obscure cultures, new developments in science and technology.

A regular contributor to National Geographic Magazine, he has examined subjects ranging from global oil exploration and the latest advances in robotics to the inner-most stretches of the Sahara Desert and the little-known treehouse people of Irian Jaya."


Looks like some pretty neat stuff.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

In Honnor of the long weekend. . .

"Men of War"
22 images from Time Magazine depicting soldiers from the past 100 years.

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1682713_1483727,00.html



I'll get back to doing daily updates soon, I need to get some blog readership before I run myself out of posts, although I keep finding new things, and I've got a good-sized reserve of interesting things saved on my computer for future use.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Can you copyright the exterior of a building? (No)

I'm not entirely certain what brought this up, but judging from some of the sidebars on this website, it was quite an interesting debate. In Chicago, there's an area called Marina Towers, because of two rather large condominium towers located there, in a rather unique round design. Supposedly these are very photogenic, and possibly iconic images of Chicago. (I've never lived there, so I can't really say.) Apparently, the Marina Towers Condominium Association wanted to try and copyright the image of their towers - basically preventing anyone from photographing, drawing, or reproducing images of the buildings in any way, shape, or form. Well, the substance of this post, is that you can't do that.

As cited on the linked to article,

"The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.

– United States Code, Title 17, Section 102(a) "

My interpretation is that if you can reasonably see it, you can take a picture of it.
It its easily publicly visible, then you can't be prevented from photographing the structure.


Just because you tan take a photograph of it doesn't mean you can go totally nuts however. If you trespass on private land A to take a photo of building B, you're still trespassing on private land A. It doesn't matter that building B is the tallest thing in town, and can be seen for miles around. You can take a photo of Building B, as long as you have premission and access to where you're taking the photo from.


I know that this isn't exactly the most interesting art-related thing around, but it is important, and it has been something I've been wondering about for a while, being primarily an urban photographer (at least for the moment ;) ). Now I can go out and snap away without worry.

To read more about it, check out the full story of the condo association, and their attempts to copyright their own building, which they legally can't do, and see some examples of why the idea is foolish, and read the page that inspired and was cited in this post,

http://www.marinacityonline.com/rulefive.htm

Friday, November 9, 2007

24 Hours of Air Traffic

Everyone at some point has used either Mapquest or Google Maps to locate something, and seen onscreen that little orange or red dot superimposed on a map above some place or other. The FAA does the exact same thing with airplanes. It knows and tracks where every airplane is in US airspace, and the data can be displayed just like that little dot in Google Maps. Except the FAA isn't tracking one airplane. It's tracking THOUSANDS of planes. Oh yeah - unlike buildings, the airplanes are moving. Put it all together, and you get a really cool animation.

Watch the video here, I know it gets a little slow after 30 seconds, but it picks up again and gets even cooler after the first minute. Explinations are included in the video, as the blog I'm linking to doesn't say all that much.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2007/11/24_hours_of_air_traffic_never_1.html

3d Panorama Photography

I think Friday is going to be a frequent two-for-one day, and quite possibly also the day for random posts that I just feel like sharing, even if they don't quite fit the theme of this blog. I haven't found any like that yet, so we'll see about that later.

The first entry for today is a series of 3d panoramas of various locations. I've seen these before, and they're really cool. You can click and scroll from side-to-side, look up and down,or zoom in and out on some of them. Its essentially like you're standing in the center of a bubble, with the images of everything you can see around you, but all in one photograph. It's pretty cool, and I've seen some neat ones of really interesting places before.

http://www.panoscan.com/MK3/ExampleSelect.html

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Ye Olde Wooden Laptop



I know that this is an art blog, but I have to count this laptop case mod as art. It is, after all, industrial design, taking a new product and making it look, and in some ways function, as a far outdated piece of machinery. According to the article,


"Built by Datamancer, this amazing Steampunk-style laptop, based on an HP ZT1000, is fully-functional and turns on with an antique clock-winding key. It also runs both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux"


Article
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/feature-steampunk-laptop-is-turned-on-with-key-linux-powered-with-video-

More Photos
http://www.techeblog.com/elephant/photo.phtml?post_key=145475&photo_key=5331#prevnext

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Popcorn - at 5400 FPS



I found this vid while searching for something on Youtube, and thought it would be worth sharing. Normal video is around 30 frames per second - 30 images shown every second to create the illusion of motion. This video was shot at 5,400 frames per second - 180 times as many individual frames of action recorded compared to normal video.

Welcomte to ArtAttack!

Welcome to ArtAttack, the blog about everything having to do with Art!

I used to be an author for a tech blog, until we took a bit of a break to go to college, and stopped publishing updates. As an art student, I don't really have that much time for tech blogging, but I found that I can't quite shake the habbit of looking at random stuff on the internet. It seems that no matter how hard I try, I can't avoid finding interesting things about art on the internet. I know that "Art" is a general term, and by "art" online, I mean ALL of it - anything - as in, whatever has to do with something visual, audible, looks cool, gets a reaction by being viewed or experinced, etc. etc. Basically, I've found a lot of cool stuff relating to art online. This is my way of sharing it.

If you find something you think would be neat to see here, feel free to leave a comment with the link, and if possible, the originating source of the artwork.

I'll start off with a link I found yesterday, a sculpture created using old forks, knives and spoons. Only when viewed with a strong backlight does the lump f metal cast a recognizable shadow.

http://www.maniacworld.com/motorcycle-shadow-illusion.html