alexis lloyd

"I dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a..."

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:21:54 -0400

“I dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. It would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. Perhaps it would invent them sometimes — all the better. Criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; I’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of imagination. It would not be sovereign or dressed in red. It would bear the lightning of possible storms.”

- Frank Chimero × Blog × The Lightning of Possible Storms

"Amazon isn’t a store, not really. Not in any sense that we can regularly think about stores. It’s a..."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 09:44:38 -0400

“Amazon isn’t a store, not really. Not in any sense that we can regularly think about stores. It’s a strange pulsing network of potential goods, global supply chains, and alien associative algorithms with the skin of a store stretched over it, so we don’t lose our minds.”

- Algorithmic Rape Jokes in the Library of Babel | Quiet Babylon

(via RemoverInstaller™ | Box Vox)

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:48:54 -0500

(via RemoverInstaller™ | Box Vox)

joshbyard: “Human Textiles” Woven From Cellular Structural...

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:58:01 -0400

joshbyard:

“Human Textiles” Woven From Cellular Structural Material Used to Create Spare Parts for People:

The company developed the “human textile” idea from earlier work using sheets of biological material to reconstruct blood vessels. Basically, researchers grow human skin cells in a culture flask under conditions that encourage the cells to lay down a sheet of what is known as extracellular matrix—a structural material produced by animal cells that makes up our connective tissue. Cytograft can harvest these sheets from the culture flasks and then roll them into tubes that become replacement blood vessels.

Blood vessels produced in this manner are still being tested—but they have performed well, with no signs of rejection, in a few patients in Europe and South America. The rolling process, however, is expensive and time-consuming, in part because cells must be used to fuse the tube together so that it is sturdy enough for transplantation.

Slicing the sheets into thin ribbons that can be spooled into threads makes it possible to use automated weaving and braiding machines to create three-dimensional structures that do not require fusing. Cytograft’s technique draws upon a long history of medical textiles, which are typically produced with synthetic fibers like polyester.

“Creating textiles is an ancient and powerful technique, and combining it with biomaterials is exciting because it has so much more versatility than the sheet method,” says Christopher Breuer, a surgeon, scientist, and tissue engineer at the Yale School of Medicine. “The notion of making blood vessels or more complex shapes like heart valves, or patches for the heart, is much easier to do with fibers,” he says. “If you can make fibers of any length, then there is no limit to the size or shape that you can make.”

(via Spinning Spare Parts - Technology Review)

Douglas Rushkoff on the changing relationship between artists and technologists

Tue, 08 May 2012 10:04:53 -0400

Douglas Rushkoff on the changing relationship between artists and technologists

How smart does your bed have to be before you are afraid to go to sleep at night?

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:54:42 -0400

How smart does your bed have to be before you are afraid to go to sleep at night?

wnycradiolab: Canada to Introduce Glow-in-the-Dark...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:28:06 -0400

wnycradiolab:

Canada to Introduce Glow-in-the-Dark Quarter

“When Canada introduced polymer bills last year to replace their paper ones, we thought – cool! Then just a few weeks ago, the Canadian government announced it was doing away with pennies as a cost-cutting measure, and we thought – seems drastic, but ok! Now they’ve announced that a new quarter to be released next week will glow in the dark. Alright – Canada’s completely lost it.”

It glows in the dark AND it has a dinosaur on it. I think it’s possible that the Royal Canadian Mint is being run by an 11-year-old boy. And, you know what? I think we should hire one for the United States Mint too, because that quarter is awesome.

Because bold colors are my primary consideration in choosing a...

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:23:11 -0400

Because bold colors are my primary consideration in choosing a banking app. Way to go, Citibank.

"Sterling rightly notes that the New Aesthetic blog is less criticism than it is collage, a..."

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 09:57:09 -0400

“Sterling rightly notes that the New Aesthetic blog is less criticism than it is collage, a collection of moments that look New Aesthetic-y. As it stands, the genre is a collection of data points, observations on what is happening rather than meditations on how or why it is happening, or what we can do with it. The reason for this absence, as Sterling hints at but doesn’t point out outright, is that the New Aesthetic is not yet an actual aesthetic movement. It’s just reality. The New Aesthetic isn’t Impressionism or Cubism. Revolutionary art is not shocking and provoking society, as it did in the case of Monet and Picasso. The New Aesthetic, as it exists in drone technology and Google Maps imagery and data surveillance, represents a ground-level change in our existence. Instead of shocking society, New Aesthetic art must respond to a shocked society and turn the changes we’re confronting into critical artistic creation. Artists are only just starting to take the raw material of the New Aesthetic and aestheticize it in a conscious, intelligent way.”

- In Response To Bruce Sterling’s “Essay On The New Aesthetic” | The Creators Project

"I think the primary concern is consumer literacy. Over and over, I think you should look at the..."

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:20:16 -0400

“I think the primary concern is consumer literacy. Over and over, I think you should look at the source of information. There are lines sort of evaporating between what is marketing content and what is editorial content, what is government content — that all gets flattened out on the web so it all sort of looks the same, and the trade dress disappears. So are you reading news from a verifiable, reliable source, or are you reading propaganda? I think it’s sort of important to know where stuff came from.”

- The Verge interview: David Carr on curation, crowdsourcing, and the future of journalism | The Verge

(via aesthetics of joy » Blog Archive » Chromatic...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:47:59 -0400

(via aesthetics of joy » Blog Archive » Chromatic typewriter)

wnycradiolab: Holland’s tulip fields from above. Like the...

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:45:06 -0400

wnycradiolab:

Holland’s tulip fields from above. Like the world’s most beautiful bar graphs.

Via the so-good-it-should-be-illegal blog Aesthetics of Joy.

An Essay on the New Aesthetic, by Bruce Sterling

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 10:34:12 -0400

An Essay on the New Aesthetic, by Bruce Sterling

Mmmm, cow something… (via What’s for dinner tonight?...

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:02:19 -0400

Mmmm, cow something…

(via What’s for dinner tonight? | The Poke:)

Gorgeous video art: creating a moving sculpture from the...

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:30:16 -0400

Gorgeous video art: creating a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person.
unnamed soundsculpture (by onformative)

Sunrise over Prospect Park lake (my new view!) (Taken with...

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 07:44:29 -0400

Sunrise over Prospect Park lake (my new view!) (Taken with instagram)

Unbelievable (via Insane art formed by carving books with...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 09:42:40 -0500

Unbelievable

(via Insane art formed by carving books with surgical tools - Karan Arora’s Posterous)

uxrave: Multiscreen patterns: Blog; Slideshare

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:13:12 -0500

uxrave:

Multiscreen patterns: Blog; Slideshare

"But libraries need to be recognized as institutions that have also supported another incredibly..."

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:33:00 -0500

“

But libraries need to be recognized as institutions that have also supported another incredibly important, and very hard, kind of creative work: the work of the solitary reader, the person who has to lock themselves away with books and ideas in order to produce something worth sharing with others, to have ideas that are worth trading in the scholarly bourse. Of course it’s important to have spaces that support serendipitous hallway conversations, shop talk, and creative brainstorming; but where do those ideas come from in the first place?

….

I think we underestimate the value of public contemplation, and particularly in an era a lot of public discourse around libraries talks about them being community resources or trading zones, it’s necessary to remind ourselves how good libraries can still be havens for thoughtful engagement with ideas.

”

- “if libraries did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them” - Contemplative Computing

How to Approach a Responsive Design

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:43:06 -0500

How to Approach a Responsive Design:

A very thorough and informative discussion of the responsive design process for The Boston Globe redesign.