I was in Kassel, Germany in 1992 for Documenta IX and had my brain melted by the sheer volume of amazing art.  As a teenager/young-adult, this was really my first opportunity to explore the art world in any meaningful way.  That experience of wandering around the galleries and discovering works and artists...learning about conceptual, contemporary, video/film, mixed-media and conceptual art had a powerfully profound and long-lasting impact on me as a person.

Whenever I think about this time, I almostly always think back to Anish Kapoor's "Descent Into Limbo".

(source)

The viewer enters a small concrete/stucco room in which there is a large black circle in the center of the floor.  Otherworldly/surreal lighting fills the space (was it electronic? natural? something else?), but the circle is the focus of attention.  What's so special about this?  Why do I care about this circle?  Wait?  What is it?  Is it a carpet or a mat or a flat form...or wait, maybe it has depth?  Maybe it's a hole.  Why can't I see it!?  What does it want from me?  We're a little scared and nobody seems to want to get close to it.  It has no edge/lip and there certainly is no bottom.  It's perfect darkness, or darkness perfected (I can't tell which).

Anish's site has some drawings that explain it in more detail.  I sometimes wonder if it's still there, haunting the ground in Kassel.

I created a build page for the "They Live" mask I made for Halloween 2015.  Check it out here.

(via http://www.mediateletipos.net/archives/36776)

I discovered that I have a super-human superpower.  It's a lame superpower, but I'm amused by it nonetheless.  At first, I thought it was mere coincidence or accident, but after several keen observations over the course of several months, I have very much connvinced myself that it is real.

My superpower is the ability to grab the exact number of pre-bagged comic book backing boards to match the number of new unbagged comic books that I just bought.  I don't have to count them in advance...I don't count the books nor do I count the bags,  I just reach into the stash and grab some boards and bags and it always turns out that I have pulled out the perfect number.  My superhuman fingers simply flip thru the stash until the the amount inexplicably feels right, and BAM, it's spot on!

So there it is.

I guess this happened about a week ago, but I just learned that Don Joyce (of Negativland and Over The Edge [radio program on KPFA]) has passed away at the age of 71.

Don Joyce was an innovator, a rebellious sonic prankster, and a true inspiration.  He will be missed.

Archives of "Over the Edge" can be heard at the KPFA archives:

http://oldwww.kpfa.org/archive/show/1782

And at archive.org

https://archive.org/details/negativland

Trying out the whopping 4 modules I have installed...

Sidewalk graffiti in PDX.

Have you ever seen inside a hummingbird's nest?  I hadn't either, until I discovered this little one in our street-side tree.  It's only about 2.5" across, and when the mother hummingbird sits inside she fills the whole thing.  I risked the fatal dive of a needle-beak long enough to raise my aging camera phone above my head to see what was inside....

Check out how camouflaged it is!  It's so tiny, you really wouldn't even know it was there.  I can't even imagine what a hummingbird hatchling looks like, and I refuse to google it.  Your move, springtime.

Super interesting read about some archaeoacoustic research in Serbia:

http://www.sbresearchgroup.eu/index.php/en/notizie-in-inglese/205-archaeoacoustic-analysis-in-the-imperial-palace-felix-romuliana-in-eastern-serbia

(via mediateletipos)

There's only a single sound clip available right now, but the effect is pretty mesmerizing.  It's wild to imagine ancient people performing sacrificial blood rituals while bathed in this soundscape.

I found an interesting open/free circuit tonight that I wanted to price out on OSH Park.  The circuit designer was awesome enough to make the design files freely available on the interwebs...but unfortunately (out of the box) they fail the OSH Park upload checker.  "Ok, that's fine, you get what you pay for" I think...I'll just open the files in Eagle and save into a newer version or investigate what's missing...

I haven't installed Eagle PCB in a while (certainly not since I had to reinstall this laptop after the most recent HD failure).  So I go to the download page, grab the installer and run it and.....of course, it fails.

But it fails due to missing 32-bit libs.

It's 2015!  Seriously?  I've suffered with Eagle for more than 15 years now, and in spite of all my persistent gripes about usability flaws and UI cruft, we still sometimes have to use it...but now there's now this problem?  

Seriously CadSoft, it's 2015...