Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Northeast Spring Swing

Found on the ground, in NYC subways, Central Park, a restaurant, etc. Photographed as-found, no trash or rocks etc were harmed in the collection of these images:





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Below, the rusty steelwork looking stuff is about 18 feet high and is entirely chocolate. Found this at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park NY:
Friday I went to a closing party for the Absolut Quartet, a robotic music installation housed in downtown Manhattan. I contributed tuned glasses (more pics below) Here's the marimba, played with catapulted golf balls (not actually golf balls but almost that size and weight). They were triggered from computer keyboards all over the world, all the instruments were programmed from the internet. The balls land on the marimba bars with a success rate of 10,000 times according to Jeff Leiberman and Dan Paluska, the creators of this modern automata. It's a bit like some animation that was going around a few moths ago, balls shot from cannons to land on strings with critical timing, so here is how it looks:
Behold the "Wino." A common shaft turns, turntables rotate connected by their own shafts, as the glasses are programmed to play, and robotic fingers press against their rims:


And some percussion...


Central Park, last Sunday.... nothing like being direct! Although I think dollars for picture taking is the main gig here. Still I fell for it. It's a good picture.