big fish

While visiting Brianna McCarthy's blog Passion.Fruit , I came across this beautiful piece she Created Entitled Big Fish. Brianna is known for her dreamy illustrations of doe-eyed brown girls typically drawn in pen, pencil, or painted in acrylics and watercolor; but most recently she's been exploring a similar illustration style but using paper collage and now textiles.

Big Fish is a glorious example of Brianna's experimentation with textiles to create a large scale portrait of one of her girls. Big Fish Is A glorious example of Brianna's experiment to create textiles With a large scale portrait of one of Her girls. I love how layered and textured the image is with all the various prints and patterns. I love how layered and textured The Image Is With All The Various prints and patterns. It's so beautiful and I look forward to seeing more of her work with this media. It's so beautiful and I look forward to seeing more of Her Work with this media.

Works of Art Inspired By Super Mario Bros.

“Turnip Murder” by Nonie

“Super Mario Bros. 2″ by Rex Hackelberg

“Return” by Misha

“Donkey Kong & Mario” by Bob Dob

“Super Mario Bros. 3″ by Gabe Swarr

“Super Mario World” by Mike Mitchell

“Empire” by Misha

Untitled by Malinko

“The M.K.” by Jose Emroca Flores

Untitled by Handre de Jager

iPhone 3G Telescope

The 6x zoom telescope which has been available for the older iPhone model has now been updated to fit the slightly thinner and more curved 3G model of Apples cell phone.

The new design to run of rays can effectively avoid the contortion of image, and makes the super wide angle, the larger luminous flux, the higher visual acuteness, good for color reduction, which makes the high quality of photography.

Here’s a comparison of what it looks like with and without the telescope:

The iPhone 3G Telescope is available from the Mobile Brando website for $19.

Coachella 09

Friday April 17th I attended super hyped Coachella Music Festival. Headliners included

It proved to be an absolutely amazing musical experience overall.

I'll add pictures soon

ALICE

The music video for my song 'Alice', an electronic piece of which 90% is composed using sounds recorded from the Disney film 'Alice In Wonderland'.

http://www.last.fm/music/Pogo/_/Alice

Room Sized Camera Obscura

Optical Experiment

This post will explain how to easily make a room sized camera obscura by placing a lens on a window and having the outside view projected onto the opposite wall, as seen below:



Carboni's "The sky in a room" site explains this experiment and how to mount the lens on shutters. His plans look like they would work great, but if you don't want to spend very much money or if you would like to see it first before permanently attaching shutters, there is a less expensive option.

What I did was cover the entire window with poster board to block all light from entering the room, cut a 1" diameter hole in the poster board, and then taped the lens over the hole.

A blank lens can be purchased from an optician at a store that sells eye glasses. Depending on the size of your room, you may need to have it ground to the appropriate size, as described on Carboni's site.

Miscellaneous notes:

Before asking the optician to grind the lens, try it on the window first, the one that I bought worked great without modification.

It will look better if you use white poster board with white duct tape, or black poster board with black duct tape.

Keep in mind that the landscape will be upside down as seen projected on the wall.

The effect works well on sunny days, and not very well when it's cloudy.

The best use for this is probably if your window faces the east, so you can see the sunrise on your wall when you wake up.

The room needs to be totally dark except for the light entering through the lens.

In the afternoon, it will look a little better after your eyes have had a few minutes to adjust.

Also it's best if the window faces a view with some activity, it can be entertaining to see cars moving and people jogging upside down across your wall.

If the image doesn't seem bright enough, it will help to mount a small box over the lens. The box should be open at the top and have a hole in the bottom sized to allow light to fall on the entire opposite wall, but to block light from falling on the other two walls, the floor, and the ceiling. This will limit the amount of light in the room and make the image appear brighter. Or instead of a box, you could taped some folded pieces of paper next to the lens to block the light.

Probably a good idea to clean the window inside and out to be sure that you get the maximum amount of light possible.

Viewed from up close, the image on my wall is not perfectly in focus, but as you can see in the photo, if you step back it looks decent.

-----

Designer Babies?

Courtesy of NY Daily News

"A fertility clinic's promise to deliver the ultimate in designer babies - letting parents choose eye, hair and even skin color - is sparking a worldwide uproar. Dr. Jeff Steinberg has already let thousands decide their kids' gender. Now he says that within the next six months, the Manhattan and L.A. offices of his Fertility Institutes will let would-be moms and dads pick whether junior has blue or brown eyes or black or blond hair.
"In the process of doing gender selection ... we've also uncovered the technology [to] characterize things like eye and hair color," said Steinberg, 54.

The idea of a Build-A-Bear style baby was slammed Monday by bioethicists and right-to-life groups - and Pope Benedict has warned against it for years.

The Pope railed against the "obsessive search for the perfect child" just two weekends ago. "A new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity," he said.

Steinberg countered that reproductive technologies aren't about to go away.

"Genetic health is the wave of the future," he said. "It's already happening and it's not going to go away. It's going to expand. So if they've got major problems with it, they need to sit down and really examine their own consciences because there's nothing that's going to stop it."

Custom-made kids will be achieved through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, the procedure used to weed out problem embryos and to allow parents to choose a gender.

In letting parents decide what traits their kids have, doctors will examine the genetic makeup of embryos created in the lab and implant the ones that have the best chance of giving mom and dad what they want.

Some doctors question Steinberg's ability to give parents their pick of traits.

"He's the only one offering this because you can't yet do it," said Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Technology. "Nobody can do this right now."

Dr. William Kearns, head of the Shady Grove Center for Preimplantation Genetics in Rockville, Md., says some known genetic markers do correlate with a probability of hair, eye and skin color, but he’s against using the data for non-medical reasons.

"Our goal in offering (embryo screening) to couples at risk is to increase the likelihood that they can achieve their dream of having a healthy baby, free from a catastrophic genetic disease," he said. "I won't use the data for non-medical trait selection."

Steinberg, one of the doctors who helped produce the first test-tube baby, admits the technology isn't 100% - and says for now the best results are with couples of Scandinavian heritage, whose gene pools are the least diluted.

"Say you made seven embryos, and one of them has got the highest chance of green eyes, and that chance is 80%. It's not perfect science because eye and hair color are not perfect genetics," said Steinberg, who opened an office on E. 40th St. two months ago.

There are no laws in New York that address how PGD testing can be used. Opponents say there should be.

Lori Kehoe, executive director of the New York State Right to Life Committee, is upset that the embryos deemed undesirable will be destroyed.

She said it is "sickening to flush a member of the human family down the drain" because they are not considered perfect.

Prof. Alexander Capron, bioethicist and professor of law and medicine at the University of Southern California, called Steinberg's procedure problematic. "The notion of unconditional love and support - which is assumed to be what parents owe their children - is totally undermined here," he said.

"You're saying I want to order up just what I want and that's what I'll love."

One New York doctor even likened it to the pursuit of a master race.

"We're crossing the line into eugenics, the theory of trying to give people enhanced characteristics - genetic engineering to make sort of the superman or superwoman," said Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, director of ethics at New York Medical College and St. Vincent's Hospital."

G E T W I L D

Graffiti on the front lines

US soldiers took to Iraq not only war and pain, or peace and freedom, as you prefer to conceive the situation, but also their cultures. Graffiti as art or vandalism is natural part of contemporary US lifestyle.
Different kind of inscriptions colour, vandalize and communicate on walls, tanks, jeeps, rocks.