Is Facebook cool enough for you yet, Zuckerberg?
It seems that Facebook is attempting to stay relevant by changing their format every couple of months now. While most people struggle to navigate the new features, and decide if they like them or not, others embrace change and find new creative outlets. This artist has inspired others to hack the page in a way that most people would not think of.
What do you think of the newest iteration of Facebook?
NYU professor, and 2007 Chicago Tribune Artist of the Year, Wafaa Bilal has outdone himself.
I’m not sure if many people recall the live art piece from 2007 in the video above. It was dubbed a few different things:
Whatever the name of the project was, it was inspired by the death of Bilal’s father and brother in Iraq, and was intended to raise awareness about Iraqi life, and the violence they face on a daily basis. The premise was simple. Bilal would lock himself in a studio for 30 days, and let strangers control a paintball gun attached to a robot, via the internet, and shoot him with it. The gun was fired 60,000+ times in the 30 days.
Now Bilal is back, and has decided to donate his body to another contemporary work, in conjunction with the opening of the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar on Dec. 30.
In the video below, you will see that Bilal now sports a titanium camera-mount surgically implanted into the back of his head, and will shoot one still image every minute for a year. These images will begin to appear in the project’s website, dubbed The 3rd I beginning December 15th, along with GPS coordinates. Bilal states that “a project like this is meant to establish a dialogue about surveillance.”
NYU has stated that they had privacy concerns about the project, and will require Bilal to cover the lens when teaching on campus.
In another recent piece called …And Counting, Bilal had his back tattooed with a map of Iraq, which was dotted once for each Iraqi and American death (about 105,000 dots in total). Dots for the Iraqis were represented by green UV ink only visible under black light, while Americans were represented by permanent ink, to illustrate his opinion that Iraqi deaths are invisible to the American public.
Whether you agree with his politics or not, his conviction and passion are as impressive as his creative use of technology to create art, and drive awareness. How far would you go to prove a point?
If you have been reading for a while, you are probably already aware that Five Nerds believe that Chatroulette has little potential to spawn a modern day renaissance.
While Chatroulette may not be the medium of new art, perhaps it will be the focal point of conversation, for generations of artists to come. Nah, probably not.
If you ever watch The League on FX (and you should), you will recognize Jon Lajoie from his role as ‘Taco,’ in this next video:
So it’s no secret that many people see the penny as a useless denomination of currency, and actively protest for it’s removal from circulation.
But what about artists, architects, and engineers?
Texas Tech alumnus, Mitch Fincher created a site to demonstrate how the penny can be used to demonstrate cantilevered structures.
Here are some of the highlights:
Can you think of a better use for the jar of pennies you undoubtedly have hoarded away, somewhere in your home?
If you have been a nerd as long as I have, you probably remember an internet without graphical browsers, and probably even dialing into a bulletin board with your state-of-the-art 1200 baud rate modem.
Since nerds like to express themselves creatively, and there was no easy solution to create images, ASCII-art was born.
Now most people would tediously insert character-by-character until they had created their “pièce de résistance,” (usually something phallic, but let’s save that for another discussion).
Fast forward to 2010, when ASCII-art is considered retro-nerd, or nerd-chic, but you don’t have the time to create your phallus art one character at a time?
Enter #ASCII Paint! This is a pretty cool online tool, which will help you discover your artistic side, without all the tedious hunt-and-peck.
Feel free to share anything cool that you create with us. We’d love to see it!
Just refrain from sending us random pictures of ASCII phalli, okay?
