Futurism: The results are spectacular. Even small seemingly random details like freckles, skin pores or stubble are convincingly distributed in the images the project generated.
See also: Sunspring: a short film written by an algorithm & Portraits of imaginary people
“Researchers at NVIDIA have harnessed the power of a generative adversarial network (GAN) — a class of neural network — to generate some extremely realistic faces. The results are more impressive than anything we’ve seen before.” — Futurism
A postmodern infographic.
Jack Leonard: The design of this infographic is a tribute to swiss modernism & the postmodern movement. It features Bauhaus style type & distorted illustrations and makes for heavy use of images.
I chose to incorporate pictures of faces and people to play on the stark dissonance between security and people.
See also other posts tagged ‘security’ and ‘infographics’.
“This infographic distills the Art of Security. Dissimilar from the Art of War in the information security world we will never know our enemy and our battle is not one that can be won. So how can we ensure that we don’t lose that battle?”
NGC 7635 aka The Bubble Nebula: Although it looks delicate, the 7 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and left of the Bubble’s center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and around 45 times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud.
“The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie a mere 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data from 2016, released to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Hubble’s launch.” — APOD
On a map of the world scaled to the most popular top-level domains, the Pacific island of Tokelau reigns supreme.
Wired: With more than 31 million .tk websites, the tiny New Zealand territory has more domain registrations than any other nation or territory in the world. It might measure just four square miles and have little over 1,400 residents, but Tokelau’s .tk dwarfs the rest of the world.
‘Online Europe’ is so much larger than geographic Europe because of the high rates of internet adoption by countries in this region. The UK, for example, is only the 21st largest country in the world by population, and the 78th by area. But in terms of internet use, it’s right at the top of the table.
The USA, on the other hand, is an anomaly. Despite having high levels of internet use, e-commerce and online innovation, there are comparatively few registrations under .us, its official country-code domain. Americans and American businesses tend to prefer .com, which at around 123 million registrations is the world’s most common domain.
…an atlas redrawn according to the number of registrations within each country’s internet domain* — whether .uk for the UK, .de for Germany, .cn for China, and so on.
Probe the solar system from Mercury to Pluto with this stellar schematic of space exploration! From the Luna 2 in 1959 to the DSCOVR in 2015, this color-coded chart traces the trajectories of every orbiter, lander, rover, flyby, and impactor to ever slip the surly bonds of Earth’s orbit and successfully complete its mission—a truly astronomical array of over 100 exploratory instruments in all.
Available as a 39″ × 27″ poster from Pop Chart Lab.
(via Mental Floss)
“Featuring hand-illustrated renderings of each spacecraft juxtaposed against the serried giants of our solar system, this galactic survey is a testament to man’s forays into the grand cosmic ballet.”
Inspired by this fan’s tribute to Rendezvous with Rama and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lightfarm Studios in Rio, Brazil created this detailed digital image. (via)
See also: Wanderers — a vision of humanity’s expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens.
‘Rendezvous with Rama’ is a hard science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke first published in 1973. Set in the 2130s, the story involves a 50-kilometre (31 mi) cylindrical alien starship that enters Earth’s solar system. The story is told from the point of view of a group of human explorers who intercept the ship in an attempt to unlock its mysteries. This novel won both the Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release, and is regarded as one of the cornerstones in Clarke’s bibliography. — Wikipedia
Richard Kreitner (writer), Steven Melendez (map): The above map is the result of a painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature. It includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s descriptions of the landscape as they traveled across it, or you can zoom in to see how different authors have written about the same place at different times.
“A painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature.” — Atlas Obscura
The Tor network is a group of volunteer-operated servers (relays) that allows people to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Tor’s users employ this network by connecting through a series of virtual tunnels rather than making a direct connection, thus allowing both organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.
(via Boing Boing)
See also: Drone strikes: an infographic; Edward Snowden on freedom; ‘1984’ stealth fashion for the under-surveillance society; Paranoid Android: Silent Circle’s Blackphone 2.
“Torflow is a visualization of the vast amounts of traffic streaming between its many nodes, delineating a map of the internet as it can’t otherwise be seen.” — Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing
The Guardian: A recently discovered map of Middle-earth annotated by JRR Tolkien reveals The Lord of the Rings author’s observation that Hobbiton is on the same latitude as Oxford, and implies that the Italian city of Ravenna could be the inspiration behind the fictional city of Minas Tirith.
CityLab: The map could have easily been lost forever, having slipped out of an old edition of The Lord of the Rings belonging to the late famed illustrator Pauline Baynes. Baynes had been using the map to work on her own full-color poster edition of Middle-earth for Tolkien, who in turn, gave her precise and copious notes on the same document.
Also: See the Sketches J.R.R. Tolkien Used to Build Middle-Earth in the new The Art of The Lord of the Rings book.
The novelist also uses Belgrade, Cyprus, and Jerusalem as other reference points, and according to Blackwell’s suggests that “the city of Ravenna is the inspiration behind Minas Tirith – a key location in the third book of the Lord of The Rings trilogy”. — The Guardian
Mental Floss: Minna Sundberg, creator of the webcomic Stand Still. Stay Silent, a story set in a lushly imagined post-apocalyptic Nordic world, has drawn the antidote to the boring linguistic tree diagram.
(via Open Culture)
‘Sundberg takes this tree metaphor to a delightfully lavish extreme, tracing, say, how Indo-European linguistic roots sprouted a variety of modern-day living languages including Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Italian — and, of course, our Language of the Future.’ — Open Culture
Korwin Briggs looks at the history of some fascinating colours with this ‘digital approximation of paint-blobs-on-paper’. There is more information in his blog post. Mummy Brown itself was pretty popular…
it tended to crack with age, and people stopped making it partly because manufacturers started running out of mummies and partly because artists realized their paint was people.
See also: Pantone announces new colour: ‘Minion Yellow’ (not made from dead Minions!)
“Veritable Hokum is a comic about mostly history, maybe science, and possibly some other stuff too. Think of it as a comic-encyclopedia, or a picture-almanac.”
I find the numbers incredible. South Carolina and Mississippi had more slaves than free citizens!
In September of 1861, the U.S. Coast Survey published a large map, approximately two feet by three feet, titled a “Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States.” Based on the population statistics gathered in the 1860 Census, and certified by the superintendent of the Census Office, the map depicted the percentage of the population enslaved in each county. At a glance, the viewer could see the large-scale patterns of the economic system that kept nearly 4 million people in bondage: slavery was concentrated along the Chesapeake Bay and in eastern Virginia; along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts; in a crescent of lands in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi; and most of all, in the Mississippi River Valley. With each county labeled with the exact percentage of people enslaved, the map demanded some closer examination.
Smithsonian: These Maps Reveal How Slavery Expanded Across the United States
(via reddit)
In 1861, in an attempt to raise money for sick and wounded soldiers, the Census Office produced and sold a map that showed the population distribution of slaves in the southern United States. Based on data from the 1860 census, this map was the Census Office’s first attempt to map population density. — census.gov
What’s Up in the Solar System?
A diagram by Olaf Frohn, updated once a month, of active space missions traveling beyond Earth orbit.
A diagram by Olaf Frohn, updated once a month, of active space missions traveling beyond Earth orbit. Released under a generous Creative Commons licence with an archive going back to October 2010.
“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.” — Winston Churchill
Dominik M. Schwarz is my kind of geek.
“It’s easy to print something large. It’s easy to print something very detailed. The combination though is difficult, especially if you ask the printing shop for only one copy.”
A wonderful process post from Dominik M. Schwarz detailing how he made a detailed 300dpi 3×2 meter wall map. “I envisioned a gigantic poster that would show the smallest villages, the most detailed coast lines and the highest level of information density possible.”
The Geologic Time Spiral — Designed by Joseph Graham, William Newman, and John Stacy
The Earth is very old—4.5 billion years or more according to scientific estimates. Most of the evidence for an ancient Earth is contained in the rocks that form the Earth’s crust. The rock layers themselves—like pages in a long and complicated history—record the events of the past, and buried within them are the remains of life—the plants and animals that evolved from organic structures that existed 3 billion years ago.
USGS: The Geologic Time Spiral (via Wikipedia)
This timeline of evolution of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. […] The similarities between all present day organisms indicate the presence of a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged through the process of evolution. Although more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived on the planet are estimated to be extinct, there are currently 10–14 million species of life on the Earth. –Wikipedia
Wired: The Warped Astrophysics of Interstellar
Kip Thorne is an theoretical physicist who helped developed the concept for the movie Interstellar.
“The story is now essentially all Chris and Jonah’s,” Thorne says. “But the spirit of it, the goal of having a movie in which science is embedded in the fabric from the beginning—and it’s great science—that was preserved.”
The film put so much effort into the appearance of the black holes that they actually made some legitimate scientific findings…
“We found that warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” [Double Negative senior supervisor, Paul] Franklin says. “So rather than looking like Saturn’s rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.” That’s what led Thorne to his “why, of course” moment when he first saw the final effect. The Double Negative team thought it must be a bug in the renderer. But Thorne realized that they had correctly modeled a phenomenon inherent in the math he’d supplied.
‘Some individual frames took up to 100 hours to render, the computation overtaxed by the bendy bits of distortion caused by an Einsteinian effect called gravitational lensing. In the end the movie brushed up against 800 terabytes of data. “I thought we might cross the petabyte threshold on this one,” [CG supervisor at Double Negative, Eugénie] von Tunzelmann says.’ — Wired
TIME assigned conflict photographer Ashley Gilbertson to document the zombie apocalypse, as seen in The Last of Us on the PlayStation 4.
My approach was to enter each situation, or level, and work the scene until I was confident I’d gotten the best photograph I could before moving on. It’s the same way I work in real life. Yet, I found it was more difficult to do in a virtual reality because I was expected to fight my way through these levels to get to the next situations.
I initially played the game at home. But after a short time playing it, I noticed I was having very strong reactions in regards to my role as the protagonist: I hated it. When I covered real war, I did so with a camera, not a gun. At home, I’d play for 30 minutes before noticing I had knots in my stomach, that my vision blurred, and then eventually, that I had simply crashed out. I felt like this could well be my last assignment for TIME.
None of the game’s characters show distress, and that to me was bizarre.
Occasionally the characters show anger, though generally they’re nonchalant about the situation they’ve found themselves in.
By the time I finished this assignment, watching the carnage had became easier.
TIME: A War Photographer Embeds Himself Inside a Video Game
Update: A harsh, but I think fair perspective from The Verge: An award-winning war photographer futilely attempts video game photojournalism
The photos, even at their most dramatic and well-shot, are bland.
“I left the experience with a sense that by familiarizing and desensitizing ourselves to violence like this can turn us into zombies. Our lack of empathy and unwillingness to engage with those involved in tragedy stems from our comfort with the trauma those people are experiencing.” — Ashley Gilbertson
Kevin Kidney has uploaded some amazing Magic Highway, U.S.A. images taken straight from publicity stills of the era.
(via Overhead Compartment)
“On May 14, 1958 the Disneyland TV program ran an episode called “Magic Highway, U.S.A.” It examined the past, present and (paleo)future of transportation.” — Paleo-Future
you are mountain – you are god
A mountain simulator by David OReilly for iOS, Mac & PC, coming June 21st 2014 for $1, €1, £1.
• no controls
• automatic save
• audio on/off switch
• time moves forward
• things grow and things die
• nature expresses itself
• ~ 50 hours of gameplay
• once generated, you cannot be regenerated
(via The Verge)
A Mountain Simulator, Relax em’ up, Art Horror game created by David OReilly, the genius behind that amazing ‘Adventure Time’ episode and that crazy game in ‘Her’.
Of course, it’s called the IXS Enterprise. And the Star Trek connection doesn’t end there: Mike Okuda designed the ship’s insignia.
The IXS Enterprise is a theory fitting concept for a Faster Than Light ship. It’s designed for/with NASA scientist Dr. Harold White and used in his presentations as an extra.
Excellent renderings by Mark Rademaker who has put in excess of 1600 hours into the project.
NASA physicist Dr. Harold White collaborated with CGI artist Mark Rademaker to create a new, more realistic design of what a faster-than-light ship ship might actually look like.
Rolling Stone: Meet the Russian Kids Who Take the World’s Riskiest Photos
Famous “Viselnik” Mustang Wanted, roofing in Moscow’s financial center.
Ivan, Kirill and Vasilisa are “roofers,” a loose-knit group of insanely non-acrophobic daredevils who scam and sneak their way to the tops of Russia’s highest buildings. Once they get up there, they perform death-defying tricks — hanging by their fingertips, standing on one leg — that they capture in photos and videos that frequently go viral, garnering multiple millions of YouTube views and widespread awe and disbelief at their vertiginous Instagram photos, a heap of which could lay claim to being among the most dangerous selfies ever taken.
In Russia anyway, doing illegal things on rooftops is nothing new, but the roofers have taken it to a new extreme — not that the authorities care. Ivan explains:
“Nobody stops us. Even if they catch us they usually let us go. They don’t want to deal with the paperwork.”
(Complete aside: ‘Mustang Wanted’ would be a really cool name for one of the Jäger’s in Pacific Rim.)
Rolling Stone hang out at the top of the world with Moscow’s death-defying ‘roofers’
‘Currently at Solar Maximum — the most active phase in its 11-year magnetic cycle, the Sun’s twisted magnetic field is creating numerous solar “sparks” which include eruptive solar prominences, coronal mass ejections, and flares which emit clouds of particles that may impact the Earth and cause auroras. One flare two years ago released such a torrent of charged particles into the Solar System that it might have disrupted satellites and compromised power grids had it struck planet Earth.’
Retronaut: A vivid colour photograph of New York from 1944.
The various billboards splashed with film titles – Tomorrow the World, 3 is a Family, Winged Victory – are all films released in late 1944. Notice the sign for the Orpheum Dance Palace; it was once New York’s most famous “dime-a-dance” hall. The famous New York City taxi cabs can be seen here in their two-tone Chevrolet/Deseto phase.
It looks almost like a contemporary photograph from a movie set or something.
I don’t know if it’s a factor of me getting older, or something else, but I’m only recently looking at old photographs (and paintings) of people and places and starting to see them as real. It’s not that I didn’t believe in history, just that I never really related to it. They may say that the past is a foreign country, but to me it has always felt much more distant than that.
‘Winged Victory’ was a film that was co-produced by 20th Century Fox and the U.S. Army Air Forces to act as a rousing military propaganda piece encouraging people to join the war effort. On the sidewalk a group of soldiers in long khaki coats enjoy Times Sq. on their leave.
May the fourth
1983 Star Wars photoshoot for Rolling Stone
These photos were taken by photographer Aaron Rapoport at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California, USA.
(via This Is Not Porn)
Not the usual fare for this blog, but I shall make an exception for 80’s Carrie Fisher.
Samsung’s design philosophy, in their own words:
“Sustainable values”? “Humans are the heart of Samsung design”, as opposed to what? “Reason and emotional sensibility are harmoniously enabled”! “Emptying” comes after “filling” and “overflowing” with insight, eh? Are they really “creating new values and cultures”? Do we even want that from a company that makes televisions, washing machines and mobile phones?
In conclusion, “Samsung aspires to the design that delivers a new ‘meaning’ and ‘delight’ to people, which contributes to society by creating sustainable and innovative value.”
Is this meaningless guff really what drives Samsung’s designers?
(via The Next Web)
“Inspired by humans, creating the future”, as you do. Samsung’s three design values, they say, are: “Balance of Reason and Feeling”, “Simplicity with Resonance” and “Meaningful Innovation”. Meaningful innovations like ‘tilt to zoom’ and ‘shake to update’ I assume they mean.
Burlingame: A New Typeface Designed for Split-Second Legibility
The Burlingame family is strong, sturdy, and hyper-legible.
Burlingame is a multi-purpose font family that started out as a single typeface with a more specialist purpose. There’s a clue in the name: it was originally intended for a game identity. It has found a wider purpose following pioneering investigations by Monotype into the legibility of vehicle displays. The research revealed a set of optimum criteria for dashboard display fonts: large counters and x-heights, simple shapes and a loose spacing of characters.
A search of Monotype’s own library turned up nothing that fitted the bill exactly, so Carl Crossgrove was asked to develop his game font, Burlingame, with its open, clear shapes, into a family of faces that could meet the high-performance demands. His refinements, increasing the x-height, loosening the spacing and paring down the corners, improved the clarity and led to a design in two widths and nine fine weight grades, suited to a wide range of uses, from packaging and publishing to game and motion graphics.
In a journey from game console to steering console, one little typeface transformed to meet the need for speed.
Comic Sans wasn’t designed to be the world’s most ubiquitous casual typeface. Comic Neue aspires to be the casual script choice for everyone including the typographically savvy.
The squashed, wonky, and weird glyphs of Comic Sans have been beaten into shape while maintaining the honesty that made Comic Sans so popular.
Comic Neue is free and has been released into the public domain by Craig Rozynski.
A variation on Comic Sans for the typographically savvy. Perfect as a display face, for marking up comments, and writing passive aggressive office memos.
A piece of art? A time-lapse photo? A flickering light show?
It is suspected that in this case, Hubble had locked onto a bad guide star, potentially a double star or binary. This caused an error in the tracking system, resulting in this remarkable picture of brightly coloured stellar streaks. The prominent red streaks are from stars in the globular cluster NGC 288. It seems that even when Hubble makes a mistake, it can still kick-start our imagination.
(via Explore)
A version of this image was entered into the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Judy Schmidt.
The Periodic Table of Storytelling second edition – by James Harris
Buy the print and check out the interactive version that will link you directly to the relevant TV Tropes pages.
By James Harris (aka DawnPaladin): The Second Edition incorporates all of the learning I received during my three years at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. It has better typography, more story molecules, and updated kilowick counts, but the identifiers are the same so as not to break compatibility with the first edition.
Sockrotation 