You know that art has changed when a new aesthetic movement announces itself not with a manifesto, but with a tumblr. Manifestos offer their grievances and demands plainly, all at once, on a single page—not in many hundred entries. “Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy, and slumber,” wrote Filippo Marinetti in his 1909 Futurist Manifesto. “We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.” The stakes are clear: out with idleness and chatter, in with speed and violence.

You’ll find no such gripes or hopes in James Bridle’s modest microblog “The New Aesthetic,” which has recently enjoyed considerable attention thanks to a panel at the SXSW interactive conference, a Wired essay response by Bruce Sterling, and a series of responses to both at The Creators Project—not to mention dozens more replies all around the web.

From “The New Aesthetic Needs To Get Weirder.”

[Image: From Mishka Henner’s “Dutch Landscapes” series. Via new-aesthetic.tumblr.com.]

Google BBS Terminal: What Google might have looked like in the 1980s

[via]

new-aesthetic:

“The pixel is the fundamental unit of digital imaging, a square representation of a single color. Pixels are always the same size, and always arranged in orderly grids. This project looks at what happens when you change these universally agreed upon standards. More broadly, I’m interested in how the construction of digital images alters our perceptions of reality. Does computer-mediated vision change how we see without computers?”

Flexible Pixels | benjamin grosser

squintystumbles:

From the project “The Other Night Sky” by Trevor Paglen

“The Other Night Sky” is a project to track and photograph classified American satellites in Earth orbit, a total of 189 covert spacecraft. […] I spent almost two years working with a team of computer scientists and engineers at the Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology to develop a software model to describe the orbital motion of classified spacecraft.

With these tools, I am able to calculate the position and timing of overhead reconnaissance satellite transits and photograph them with telescopes and large-format cameras using a computer-guided mechanical mount. The resultant skyscapes are marked by trails of sunlight reflected from the hulls of obscure spacecraft hurtling through the night.

boldesol:

Alan Turing is the father of computer science. He is largely responsible for development of the Turing-Welchman bombe, which effectively cracked Enigma-encoded messages during WWII. He created a formal definition of the algorithm and created the Turing machine. Without him, we may not have computers as we know them to be today. 

In 1952, Turing was arrested in the UK for being gay. Instead of serving prison time, he chose the alternative– chemical castration through estrogen therapy. He lost all of his security clearance and could no longer work on his life career of cryptology as a result. 

Turing’s favorite children’s tale was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In 1954, he was discovered dead in his bedroom. He had committed suicide by eating an apple soaked in cyanide. A memorial for Turing depicts him holding an apple- a symbol for forbidden love. In 2011, a petition was made asking the British Government to pardon Turing’s conviction of gross-indecency. It was rejected by Lord MacNally, who summarily stated Turing knew his actions would result in a criminal offense and therefore should have been prosecuted.

Mr. Turing, I’m sorry. The world can be a cruel place. You are respected and won’t be forgotten. The same can’t be said of many.

Enceladus: Saturn’s Moon

Below a darkened Enceladus, a plume of water ice is back-lit in this view of one of Saturn’s most dramatic moons.

[Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute]