Below are some paintings by "the painting fool." What makes the painting fool an unusual artist is that it's not human. It's a computer program, though he/she/it talks in the first person:
I'm The Painting Fool: a computer program, and an aspiring painter. The aim of this project is for me to be taken seriously - one day - as a creative artist in my own right. I have been built to exhibit behaviours that might be deemed as skilful, appreciative and imaginative. My work has been exhibited in real and online galleries; the ideas behind my conception have been used to address philosophical notions such as emotion and intentionality in non-human intelligences.
If the painting fool suddenly becomes obsessed with drawing clowns and disney characters, then we're in trouble.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Feb 21, 2013 -
Comments (1)
Category: Art
On his website, speedartman.com, D. Westry calls himself a "speed art pioneer." He also says that his "upside down" performance art technique (see the video below... I probably just spoiled the surprise at the end) is "one of the most influential art expressions of this generation." I have no idea what that means, but it sounds impressive.
Alabama artist Sergio Protillo adds something a little special into his paint — cremains. People bring him the cremains of their loved ones, and he mixes them into some paint and creates a painting that's "like an additional memory to the person's life." He says one client cried when he saw his family member's cremain painting. [whnt.com]
Posted By: Alex - Wed Feb 13, 2013 -
Comments (4)
Category: Art, Death
Artist Julie Green creates plates that show the last meals of death-row inmates. She's been creating these plates for 13 years and now has around 500 of them. The most popular last-meal request? Junk food from KFC and McDonald's. [Daily Mail]
Artist Nancy Peppin specializes in using Twinkies in her work. She sees herself as working in the tradition of Warhol. His Campbell's soup can art was her initial inspiration. Sometimes she makes art out of the sponge cakes themselves, and sometimes she creates paintings, photographic prints, etc. that feature Twinkies. Either way, they're her muse.
She's been creating Twinkies art since 1975, but thanks to the current woes of Hostess, she's been getting lots of attention recently. What I'm curious about is how she preserves the Twinkies to make sure they don't rot. Because that idea of Twinkies never rotting is just an urban legend. I also couldn't find any info on how much her pieces go for. [huffpost]
The metal device, which looks like a chastity belt and is equipped with a blood-dispensing system and electrodes that stimulate the lower abdomen, replicates the pain and bleeding of the average five-day menstruation period. It is designed to be worn by men, children, postmenopausal women, or whoever else wants to experience menstruation... Since the 1960s, advances in hormone-based contraception have, by suppressing ovulation, made monthly periods no longer biologically necessary. Sputniko! notes that the Menstruation Machine may be particularly desirable in a future in which menstruation in fact becomes obsolete.
GeoBeatsNews reports on an experimental London-based project to feed pigeons a special diet that'll make them poop soap. That way, instead of dirtying the city as they fly around, they'll clean it.
The video makes it sound like this is an official government-sponsored project. But as far as I can tell, it's an art project called "Pigeon D'Or" by Cohen Van Balen. That is, it's probably not really happening. Van Balen offers this description of the project:
With the help of biochemist James Chappell, we have used synthetic biology to design and create a bacteria that can modify the metabolism of pigeons. To achieve this, we have created a new biobrick, or standard biological part, that when added to the genetic information of the bacteria, creates lipase. We have also used a biobrick that lowers the ph. The result is a biological device that produces a kind of window-soap. We have built this device in the bacteria Lactobacillus, which is a bacteria that naturally occurs in the digestive tract. So when feeding this bacteria to a pigeon, it should produce and defecate biological soap.
60X1.com is a website whose sole content consists of splash pages — the opening pages for most websites, usually containing a small amount of graphics. After clicking through all the splash pages the spectator will find there is actually no core content, opening the question of definition regarding content in web pages.
60X1.com is designed to be user-unfriendly, aiming to serve as a counter structure to the model of most successful websites — portal sites where all the links are contained in one interface in order to generate a maximum number of hits, instead 60X1 is designed to generate a minimum amount of hits with it's long domain name, one way navigation and it's big file sizes of images, existing as an experiment to test viewers' patience and expectation, as well as calling the internet into question as a forum for communication.
The challenge, as you click through the splash pages, is to find the word "enter" which is hidden somewhere on each page. Until you find that word, and click on it, you won't be able to get to the next page. I got about five pages in before I gave up. So I guess his experiment in bad site design worked! I've reproduced a few of the splash pages below.
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.