Technology

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Glitch Art – The Beauty of Imperfection

By In Art, Blog, Books, Technology0 Comments

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” (Marilyn Monroe)

In a technical sense a glitch is the unexpected result of a malfunction. The term is thought to derive from the German glitschig, meaning ‘slippery.’ Glitches are mostly a result of miscommunication or mistranslation when transferring data in software, video games, images, video and audio. The term glitch came to be associated with music and visual arts in the mid 1990s to describe a general aesthetic of the digital age.

Iman Moradi, the first official glitch theorist, has written extensively on the subject of glitch art beginning with his dissertation for the University of Huddersfield (PDF) until the publication of his recently released book Glitch: Designing Imperfections.

Moradi divides glitch art in two categories: The first is the pure glitch which is the result of a malfunction or error, an unpremeditated digital artifact. The second is the glitch-alike which is the result of an intentional decision on the user side.

All those who didn’t see the beauty in category one glitches yet should definitely consider reading this eye-opening book to brighten up their life: losing all the data on your hard drive eventually becomes art next time.

All category two artists trying to create there first own glitches should open WordPad on a Windows PC and follow stAllio’s short introduction.

Related post: IOgraph – Everyone is an artist

D.

Doing Homework with a Search Engine Optimized Brain

By In Blog, Education, Technology1 Comment

Mother: ”Turn off the iPod.” ”Stop with the video chat!” ”NO TEXTING while you’re supposed to be doing homework!”

Son: ”MOM! Stop. I can concentrate better with music on.”

Daughter: ”I need the video chat on. I’m going over homework with my friends.”

(debbiestier)

Sounds familiar? In the above CBS News video neuroscientist Gary Small explains how technology may be making us smarter and why it may be good to let our kids become internet savvy multitaskers. Hopefully, they never forget that communication isn’t concentration, and information isn’t education. Fortunately, so far no one bars a search engine optimized brain from reading a book.

M.

Montessorium – Math is all around us

By In Blog, Education, Technology0 Comments

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) took the idea that the human has a mathematical mind from the French philosopher Pascal. A mathematical mind, in her words, is “a sort of mind which is built up with exactity.” The mathematical mind tends to estimate, needs to quantify, to see identity, similarity, difference, and patterns, to make order and sequence and to control error. Young children observe and experience the world sensorial. Math is all around them from day one. How old are you? In one hour you will go to school. You were born on the 3rd.

The concrete Montessori materials for arithmetics are materialized abstractions. The child’s growing knowledge of the environment makes it possible for him to have a sense of positioning in space. Numerocity is also related to special orientation. The Montessori materials help the child construct precise and internal order.

Intro to Math by Montessorium elegantly adapts this idea for the use with the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. It provides several activities  to teach the numbers 0-9 and the concepts behind them: arranging a collection of rods from smallest to largest, learning how many bars are in another collection of rods, tracing numbers as they appear on screen, matching written numbers with rods, and matching dots from a box with numbers.

When Montessori meets Montessorium. (c) www.montessorium.com

Maybe Montessori classrooms will include some iPads with Montessorium’s apps in the near future. There is a great potential for an enhanced learning experience using different approaches to the same old idea: that math is all around us.

Intro to Math by Montessorium on the App Store.
Wooden Montessori Materials at www.kidadvance.com.

D.

DeviantArt’s Muro Drawing App

By In Art, Books, Technology0 Comments

DeviantArt’s new drawing app Muro works in all modern browsers. You can directly start drawing on a blank canvas using different brushes, all without Flash or any other plug-in. Several brushes are available to everyone, some of the advanced features are reserved for registered users. The image above was created by DeviantArt user loish using the new tool. It’s fascinating to see how new technology can help to liberate online creativity, which is no longer restricted to writing texts, but open to a much wider range of expression. If you ever wondered what HTML5 is good for, here is the answer.

www.deviantart.com/muro/

S.

Street View becomes Street Slide

By In Books, Culture, Technology0 Comments

The latest fascinating contribution to Street View comes from Microsoft. With the new technology called Street Slide users do no longer teleport from one 360-degree bubble to another, but slide rather comfortably along a street panorama. The visual search has therefore become much more efficient and faster. Thanks to a mobile application, it will be much easier to find your way in the real world, using street signs and billboards both virtual and real ones.

Microsoft Research
MIT Technology Review