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Simnuke: 60 Years After Trinity

Simnuke VideoI hit the desert with MGL and Ted this weekend for the experience that was Simnuke. Simnuke is the culmination of megatons of hard work by conscious fire artists who created a 1/10,000 scale of the infamous Trinity first nuclear test exactly 60 years ago. The simulation was created by the use of large fans fed with 400 gallons of pressurized biodiesel, going up in less than 30 seconds. Simnuke is meant as a reminder of the horror of nuclear weapons, something that many of us don’t really think about anymore in this post-Cold War world, myself included. Considering that the Bush administration spends more on nukes now than we did on average during the Cold War and that we are minting new would-be terrorists daily with western actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine it is a super important reality to keep in mind. This video is a little something I shot and edited capturing the explosive beauty of what the Simnuke Project was able to illuminate. Length: 01:27 [3MB Quicktime7] [10MB Quicktime MPEG4]

Gmapping History & Future



Washington, DC 20050
Originally uploaded by ekai.

The latest example of cool emergent technology is Google Maps rendered with satellite imagery annotated with Flickr notes. Geeks and the geekly inclined are zooming in on neighborhoods where they once lived and are tagging those screen capture images with notes describing historical moments in the geography. Flickr has a group called Memory Maps dedicated to this.

Since I grew up in the DC area, I decided to look around some internationally known locations to see what they look like from the sky. Interesting to note that the White House and the neighboring Old Executive Office Building and Department of Treasury buildings are “sanitized” from the top, for national security reasons I’m sure. Their roofs are represented as blank continuous dull colors with none of the detail you’ll find on other buildings. Some areas, such as the courtyards in the Old Executive, are grossly pixelated. On the other hand, the Pentagon, looks complete with detail. This begs the question, what does it take to get a piece of property obscured from Google’s database? Can I fill out a form and demand that my house be gzapped so no one knows that the grass hasn’t been cut in 3 years or that my meth lab exploded?

As if that wasn’t enough cool, this brilliant individual figured out how to remix Craig’s List housing ads with Google Maps. This is the kind of thing that some bubbleheaded VC would have sunk $30 million into 5 years ago. And now it’s done emergent style with an idea and a little duct tape. Imagine what can happen when there is an open API for all this.

SRL in LA



Sneaky in LA
Originally uploaded by ekai.

I’m in Los Angeles for a Survival Reseach Labs show tonight, Saturday night. This past couple of weeks I’ve been putting a bunch of time in over at the SRL shop for this LA show. It’s outside the Dangerous Curve gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Deets are on the site. FREE, no tix, just show up. Get there early for a good vantage point. Show starts at 8:30pm. Lots of remote controlled machines and mayhem. And Kimric’s merry-sheep-go-round. This will be a good one. Look for me, I’ll be the dork in an orange jumpsuit.

It’s been fun operating heavy machinery again. Cutting, drilling, sanding, lathing, lifting, twisting, screwing, unscrewing, bumping, grinding, etc. All in the name of art. Big ass art. These shows are so few and in-between that it’s not hard to dive into the mix for awhile to help realize the madness. Weeks of preparation for what amounts to an hour long show. An hour of mechanized mayhem, disorder, consciousness bending reality that you just can’t see anywhere else. Seriously. Mark gets approached by Hollywood all the time and he tells them to fuck off. This LA show is no Hollywood production. Yes, we’ve got kick ass catered food, but that’s about it. Personalities, salaries and stand-ins step aside. It’s all blood, sweat and fucking amazing art. Come on down.