The Clock in the Sky Blog Blog

Blog of Kit Clock, aka Kitleigh Evans. A post a day. I promise. (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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"Make Your Own Kaleidoscope!" (http://krazydad.com/kaleido/) Author: Jim Bumgardner Year: 2003 "Once your image is loaded, you can make the kaleidoscope move by clicking and dragging on the image with the mouse. When you mouse over the image, a faded version of it will appear. Click and drag the mouse to reposition the image. The 5-way, 7-way, and 11-way buttons on the upper left will change the mirror aperture from wide to narrow." Turn any image from the web into a kaleidoscope! The image does seem to lose a little quality (becoming jagged around the edges), but the results are still very cool.

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"The Scale of the Universe 2" (http://htwins.net/scale2/) Author: Cary and Michael Huang Year: 2012 "The Scale of the Universe 2 is a brilliant application that provides a captivating, highly educational visualization of the scale of our universe, from the still-theoretical quantum foam (1 x 10-35 meters) to the universe itself (1.6 x 1027 meters). What makes the tool even more impressive is that it was created by two 14-year old brothers from California, Michael and Cary Huang." ((http://www.techlicious.com/blog/exploring-the-scale-of-the-universe/) It is mind-bogglingly hard to imagine the scale of the universe, because humans are used to dealing with things on their own scale. That's where this interactive page steps in - to help put things in perspective. Zoom in or out to explore things too small for the human eye to see, things too big to comprehend, and everything between. Click on anything to see its size and an easy-to-digest snippet of information about it.

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“DDD” (http://www.the389.com/7/3/) Author: Andrey Yazev Year: 2010 “From the Author: Move mouse to draw, drag to rotate.” (http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/ddd/) Very easy to use. As simple as it might be, it’s still pretty entertaining to watch your drawing rotate in the simulation of a 3D space. You can also control the rotation of your drawing by varying the speed and angle of your drag.

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“The Market-O-Matic (1.0)” (http://www.playdamage.org/market-o-matic/) Author: Curt Cloninger Year: 2001 “Tired of racking your brain trying to squeeze out yet another artist’s statement extolling the unique virtues of your latest net.art joint? Do you lapse into fits of involuntary muscle spasms every time you hear the word “immersive” in casual conversation? Then search no further — The Market-O-Matic (1.0) [fine arts version] is here!” This is kind of like a “Mad Libs” version of an artist’s statement. Select your arty-sounding words from the list, fill in a few words and your name, and generate some nonsense. A lot of the words are related to digital art and technology, so what’s produced is rather random, but… almost coherent.

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“Day-dream” (http://day-dream.com/020/0xx.html) Artist: David Oppenheim Year: 1996 A collection of old interactive and animation work, an excellent example of the experimental art style that the internet started to develop early on. Some of the oldest stuff no longer seems to function correctly, so I suggest you start from the newest content (20) or view the artist’s video of the project. (http://day-dream.com/nn/dd001-020-video.htm)

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“Frozen Niki” (http://frozen-niki.org/) Author: Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied Year: 2005 “In due course Nikolaj’s cranium will be stablized at the -20°C mark and data transmission to the Bajkanur server will be initiated and fed immediately via the Internet to Nikolaj’s personal blog.” The concept of this nontraditionally-told narrative is that Niki’s thoughts while cryogenically frozen are being fed to his blog. The narrative, starting at the bottom of the page, begins with “Test” and eventually becomes a story told in the form of tags. Each entry also includes a single line of art (a part of the whole), perhaps representing the abstract visual component of Niki’s thoughts.

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"The Continuum of Cute" (http://thnlnk.com/rhizome/continuum.of.cute/013) Author: Nina Katchadourian Year: 2008 "The Continuum of Cute invites the viewer to arrange 100 pictures of different animals, all found on the Internet, in order of cuteness. A giant inter-species beauty contest, the project investigates both our individual and collective sense of the "cute" at the same time as it indulges the anthropomorphic qualities that are often embedded in our sense of the word." (http://thnlnk.com/rhizome/about.continuum.of.cute/248) It's relatively easy to decide which animals are cute or not cute, but the problem comes when you try to put them in order. You may find that you have to decide (or clarify for yourself) what "cute" means to you. This project also allows you to see what other people's organized lists look like, revealing certain patterns, as well as some of what you might consider odd choices. (http://thnlnk.com/rhizome/community/225)

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“Arcs21” (http://liaworks.com/projects/arcs21/) Author: Lia Year: 2009 “Continuing in the tradition of free online distribution of netart in the 90s, Arcs21 offers the user the possibilities of research, playing and co-creation: browserspace is translated into a realtime artwork which is freely available over the internet, without restrictions and without any imposed newsletters.” (http://www.liaworks.com/theprojects/arcs21/) With this, you can create interesting swirly/wispy pictures in shades of red. The controls aren’t labelled, which at first makes it hard to understand what each does, so experimentation is necessary. Clicking erases the image, and the image will pause when you hover over the controls. The settings can be randomized by clicking one of the three grey squares in the lower right corner.

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From: "The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art" (http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu/Brain/)

"The Knitted Brain" Author: Karen Norberg "Inspired by research from neuroscience, dissection and neuroeconomics, our current exhibition features a rug based on fMRI imaging, a knitted brain from dissection, and three quilts with functional images from PET." Technology and science combined with art! The site allows you to zoom into each image to see the intricacies and texture of the fabric. The "Supporting Online Material" seems to be gone, so here is an archive. (http://thnlnk.com/archive/knitted.brain.animation/975)  Brain animation - (http://thnlnk.com/archive/brain.animation/600) "Understanding the Human Brain: Dr. Giorgio Ascoli" - (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvFwT0Z6ceo)

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"Circle Game" (http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/circle-game/) Author: Shea Barton Year: 2012 "From the Author: A game made with the HTML5 canvas. Eat smaller circles to grow, avoid larger ones."  I find the dance of the multicolored circles rather mesmerizing... it's pretty hard to stay alive for very long, but then again, I'm using a trackpad.

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"Bomomo" (http://bomomo.com/) Author: Philipp Lenssen and Nikolai Kordulla Year: 2009 "From the Author: Best give it a try yourself... just use your mouse & mouse button!" One of the more creative drawing applets that I've found. Choose and experiment with 20 different brushes for very interesting effects! (Image by me, made with Bomomo) 

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"This script takes the URL of a GIF, JPG, or PNG image and converts that image into ASCII text or colored HTML. Not very useful, but pretty cool."

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"My boyfriend came back from the war" (http://www.teleportacia.org/war/war.html) Author: Olia Lialina Year: 1996 "My boyfriend came back from the war is one of the first engaging hyper text net art narrative in which the story unfolds by clicking on images and texts in various sized windows within the frame." (source) The web, now overflowing with interactive content, has come a long way since '96. This early example still remains a classic. Part of its charm is the simplicity of its black and white design, as well as the ability to interact with the piece and choose which parts to display together. The piece was also remixed in different formats through the years: (http://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru/)

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"Make color schemes. Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image."

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"Magnetic Words 3.0" (http://isnoop.net/toys/magwords.php)

Author: Ian Maddox

Year: 2005

Create poetry (or just plain nonsense) by dragging around words and punctuation "magnets" on the fridgelike background. A lot of these words seem to be farm related, which perhaps becomes a common theme uniting each little group of words. The page is also collaborative, which means that you can come back often to see how others have changed it since you were last there.

Another image: http://i50.tinypic.com/28bgz2b.jpg

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"Playdamage.org" (http://www.playdamage.org/) Author: Curt Cloninger Year: 2000 "playdamage.org is an abstract multi-sensory journal exploring the parameters of visceral, pre-cognitive expression." (http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/2114/) A spellbinding (and frequently puzzling) 90-page trip through image and sound. It is still surprisingly attention-grabbing for something that was made 12 years ago. Though still interesting when viewed by itself, you may also want to look at this page, where the artist explains the concepts behind Playdamage: (http://www.spark-online.com/february01/discourse/cloninger.html)

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"Midnight" (http://art.teleportacia.org/exhibition/midnight/) Authors: Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied Year: 2006 "Midnight recites gifs like it recites brands, leaving a bread crumb trail of the artists' consumption, across the web, while recycling the resultant byproducts as a real treat for net art fans." (Source)

The familiar Google Maps navigation cross floats against a black background. As the user interacts with it, it transforms into relics of the internet's past - retro animated gifs.