At Schiphol Airport there is a clock that has a man standing in it.
He’s cleaning the clock face from inside. It’s a bit fuzzy but you can see him. Each minute, he erases the minute hand and redraws it at its new position.
Photos here.
The clock is part of a series by artist Martin Baas called Real Time. It’s a 12-hour life-size video performance. So compelling to watch!
There’s another installation by London Paddington (just by the new Elizabeth Line entrance). Worth a visit.
2.
I’m into Time Sense, an exosense, an external sensory organ which is intended to be worn 24 hours/day:
Time Sense is a wearable sensory headband which allows the wearer to feel the passing of the 24-hour clock around the circumference of the head. As the day progresses, a tiny heat sensation passes the length of the headband.
It is mentioned on artist Neil Harbisson’s Wikipedia page:
When he feels the point of heat in the middle of his forehead it is midday solar time in London, when the heat reaches his right ear it is midday in New Orleans.
Harbisson also has an antenna implanted in his skull. It has a camera on the end and produces vibrations:
it allows him to feel and hear colours as audible vibrations inside his head, including colours invisible to the human eye such as infrareds and ultraviolets.
A cyborg third eye!
SEE ALSO: Art + Tech (2015) – my list of projects in which tech companies use art to explore the future.
3.
The 50Hz mains hum? (60Hz if you’re in the US.)
It changes, slightly, all the time, as load on the grid changes.
And it’s present, faintly, in the background of all recordings.
The UK national electrical grid delivers power across the country. This mains power supply makes a constant humming sound, yet there are tiny changes to the frequency of this sound every second. Most recordings made in the UK have a trace of mains hum on them and this can be forensically analysed to determine the time and date they were made, and as a result, whether anyone has edited the recording.
It’s a technique called Electrical Network Frequency (ENF) analysis (Wikipedia) and was discovered by Dr Catalan Grigoras in 1996.
Uh-oh…
[Since 2006] the UK government has used this technique as a surveillance tool.
Here’s the BBC on ENF (2012): The Met Police were the first to automate the system.
At the Hummingbird Clock you can apply to analyse your own recordings.
4.
Pong is probably the first video game I played. It was on an Atari 2600 (four-switch) and I still remember that wood veneer. MORE COMPUTERS SHOULD HAVE WOOD VENEER.
Anyway, PongSaverlooks like Pong. But the score tells the time:
PongSaver is a Mac screensaver which plays a game of Pong against itself. It doubles as a clock, by using the score display to show the current time. It does this by changing the intelligence of the two sides so that they score when needed to advance the hours and minutes.
There is something beautifully overpowered about programmatically manipulating the intelligence of an AI in order to achieve a +1 to the relevant side’s score. The software is an uncaring god.
There is something absurdly disproportionate about using cutting edge AI that has taken months to train to simply tell the time – like cracking a nut with the Large Hadron Collider.
Or maybe it’s entirely appropriate, given time-keeping has always been high technology: maybe you remember Synchronome clocks which were centralised by sending ticks on wires around large buildings - we had those clocks at my school - or that Western Union launched a nationwide broadcast time service in the 1870s.
ANYWAY.
My own rhyming AI Clock has a new web-based sim.
I also recently sent out update #1 on the Substack so subscribe there if you want news. tl;dr I’m investigating two routes to manufacture, and there’s a developer API if you want to integrate up-to-the-minute poems right now.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it by email or on social media. Here’s the link. Thanks, —Matt.
‘Yes, we’ll see them together some Saturday afternoon then,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any hand in your not going to Cathedral on Sunday morning. I suppose we must be getting back. What time was it when you looked at your watch just now?’ "In China and some other countries it is not considered necessary to give the girls any education; but in Japan it is not so. The girls are educated here, though not so much as the boys; and of late years they have established schools where they receive what we call the higher branches of instruction. Every year new schools for girls are opened; and a great many of the Japanese who formerly would not be seen in public with their wives have adopted the Western idea, and bring their wives into society. The marriage laws have been arranged so as to allow the different classes to marry among[Pg 258] each other, and the government is doing all it can to improve the condition of the women. They were better off before than the women of any other Eastern country; and if things go on as they are now going, they will be still better in a few years. The world moves. "Frank and Fred." She whispered something to herself in horrified dismay; but then she looked at me with her eyes very blue and said "You'll see him about it, won't you? You must help unravel this tangle, Richard; and if you do I'll--I'll dance at your wedding; yours and--somebody's we know!" Her eyes began forewith. Lawrence laughed silently. He seemed to be intensely amused about something. He took a flat brown paper parcel from his pocket. making a notable addition to American literature. I did truly. "Surely," said the minister, "surely." There might have been men who would have remembered that Mrs. Lawton was a tough woman, even for a mining town, and who would in the names of their own wives have refused to let her cross the threshold of their homes. But he saw that she was ill, and he did not so much as hesitate. "I feel awful sorry for you sir," said the Lieutenant, much moved. "And if I had it in my power you should go. But I have got my orders, and I must obey them. I musn't allow anybody not actually be longing to the army to pass on across the river on the train." "Throw a piece o' that fat pine on the fire. Shorty," said the Deacon, "and let's see what I've got." "Further admonitions," continued the Lieutenant, "had the same result, and I was about to call a guard to put him under arrest, when I happened to notice a pair of field-glasses that the prisoner had picked up, and was evidently intending to appropriate to his own use, and not account for them. This was confirmed by his approaching me in a menacing manner, insolently demanding their return, and threatening me in a loud voice if I did not give them up, which I properly refused to do, and ordered a Sergeant who had come up to seize and buck-and-gag him. The Sergeant, against whom I shall appear later, did not obey my orders, but seemed to abet his companion's gross insubordination. The scene finally culminated, in the presence of a number of enlisted men, in the prisoner's wrenching the field-glasses away from me by main force, and would have struck me had not the Sergeant prevented this. It was such an act as in any other army in the world would have subjected the offender to instant execution. It was only possible in—" "Don't soft-soap me," the old woman snapped. "I'm too old for it and I'm too tough for it. I want to look at some facts, and I want you to look at them, too." She paused, and nobody said a word. "I want to start with a simple statement. We're in trouble." RE: Fruyling's World "MACDONALD'S GATE" "Read me some of it." "Well, I want something better than that." HoME大香蕉第一时间
ENTER NUMBET 0016ebcfc.com.cn hbiyes.org.cn www.floworks.com.cn gzawty1.com.cn gqlbj.net.cn www.lynsxf.com.cn www.tqiuwc.com.cn www.rdsohh.com.cn www.nmseal.com.cn www.nqyusu.com.cn
1.
At Schiphol Airport there is a clock that has a man standing in it.
He’s cleaning the clock face from inside. It’s a bit fuzzy but you can see him. Each minute, he erases the minute hand and redraws it at its new position.
Photos here.
The clock is part of a series by artist Martin Baas called Real Time. It’s a 12-hour life-size video performance. So compelling to watch!
There’s another installation by London Paddington (just by the new Elizabeth Line entrance). Worth a visit.
2.
I’m into Time Sense, an which is intended to be worn 24 hours/day:
It is mentioned on artist Neil Harbisson’s Wikipedia page:
Harbisson also has an antenna implanted in his skull. It has a camera on the end and produces vibrations:
A cyborg third eye!
SEE ALSO: Art + Tech (2015) – my list of projects in which tech companies use art to explore the future.
3.
The 50Hz mains hum? (60Hz if you’re in the US.)
It changes, slightly, all the time, as load on the grid changes.
And it’s present, faintly, in the background of all recordings.
It’s a technique called Electrical Network Frequency (ENF) analysis (Wikipedia) and was discovered by Dr Catalan Grigoras in 1996.
Uh-oh…
Here’s the BBC on ENF (2012):
At the Hummingbird Clock you can apply to analyse your own recordings.
4.
Pong is probably the first video game I played. It was on an Atari 2600 (four-switch) and I still remember that wood veneer. MORE COMPUTERS SHOULD HAVE WOOD VENEER.
Anyway, PongSaver looks like Pong. But the score tells the time:
There is something beautifully overpowered about programmatically manipulating the intelligence of an AI in order to achieve a +1 to the relevant side’s score. The software is an uncaring god.
There is something absurdly disproportionate about using cutting edge AI that has taken months to train to simply tell the time – like cracking a nut with the Large Hadron Collider.
Or maybe it’s entirely appropriate, given time-keeping has always been high technology: maybe you remember Synchronome clocks which were centralised by sending ticks on wires around large buildings - we had those clocks at my school - or that Western Union launched a nationwide broadcast time service in the 1870s.
ANYWAY.
My own rhyming AI Clock has a new web-based sim.
I also recently sent out update #1 on the Substack so subscribe there if you want news. tl;dr I’m investigating two routes to manufacture, and there’s a developer API if you want to integrate up-to-the-minute poems right now.