When art and tech intersect, we get grills 3-D printed from hip-hop lyrics
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
...and that is freakin' awesome.
Roopa Vasudevan
It’s always pretty cool when art and technology come together, because the amalgam can open the world of art to a broader audience — if you’re not the type who appreciates flat paint on canvas, maybe you’d marvel at a sculpture that uses fiber optics and radio frequencies.
This intersection happens more and more, everywhere, as technologies advance and new media invites experimentation. In Philly, there are a couple new spaces in which you can check out the type of work that’s sure to only become more impressive (3-D printing, hello) as advancements in tech march on.
You can read a blurb about little berlin’s First Friday reception in this week’s print issue, but what they’ve got going on in art/tech is worth a deeper look: Heavily Scripted: Generative Art and Bots, curated by Lee Tusman, features the work of artists, coders and designers who write programs that create art by script.
In other words — all the art is made from programs that create physical objects, write words or generate visual art or video. Cool, right? Here’s some of what to expect at the show (via little berlin’s website):
Grillz by Roopa Vasudevan
"Grillz” is an exploration and analysis of the usage of language in mainstream hip-hop lyricism, with particular attention paid to mentions of money and income. Individual songs are algorithmically analyzed for references to extreme poverty—the projects, drug dealing, prostitution—as well as extreme wealth—cars, cash, jewelry and the like. Mentions are scored according to relative distance from words of the opposite polarity, and the resulting landscape formed is extruded into a 3D shape and printed as wearable grills: jewelry designed to fit over one’s teeth, and which have become inextricably linked to hip-hop culture over the years as a symbol of over-the-top, ostentatious wealth. The grillz exhibited here represent data from “Juicy” by the Notorious B.I.G. along with 4 other songs.@555µhz by Ramsey Nasser
555 microhertz (cycles per second) is equivalent to 1800 seconds or 30 minutes. Beginning on January 23, 2014 with a blank picture, 555µhz began tweeting each frame from the movie Top Gun starring Tom Cruise, with a new screengrab posted to the twitter account every 30 minutes, until it was taken down by Twitter on February 26. @555µHz is—was—the first movie projector on Twitter, undertaking a screening of Top Gun, at a refresh rate running counter to every trend in display technology and our understanding of human vision, not even a refresh rate but an accumulation rate, a projection that turns itself into a film strip, itself being projected by and on your screen.-GawkerPost The Met [website down]
Post the Met is software that randomly selects an entry from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s public web archive, and posts it to the antiques section of Craigslist each day (currently shut down/prevented by The Metropolitan). Each Craigslist post asks interested parties to make an offer on the item. The project also includes a web template enabling the Museum’s collection to be experienced through the Craigslist website styling. Might the museum’s web archives be more enjoyable in a familiar context – without all that cultural posturing? Squint a little and its quite easy to imagine how that Egyptian sarcophagus could make a nice new coffee table. Wouldn’t that look great in your apartment!? Make an offer!Listen to Wikipedia
Listen to the sound of Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site, punctuated by a string swell. You can welcome him or her by clicking the blue banner and adding a note on their talk page.NSA Haiku Generator
The NSA Haiku Generator uses the NSA’s database of terms which can land you as a suspected terrorist if you use them in electronic communication. Rather than a ‘doom and gloom’ mindset, the artist has decided to turn the process into a game. By assigning each phrase from the list a syllable count, randomized haikus of NSA-selected suspect words can be generated out of hundreds of words. These creations can then be shared on social media with the intent that every haiku shared renders the NSA’s dubious efforts a little more ineffective by over-saturating the net with sensitive search terms.
I…just…wow.
Heavily Scripted: Generative Art And Bots, Oct. 3-25, little berlin, 2430 Coral St., littleberlin.org.
CRUX space
On Friday, Oct. 3 (hey, that’s First Friday!) CRUX will open its doors as Philly’s only "New Media art gallery." What’s that mean? It’s a gallery space featuring work created with and influenced by technology, but also bills itself as “a space for experimental projects to be born.” 
CRUX will host monthly shows, but this week’s is Mediating Technology, curated by Katherine Bennett and featuring the work of five artists.
As part of Design Philly, CRUX will also have an Oct. 17 panel discussion about “how technology may be taking over our lives in subtle ways.” Creepy. The space is continuing to evolve, and has a 1,000 square-foot outdoor space that could become a place for outdoor work, performance and events.
Opening reception: Oct. 3, 6-10 p.m., CRUX, 700 W. Master St.; panel discussion, Oct. 17, 6-10 p.m. cruxspace.com, 215-881-3581.
