Comments on: Time-lapse video of an ant colony eating a scanner, captured with the scanner in question

By: uricacid

uricacid — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:03:00 +0000

essentially, people don’t like being lied to, even if the lie is harmless.

By: Donny Viszneki

Donny Viszneki — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:11:00 +0000

lolcory, xeni posted this in 2010 http://boingboing.net/2010/07/31/ants-on-a-scanner-5-.html

By: J_france

J_france — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 09:21:00 +0000

I think when he/she says “in” he means “on”, or on the inside of the glass.

Not actually a lie, per-SE, but not clearly explained, and further misrepresented by the use of a mirror (to reflect the light) and old circuitry in the farm. The write up here further sealed the deal.

By: Mark Lakata

Mark Lakata — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 06:03:00 +0000

Interesting that the comments on Vimeo are 100% supportive of this “awesome” artwork (probably a lot of artists), and here they are almost 100% negative screaming “fake”.

http://vimeo.com/13703448

btw, stop it at 0:21 and you’ll see a circuit board completely bare, with SN74LS299N parts. That is a single 8-bit shift register. You would never build a scanner using discrete chips like that. That is a circuit board he found at a junk pile at a swap meet, removed from ancient military hardware from the early 1970s.

There is also a single frame a bit later that has 4 pieces of “magnetic poetry” that says “behind & next street”, which might be some secret coded message. I’m wondering if the whole thing isn’t a secret code. Whatever it is, it is not what it claims to be.

By: jackbird

jackbird — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 01:50:00 +0000

Thants.

By: Art

Art — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:23:00 +0000

Perhaps we can get E.O. Wilson to comment on this project ;)

By: Joshua Frazer

Joshua Frazer — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:15:00 +0000

Not to mention, what scanner images its own innards?

By: Noctilucent Studios

Noctilucent Studios — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:06:00 +0000

You WIN for best avatar name.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:56:00 +0000

Naw. He throws a kitten in there every few days.

By: phisrow

phisrow — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 19:01:00 +0000

Electronics can be surprisingly tough, if certain conditions are met…
If there are high voltages(cold cathod backlight inverters, say, or even +12 power busses, a moisture or contaminant induced bridge to some delicate little flower of a low voltage bit of silicon logic can kill the whole thing good and dead.

If you can avoid that, though, chip packaging components are almost alarmingly resistant to environmental meddling(the classic purple ceramic material will probably be used as currency by the mutant cockroach men after WW3, and even the plastic packages will stand up to almost anything save mechanical violence or hot nitric acid) and both copper and tin/lead, even if not protected by a conformal coating, tend to patinate, which protects the interior material for a fair while…

By: nixiebunny

nixiebunny — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 18:46:00 +0000

He put all that stuff in there. Its entirely a fabrication.

The interesting thing about this is that it would be possible to do it for real, with a bit of mechanical ingenuity. But conceptual artists don’t tend to be that sort of person.

By: HahTse

HahTse — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 18:17:00 +0000

Would that make Rush Limbaugh Picasso?

By: winkybb

winkybb — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:33:00 +0000

To be fair, the post never claims that the images were captured by the actual scanner being overtaken. The confusion is that the author used the term “allowed me to scan in high definition”. Might of been more accurate to say “capture in high definition”, presumably by shooting through the glass of the scanner box. I’m not getting into whether the guts are scanner parts or not.

The orange numbers are obviously post-capture effects. I think there is quite a bit of that going on. The flashing lights and simulated scan-light are on a very different time line to the time-lapse photographs.As for the source of the organic matter and stuff, it may be that he sat the scanner on a box of soil of (and maybe punched some holes in the bottom of the scanner) that the ants then carried into the guts of the scanner.

By: Art

Art — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:54:00 +0000

Magnificent colors! But I need more info about the project. Ants in a scanner, right? So where does the water, soil and everything else come from? It sounds as if the author implies that the ants were eating and living on the electronic components. What did I miss here?

By: Commodore Crush

Commodore Crush — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:08:00 +0000

Ants?

By: cosmichorror

cosmichorror — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:04:00 +0000

If there is art is provoking people to call you out on an obvious lie, does that mean all politicians are some kind of Rembrandt?

By: autark

autark — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 13:53:00 +0000

maybe the real art is the art of the troll in the description the artist used to rile up all the comments?

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:56:00 +0000

Agreed. SMC (Surface Mount Chips) are recent. In the ‘good ole days’, all the boards used DIPs (Dual In-line Package).

By: HahTse

HahTse — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:24:00 +0000

Fake.

Looks cool nonetheless.

By: petsounds

petsounds — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:47:00 +0000

The whole thing is a giant AfterEffects job. Look at the “PCB board” numbers around 1:00 in. They are *over* the supposed rust and decay, and they don’t move exactly in sync with the camera pan. Seems like a massive troll which BB got suckered into.

By: CastanhasDoPara

CastanhasDoPara — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:31:00 +0000

Yeah! No shit about the fact checking thing.

By: Grebmar

Grebmar — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:57:00 +0000

A nice art project, if the tag is a bit misleading – thank goodness the commenters are here to do some fact-checking.

By: DewiMorgan

DewiMorgan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:50:00 +0000

The obvious lie, and the geeky ant-hive-defense reactions, are part of the art.
Maybe not intended, but it’s there, for me at least :)

By: macegr

macegr — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:16:00 +0000

It wasn’t scanned with the scanner in question. Not because the electronics look too old, but because a scanner looks outside its own box, not inside. If you put a mirror on the bed, that wouldn’t work either because the scanner would just capture its own light source and scanning head, you’d see nothing of the scanner internals. I believe the artist built an ant farm using the glass of the scanner as one wall, and threw in some electronic junk.

By: penguinchris

penguinchris — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 07:05:00 +0000

I see what you mean but it’s still BS, and I disagree that it wouldn’t have worked without the lie.

He could have presented this with minimal commentary (and no outright lies) and it would have been cool – because it’s a cool video as is! (though I would exclude the random numbers overlain).

Without the obvious lie, it would not have prompted all these negative comments. Instead we’d be arguing about what it is exactly that we’re seeing, just like we are now but in a positive way!

By: noah django

noah django — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 06:29:00 +0000

I was skeptical; after reading the comments, I’m sure it’s as fake as all hell. and apparently, there’s some kinda cut-up poetry inserted? pic related.

By: noah django

noah django — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 06:26:00 +0000

you, I like.

By: nachoproblem

nachoproblem — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 06:25:00 +0000

Unfortunately it seems like the lie is necessary to provide an underlying story for the piece. If you just present it as, “I filmed a bunch of ants in a box full of electronic crap,” then it suffers as most art pieces do from everybody wondering what the point is. On the other hand since it is a pretty obvious lie, when deconstructed, it might qualify for artistic license for the sake of the deal… willing suspension of disbelief… or whatever the hell you call that.

By: BBanzai

BBanzai — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 05:28:00 +0000

Now’s the time on Sprockets that we dance!

By: SoItBegins

SoItBegins — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:34:00 +0000

What I’d like to know is, how could a scanner scan itself WHILE INFESTED? All that nature can’t be good for it.