Here are some photos of giant sculptures being set up for Maker Faire, taking place this weekend in San Mateo. (Click on thumbnails for enlargement) Link

A friend at Fleshbot writes...

Prague's Big Sister internet-enabled brothel has long been high on our list of travel destinations ever since our globetrotting siblings at Gridskipper first bought it to our attention a couple of years ago. (But only from a sociological perspective, you understand, not because we want to boink our way to international notoriety via the dozens of video cameras set up throughout the establishment which broadcast the goings-on to tens of thousands of the site's subscribers.) Short of going to Prague or coughing up a $40 monthly membership to join the website, the best way to see what Big Sister is all about is photographer Hana Jakrlova's Big Sister photodocumentary project...

Link to Fleshbot post (nsfw). Shown here, the, ah, polar bear theme room inside the Big Sister brothel.

Google just launched a bunch of custom artist themes for iGoogle, and they were kind enough to invite me to design a theme for it. I called it "Adventure in Lollypop Land." The scene changes throughout the day.

I donated my fee to the wonderful SOVA Community Food & Resource Program, run by Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles.

Link

A redemption tale by the prolific religious comic book artist Jack Chick is born again through animation, in a classic short film by Syd Garon and Rodney Ascher.

Link to Boing Boing tv episode with discussion and downloadable video.

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Chick, born in 1924, is the most published comic book author in the world. Over decades, his publishing company has released some 500 million fundamentalist evangelical "Chick tracts" warning of the eternal consequences of a life lived without salvation.

One of these cautionary cartoon gospels, "Somebody Goofed," attracted the attention of animator-directors Syd and Rodney a decade ago -- and they transformed it into the mixed media pastiche Boing Boing tv presents to you, dear viewer, today.

This 8 minute film debuted at the DFILM Digital Film Festival in San Francisco on November 7, 1997. DFILM founder Bart Cheever tells Boing Boing tv:

We showed it all over the world. No other film came close to provoking the kind of intense, gut-level reaction that we saw with Goofed -- people really loved it or really, really hated it. Religious people called it blasphemous and threatened to organize boycotts of our shows. Anti-religious people called it religious propaganda and wrote angry letters to theater owners where we screened the festival.

To me, Goofed was the Birth of a Nation of After Effects films, and was really the aesthetic blueprint for much of what you see on TV today. So many people have copied their cool 2D photo-animations, and their style is used so heavily today on VH1, E, MTV, and so on -- it's easy to forget how groundbreaking the film was. No one had ever really done anything like it before.

I loved the way Goofed is this rich moving collage of newsprint religious tracts, album covers (can you spot Paul's Boutique?), clips from 70's gangster films, cigarette ads from old magazines etc. To me, Goofed represented a whole new way of collaging various forms of media.

UPDATE: We reached out to the filmmakers for some thoughts on this amazing piece of work, 10 years after its creation -- Rodney Ascher tells us...

Making Somebody Goofed was 50% art experiment and 50% self-designed AfterEffects tutorial. It was the first digitally animated project for both of us (I think...). It took at least 6 months to make the thing, maybe close to a year. I was running a Powermac 7500 (Syd's always had a model 1 or 2 levels faster than mine so he was probably behind the wheel of an 8500) and we got a gasp during a Q and A when we explained that rendering some of the QuickTimes took more than a day or two and transporting the uncompressed files demanded about 12 Jaz cartridges!

It was designed to be something of a Rorschach test: we followed the original comic as rigorously as we could, resisted any temptation to change things around (for pacing, content, whatever) and allowed the audience to interpret however they liked. During its premiere at DFilm, the audience was mostly quiet and thoughtful but at a screening at the SFMoMA it played pretty much as a spoof with a lot of appreciative laughter. On the other hand, when it was shown at a screening for the Television Commercial Industry, the awkward, confused, slightly hostile silence was deafening. Happily enough, we've gotten very nice responses from both Chick Publications and The Suicide Girls.

Related posts on Boing Boing:

Photo Fictions: bizarre narrative photo show in L.A.

Rodney Ascher's short film about a freefalling parachutist

Syd and Rodney's "Jack Chick's Titanic" video

Galactus meets Jack Chick

Jack Chick's own Passion

Jack Chick profile

Parody of Jack Chick tract warns against tiki worship.

Hallowe'en, Jack Chick style

(Special thanks to Pesco, and to Syd Garon)

The gem sweater bedazzlements and lyrical besnazzlements of "internet ceWEBrity" Leslie Hall have graced Boing Boing tv before -- but in today's episode, Ms. Hall submits an exclusive tour diary for BBtv viewers, a veritable world exclusive. "With these shoulderpads I have the strength to destroy, villages, homes, and crops," she warns. Her ladyfire is mighty, as all ye who gaze upon this video shall witness.

Ms. Hall was among the internet personalities who participated in the recent ROFLcon gathering in Cambridge, Mass. Her presence there among fellow internet memesters is documented in this Wired gallery, and in a photo set from Scott Beale of Laughing Squid. See also his short video of the Tron Guy talking about geek women. Which brings us back to the 26-year-old Ms. Hall, straight outta Iowa, believed by her many followers to be the fiercest gold-lame-wrapped geek woman on the planet.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.

Related Boing Boing tv items:
* Leslie Hall: ceWEBrity, gem sweater diva, jammer of jams.
* Leslie Hall iPhone snaps, "Blame the Booty" remix - Boing Boing

Artist Nina Katchadourian tried repairing spider webs with thread, but her efforts were rebuffed: "My repairs were always rejected by the spider and discarded, usually during the course of the night, even in webs which looked abandoned."

The Mended Spiderweb series came about during a six-week period in June and July in 1998 which I spent on Pörtö. In the forest and around the house where I was living, I searched for broken spiderwebs which I repaired using red sewing thread. All of the patches were made by inserting segments one at a time directly into the web. Sometimes the thread was starched, which made it stiffer and easier to work with. The short threads were held in place by the stickiness of the spider web itself; longer threads were reinforced by dipping the tips into white glue. I fixed the holes in the web until it was fully repaired, or until it could no longer bear the weight of the thread. In the process, I often caused further damage when the tweezers got tangled in the web or when my hands brushed up against it by accident.

Link (via Kottke)

Famed NYC-based prankster/billboard artist Ron English recently took his brilliant brand of witty culture jamming to the Los Angeles area. Our pals at Hi-Fructose have the photographic evidence of the shenanigans. Link

Previously on BB:
• New Ron English book: Abject Expressionism Link
• Billboard Liberation Front: AT&T Link

My old friend Meri Brin is a terrific fine art printmaker and crafter. She creates and sells limited art prints and also handmade notebooks and other lovely goods. You may have come across her work at last year's Maker Faire Bay Area. Seen here, "A Knife In Quiet Hours" (variable edition of 30). Link to Meri's site, Link to Meri's Flickr stream, Link to her notebook company Fixed Orifice Press

Today on Boing Boing tv, a look at some of the talented animators from around the world whose work has been featured on our show. Link to BBtv episode with discussion and downloadable video.

Science painter Cornelia Hesse-Honegger collects and paints mutant bugs in the vicinity of irradiated wastelands like Chernorbyl, around nuclear plants, and nuclear refining sites. This handsome, lopsided li'l fella came from nearby the reactor at Gysinge, Sweden. Link (via Neatorama)

I was delighted when I got home today and saw Mark's post about the injured turtle outfitted with a set of wheels (top right). I had just visited the amazing headquarters of designer toy firm STRANGEco where I scored a wonderful Turtlecamper figure (top left) by Jeremy Fish. Coincidence? Some might think so. Link (Thanks, Gregory Blum!)

Here's a neat poster to help you visualize all of the top-level domains in the world...

At the end of every URL and email address is a top-level domain (TLD). Although .com is the world’s most popular TLD, it is far from alone. There are more than 260 TLDs in use around the world, most of which are country code top-level domains (ccTLDs).

The Country Codes of the World map includes 245 country codes, which encompasses all United Nations countries as well as numerous islands and territories. Each two-digit code is aligned over the country it represents and is color coded with the legend below for quick and easy reference.

Link, they're $30 each plus shipping. (via Kevin Kelly)

Sneak peek at a show opening at New York's Adam Baumgold Gallery on May 1 -- "Alphaville," by Scott Teplin, features meticulously rendered pen and ink and watercolor drawings inspired in part by Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film (which happens to be my favorite movie, ever, period). Snip from the show description:

Teplin has filtered the city of Alphaville through his own imagination and drawn a world devoid of people - only evidence of their domestic and work environments remain for exploration.

Godard filmed Alphaville when computers were in their infancy and not well understood by the public. As a result the film is haunted by Alpha 60 - a dictatorial talking computer that rules the city and forbids the concept of free individuals. Teplin's recreated Alphaville takes place in the present, where computers are not much more than an occasional laptop on a table and a few rooms set up for surveillance of other rooms in secret. Humor is always a prevalent thread in Teplin's work and he has used Lemmy Caution's name as an inspiration for weirdly overgrown indoor potted lemon trees that seem to devour the very wall that contains them - in the title piece of the show. Also featured in the exhibition are individually, vividly watercolored pen and ink drawings of each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, whose surreal rooms and environments follow the deductive structure of the letters. Another set of drawings focus on words and letters such as SLUMBER LORD and GRACIOUS HOST that become Teplin's eccentric, isometrically spaced rooms.

The exhibition highlights Scott Teplin's artist book(s) "Sinker Down and Out," (2007) a Kafkaesque journey of a donut's travels through the digestive path. "Sinker Down and Out" is a hand-drawn 'editioned' artist book. The first part is simply an artist book, similar to other tightly engineered volumes Teplin has created in the past, including maddeningly detailed pen drawings accompanied with strategically placed, scalpel-incised holes. Because artist books are notoriously difficult to exhibit, the second part of this project was born. It consists of one fully-bound book, identical to the original master copy, for each of the 21 page spreads in that master.

Link to gallery website, and here is the artist's site (thanks, Coop!).

Boing Boing tv visits New York Comic Con, the largest comics convention on the Eastern seaboard, and we find games, geeks, and graphic novels galore. Our guide through the event's board game realms is Dr. Gregory Wilson, author and fantasy fiction professor at St. John's University of New York, who teaches us little-known tools for game quality evaluation. "You can tell this one is awesome because of the weight of the box -- it's probably about 15 pounds," he says as we pass one title. "This one takes two hours just to set up! Clear evidence that it, too, is awesome."

Part two of today's episode is a little alternate reality game of our own design -- we like to call it "Count the Cosplayer."

Link to Boing Boing tv post, with discussion and downloadable video.

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BONUS AWESOMENESS: In related news, Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City blog says: "I set up a small online quiz asking people to label unidentified visitors as either art fair or comic-con attendees. There are a few surprises in there, which keeps it interesting."

Heather sez, "A new painting & print from the fabulous Suzanne R Forbes is on Etsy. $10 of each print purchase goes to the EFF. "

Miss Eva G posed for me in her SOMA loft, dressed in her own fabulous steampunk finery, with an antique crossbow she brought back from China. The painting took several sittings with Miss E and then many hours of work painting in the detailed background. She is defending early implements of the computer revolution, Jacquard punch cards and IBM cards, a CDV of Ada Byron, and Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2. An apple core represents Turing, eaten up by the intolerance of his era. Also prominently displayed are so

me wonderful modern creations- The Steampunk Laptop by Datamancer and the Steampunk Flatpanel and Keyboard by Jake Von Slatt- who were kind enough to allow me use their work in the painting. The packet-sniffing rat under the desk is a nod to the EFF’s most recent victory; the EFF logo appears among the luggage stickers on the trunk. I added the bullet shells at the last minute when I learned that Miss E. is a crack shot.

Link (Thanks, Heather!)

My old pal Rodney Ascher has curated a show in Los Angeles of strange, provocative, creepy, and downright freaked-out narrative photography. For example, Rodney created "The Fumigator Series" (above left), which he describes as "a rightwing fantasy inspired by vigilante movies of the 70's and 80's and action/adventure paperbacks like The Executioner, the Enforcer, The Death Merchant, and the Penetrator." Others shot fake movie stills and dramatic tableaus, like the one seen here above right created by The Blacksmoke Organization. The exhibition, Photo Fictions, runs until May 17 at the Show Cave. Link

Grab your LED throwies and your laser tagging units, comrades, and join the revolution. Today on Boing Boing tv, a sneak peek at a new documentary film on the subversive public art collective known as Graffiti Research Lab, who develop and distribute "open source technologies for urban communication." The voices you'll hear in today's episode -- GRL founders James Powderly and Evan Roth.

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.

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From their statement, redacted by the "U.S. Dept. of Homeland Graffiti"...

From their origins in the trash room of a non-profit in Manhattan to their emergence as the instigators of an international art movement, Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season documents the adventures of an architect and an engineer who quit their day jobs to develop high-tech tools for the art underground. The film follows the GRL and their network of graffiti artist collaborators (and commercial imitators) across four continents as they write on skyscrapers with lasers, mock advertisers with homemade tools, get in trouble with The Department of Homeland Security and make activism fun again. Primarily using video footage from point-and-shoot digital cameras (“The Pocket School”) and found-content on the web, the movie’s visual style draws as much from the art of the power point presentation and viral media as conventional documentary cinema.

Narrated by GRL co-founders, Roth and Powderly, The Complete First Season makes a humorous and insightful argument for free speech in public, open source in pop culture, the hacker spirit in graffiti and not asking for permission in general. The film was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008. Available 24/7 on The Pirate Bay.

Part two of today's episode documents GRL's hijinks at Maker Faire 2007. That event's 2008 edition is coming up next week.

GRL was mistakenly credited with the Boston Mooninite LED Terror Freakout; while their work no doubt inspired the street marketing team responsible for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force debacle, Powderly told Boing Boing the day it happened that GRL was not involved.

Link to more info about the DVD and where you can download a torrent -- or, see it at the premiere, May 4, at New York's MOMA.

The Sinai Hotels show features photos of half-built, abandoned luxury hotels in Egypt's Sinai peninsula:

With images by Sabine Haubitz and Stefanie Zoche of Haubitz+Zoche, the show looks at "the concrete skeletons of five-star hotel complexes" abandoned on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. They are resorts that never quite happened, then, with names like Sultan's Palace and the Magic Life Imperial. This makes them "monuments to failed investment."

Link (via Kottke)

polossatik says: "Klara.be (belgium art radio/channel) did an experiment with Belgian painter Luc Tuymans (who's paintings go for million usd). What if you take art out of its usual context and expose it in the street? Would people even notice it?"

Filmmaker John Downer turned a bunch o elephants into walking cameras and used them to capture scenes of the jungle:

He fixed webcams to four elephants. One carried a "trunk-cam" - a device resembling a huge log concealing a camera which could be held in its trunk and dangled close to the ground.

Another had a "tusk-cam" hooked over its tusk. The elephants moved so steadily that the images are pin-sharp. Other log-cams were left on the forest floor.

The high-definition cameras were created by inventor Geoff Bell for a documentary in the remote Pench National Park in Madhya Pradesh in the heart of India.

Link (Thanks, Marilyn!)

At the 2008 Bent Festival for experimental electronic music, Xeni encounters Krach der Roboter ("Noise Robot"), who brings a message of peace, crackers, and chaotic tonal algorithms for all mankind.

"Why do humans love robots so much?," Xeni asks him. "Actually, people love animals, babies, and robots," Krach replied. "But animals make turds and babies cry, while robots do none of those things."

Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.

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Today's episode includes gratuitous references to the spectacularly crappy 1979 movie "Starcrash," starring David Hasselhoff and Christopher Plummer. Special thanks to Make, which sponsored the event, and to Andreas Stoiber and Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom.

MORE circuit bending video goodness: filmmaker John Fox attended the 2007 Bent Festival in Los Angeles, and shot this fun mini-documentary about the instruments, the technology, and the participants: Video Link.

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Joel takes note of Darkpony's latest, poignant drawing. Link, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets

Christiaan Postma's "Clock" is a cunning arrangement of hour- and minute-hands on a black background. As the hands swing around, they spell out the name of the present hour.

The starting point with this project was a personal study about form & time. I put together more than 150 individual clockworks and made them work together to become one clock. I show the progress of time by letting the numbers be written in words by the clockworks. Reading clockwise, the time being is visible through a word and readable by the completeness of the word, 12 words from “one” to “twelve”.

Link (via Cribcandy)

I love these light-fixtures made from obsolete CRTs from Technoscrap (whose site, unfortunately, has no way to directly link to them, hence the link to Make). Link

A judge dismissed charges against Steve Kurtz, professor and member of the Critical Art Ensemble, who has been in a four year legal battle after police discovered biological lab equipment and harmless bacteria in his home. The cops were at his house because he called 911 to report that his wife had died of heart failure. He had the biological gear and specimens for an art project. Kurtz was initially investigated for bioterrorism but later indicted for mail and wire fraud. From the New York Times:

U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara ruled that the 2004 mail and wire fraud indictment against Steven Kurtz, a University at Buffalo professor, was ''insufficient on its face..."

''Obviously this is a weight off his back, but he still had to suffer through this for four years,'' said Kurtz's attorney, Paul Cambria. ''The last thing this guy is is a bioterrorist.''

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Buffalo said it was considering an appeal but otherwise declined to discuss the ruling.

Link (Thanks, Jody Radzik!)

Previously on BB:
• Art attack update Link
• Art of bioterrorism? RU Sirius interviews Steve Kurtz Link
• Case against Steve Kurtz continues Link
• Battling for bio art Link
• Art attack Link

Jonathon Yule's Invdr features a lovely gallery of robots made from various sans-serif fonts. Link (Thanks, Jake!)

TradeMark Gunderson of Evolution Control is selling these handsome laminated artistic license cards for $20. Link

Pippa Bacca, a performance artist from Italy who hitchhiked throughout Europe wearing a wedding dress to spread a message of peace and "marriage between different peoples and nations" was found dead in Turkey, raped and murdered by a mentally ill man who offered her a ride:

Her naked body was found on April 11 in some bushes near a Turkish village after a suspect led investigators to the site. Although an official cause of death has not been given, local Turkish authorities said Ms. Bacca had been raped and strangled.

The killing has stirred broad public anger and grief in Turkey and Italy. Still, what Ms. Bacca would have wanted, her family and friends said, was her message of peace to live on.

“She thought that in the world there were more positive than negative people, and that it was right to be trusting,” said Rosalia Pasqualino, a sister of Ms. Bacca, whose real name was Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo. “Trust is a very human factor, and she believed that to understand people, you had to get to know them.”

Link to New York Times story, and Link to video shot in Italy on the inauguration of her performance project. (thanks, Reverse Cowgirl)

BB reader Jeff says,

I've been reading a lot about Flickr's decision to allow short video clips on the site (and the ensuing dialogue). After thinking about this I remembered the best "long photo" I have ever seen: a scene from Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi where Las Vegas waitresses stand still for what seems like an eternity. I posted the clip (along with two others that come right before the waitresses) on my blog.

Link.

Previously on Boing Boing:
* Flickr adds video-sharing

My brother Mark Pescovitz is a transplant surgeon and professor of microbiology and immunology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He has the busiest travel schedule of anyone I know, flying around the world -- from Malaysia to Kenya to China to Turkey -- to perform surgery, train doctors in remote regions, present his research, and meet with collaborators. Mark has also enjoyed documentary photography since he was in high school. These days, to maintain his sanity with such a hectic work schedule, he always adds an extra day whenever he visits a new place to just explore the locale with his camera. He treats that day as sacred, keeping it free of commitments.

"I doubt few would consider flying to Manila (a 15 hour non-stop flight) for a one day meeting a “pleasure” trip," he says, "but by bringing my camera and tacking an extra day to wander around shooting photos, the perspective of the trip completlety changes."

The art school at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is holding an exhibition of my brother's travel photography. Titled "The Unconventional Tourist," the photos are on view at the Marsh Gallery at Herron School of Art and Design until April 27. Mark is donating any proceeds from the sale of the art to the university's galleries. Seen here, a photograph from Edloret, Kenya. Link

Previously on BB:
• Photo reveals the opposite of recycling Link
• Ladybug group shot Link
• Mark Pescovitz photo Link