This stealthy undertaking was not an act of robbery or espionage but rather a crucial operation in what would become an association called UX, for “Urban eXperiment.” UX is sort of like an artist’s collective, but far from being avant-garde—confronting audiences by pushing the boundaries of the new—its only audience is itself. More surprising still, its work is often radically conservative, intemperate in its devotion to the old. Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. - Wired.com
"The New French Hacker-Artist Underground"
posted by The Whelk
on Jan 24, 2012 -
20 comments
A
digital clock made of wood and operated by 70 workers for one continuous 24-hour period.
"Even though the workers are trying hard to construct every single minute, they are constantly on the verge of failing."
posted by freshwater_pr0n
on Dec 27, 2009 -
35 comments
"For Dirk McLauren, Wedesnday January 19 2381 has
begun very poorly." The
Zybourne Clock was to be a hundred-hour long electro-punk-themed RPG made by members of the
SA subforum BYOB. After only a few weeks, the project collapsed in drama and failure, leaving only hilarious snippets of text, original "artwork," and level designs. More
effort and skill went into
parodying The Zybourne Clock than into
creating it.
posted by Optimus Chyme
on Nov 19, 2009 -
35 comments
The Antikythera Mechanism has been decoded. Two years ago, it was confirmed that the machine was capable of astronomical calculations. Now it appears there's just one more thing: 3D imaging of the machine made it possible to reconstruct the complete workings, and it turns out it was also capable of tracking the timing of the Olympic games. The findings were reported today in
Nature. Previous Apple joke here, an incredibly deep post about it here, and a longer report from the New Yorker.
posted by one_bean
on Jul 30, 2008 -
40 comments
The
Kamusi project, an online Swahili-English dictionary site, has created the world's
first clock that tells Swahili time. Not to be confused with the conceptual clocks of
Tibor Kalman, like the
Five O'Clock Clock, or Kalman's
jumbled time clock tower
The Swahili clock reflects an actual conceptual change that takes place for Swahili speakers.
In Swahili culture the day starts at sunrise (unlike in the Arab world where the day starts at sunset, and in the Western world where the day starts at midnight). Sunrise in East Africa, being exactly at the Equator, happens every day at approximately 6:00 a.m. And for that reason, 6:00 a.m. is "0:00 morning" Swahili time. So the hands of a watch or clock meant to read Swahili time would always point to a number opposite to the number for the actual time as spoken in English. That is, the Swahili time anywhere in the world (not just East Africa) is delayed by 6 hours.
[more inside]
posted by derangedlarid
on Feb 25, 2008 -
26 comments
World Clock SWF application showing the time of day expressed in actual time, the number of species passed into extinction, barrels of oil produced, the temperature of the earth, prison population, world population, and deaths by various causes. Because, y'know, you weren't depressed enough already. Site also offers
a number of free games, calculators and applications for your own site.
posted by psmealey
on Jun 30, 2007 -
36 comments
The
astronomical clock in the French city of Besancon is quite a mechanical marvel. Built in 1860, its inner workings are comprised of more than 30,000 interoperating pieces, driving 37 separate clockface gauges. It is one of the finest intersections between art & mechanics that I've ever come across.
posted by jonson
on Jul 4, 2006 -
12 comments
Clocky. An MIT student has designed an alarm clock with built-in wheels and motion sensors. Upon hitting the snooze button, Clocky will roll of your nighttable, bump around your room, and hide, forcing you to have to get up and look for him instead of hitting the button again.
posted by XQUZYPHYR
on Mar 29, 2005 -
38 comments
Stolen shamelessly from
Tom: a charming
clock, reminding us once again that "time" is an intellectual concept meaningless without human participation... (Don't miss
the webserver, either.) Considering the depth and breadth - and apparent copious free time - of the MeFi community one would hope we'd be able to
help fill in some of the still
unphotographed minutes.
posted by m.polo
on Jul 27, 2001 -
3 comments
Kit Williams gained a great deal of fame through publishing a puzzle book called
Masquerade. He has produced some fine artwork besides (I was actually looking for a particular painting of a Morris Mini to supplement
veruca's link). In addition to paintings, he has a fascination with
clocks and mechanical
devices.
posted by plinth
on Mar 20, 2000 -
0 comments
The Dick Tracy age is upon us. Web access in a watch? Count me in, although I'd hate to have to learn yet another new language like WWML (wrist watch markup language, I just made it up) to make a watch-compliant version of MetaFilter.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 24, 2000 -
2 comments
