Art

378 Articles

How Do You Prove An AI Didn’t Make Your Art?

November 27, 2023 by 92 Comments

In the world of digital art, distinguishing between AI-generated and human-made creations has become a significant challenge. Almost overnight, tool sets for generating AI artworks became commonly available to the public, and suddenly, every digital art competition had to contend with potential submissions. Some have welcomed AI, while others demand competitors create artworks by their own hand and no other.

The problem facing artists and judges alike is just how to determine whether an artwork was created by a human or an AI. So what can be done?

Continue reading “How Do You Prove An AI Didn’t Make Your Art?” →

Agate Light Twinkles Just Right

November 23, 2023 by 3 Comments

Mother Nature is often a cruel mistress, but what can you do? You’ve got to make the best of what she gives you. This lovely little light was born from death — the death of a pine tree, that is, that was killed by beetles boring large holes inside.

When [Craig Lindley]’s friends gave him some slices of that pine tree, he knew he had to make a blinkenlights thing out of it. The next step was to procure slices of agate, and from the top of Pike’s Peak, no less.

Each slice of agate has three RGB LEDs behind it, and  these are controlled by an ESP32. There’s also a PIR sensor that detects people and gives them a show. More specifically, it runs through several patterns at random speeds up and down the piece.

The agate slices are embedded in the wood, which [Craig] achieved first with a Dremel, and then with a router when the Dremel proved difficult. After some troubles with resin and an unfortunate mishap with a rag, [Craig] ended up with a beautiful light with which to dazzle his friends, especially the ones who gave him the pine slice.

You know we love blinkenlights; you see them here all the time. Did you know you can use them to keep time?

three resin-printed Single8 film cartridges, uncropped image

Re-Inventing The Single 8 Home Movie Format

November 23, 2023 by 22 Comments

[Jenny List] has been reverse-engineering and redesigning the Single8 home movie film cartridge for the modern age, to breathe life into abandoned cine cameras.

One of the frustrating things about working with technologies that have been with us for a while is the proliferation of standards and the way that once-popular formats can become obsolete over time.  This can leave equipment effectively unusable and unloved.

There is perhaps no greater example of this than in film photography – an industry and hobby that has been with us for over 100 years and that has left many cameras orphaned once the film format they relied on was no longer available (Disc film, anyone?).

Thankfully, Hackaday’s own [Jenny List] has been working hard to bring one particular cine film format back from the dead and has just released the fourth instalment in a video series documenting the process of resurrecting the Single8 format cartridge. Continue reading “Re-Inventing The Single 8 Home Movie Format” →

Increase Your Blinkenlights With This Silicon Wafer Necklace

November 14, 2023 by 5 Comments

Necklaces aren’t often very high-tech, mostly because of the abuse they have to go through being worn. This was obviously a problem that needed solving, so [Matt Venn] decided to change that by making a necklace out of ASICs just in time for Supercon.

Although this isn’t the first time [Matt] made such a necklace, he though his previous one was “too hip-hop” and not enough “15 million dollar Nikon Lithography Stepper”. Obviously, this means designing the whole chain, art included, from scratch with the blinkenlights to match. Together with [Pat Deegan] and [Adam Zeloof], the team created a beautiful technopunk necklace with art on every chain link and of course a real silicon wafer with a RISC-V tapeout from 2022 on it.

With [Adam] doing modeling for the chain links, and [Pat] and [Matt] designing the electronics required for the mandatory blinkenlights, and some last-minute soldering and assembling the project was finished just in time for Supercon, where it fit right in with all the other blinkenlights. It even runs on one of the RISC-V cores from the same tapeout as the central wafer!

The Eyes Of The Basilisk Are Watching You

November 9, 2023 by 1 Comment

MIT student [Anhad Sawhney] built an interesting decoration for his dorm room corridor called The Eyes of the Basilisk. Named after the mythical creature with a deadly gaze, the project monitors passers-by using thermal cameras and an LED matrix.

The project uses a thermal camera and a 64 by 64 LCD panel, with an ESP32 taking the signal from the thermal camera and processing it to find the largest hot blob in the image, which is (probably) a person. The ESP32 then displays the pixel art basilisk eye image with the iris closest to the blob’s coordinates, updating once a second. With a bit of processing to make the eye appear more spherical, it is a pretty convincing trick.

Most might have built one (or two) of the devices on a breadboard and left it at that, but [Anhad] decided to use the project as a way to teach PCB fabrication to some friends, so they created a PCB that could be mounted onto the back of the LCD matrix and built 14 of them, using the pick & place machine that he had access to at the MIT Media Lab. They then mounted all of them on the wall of his dorm room so the wall appeared to keep track of anyone walking by. I’ve never met a Basilisk, so I don’t know how many eyes they have,  but it has a pretty creepy look as it watches you walking down the corridor.

Continue reading “The Eyes Of The Basilisk Are Watching You” →

Oh, The Places You’ll Go With Stop Motion Animation

November 5, 2023 by 5 Comments

Robots made of broken toy parts, stop-motion animation, and a great song to tie it all together were not on our bingo card for 2023, but the results are perfect. [Mootroidxproductions] recently released the official music video for I Fight Dragons 2019 song “Oh the Places You’ll Go”.

The song was written by lead vocalist [Brian Mazzaferri] with inspiration from the classic Dr. Seuss book. [Brian] wrote it for his newborn daughter, and we’re pretty sure it will hit any parent right in the feels.

[Mootroidxproductions] isn’t a parent themselves, but they expanded on the theme to create a video about sacrificing oneself to save a loved one. With a self deprecating wit, they take us through the process of turning broken Bionicle parts, bits of Gundam, Lego, and, armature wire to make the two robots in the film. He also explains how he converted garbage into sets, greebles, and lighting effects.

The robots had to be designed so that they could fulfill their roles in the film. From the size of their hands down to their individual walking gaits, he thought of everything. His encyclopedic knowledge of Bionicle parts is also on full display as he explains the origin of the major parts used to build “Little Blue” and “Sherman”

Click through the break for both the main video and the behind-the-scenes production.

Continue reading “Oh, The Places You’ll Go With Stop Motion Animation” →

Blatano Art Project Tracks Devices In Its Vicinity

October 26, 2023 by 1 Comment

Computers, surveillance systems, and online agents are perceiving us all the time these days. Most of the time, it takes place in the shadows, and we’re supposed to be unaware of this activity going on in the background. The Blatano art piece from [Leigh] instead shows a digital being that actively displays its perception of other digital beings in the world around it.

The project is based on an ESP32, using the BLE Scanner library to scan for Bluetooth devices in the immediate vicinity. Pwnagochi and Hash Monster tools are also used to inspect WiFi traffic, while the CovidSniffer library picks up packets from contact-tracking apps that may be operating in the area.

This data is used to create profiles of various devices that the Blatano can pick up. It then assigns names and little robotic images to each “identity,” and keeps tabs on them over time. It’s an imperfect science, given that some devices regularly change their Bluetooth identifiers and the like. Regardless, it’s interesting to watch a digital device monitor the scene like a wallflower watching punters at a house party.

If you’ve built your own art-surveillance devices to comment on the state of modernity, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!