My previous twitter robot inspects the way language is curated by a distinct group of individuals – the chatter of celebrity gossip mongers. This incarnation, @the_w0rd_0f_g0d mines an entirely different source.

I have used three corpora as source text for the messages, The King James Bible, The Qur’an and the works of L Ron Hubbard. The language of the first two are broadly similar, and produce plausible text when combined. The latter, by virtue of being primarily a self-help guide, rather than a set of explicit fables and scriptures, has a very different linguistic form, and can be easily spotted in the resulting tweets.

As with @the__truth, the results are hit and miss, however there are gems of linguistic beauty every now and then.

Filed by shardcore at 4:40 pm under generative text, words
No Comments

We live in an electronic age, where the microprocessor is ubiquitous. So pervasive is the use of integrated circuitry, that we have become indifferent to the phenomenal computational power surrounding us, and hence blithe to it’s disposability. In the late 60s when semiconductor technology was in its infancy, and the integrated circuit was still a novelty, a young scientist at Caltech, named Gordon Moore made the insight that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit was doubling every 18 months or so. This speculation became known as ‘Moore’s Law’, and has held up surprisingly well, with contemporary CPU chips containing millions upon millions of transistors, and increasing in computational power at an exponential rate.

With such growth comes inevitable redundancy – the state-of-the-art gadget you crave today will be left to gather dust in the back of a drawer in a couple of years time. It’s easy to lose sight of this rate of change, in fact, that we don’t just take it for granted, but actively expect smaller, faster, more feature-filled devices to replace the ones we found miraculous just a few months ago.

4-colour spray stencil on DEC Hi-Note Laptop

Which brings us to this piece – a portrait of Gordon Moore, from the 60s, about the time he first suggested his ‘law’. I have stencilled the portrait onto a 1995 DEC Hi-Note Laptop, which when released was a state-of-the-art device, retailing for £2360 + VAT – and now worth less than the price of a canvas.

I tried to estimate how many (now worthless) transistors this device contains:

• CPU – 486DX = approx 1 million
• Screen (800×600, colour) = 800×600x3= 1,440,000
• RAM (24MB) = 24×1024x1024×8 = 243,793,920
• Supporting chipset = approx 0.5M

This rough calculation suggests there are nearly 250 million transistors in this device alone. As you can see, the device has an ‘Intel inside’ sticker – After leaving Caltech, Gordon Moore went on to found the Intel Corporation, and now has an estimated personal worth of $3.7B …

Filed by shardcore at 10:33 am under 3d, mixed media, painting
2 Comments

I have recently been working with the poet Michael James Parker, and film-maker Iain Gaffney, creating films of some of his poems.

Here is the latest, House Husband.

Filed by shardcore at 6:33 pm under video
No Comments

The internet is full of cat pictures, generally showing them as nonsense talking idiots. However, cats are not simply LOLing machines, I live with two cats who actively dislike each other.

Inspired by their daily fighting, I have chosen to paint some unLOL cats.

They are currently on display at The Tin Drum in Seven Dials Brighton, at the credit crunchtastic price of only £300 each. If you’re interested in purchasing one please email me directly.

“Mr. Frisky is alarmed by the sudden ringing of your iPhone.”

Silver Spray and Acrylic on Canvas 600mm x 600mm

“Mittens is displeased with your choice of economy cat food.”

Silver Spray and Acrylic on Canvas 600mm x 600mm

“Monty dislikes the neighbour’s new dog intensely.”

Silver Spray and Acrylic on Canvas 600mm x 600mm

Filed by shardcore at 11:51 am under exhibitions, for sale, painting
1 Comment

It’s been rather quiet at shardcore.org recently, because of my involvement in Brighton’s White Night art festival. My long-time collaborator Sam Hewitt and I were commissioned by Brighton & Hove council to create a secret centrepiece to the festival. The theme was ‘fortune’, and we responded by creating two giant robotic Japanese Fortune Cats, who would answer questions live in Jubilee Square.

This turned out to be quite an undertaking, involving participation from twenty one artists, actors and roboticists. I am pleased to say the evening went without major incident, and the cats spoke through the night from 7pm to 1am, imparting words of wisdom to hundreds of visitors.

I’ll be uploading more information on the development of this idea over on thefortunecats.com over the next few weeks, in the meantime here’s a film of the cats in situ.

Filed by shardcore at 5:42 pm under 3d, White Night, exhibitions, installation, street
No Comments