Author Archives: chipdunn
LEDs that produce more light than the electricity they use, and cool the room, too
‘Habitable Zone’
NASA announced its Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems, including three super-Earth-size planets in a “habitable zone.”
Maxwell’s Demon
“For now, we can only say for certain what 20 or so elements are doing.”
Amok
In relation to the class discussion on björk’s Biophilia album-app that dropped recently, figured I’d link to Thom Yorke’s new super-band Atoms For Peace – Amok album website that dropped last month as well. Album stream off the site visualizer or grooveshark.
The title of the band is inspired by a speech delivered by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN on Atomic Warfare. Read an article on the historical speech @ the Union for Concerned Scientists.org
Ferrofluid
A ferrofluid -portmanteau of ferromagnetic, and fluid) is a liquid which becomes strongly magnetized in the presence of a magnetic field.
Planning to order some on Amazon.
Despite being dangerous I really wish I could experiment with Mercury. Perhaps I’ll look around for a lab that would be willing to grant footage or something. Anyway exotic metals are very fascinating elements to watch. They look like a living breathing species
Poem
Remedios Varo
For stop motion 2 this year were animating a painting by para-surrealist Remedios Varo. I’m a member of the special FX team and were going to emulate a smoke effect in the window probably using ink and water. The scene will include a puppet and a lot of interesting camera moves for the perspective shift. Varo’s work definitely utilizes a lot of surreal like elements but I can’t help notice how their seems to be a lot of mystical/scientific themes in a lot her paintings. There appear to be several astronomical references to the cosmos above. Check out some work here.
Elementia
-“Educational adventure game with the goal of introducing students to elements with a fun murder mystery.”
I designed the artwork for this game over the weekend @ MIT during the annual Global Game Jam. You basically create a functioning game over the course of 48 hrs all weekend, and pair yourself into a group of programmers/sound engineers/ artists/ and designers. My first Game Jam experience was a lot of work but I had an absolute blast and learned a ton. The even is open to anyone annually, so if your interested in attending next year as an artist its a great opportunity. Elementia is exclusively on Windows and can be downloaded & unzipped here. To run navigate to the Upload folder – release – compiled – and open the tangle.exe file. Began as an educational game to help kids remember the periodic table, yet somehow turned into a content rich dialogue based title with chemistry puns..
massartsci.org 
