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Exhibition currently in London at http gallery - read about it here

"This exhibition explores the connections between the collaborative characteristics of needlework, craft and Open Sourcei software. This project has brought together embroiderers, patch-workers, knitters, artists and computer programmers, to share their practice and make new work."

In case you hadn't realised yet that joining Facebook is not the best way to protect your identity, the BBC have kindly demonstrated that even if you restrict your profile to 'friends', swathes of that info may still go walkabouts if one of those 'friends' installs (note: not just if you install) a dodgy application.  What I think is particularly impressive about the Facebook security model is that they allow any old application to be runi, with no auditing, from any server on the Net.  But it should be OK, b

HP have managed to produce a new (or perhaps old) type of semi-conductor device, called a memristor, the theory of which was originally proposed forty years ago.  One of the novel features is that it can store, or remember, the state of charge it had when the power supply was turned off.  This potentially offers new ways of making device memory.  As a BBC article suggests this may make it possible to build computers that boot up almost instantly.  The writer gets a bit carried away though when s/he adds that it

So the first web server was launched in March 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee and connected to another by the end of the following year. I've recently been pointing to 2011 as the 20th anniversary of this and one worth celebrating.

Some are claiming that today is a more important anniversary, which would be 15 years since Cern made the web public domain.

Prompted by this recent blogi on rhizome about the promotion/virali spread of web-based art pieces through del.icio.us, I had a look at folly's del.icio.us presence: across our online artistic programme there are two clear winners - Digital Artist's handbook has been bookmarked 205 times, and What's Cooking Grandma 600 times.

Check out The Flowfield Unity's take on the future of art created using computers...

I'm moved to write about a particularly impressive piece of open sourcei and free software that I've just come across: it's called Celestia, and it is a fully immersive 3D model of the known universe for your computer. Unlike many planetarium programs, it is not limited to viewing the night sky from Earth.

Bill Thompson, presenter of Digitali Planet, observes a lack of interest in computer programming, and a loss for the UK software industry and asks that the the Arts Industry recognise their reliance on computers.

Read the article here

I agree, programming is a useful and creative skill, as demonstrated by the open-ended possibilities provided by open-source software and the digital art that we here at folly advocate.

http://www.imal.org/HolyFire

Interesting exhibition that looks at collectable new media art (i.e that people can/will pay money for and own).

Including boredomresearch's ornamental bug garden.

From the exhibition blurb:

Holy Fire is an attempt to explore how new media art, bypassing all the stereotypes connected with its presumed immateriality and difficulties of maintenance, was able to enter the art market.