norayoung.ca | At the Corner of Technology and Culture
The Clock: Art in the Digital Age
On a recent visit to Ottawa, I went to see Christian Marclay’s The Clock at The National Gallery. Very basically, The Clock is a 24-hour film, comprised of short clips of movies and TV shows, each of which shows or refers to the time: a character looks at a watch, we see a clock on [...]
Games People Play
“Gamification” is a huge buzz term these days. It refers to the use of games and game mechanics to all sorts of tasks, including those we don’t normally think of as fun, such as chores or public policy outcomes. The popularity of video games shows us that people will engage in focused activity – even [...]
Yes, That’s Right, It’s a New Post
A while back, I visited experimental architect, Philip Beesley, in his studio in Toronto’s west end. I went to talk to him about the enormous, beautiful, installation piece he’s taking to the Venice Biennale of Architecture, representing Canada. It’s a remarkable work, called Hylozoic Ground. You can see some images here. Hylozoism was the concept [...]
Everyone Loves a Zombie
Fox News (yes, I know) is reporting that a digital road sign in Austin, Texas was hacked recently. The impish hackers changed the sign to read “Zombies Ahead”. Heh, zombies. Foxnews.com says that: “According to the blog i-hacked.com, some commercial road signs, including those manufactured by IMAGO’s ADDCO division, can be easily altered because their [...]
Advertising Turf Wars
Amidst all the increasingly invasive, extreme, (or, on a lighter note, interactive) advertising out there, here’s an intriguing little border war. Textually reports that a teenaged graffiti artist named Skullphone hacked into a bunch of digital billboards in Southern California, replacing the ads with his logo of a, er, skullphone. Probably most arresting less because [...]
