This has nothing to do with art, digital or otherwise, but does involve the internet.

I recently purchased a 2006 pink Genuine Buddy Scooter. This color combination is no longer being made and I wanted to ensure that I got a color matched topcase. Luckily, I was able to find one at Scooter West.

Unbeknownst to me, but beknownst to others, these things DO NOT come with instructions. I was able to find a forum-based general walkthrough at Modern Buddy but figured that picture-based instructions may help someone, somewhere. These instructions may very well be incorrect, but hey, I used up all the provided components and the top case seems attached well enough.  NOTE:  You must already have a rear rack installed on your buddy.

Components

Your top case kit should’ve contained
1 top case
1 large, black plate
2 long brass brackets
4 long bolts
4 short bolts
4 nuts
4 flat washers
4 dished washers
2 keys
a foamy insert liner thingy (not pictured)

If you’re missing any of these…um..good luck.

Additional Tools

A 10mm socket wrench.

Instructions

Step 1. Install the large, black plate to your rear rack using the two long brass brackets, the 4 long bolts, flat washers and nuts.  The wider end of the black plate should face the front of the scooter and laid down on the rear rack so that the lipped edges face down onto the rear rack.   The bolts should be inserted from the top of the black plate, through a washer, through the rear rack, brass brackets and nut, in that order.  The rear brackets should be positioned so the bolts are on the outside of the center bar on the rear rack and so the black plate is flush with the back bar of the rear rack.  Tighten the bolts so that there is no wiggle room - everything should be solid.

Step 2. Attach the top case through the black plate with the 4 short bolts and 4 dished washers.  My topcase fit the best use the the 4 rear-most holes in each of the four pairs of holes on either side of black plate.

Step 3. Insert the foamy insert liner thingy into the top case and optionally lock the case and take a picture.

Sweet. The Olympics has an interactive art component! Check out Vectorial Vancouver where you can arrange the lights on display in Vancouver and submit your designed to be played in succession. Participate in anonymous, public, interactive art!

Here’s mine, dedicated to my sweetie.

VIDEOGIOCO by Donato Sansone from Enrico Ascoli - Sound Design on Vimeo.

Includes graphic violence

And here I am just trying to get back into pencils…

a co-worker showed this to me: Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile.

For three bucks? How could I not download it? It’s quite flexible and you can apparently get down to some significant detail with the app. It will take me some time to get used to the interface - there’s a million options - but amazing images can be created.

Download it from iTunes

I got an email from Sierra club yesterday and the eco tip was to buy art created from recycled materials. The thought had never occurred to me to seek out art based on what it’s made out of but of what the image is or what it means to me. A clever tip nonetheless in this time of environmental concern. Recycled art keeps garbage out of the landfill, provides another creative outlet, as well as a unique item for the consumer.

Many recycled art I’ve seen have been nifty reproductions of master works. Just an observation and I fall into that myself with my bizarre beer cap collection. I’ll probably just make a large starry night since most beer I drink tends to have blue caps.

I found this on Digg yesterday. Reproductions of Mona Lisa done with everything from a lawn to old computer parts.

A local artist, Barry Stickerman Snyder, creates art out of produce labels. In addition to an American Gothic reproduction, he has amazing original works that have an almost southwestern mosaic feel to them.

Know of more? Leave a comment and share.

A while back, I read an article in the newspaper about Denver’s Magnet Mafia, a group of local artists that decorate magnets and stick them up around the metro area. I thought it was an awesome concept and probably would’ve bounded down to join them if I was more socially extroverted.

Graffiti in general is quiet fascinating as it’s simultaneously viewed as both art and a defacement of public property. Though the term ‘graffiti’ usually brings to mind the modern depiction of fat letters on fences and boxcars, it does have roots in the ancient world …I suppose The Life of Brian’s Graffiti Lesson isn’t too out of place.

Check out MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU. It’s graffiti come to life.

To see what’s going on in the world, take a look at Top 50 Graffiti Trends and Counter Culture Art in Q1 2009.

Feel inspired? Try some graffiti in the comfort of your own backyard by growing your own graffiti moss. Think of it as another form of living art.

I’ve gotten some annoying email forwards in my day but sometimes someone blesses you with a true gem. Below are some links to a few of those jewels representing sculpted works made from existing materials.

Ghost in the Machine by iri5.
Uses non-traditional recycled material or ‘another person’s trash’ to create art. In this case, iri5 uses old cassettes and cassette tape to form famous portraits of the musician.

Paper cutout art by Peter Callesen.
Amazingly detailed and creative paper cutout art pieces. This is not from the actual forward because the original email had inline images. Luckily, I was able to find a artist’s website on the web.

This veggie art is cute and creative. This is not the actual forward I received because the forward was just a bunch of inline images. Naturally, I can’t find the original artist either, so please leave a comment if you know who created these beautiful sculptures.

If there’s one philosophy that was fervently brandished by the art students I went to school with, it’s that text has no place in art and any worthwhile art piece shouldn’t need text on it to get the point across.

But, can text itself can be artful?

With the rise of web2.0 technologies, tag clouds are springing up all over the web on blogs and in a variety of mashups.  In addition to providing quick and interesting information at-a-glance, I find them to be quite beautiful. I’ve seen Wordle, in particular, twice since Obama has been elected - once on the web after his inauguration speech and another just last week during a mini-state of the union style address on CNN. readwriteweb.com wrote an interesting content comparison post that compared the speeches of several past presidents and immediately shows the overarching themes.

Another neat textual art project is TextArc, a program that demonstrates the relationships between words within a text. I highly recommend checking out the analysis of Alice in Wonderland. Similarly, Visual Thesaurus provides a visual word definition and relationship view. Check out the word list for Carroll’s Jaberwocky to see it in action.

Beyond the containerized context of a specific written work, you can see the commonness of many English words at wordcount.org, which uses size to represent how frequently a word occurs.

I’m sure there’s many more neat text-based art projects on the web. If you find any, please comment and leave a link so I can check them out and bookmark them. I created a neat analysis of 100 spam emails and subject lines between March 13-15 with wordle. Conveniently, it’s somewhat pill-shaped.

Hello and welcome to Dedd Pixel.

What’s a Dedd Pixel?

Well, a Dedd Pixel is a blatant misspelling of Dead Pixel, which is a term used to describe a defective LCD monitor pixel that remains unlit. It is also the name a fictional band that my friends and I had in college. In a programming class, we were AlScSh and the drum machine, then became Flux in our Electromagnetics class, before transforming into Dead Pixel for reasons unknown. We finally settled on Dedd Pixel after realizing that truly edgy bands misspell things. Since the band is fictional in the first place, I’m using it as the name of my artBlog.

What is the intent of Dedd Pixel?

Although I rarely have time to create art, I still love to learn about art. So while I don’t necessarily create a lot of art, I do read about it and bookmark/link to it. This blog is intended for me to share some of the neat art-related websites and news that I find. I may stray at times and talk about politics,  food, or my cats, but the main focus will be on art that relies on the internet, gaming and technology.  I can’t guarantee how often I update; I’m aiming for at least one post a week but am finding that nothing promotes procrastination more than a schedule.

Who are you?

I’m a web developer. I graduated from CU Boulder in 2004 with a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a BA in studio art. I have several avatars; this is one of them.