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Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 3, 2021 at 8:45am

NFTs: Why digital art has such a massive carbon footprint

How much would you be willing to pay for a one-of-a-kind work of art? For some collectors, the limit lies somewhere in the region of hundreds of millions of dollars. What about a work of art that has no tangible form, and exists only as a digital token that's no more "real" than a JPEG file? Welcome to the strange world of crypto art collectibles, also known as NFTs.

Like Bitcoin, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are cryptocurrencies. But whereas individual bitcoins all have the same value, NFTs are more like baseball cards. Each token has a different value and they can't be used to buy things. They exist on your computer as digital representations of artworks, songs, films and games, among other things.

When you buy an NFT, you're buying a unique certificate of ownership, which is locked away on an immutable distributed database known as a blockchain. The creator of the artwork generally retains the copyright and in most cases, you own little more than bragging rights. Creators are also likely to pass the costs for creating your NFT files (or "minting" them) on to you (around US$100 as I write this).

Most of the time, what you'll also be responsible for is an enormous carbon footprint.

Because they depend on a blockchain, NFTs use a lot of energy. Most creators still use Ethereum, a blockchain secured using a similar proof-of-work system to Bitcoin. This involves an energy-intensive computer function called mining. Specialist mining computers take turns guessing the combination to a digital lock (a long string of random digits). The computer that correctly guesses the combination wins a reward paid in a cryptocurrency called Ether. The digital lock resets roughly every 15 seconds, and the competition continues. Ethereum uses about 31 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity a year, about as much as the whole of Nigeria.

It's very difficult to calculate exactly how much responsibility the NFT industry should take for Ethereum's carbon emissions. Ethereum was going to run with or without NFTs. But with the growing demand for digital art, NFT buyers and sellers are becoming liable for an increasing share of Ethereum's total energy use, and some artists are starting to think twice.

https://theconversation.com/nfts-why-digital-art-has-such-a-massive...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on October 15, 2020 at 7:51am

Robot swarms follow instructions to create art

https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-robot-swarms-art.html?utm_sourc...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 9, 2016 at 6:49am

Software that turns drones into artists developed

Tiny drones outfitted with a miniature arm that holds ink-soaked sponge may soon be able to create huge paintings and outdoor murals, thanks to a new software developed by scientists.

Paul Kry from the McGill University in Canada and his students teamed up to programme tiny drones to create dot drawings - an artistic technique known as stippling.

Programming the aerial robots to apply each payload of ink accurately and efficiently requires complex algorithms to plan flight paths and adjust for positioning errors, researchers said.

Even very slight air currents can toss the featherweight drones off course.

The drones, which are small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, are outfitted with a miniature arm that holds a bit of ink-soaked sponge.

As they hover near the surface to be painted, internal sensors and a motion capture system help position them to dab the ink in just the right places.

So far, the flying robots have rendered - on paper - portraits of Alan Turing, Grace Kelly and Che Guevara, among others. Each drawing is composed of a few hundred to a few thousand black dots of varying sizes.

Eventually, larger drones could be deployed to paint murals on hard-to-reach outdoor surfaces, including curved or irregular facades, Kry said.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 25, 2015 at 5:41am

Tech Art at the Heart of Silicon Valley
http://www.livescience.com/52270-art-in-silicon-valley-is-understan...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 8, 2015 at 5:53am

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 3, 2015 at 8:07am

The Science Behind Pixar The exhibit combines different styles of learning, from computer interactives to tactile activities, all while giving visitors lessons in "STEM"

http://www.necn.com/news/new-england/The-Science-Behind-Pixar-32382...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on August 31, 2015 at 1:54pm

Innovative art exhibition and competition

The exhibition themed, ‘Interactions: Crossing Lines’ is led by the powerful visual artist duo of Soji Adesina and Uthman Wahaab.
Tech company Samsung and contemporary art destination, Rele Gallery have announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration featuring an art competition and an art exhibition, a meeting of the worlds of technology and art.

The exhibition themed, ‘Interactions: Crossing Lines’ is led by the powerful visual artist duo of Soji Adesina and Uthman Wahaab. The body of work, to be presented, seeks to deconstruct the concept of how drawings interact with the gallery space. The drawings will be rendered to exceed the boundaries of drawing surfaces, (paper & canvass) travelling onto the walls of the gallery and into digital spaces – Samsung tablet devices.

This innovative exhibition will mark a milestone for the tech and art industry in Nigeria.
http://pulse.ng/arts_culture/techmeetsart-samsung-and-rele-gallery-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on June 2, 2015 at 9:05am

The boundaries of art are changing and technology sits alongside it.

When science meets art, the effect is electric

The group also works together as "Professor Science Troupe", a free community outreach program for secondary school students to help popularise and demystify science.

Last year, the group took out the People's Choice award at the Gertrude Street Projection Festival with Pestilent Protrusions, a psychedelic array of animatronically blooming flowers built into a shopfront.

They will exhibit there again in July but their next local festival outing is Federation Square's Light in Winter Festival which runs from June 1-June 19.

Then it is off to Wellington and Portugal spreading the scientific and artistic word.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/when-science-meets-art-the...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on April 18, 2015 at 9:44am

An artist who teaches people how to do digital iPad paintings

Jeremy Sutton, a physicist-turned-artist, who creates portraits, collages and landscapes using his iPad

http://jeremysutton.com/

http://www.high50.com/culture/jeremy-sutton-david-hockney-inspired-...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on February 25, 2015 at 9:33am

Two historians on a mission to preserve historic structures in Ethiopia inadvertently turned a cutting-edge 3D scanning device into a tool for creating works of art.

Lidar technology uses pulses of laser light to map the contours of 3D surfaces and structures.

For example, 2D photographs can capture the major features of a landscape, but lidar reveals every dip, ditch and rise. It shows the full size of boulders, the depth of canyons. Some lidar technologies can see through foliage, and have been used to hunt for lost cities buried in the jungle. Similarly, 2D photographs of sculptures and frescoes lose an entire dimension of the art work — it would be like photographing a Van Gogh painting in black and white. [See More Amazing 3D Lidar Works of Art]
http://www.livescience.com/49920-lidar-technology-works-of-art.html
http://www.livescience.com/49899-lidar-technology-gallery.html

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