A DEVICE which can produce a 360 degree picture by television through a stereoscope scanner has been invented by Leslie Gould, a radio engineer of Bridgeport, Connecticut. With Mr. Gould’s television system it is possible to televise a boxing match, a play, an orchestra, or any other spectacle whose scene of action can be compressed into a reasonable space.

The new invention makes use of neon tubes of various sizes and colors, depending upon the magnitude of the image. The spot on which the television subject is located is scanned by beams from two rotating arms, as shown in the drawing above. At the extremity of each arm is a scanning drum containing a photo electric cell, which picks up the images to be televised.

The scene which is going to be televised must be flooded with a great quantity of strong light. Each electric eye catches the light reflected through the apertures in the revolving drums from the light portions of the body, and flashes to the transmitter the electric impulses set up by the variations in light.

Walking around the studio, I’m reminded that many of the far off places that I saw on the screen, places like Frank Loesser’s New York from Guys and Dolls, were actually filmed here, the place that I go to work everyday. Luck IS sometimes a lady and, G-d willing, life sometimes works out nicely nicely.

Aaron Koblin’s collaboration with Takashi Kawashima, Ten Thousand Cents is a digital artwork that creates a representation of a $100 bill. Using a custom drawing tool, thousands of individuals working in isolation from one another painted a tiny part of the bill without knowledge of the overall task. Workers were paid one cent each via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk distributed labor tool. The total labor cost to create the bill, the artwork being created, and the reproductions available for purchase are all $100. The work is presented as an interactive/video piece with all 10,000 parts being drawn simultaneously. The project explores the circumstances we live in, a new and uncharted combination of digital labor markets, “crowdsourcing,” “virtual economies,” and digital reproduction.

ETech is the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, O’Reilly Media’s flagship “O’Reilly Radar” event. It is a technologist’s R&D lab, workbench, and playground, specifically designed as a conference to expose new ideas and to learn from the people behind them. ETech is the only place for first access to the innovations and disruptions that are changing the way we live and do business – access people need to stay ahead of the curve in their respective workplaces. This year’s theme at ETech focused on how the way we live is changing — through policy, technology and ideas.

ETech is better experienced than described but I was pleased to be able to spend time with other artists who employ a technology approach like Aaron Koblin, who talked about making art with lasers (I drove up with said laser in our backseat), Alex Bisceglie and his partner in innovation Nick Spears, with whom I’ve been cooking up a collaboration involving video to be displayed in his wonderful spherical display, The Orb, and the guys from Uncommon Projects. Also really enjoyed talking with Nick Bilton from New York Times R&D, who convinced me that my quaint love of paper may not influence the company’s delivery method moving forward.