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Traveling through the Multiverse

February 24th, 2009 · No Comments

led-multiverseAmerican artist Leo Villareal created Multiverse, a move-through art installation in a 200-foot-long tunnel at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. using 41,000 LED nodes that flicker on and off in random, abstract patterns…

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→ No Comments | Categories: Art · Science

Kipple drives out nonkipple

February 15th, 2009 · 3 Comments

Kipple is a word invented by the science fiction author Philip K. Dick for a concept similar to entropy. Here is the passage explaining kipple from Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which was made into the film Blade Runner:

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s home page. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.

The novel’s philosopher of kipple, J. R. Isidore (who became J. F. Sebastian in Blade Runner), explains…

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→ 3 Comments | Categories: Ideas · Kipple · Science