Despite Singularity Hub’s blogginess (yes it’s a word) most of my posts aren’t inspired by personal  real life events. Well today is different. After being chased by hundreds of costumed competitors through the streets of San Francisco on Halloween night (true story), I ended up at Noisebridge, a Bay Area hackspace. They have dozens of really cool projects, including Muralizer, a prototype system that draws murals on walls. Using vector graphics files on a computer, the very simple device traces the picture across a vertical flat surface. Like so many other hackjobs, it still needs a lot of work, but it’s a great example of how the digital world can be projected into our own. Check out the video after the break.

Like a virus, art tends to infect whatever new technology we create. From cave drawings to augmented reality, humans don’t seem capable of inventing a tool without thinking about how they can entertain each other with it. While we often focus on the utility of developing technology, the creative/expressive portion of that technology is just as inevitable and perhaps as important. One of the biggest trading goods of industrialized countries is entertainment, fashion, and art. Devices that allow us to customize our clothes and living spaces will become sought after means in expressing ourselves. Such technology is important even from an economic standpoint – as more and more jobs become automated, people may turn to art to fulfill their need to work.

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