the world of ollie palmer

I made my own addition to my phone. Why use a fixed camera when you can simply add one of these beauties?

Posted via email from Unit 14

Hmm, it’s getting cheaper to send things into space…

Project Icarus at MIT sent a camera to near space for $150 (more).

Toshiba made this film sending a chair to near-orbit (more).

Steve Truglia is planning to leap from a balloon at a silly height. He has lots more money, though.

He’s been inspired by Kittinger – whose jump can be seen in this video by the Boards of Canada…(you may also want to check out my earlier blog post)

Playing with space might be fun. Anyone agree?

Posted via web from Unit 14

Posted via email from Unit 14

As part of another project (as-yet-unblogged), I’ve been looking at RFID tags – and more specifically, how they can be used within robotic and entomological systems. The wasp below is sporting an RFID tag that costs €3 as part of a study of wasp movements (image credits: ZSL – for more on that, click here…). RFID is becoming an everyday commodity…

One of the most commonly accepted RFID systems in operation is the Oyster card. I put mine into a glass full of nail varnish in order to remove the chip inside.

After a few hours, the adhesive holding the components together was degraded to such an extent that the whole thing was a floppy mess, ready to be peeled apart.



This is version 2.6 of the Oyster card – previous versions contained copper wire, but this one uses conductive ink as the arial. The flexible centre is now ready for embedding into anything – e.g. a jacket sleeve – ready for use. The pencil points towards the “ID” part, which contains the chip’s all-important frequency.

One of my favourite graphic artists is Chris Ware. His books are fantastically intricate, poetic, and examine in miserly detail the mundanities of American life with referential nods towards ’20s Jazz artwork, typography and George Herriman. Its form is perfectly suited to the format it takes – namely beautiful books. So you can imagine how much I shuddered at the thought that the cartoons had been converted to an animated format.

Fortunately, however, I wasn’t disappointed by the first Quimby Mouse I managed to find online. Enjoy!

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

This week the Mis en Abyme project has moved out of the realm of the purely hypothetical, research-based project and into the real world – and a step closer to the abyss of the meta-world.
» Read the rest of this entry «

Good news – Ollie’s photography is now available to license on gettyimages.com. The “by olliepalmer.com” library will grow over time!

It is a privilege to be invited to be part of one of the world’s great photo-libraries. Now a global audience is able to buy photographs that I have taken from around the world to use and re-interpret creatively. It’s fantastic to know that your work could be helping others create.

If you like my photography, click here to see more on my website (hideously unorganised), or here to see more on my Flickr stream (along with lots of other, less pretty pictures).