Bits: 08.14.10

• SMSlingshot (above), "a handheld digital slingshot device for spreading information on public screens," is:

equipped with an ultra-high frequency radio, hacked arduino board, laser and batteries. Text messages can be typed on a phone-sized wooden keypad which is integrated in the also wooden slingshot. After the message is finished, the user can aim on a media facade and send/shoot the message straight to the targeted point. It will then appear as a colored splash with the message written within.

Here it is in action.

• The Takeaway interviews Roseanne Cash on famous parents, death and why it's hard to make great art when you're happy.

• The New York Times on museum directors pulling in big salaries, getting free housing, and not having to pay taxes on the value of that housing. Via Unbeige.

• Conference: The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice, Oct. 9-10, NYC, with presentations by Futurefarmers' Amy Franceschini, Minneapolis-based FEAST organizer Jeff Hnilicka, experimental geographer Trevor Paglen, curator Nato Thompson, Superflex, Eyal Weizman, and others. Via Greg.org.

• A job for you: The Brooklyn Museum's hiring an associate editor.

• Event: Lewis Hyde, the anthropologist who wrote the excellent books The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property and Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art is coming to the Walker on Sept. 2 to discuss his new book, Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership.

• A statue of Hernan Cortés, the conquistador who conquered the Aztec empire, was splashed with red paint in Medellín, Spain (before, after), and a vandalized Louise Bourgeois sculpture is leaving New Orleans.

• Love it: Gumball machines filled with seed-bombs.