If you've been yearning for controversy, why not meet Mr. David Hockney? Commonly know as "Britain's best-loved living painter," Hockney has suggested that the proliferation of the iPod has been a primary contributor to the recent "fallow period of painting." He insists that today's society is "all about sound," and even mentions that people are turning off their eyes and ignoring contemporary art whilst "plugging their ears." Put simply, he believes the modern "decline in visual awareness" rests heavily on Apple's own cash cow, and further stirred the pot by insinuating that it led to "badly dressed people" who cared not about lines nor mass. As expected, a spokeswoman for Apple Australia refuted the claims, and while we certainly have seen no shortage of brilliant creations since the iPod explosion, there's always two sides to the canvas.

We know, you've been catching up on a world of news this morning thanks to the Wii News Channel going live, but if you're one of those folks who snapped up your Mii on a Tee just as soon as you found the funds, this is for you. Sculptor and illustrator Paul Thiel crafted a 3D figure of a friend's Mii as a Christmas gift, but soon realized that geeks like us would hit up the Ramen diet for a few days in order to have one of our own, so now he's hard at work constructing a proper way to take and process orders. Even though no prices have been set just yet, you can take one look at this masterpiece and see how priceless your very own could be, so be sure to hit the read link for the full skinny of how to get your pre-order in and secure yet another piece of obscure, albeit nifty, video game art.

[Via Joystiq]

While today might not seem all that out of the ordinary, it's not everyday that we find not just one, but two cases of folks using RFID technology to enhance our lives and bring excitement to otherwise mundane exhibits. Following up on ET's playful garb, Mogens Jacobsen has crafted the Audiobar (Hørbar), which is a "physical bar-like social environment that enable visitors to interact with sounds via RFID tagged bottles." His was recently commissioned by The Museum for Contemporary Art Roskild to come up with a new and varied way to present the museum's "vast archive of sound-art," and is now garnering worldwide attention for his success. Each tagged RFID bottle responds to the reader installed in the table, and the housed computer channels the appropriate audio clips to correspond with the bottle movements. While it still might take a bit more pizazz to get a gang of second graders to listen to anything on a museum field trip, this is most certainly a step in the right direction, and can be checked out now if you're stopping through Denmark.

[Via Textually]

We know, we're suckers for cheesy art, but we give props where props are due for the well designed, masterfully engineered pieces as well. While we doubt the Digital Stag is atop any thief's list of things to swipe, there's a decent chance the Italian funeral urn Cratere dei Niobidi is. This urn spurned (ahem) a restorer and a geophysicist to envision sonic tomography as a means to protecting authentic works of art and giving museums and art buyers alike a way to spot fakes. The system works by attaching a network of sensors in and around the artifact, and when tapped with a rubber hammer, computer software can record the sonic fingerprint that will only match up with the original. Additionally, the waves could inform restorers if a segment of a structure is weaker than the eye can tell, giving them extra time to build reinforcements on ancient buildings, walls, etc. The chance of such a system ever being used outside of highly trafficked museums, however, is slim, primarily due to the $19,000 to $26,000 price range that the system falls in, not to mention the "trained staff" (read: loyal and innocent) required to run it.