All Over Albany

Artificial tulips

More AI tulips!!! With the larger dataset I've made and spectral normalisation I'm able to get much more variety in the type of tulips it produces. pic.twitter.com/19vhpyLwDj

— anna ridler (@annaridler) June 1, 2018

This is random and weird and kind of wonderful, and because tulips...

An artist in the Netherlands named Anna Ridler is working on a project in which she's training an alogrithm to create tulips. It's called "Mosaic Virus" and it's a commission for the Impakt Festival in Utrecht later this year (festival theme "Post-Truth"). Blurbage from her website:

Drawing historical parallels from "tulip-mania" that swept across Netherlands/Europe in the 1630s to the speculation currently ongoing around crypto-currencies, this video work is generated by an artificial intelligence (AI). It will show a tulip blooming, an updated version of a Dutch still life for the 21st century. The appearance of the tulip would be controlled by bitcoin price. "Mosaic" is the name of the virus that causes the stripes in a petal which increased their desirability and helped cause the speculative prices during the time. In this piece, the stripes will depend on the value of bitcoin, changing over time to show how the market fluctuates.

Here's a video that might provide a better look.

The streaked tulips that result from this virus -- such as the famed Semper Augustus -- are called "broken tulips."

How Albany does not have a bar called The Broken Tulip, we do not know.

[Via the whims of the Twitter recommendation algorithm, maybe because of Abe? Who knows.]

Earlier:
+ Portraits of tulips
+ Because it's park furniture shaped like a tulip

Go see the tulips, don't wait

Important news: The Washington Park tulip beds are blooming.

As of Friday afternoon we'd say about 65 percent of the tulips were in bloom, and it looked like many others were getting ready to emerge.

So, don't wait until the Tulip Fest. Make some time to stop by take in the tulips over the next week.

Here are a handful of photos if you'd like to virtually gawk.

But, really, just go see them.

Blooming tulips, before and after

It's prime tulip season, so we put together another around of "sliding" before-and-after photos of the tulip beds in Washington Park.

The pre-bloom photos are from April 22. And the post-bloom photos are from Friday, April 29.

The tulips be at their peak this coming week. And thanks to the snapback cold a few weeks ago, it looks like many of them will be around for Tulip Fest.

Happy spring.

(there's more)

Tulips, before the bloom and after

The "sliding" photos are after the jump.

We're right in the heart of tulip season, so we thought it'd be fun to put together some "sliding before and after" photos of the Washington Park tulips.

The pre-bloom photos are from April 27 -- so, almost two weeks ago -- when almost none of the tulips were in bloom. The post-bloom photos are from this morning.

Happy Tulip Fest.

(there's more)

Tulip flight

Not local -- this is from The Netherlands a few weeks ago -- but sometimes you just need to take a break and watch some aerial video of enormous tulip fields. (We recommend watching it full screen in HD.)

It should be tulip time here soon...

[via]

Because it's park furniture shaped like a tulip

So, some Capital Region park or public space might need these: A Dutch company has designed an outdoor seat that looks like a tulip. The Tulpi seat stays folded up like a tulip bloom when not in use, and then folds down to provide a place to sit.

The company that makes the seat says they're durable, ergonomic, and the fold-up design helps keep dirt and rain off the seats. Brochure blurbage:

The Tulpi is a perfect combination of design, ergonomics and sustainability. The tulip shape of the chair immediately creates an atmospheric scenery that will brighten up public spaces. Tulpi's are loved by kids, especially in parks! They love the bright colors and the fact the Tulpi can rotate 360 degrees.

The chair won a recent design award for street furniture.

There's also a tulip-shaped trash can.

[via CityLab]

photos: Tulpi / Marco Manders

Tulip power rankings

The storied arena.

Tulip season is very much underway in the flowers beds of Albany's Washington Park. There are still several varieties yet to bloom, but there were plenty of tulips to gawk at Wednesday afternoon.

So who's out to the early lead in this ultra-competitive floral venue? Which blooms are lowering the boom on the competition?

Let's go to the early season power rankings...

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Portraits of tulips

That's Double Beauty of Apeldoorn to you.

Sure, you've seen plenty of tulips. But do you really know them?

Intrigued by these famous floral personalities from Washington Park, we had them sit for portraits -- and a look into their psyches...

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In the the park with the tulips

Check it out: An aerial view of the tulip beds near the Moses statue in Washington Park. The image above is just a section of the photo. We've also embedded a large, zoomable version of the whole photo.

The photo was taken by Robert Eastman. His company -- Ground Aerial -- takes low-altitude aerial images using a 60-foot extendable mast topped with camera equipment. As he said to us in an email today: "[W]e were in Albany on Tuesday working on a project. Since the weather forecast for this weekend doesn't look so great, I thought I'd stop by Washington Park and enjoy the tulips on a nice sunny day. I couldn't rest breaking out the equipment and getting a panoramic shot from the air."

(Thanks, Robert!)

Washington Park tulips are early -- and beautiful

Bloom.

The tulips in Albany's Washington Park are at their peak. Officially. The city actually sent out a press release today to make sure the word got around because the flowers are so early this year.

That's a little funny, but it speaks to how much tulips are part of Albany's identity. And people would be disappointed if they missed out.

We stopped by the park today to check out the blooms. We ran into Jessica Morgan, Albany's new city gardener. She got dealt tough hand in her first year.

"It's terrible luck!" she said to us, laughing, as we watched people admire the beds of flowers.

(there's more)