7H thinks very practically :) He prints his posters on cloth… “easier to carry”. Serious, I have enough of these giant tubes of paper to bring to conferences. Could be great if you could wash the cloth off and re-use it:
“Compared with the citizens of most other countries, Americans have always lived a nomadic existence. Nearly one in five of us move each year and, having done so, are likely to pick up and move again. More than two in five of us expect to move in the next five years. As a result, compared with other peoples, Americans have become accustomed to pitching camp quickly and making friends easily. From our frontier and immigrant past we have learned to plunge into new community institutions when we move.
Nevertheless, for people as for plants, frequent repotting disrupts root systems. It takes time for a mobile individual to put down new roots.”
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney: Simon & Schutster Paperbacks, 2000); p. 204
The concept car… So easy to talk to one another :-P
And a YouTube video 1969 commercial of interest. “Break away…”:
Via Wired science. A smart home made from recycled materials… The consumption of energy/media is monitored.
Info via gizmodo and Wired science.
A strange lollipop from eye candy:
The candy that provides you with a sensational new way to see.
This delicious new confectionary uses cutting edge Sensory Substitution Technology to transmit vivid emotive images into your mind’s eye.
Available in six unique flavours, each helping you achieve the right state of mind by projecting specially created evocative imagery into your field of vision.
Eye Candy is the natural way to become the person you want to be.
Following up with screens and LEDs, here is an interesting article in wired about the band nine inch nails: Nin Dazzles with Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens by Bryan Gardiner. Excerpts:
“Unlike most rock shows, the visuals for about 40 percent of the show (including “Only”) aren’t pre-rendered. There’s no staging, no pantomiming by band members: It’s all interactive, live and rendered on the fly.
[…] The core of the show is a sophisticated trio of transparent “stealth” screens, which are raised and lowered during the performance.Using one high-resolution (1024 x 288) Barco D7 screen — basically, an opaque, computer-controlled screen comprised of a tiny LED system on modular panels — and two lower-resolution semitransparent screens up front, Reznor and other band members are able to trigger and control various video loops and effects directly from the stage. The musicians can also interact directly with those visuals onscreen during the show, thanks to a sophisticated array of sensors and cameras.”
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is the finalist for the technologies of the self book cover! Here is the picture she sent us:
Image/project description:
“Microbe Controllers: Biological Landscaping at Home
Microbes are the enemy. We spend millions on anti-bacterial products, fearing the microbes in our food, in our homes, on our hands. Yet with microbes in our body outnumbering our own cells, they might have more to offer than we thought. Escherichia coli - or E.coli - is the workhorse of the biotech lab and the model bacterium, having played a key role in the development of many biotechnologies. Easily manipulated and cultured in a laboratory, we probably know more about these lowly bacteria than any other living creature on earth. Craig Venter is fishing the world’s oceans, assembling a vast library of diverse microbes, prospecting for new strings of genetic code that may yield new and profitable commercial applications. Microbes are being genetically engineered to create biological computers, infiltrating the previously grey technology of silicon with a new green dimension.Microbe Controllers considers a domestic landscape where engineered microscopic organisms are cultivated to perform useful tasks in the home. Aware of this microscopic landscape around us, will our attitudes to what we accord ‘living’ status change? What are the ethical issues in making living, disposable consumer products? Are we economically compelled to develop biotechnologies and consider the ethics later? At what scale do we value life? In the lab, bacteria, neurons and other cellular scale ‘things’ are not attributed ‘living’ status, but as the size and complexity increases, we begin to feel tenderness or anxiety.
Should we be fighting for microbe rights? Cemeteries and memorials for dead kettles and expired lab cultures? Microbes may not have feelings - as far as we understand - but perhaps we should we explore the ethics of enslaving them before the Argos catalogue is filled with living electronics.”
About Daisy:
“Since finishing my Architecture BA at Cambridge in 2004, I realised that I found what goes on between the walls more interesting than the walls themselves.This realisation led to work in urban regeneration at the Mayor of London’s Architecture & Urbanism Unit, and then after a year at Harvard exploring communication and narrative, working for an agency specialising in social, cultural and spatial planning of the public realm. I am now on the MA Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art, London.
I’m still interested in cities and urbanism: for me that includes not only the buildings and transport infrastructures, but also the interactions, the people, systems, services, stories, governance, toxins, dirt, surveillance, communities, sleaze, hormones, technology, relationships, smells and all the other things that (surprisingly) still make us want to live in urban environments. By 2050, 75% of the world’s population will live in cities; that’s potentially 8 billion urbanites. I think designing and questioning this unprecedented future is important.”
Currently organizing for ReD a workshop bringing together policy makers, industry and academia – the Danish Design School. Here is a sketch mapping the bicycle ecology.
A very inspiring blog: copenhagenize
A must see video: cycling for everyone: lessons for Vancouver from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany
