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.”

zero energy media wall

Info via core77

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

Visited the famous cemetery in Nørrebro (Copenhagen, Denmark) where Kierkegaard and Andersen are buried… and saw that:

Movable objects in a cemetery :-)

While conducting research on Green technology for ReD… I came across sweet pix and sites of interest to the neo-nomad:

EDF partners with Toyota. Picture taken from autobloggreen.

And MIT, always ahead… “recommends steps to slash gasoline use by 2035“:

“John B. Heywood, the Sun Jae Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has led research examining different approaches to cutting transportation fuel use and emissions. He and his colleagues recently released a comprehensive report that integrates findings from five years’ work.

MIT assessments of various propulsion technologies yielded these estimates of their potential fuel consumption in 2035. The analyses assumed that these new cars—to be sold in the United States—have the same performance and interior size as today’s average mid-size car. The 2035 vehicles have more efficient engines and transmissions, 20 percent lower weight, and reduced drag and tire resistances.”

And of course GM’s OnStar technology:

“With more than two million subscribers, OnStar is the leading provider of telematics services in the United States. Telematics is the transmission of data communications between systems and devices. OnStar’s in-vehicle safety, security, and information services use Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite and cellular technology to link the vehicle and driver to the OnStar Center. At the OnStar Center, advisors offer real-time, personalized help 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”

The legend of Figure 3 reads:

“Within seconds of a moderate to severe crash, the OnStar module will send a message to the OnStar Call Center (OCC) through a cellular connection, informing the advisor that a crash has occurred. A voice connection between the advisor and the vehicle occupants is established. The advisor then can conference in 911 dispatch or a public safety answering point (PSAP), which determines if emergency services are necessary. If there is no response from the occupants, the advisor can provide the emergency dispatcher with the crash information from the SDM that reveals the severity of the crash. The dispatcher can identify what emergency services may be appropriate. Using the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite, OnStar advisors are able to tell emergency workers the location of the vehicle.”

In French, the word for furniture, “mobilier”, originates from the Latin word “mobilis”, that which is moveable. In essence, a piece of furniture — a “meuble” — is displaceable. Modernists have attached pieces of furniture to the building envelope not only by literally integrating furniture to surfaces but also because they created pieces of furniture that matched their design philosophy and that fitted within spaces. On one hand, an integrated design piece, on the other hand a sort of mobile unit that is abstract enough to blend in with its surrounding; the now classic pieces of furniture — that of highest excellence — were once part of a total design. They were blending spatially and disappearing visually, and communicating the architect’s vision of offering democratic design solutions — design for the masses. Out of its ideal context, a space designed by the same architect, what does a piece of furniture created by an acclaimed master still retain?

Charles and Ray Eames (My favorite :) Lounge Chair and Ottoman, 1956. Picture from the Vitra website. The description says: “Charles Eames’ declared aim for this chair was to combine the utmost comfort with high-end materials and high-quality finishing. The result: a modern interpretation of the traditional club armchair boasting a convincingly well thought-out construction, right down to its tiniest details. Just as he intended, the chair conveys the impression of a soft, well-used baseball glove, inviting the user to sink back into it.”

Extension of the architect’s vision, the piece of furniture he creates vehicle his thinking. Meant to fit within unique interiors of modernist architecture, the mass-produced — and re-produced — mobile unit becomes a communication agent, a mean for designer to reach as many people as possible — and not always the elite. Even if building re-production has been a hot topic for a while (Prefabrication), a piece of furniture is a much more manageable element to copy with or without license, and cheaper to acquire. More tangible and visible than a coffee table book, it is a three dimensional communication and promotion tool for the architect — as architects pervade more interiors — and if sometimes an object of aspiration for the en-user, an integral part of a collection.

An extension of someone else vision, the piece of furniture carries much symbolism and intent. Having such a piece of furniture in a space that you gave birth to means acknowledging the authority of a considered master. Architects, and interior architects relate to this in different manners. For many architects, space is the showpiece. Architects usually hold on to their creation to the very last and small details and want to control all phases of the design process — Shop Architects uses BIM, the Building Information Modeling software (Any change in price or design is updated all throughout) — including the specification or design (Treating furniture like buildings) of furniture. A particular architectural program however is that of the museum for that the space of a museum needs to tune out so to emphasize the art whose period. Architecture in that case becomes at its best a jewel case that brings art and architecture to a whole. For interior designers on the other hand, the atmosphere of an interior is what matters most. They focus on the assemblage of unique pieces they curates in space. While architects sample theories and concepts, interior architects put together more tangible material, chairs, lamps, fabric… etc. Objects, with all what they may embody are in focus.

To be continued…

Back from fieldwork in Mumbai where I researched the usage of certain computing devices. A side note from the study was the realization that an entire Indian population lived on recycling electric goods. Here is a picture:

The West surely could learn from this practice. Indeed e-waste has been a big problem, and unfortunately a bigger problem for developing countries: European E-waste Labeled ‘Second-hand’ is Unloaded in Ghana.

An example of awareness project, the WEEE man:

“The WEEE Man is made from the amount of waste electrical and electronic products that an average UK citizen – YOU – will throw away in YOUR lifetime, if YOU carry on disposing of products at the current rate. Currently most of these products go straight into landfill. From January 2006 manufactures & retailers will be responsible for recycling this waste under new EU legislation called the WEEE (Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment) Directive.”

An initiative of interest. We have already mentioned the project “Sharer” by Vinay Venkatraman and James Tichenor:

Beach time in CPH. The weather is excellent… Saw strange boats from Island Brygge – CPH-plage

The “Pirate” boat. phone pix (I really need to upgrade that one!)

The “Sofa”-boat. Phone pix :(

And since we are talking about boats… Check the iboat boat mapper… The 100th race to Mackinac just ended. Noah tells me that they “carried a transponder so they were tracking [their] location…” “Click “The Race” and then “Race Tracking”":

The path of Noah’s ark ;) Xoxo for the info!