"In all of my photographs I play the characters because I relate easy and it's much more interesting like this. The 8 bit objects that I've created are made from polyester and painted on with acrylic" LOW - REz LIFE (part 1)(via who killed bambi?)
"Boilerplate is a fictional robot of the Victorian era and early 20th century ... Boilerplate originally featured on a website created by Paul Guinan in 2000 as an online pitch for a graphic novel. The Boilerplate site details the history of a remarkable robot built in the late 19th century, and features photoshopped "archival images" in which Boilerplate (actually a 12-inch articulated model) is seen interacting with historical figures, such as Teddy Roosevelt and Pancho Villa. Becoming aware that some visitors to the site were taken in by its contents, making it an unintentional hoax, Guinan resolved to see how authentic he could make the character seem, working to ensure the descriptions of non-fictional events were accurate ..."Graphic Novel bei Amazon: Boilerplate: History's Mechanical Marvel
(via we make money not art)"Tardigotchi is an artwork featuring two pets: a living organism and an alife avatar. These two disparate beings find themselves the unlikely denizens of a portable computing enclosure. The main body for this enclosure is a brass sphere, housing the alife avatar in an LED screen and the tardigrade within a prepared slide. A tardigrade is a common microorganism measuring half a millimeter in length. The alife avatar is a caricature of this tardigrade, its behaviour is partially autonomous, but it also reflects a considerable amount of expression directly from the tardigrade’s activities (like eating) ... By pushing a button, the virtual pet is fed, which in turn will feed the tardigrade. Tardigotchi has a social web presence: sending an email to the virtual character triggers a heating lamp, relaying a momentary signal of warmth to the tardigrade, while prompting the pixelated tardigrade to recline and soak up animated sun rays ... It also serves as a reminder for the special place humans have in communing with other animals, perhaps equally for artificial ones ..." Tardigotschi (inkl. Tardigotschi-Video, das leider erst ab Minute 3:30 halbwegs interessant wird)
"We have refurbished a vintage 1965 Boeing 727 airframe, which in its prior life shuttled globetrotters on South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines (Colombia) ... Our classic airplane, nestled on the edge of the National Park in our Costa Verde II area, is perched on a 50-foot pedestal. At this height, you will enjoy scenic ocean and jungle views from the hard wood deck built atop the plane's former right wing ..." 727 Fuselage Home (viele Fotos, die es auch in groß gibt)(via Fubiz)
"These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations ..." Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943(via MeFi)
It is now a museum run by the nonprofit Arizona Aerospace Foundation which includes a Titan II intercontinental ballistic missile still in its silo as well as the original launch facilities. It is very spectacular and impressive. And it seems like if you to push the red button the third world war would begin! A nuclear silo in the United States (33 pics)Neulich hatte ich das russische Gegenstück gepostet – und jedesmal wenn ich mir solche Fotos anschaue, kann ich den Irrsinn kaum fassen ...
"The irony is that James Dean was considered anything but stylish by many of his Hollywood peers of the day. He turned heads and created a legend, not by dressing up– but by dressing down. Established style icon Humphrey Bogart looked down his nose at Dean, considering him a punk and a slob. On Jimmy’s passing, Bogart had this to say– “Dean died at just the right time. He left behind a legend. If he’d lived, he’d never have been able to live up to the publicity.” ... James Dean cemented the rebel uniform for his generation of youth, and for many to come, through his very personal portrayal of Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause. Immortalized onscreen in Technicolor wearing the now iconic red jacket, white tee, Lee 101 Jeans, and engineer boots, Dean seemed to hold the world breathless, and became the first actor to speak for the silent anguished teen– he gave them a voice they had been lacking ..." JAMES DEAN CULTURAL GIANT OF THE REBEL SETFilmfreunde erfahren in dem Artikel nicht unbedingt was Neues, aber es geht ja sowie mehr um die Fotos ...
“A kind of taste pack for oatmeal. This package contains the right amount of oatmeal with added sugar and salt. You break your BREAK FAST pack over a bowl, add water and cook in the microwave. Then you can tentatively serve with cold milk. The idea is to target a new audience that otherwise would not eat oatmeal, but also to those who are usually in a hurry in the morning and tend to skip today’s most important meal, breakfast. Break it fast and have a BREAK FAST!” Student Work – Niklas Hessman(via NOTCOT)
"If you feel you are part of our modern viewless generation, the txtBOMBER is the perfect tool for you! Just switch it on, it's powered by a strong battery. And move it along a wall. It's that easy to show your?its?someones? opinion of something?someone?! Hell! You should reconsider if you are keen enough to use it! The txtBOMBER has seven build-in pens to "print" the letters and a micro-controller-brain (Arduino), no need for a computer or any other brain." txtBOMBER(via Berlin based Streetart)
"The skill is first demonstrated via kinesthetic teaching, and then refined by Policy learning by Weighting Exploration with the Returns (PoWER) algorithm ... After 50 trials, the robot learns that the first part of the task requires a stiff behavior to throw the pancake in the air, while the second part requires the hand to be compliant in order to catch the pancake without having it bounced off the pan."(via BotJunkie)
“My photographs of the derelict shopfronts record the last moments of the Jewish community in the area – the bustling world of the inter-war years had been moved into the suburbs, and the community that stayed behind was less identifiable. In the nineteen eighties they were just hanging on, some premises had been empty for more than five years. Like a mouthful of broken teeth, a boxer’s mouth that had been thumped, with holes where teeth once were ... Later, in 1988, I moved back here to live in a co-operative housing scheme in Whitehorse Rd in Stepney and then I had time to walk around in this landscape that evoked the fragmentary stories I had heard of my grandparents’ lives in the East End ... The eighties were a terrible time for removing everything, comparable to what the Victorians had done a century earlier. So I photographed the shopfronts because this landscape was not going to last and then I put the pictures in a box." Alan Dein, East End Shopfronts 1988 und More East End Shopfronts of 1988(via How to be a Retronaut)
"The final design—the MPL—offers 22 degrees of motion, including independent movement of each finger, in a package that weighs about nine pounds, the weight of a natural limb. Providing nearly as much dexterity as a natural limb, the MPL is capable of unprecedented mechanical agility, and is designed to respond to a user’s thoughts ... The team will develop implantable micro-arrays used to record brain signals and stimulate the brain. It also will conduct experiments and clinical trials to demonstrate the ability to use implantable neural interfaces safely and effectively to control a prosthesis, and optimize arm control and sensory feedback algorithms that enable dexterous manipulation through the use of a neuro-prosthetic limb." APL gets funding to test thought-controlled prosthetic limb (via io9)Apropos Prothese: Papproboter-Arme, die man bei Etsy kaufen kann. (via Boing Boing)
"It was the time, when I was eating sashimi at a bar, fiddling with my iPad. A slice of Tuna accidentally dropped on the iPad. At that time, I hurriedly got rid of the sashimi, wiped it off. Later I found that suddenly. In the first place, If iPad were a dish, there are no problem. Now, I introduce a revolutionary way of using iPad ..." Let's start a new life with iDish(via reddit)
"one day I ... read about a guy who used his Arduino to turn a TV on and off with one of those brainwave reading headsets. Then later on that same day I was here at Instructables and a fellow had made an office chair that twitters every time he farted. So, I got to thinking and decided to mash those two hacks into one remote that changes the TV to a random channel every time he tutes ... if you throw it in a plastic enclosure and hide it between the couch cushions; you've got a purdy dang good prank!" Fart Operated Random Channel TV Remote
"The Attenborough Design Group (ADG) is a fictional research group charged with investigating the use of behaviours found in nature to defend emerging technologies ... These products include the Gesundheit Radio, which sneezes periodically to expel potentially damaging dust, Floppy Legs - the portable floppy disk drive which stands up if it detects liquid nearby, and the AntiTouch Lamp, which sways away from you if you get too close to it’s sensitive halogen bulb."(via core77)
"this is ... a full CG generated panorama ... I made it to give special recognition to M.C.Escher's work, a very talented artist widely known. This impossible world was inspired by Escher's litograph "Relativity". Be careful not to get sick wandering around!" Tribute to Escher(via Boing Boing)
Gutes Design ist innovativ.(via kottke)
Gutes Design macht ein Produkt brauchbar.
Gutes Design ist ästhetisches Design.
Gutes Design macht ein Produkt verständlich.
Gutes Design ist ehrlich.
Gutes Design ist unaufdringlich.
Gutes Design ist langlebig.
Gutes Design ist konsequent bis ins letzte Detail.
Gutes Design ist umweltfreundlich.
Gutes Design ist sowenig Design wie möglich.
"With grand buildings, subtropical climate and scenic location ... the resort city of Gagra was once known as the “Russian Riviera.” ... It is widely claimed that, shortly after the Soviet triumph, Lenin personally gave the order to convert this haven of the rich into a paradise for the proletariat. In the 70 years that followed, Gagra was to the USSR what Hawaii was to the United States, an exotic foreign kingdom located within its borders — all the sunshine you can handle and no need for a phrasebook. Yet, almost immediately after the collapse of communism, this former playground of Czarists and lucky Soviet citizens became the scene of open combat and ethnic cleansing. Significant sections of the city were abandoned after the conflict came to an end in 1993, and since then have crumbled into an eerie ruin ..."
Wired: War-Torn and Overgrown, Ghost Town Was Soviet Paradise (Text + viele Fotos)
"I picked up a children's picture book at the local library recently. Some of you might be thinking, "Why would you take out a Japanese picture book? Are your Japanese language skills that atrophied?" Well, this happened to be a very special book, because it showed kids how Nintendo games are made, from start to finish. With some fantastically juicy pictures! And not only that, the game it focussed on was Super Mario Bros. 3! The book was published in late 1989, based on a tour and interview session at Nintendo of Japan in July of that same year (this will become evident in a later picture). They interview Shigeru Miyamoto, Koji Kondo, all the major players in Nintendo's games. The Stars of Famicom Games – How Video Games are Made
"A typology of rap videos and an attempt to construct the most generic Rap video out of many. Musical genres are always heavily codified and rap seems to be one of the most extreme ones, each video has similar if not identical subjects, the same light, the same cars, the same girls, the same dance moves etc. Through their likeness they seem to be almost ‘classic’, just as classic theater or opera."(via today and tomorrow)
"The Lego NXT wall-e transformable robot is fully self controlled It uses Lego Mindstorms programming environment. It is for all I know the first Lego build look-alike wall-e which is capable to transform automated. This transformation is quite similar to the way the original wall-e does it." Nxt-WALL-E-Transformable(via Make)
"It’s difficult to imagine this once-fantastical device without thinking of iPads, iPhones, Kindles, and Wikipedia. And it’s unfortunate that Douglas Adams, a Mac-user and tech nerd, never got to see his vision realized of a handheld device with instant access to endless sources of information. In the book, the device is described has having “about a hundred” tiny buttons, though were it written today, the Guide would surely have a touchscreen. Still, I couldn’t resist making it look like a calculator (and very much like a Kindle) if only to decorate the buttons with an alien alphabet ... This will be my last illustration for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In creating the series I realized that I didn’t want to illustrate the characters. It’s a book about ideas — science, reason, philosophy, religion — and the characters exist only as vessels for these ideas" It’s a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That’s its job (mit Link zu iPad-Wallpaper, für das man sich alberner Weise bei Flickr eingeloggen muss)Weitere Illustrationen von John Martz:
"I'm stopping at 3000," Zieja says. "I'm not collecting metal lunch boxes anymore because there are only about eight ever made that I don't have." Zieja, 54, claims he's got the largest collection on public display in the United States. Maybe even the world. Still, it's hard to fathom a number like 3,000 when talking about lunch boxes ... Hot Collectible Lunch Boxes Preserve the Past
"[This work] consists of a wallinstallation of 14 switches transformed in a disgusting way. Every time a switch is pressed, a virtual light-bulb on a screen is lighting up as a feedback for the test-person. Through its simplicity and its everyday occurrence, the interaction with a switch has been marginalised into subconscious behaviour ... I want to show that people are indeed both repelled and fascinated by the disgusting transformation of the switches. Katrin Baumgarten: Disgusting Switch Installation (inkl. Fotos)(via Make)
"Andrei Tarkowski war der Sohn des Lyrikers Arseni Tarkowski. Schon früh machte sich seine künstlerische Begabung bemerkbar, wobei diese durch seine Mutter gefördert wurde. Er studierte in den 1950er Jahren zunächst Musik, Malerei, Bildhauerei, Orientalistik und Geologie, bevor er 1954 an der Filmhochschule in Moskau zu studieren begann ... Seine Filme Andrej Rubljow, Solaris, Der Spiegel und Stalker konnten nur gegen starken Widerstand der Behörden veröffentlicht werden. Die meisten erhielten, auch gegen den Protest der offiziellen sowjetischen Vertreter bei den Filmfestivals, internationale Preise. Die Filmmusik vieler seiner Filme wurde von Eduard Artemjew komponiert und mit dem ersten sowjetischen Synthesizer vertont ... Tarkowski war zwar im Ausland berühmt, doch in seiner Heimat blieb ihm die offizielle Anerkennung versagt ... Er verließ 1983 die Sowjetunion, um in Italien Nostalghia zu drehen und um der erzwungenen Untätigkeit in der Sowjetunion zu entgehen ..."(via Rivva)
In the 1930s, a new style of poster emerged that reflected the growing significance of the masses in Japanese society. These artistic posters borrowed elements from Western design and often incorporated bold slogans with political, economic and educational themes ..."
"Since the dawn of time man has struggled to unlock the secrets of eternal life. Occult Jam is a small triumph over mortality. Base ingredients are preserved through their transformation into jam and enhanced with powerful artifacts ... The jams include: Absinthe and pineapple with sand from the Great Pyramids, Plum and Oak with wood from Nelson's ship The Victory [and] Milk Jam infused with a speck of Princess Diana's hair" (Hervorhebung von mir)Wie es nun aussieht können wir uns möglicherweise schon bald alle Prinzessin aufs Brot schmieren:
"The jam could soon hit supermarket shelves after top retailers showed an interest in stocking it ... Sam Bompas, who founded the quirky catering company with school friend Henry Parr three years ago, said: “It started out as jam as art, taking something very mundane and turning it into something fun which tastes good. “The milk jam takes a speck of Princess Diana’s hair and infuses it in gin before it is turned into jam with milk and sugar. We got the hair off eBay. There’s a chap in the States who buys up celebrity hair, then cuts it up into small pieces and sells it on. At the moment we are only selling it through the Barbican but I am speaking to a couple of really big retailers ..." FANS' FURY AT ROYAL JELLY MADE WITH DIANA'S HAIR(via Cakehead Loves Evil)
"In the 70's, Rob Hampton and some friends created their own versions of "King Kong", "Star Trek", and even an Alien homage called "Starbeast". Hampton unearthed those decades-old super 8 films and added in new sound effects, better editing, and dubbed in all the voices (including the girls). The results are tremendous fun ..."Alle drei Videos nach dem Klick
"This piece of work is a bird's eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world." 1945-1998 by Isao Hashimoto
"The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth's atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see: a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the belts ..." A Very Scary Light Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space (inkl. Video, das sich leider nicht einbinden lässt)(via io9)
"Pizzazz was a magazine published by Marvel Comics from 1977 to 1979, for a total run of 16 issues. Aimed at the youth culture, Pizzazz mostly contained articles about popular movies, rock stars, et cetera, as well as comic strips and puzzles. Recurring features included a comic about Amy Carter's life as the President's daughter, a serialized Star Wars comic, and a one-page comic by Harvey Kurtzman (usually from the 1940s) on the last page. The covers showed either photos of popular celebrities, or photo-realistic drawings of celebrities and/or Marvel superheroes ..."(via Fanboy)
"Meet your friendly neighborhood Spider-Kid! It's the stuff of childhood dreams, right? A boy in Cambridge, England, can climb the walls just like his favorite superhero. OK, Vacuum-Boy's powers are slightly less subtle than Peter Parker's. But you have to love 13-year-old Hibiki Kono's creativity. He spent five months designing and building his Spider-Man gear from a pair of cheap 1,400-watt vacuums bought at Tesco (like a British Wal-Mart) and some suction pads ..." POPSCI: English 13-Year-Old Builds Vacuum-Powered Spider-Man Contraption And Literally Climbs the WallsDas Ganze geht auf eine Story in der SUN zurück, aber da rollen sich mir die Fingernägel beim Verlinken auf.
Project Review: Project "Meadow" (WDI)
Project Review: e-Ticket Paris 1997
