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What is Next Nature?

With our attempts to cultivate nature, humankind causes the rising of a next nature, which is wild and unpredictable as ever. Wild systems, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us.

Posts Tagged ‘Image-Consumption’

  • MANKO & Plagiarism

    MANKO & Plagiarism

    In this first review of the works of Manko, we’ll discuss the complex sorts of plagiarism in Augmented Reality art that are typical for our contemporary art scene. This introduces a relevant clue to the later demise of Manko.

    By ASTON REVOLA, Paris 21-08-20, for NextNature.net

    Last year, in May, Manko released an artistic Augmented Reality (AR) application that showed what the missing arms, legs and even heads of some of the most famous sculptures in art history were supposed to look like. Based on artist sketchbooks he remodeled them in 3D and with the use of the new contact lenses of the museum, visitors could now see the whole picture. It was a huge success and soon enough Manko licensed others to remix these virtual body parts he designed. One of the best remixes was actually done by Manko himself, where he transposed the arms of Milo’s Venus onto Dali’s version, making the arms move and search all the drawers in her chest, frantically and endlessly.

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    Aston Revola

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  • iBookshelf: Simulation before Extinction

    iBookshelf: Simulation before Extinction

    As technology progresses we constantly have to adapt ourselves to an ever changing media landscape. Designers try to smooth the changes with a ‘progressive nostalgic‘ strategy: linking newfangled technologies with familiar phenomena.

    Flipping through the bookshelf on your iPad, provides the owner with the familiar feeling of having an easily accessible library of books. The nostalgic reference to a wooden bookshelf makes the modern notion of a digital book collection graspable. At the same time, the digital storage of books is expected to have a huge impact on the publishing industry and the actual use of books: similar to the first cars that were designed as ‘horseless carriages’ and the ‘envelope’ icon you click to open your email application, which acceptance caused an drastic decrease in the use of actual envelopes, the digital book cabinet is a first sign of extinction for the physical book cabinets it so elegantly simulates.

    A technology that already became extinct is simulated in the iRetroPhone rotary dialer application for those who want to dial grandma’s style.

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    Koert van Mensvoort

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  • Go forth, Buy a Smartphone and Reproduce Thyself

    Go forth, Buy a Smartphone and Reproduce Thyself

    It took some years of evolution to turn sex (between different sexes) from a stricly functional activity attuned to reproduction, into the recreational activity it is primarily observed today. And technology, like the anti-conception pill, did not play just a small role in that.

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    Hendrik-Jan Grievink

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  • Smart vending machine

    Smart vending machine

    At Tokyo’s Shinagawa Station visitors can now select beverages from a 47-inch touch panel.

    An embedded camera will recognize your gender and age, allowing the machine to recommend a beverage suitable to whatever stereotype is attached to your particular circumstances. It will store your purchasing history too, so you can be freaked out by tailored ads every time you use it. 500 more of these units are planned to be installed in and around Tokyo over the next two years, with operating company JR East expecting them to tally up 30 percent more sales than their analog brethren. Via engadget.com

    Smart vending machines in the streets show that Big Brother is being naturally accepted in a pixel consuming society.

    Arnoud van den Heuvel

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  • A Soft Drink Fairytale

    A Soft Drink Fairytale

    Once upon a time there were two global soft drink brands. One old brand and another, slightly younger. The older one positioned itself as The Real Thing as it entered the market first, and the younger suffered a lot from that. How can you compete with something that is… REAL?

    The more the younger brand tried to be just like The Real Thing, the more it was being perceived as… the Fake Thing! This became even worse because The Real Thing did not make the slightest effort to become even a little bit like The Fake Thing – it just stayed its authentic self over the course of 125 years. The younger brand became very sad and tried to move away from the Real Thing. ‘Puh!’ it said, ‘they may be old and real, but we’re fresh and new!’. They used all kinds of slogans to position themselves as a choice for a new generation of consumers, and borrowed from some ancient Asian symbolism to create a fresh image – but if that was such a lucky choice?

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    Hendrik-Jan Grievink

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  • Mercedes-Benz Was Here

    Mercedes-Benz Was Here

    In the older days, people had to cross natural barriers like mountains for survival purposes. Grains from one side of the mountain was traded with cloth from the other side, for example. Today, we trade images and visual information overload has taken the place of the the mountain.

    One can imagine this trading trips our ancestors made could be tough endeavors. Dangerous slopes and treacherous wheather conditions can take their toll, up in the mountains. Not to speak of the physical challenge of to climbing a mountain, packed with trading goods. New technologies like tunnels, cars and helicopters made it possible to skip the long climbs that take a strain on your body and mountain climbing as a bare necessity died out, to make place for mountain climbing as a recreational activity.

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    Hendrik-Jan Grievink

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  • Dog Modding in China

    Dog Modding in China

    As a child, I already saw some great tiger potential in my cat and some shark-ish attitude in the behaviour of my goldfish. Personally, I think that since we started domesticating animals, man must have had fantasies about undomesticating them. The thrill of making ‘man’s best friend’ into his enemy again – if only it where for one day: Back to the tribe!

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    Hendrik-Jan Grievink

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  • Chinese Crayons

    Chinese Crayons

    Though I did not eat as many crayons as PiPi growing up, I’m sure we all remember the first day we tasted wax. How can something *look* so tasty, yet be totally bland. But I digress. Due to the sissy-fication of America, Crayon colour’s names have been slowly but surely changed over the years in order to be more politically correct. For example, in 1962 the crayon colour “flesh” was renamed to “peach”. A travesty of justice in my opinion. The replacement name should have been more suited to represent both the actual colour AND the history of the crayon’s original name. I would have named it “honkey-hued-hei-ren-hanging-honeydew”. Having said that, let me present the Sinocidal Chinese CrayonColours. Peculiar image.

    Via mylaowai.com, thanks to Mónica Carriço

    Hendrik-Jan Grievink

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  • YouTube Preview Image

    When Dreams become a Commodity

    As neuroscience progresses, we gain access to previously inaccessible and unexplored areas of the human mind. Consequentially the intricate processes in our brain are cultivated and transferred into explicit information. Soon after, they become a commodity.

    In his forthcoming film Inception, director Christopher Nolan – renowned from blockbusters like The Prestige and The Dark Knight – explores the notion of people entering and sharing a dream space. If you had the ability to access somebody’s unconscious mind, what would that be used and abused for? The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Dom Cob, an expert in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable.

    “What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind, can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it.”

    Although the technologies presented in the film are vastly speculative and assume a level of info-neuroscience that might never be realized – if only because the fundamentally distributed architecture of the human brain would turn out principally incompatible with digital information technology – the thought experiment of having shared dream spaces and being able to steal thoughts directly from someones mind, has a certain luster nonetheless.

    Besides the obvious implications on governmental, corporate and personal espionage – I know where you slept last night – , there could be serious ramification on our copyright & patent system as well. While one currently has to materialize an idea to a certain extend when filing a patent, the technology to share and record your dream space allows you to have witnesses that can prove you did indeed already have that certain brilliant idea, long before someone else filed the patent, in your dreams…  Yet another step in the materialization of the virtual.

    Koert van Mensvoort

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  • Blob architecture 1.400 AD

    Blob architecture 1.400 AD

    Blob architecture 1.400 AD in the emperor’s garden in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Peculiar image, from China with love.

    Hendrik-Jan Grievink

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  • To Milk the Cows, Click here

    To Milk the Cows, Click here

    In millions of offices and homes around the world, people are hard at work planting crops, feeding cattle and tilling their land. Welcome to Farmville, the digital rural world where the sun always shines, where beans take two days to grow, where pink cows produce strawberry milk, where farming is leisure.

    Farmville has become a viral Internet trend since its launch as a Facebook application in 2007. According to Zynga, the company that brought FarmVille into the world, it has rapidly grown to over 70 million users – compare that to the one million traditional farmers active in the USA.

    Players sign up and get fields, infrastructure, and cash. Their task is to create bigger, better, and richer farms. The game starts off with a given piece of land and seeds that can be planted, harvested and sold for online coins. As you make money, you can buy things, from basics like pumpkin seeds and chicken to the truly superfluous, like elephants and hot-air balloons. Impatient players can use credit cards or a PayPal account to buy more assets, although purists tend to disapprove on the practice and constrain themselves to developing their farm through simple ‘labor’.

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    Koert van Mensvoort

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  • Brand Mutation: Beersneaker

    Brand Mutation: Beersneaker

    What happens when brands have sex and make children? The Nike Dunk SB Heineken were a hit amongst sneaker-wearing-beer-drinkers, but unfortunately the child was unofficial. Heineken was more than disturbed about Nike not contacting them prior to production. The Beer company now requests for the Nike Beersneaker to be pulled when listed on eBay. Peculiar object of the week.

    Via Sneakerfiles.

    Koert van Mensvoort

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