Plastic is a new material in the Earths ecosystem
I gathered this hand full of tiny pieces of plastic on less than one square meter of beach in Greece (map). Spotted with the Next Nature Spotter iPhone app.
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 ‘Plastic-Fantastic’
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Artificial Shrub Observatories
Justin Shull investigates the born and the made by mixing them up in mobile installations like the “Terrestrial Shrub Rover” and the “Porta Hedge”. His designs consist of several eco-conscious design features including recycled Christmas trees on the exterior, wood finishing on the interior, and the relaxing sound of birdsong audio on the interior and exterior. These vehicles are made to observe and explore both terrestrial and social environments.
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Unlimited Urban Woods
What to do when you have a small city with limited space, and you rather turn available space into parking lots instead of parks? You turn to DUS Architects for an unlimited forrest. The Unlimited Urban Woods lets you disappear into an endless forrest that just takes a few square meters.
By placing a real tree into a cubic space of mirrors, the tree gets repeated endlessly, creating the feeling of a forrest. Personally, I would be interested in an endless parking space in the forrest too.
Images by Pieter Kers.
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Urban Dolls
The idea of altering your body for aesthetic purposes is still somewhat frowned upon today. But more than because the very idea of improving yourself, this is about its irreversible nature.
When a women has some silicons inserted in her mammary glands, she’s very unlikely to go to back to a petite 75B one month later, but that very same woman can simply throw her high heels in the corner and wipe of the lipstick after an important vernissage. Compared to plastic surgery, clothing and make-up are much more accepted ways of presenting yourself to the opposite sex as that hyper-attractive step up the evolutionary ladder.
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LED Religion
The Catholic Church is not exactly renowned for its progressive attitude towards technological progress. Just think of the belligerent attitude the Church still has towards contemporary next nature phenomena like condom use, the anti–conception pill or gay marriage and you’ll get the drift. When it comes to fund raising, however, the Church tends to be more technologically progressive.
During a recent visit of the Central Cathedral in Barcelona, Spain, I spotted these LED based wake lights, which seamlessly replace the wax candles traditionally used to make your prayer tangible. Apparently the God fearing people in control of the Church decided there is no noteworthy spiritual difference between LED’s and burning candles?
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Hydrogel heals injured Brain & Bone-tissue
A new nano-particle-infused hydrogel, developed by scientists from Clemson University, should be able to heal scrambled brains and broken bones. The gel creates new blood vessels and in a later stage encourages the body to make its own stem cells to replace dead bone and/or brain cells.
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Geminoid Female
Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro (Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaska University) has done it again! This time in coöperation with robot-maker Kokoro Co. Ltd. Objective: to create a realistic-looking remote-control female android (actroid) that mimics the facial expressions and speech of a human operator. Result: “Geminoid F”.
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Cuddly Scooters
Why do we grow attached to things? Patricia Piccinini captured it well in this peculiar work: The Stags – 2008 (Culture becomes nature)
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Recycled Island
Recycled island is a research project on the potential of realizing a habitable floating island in the Pacific Ocean made from all the plastic waste that is momentarily floating around in the ocean.
The idea is as simple as it is ambitious: recycle the great pacific garbage patch – a concentration of plastic litter in the central North Pacific about the size of France – on the spot and turn it into a floating island at the size of Hawai.
Although the project is still highly speculative the people of WHIM architecture deserve kudos for their nextnatural view on plastic as a basic material in the Earths ecosystem that can be mined and used for better purposes than polluting birds.
We are keen on how the project will develop further. In cause it turns out to be too difficult we can always return our focus on designing microbes that eat plastic.
Related posts: Designing bugs that eat plastic, Plastic Birds, It came out of the sea. -
Grapple – a Grape flavored Apple
They say “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, but now we wonder what this keeps away, the Grapple, a hyperfruit that “Grunches like an Apple. Tastes like a Grape.”
The manufacturers of the hyperfruit cheerfully present their product as the missing link between candy and traditional fruits that – according to them – could even be an answer to unhealthy eating habits:
“With childhood obesity increasing at alarming rates, Grāpple® brand apples could go a long way to improving the eating habits of children and introducing them to more produce.”
The Grapple is made by adding flavorings to a regular Washington Extra Fancy Fuji Apple, the process uses some “complex” infusion technique and adds no additional sugars or calories.
Grapples are not genetically altered in any way, which might give parents some comfort, although we should actually be disappointed that the Grapple is merely a processed apple, rather than a bred fruit, as this means that the production of every single Grapple requires additional energy and resources – then again, the same is true for traditional sugar candy.
Anyhow, parents will be in trouble when their kids ask to show them the “Grapple tree”.
See also: Who designed the Banana?, Why are Carrots Orange? It is political, Hyper fruits, Some Kids don’t like Chicken, Better than the real thing. Thanks: John Weeks.
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Stereotype Packaging
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), unhealthy diet is amongst one of the leading causes of the major non-communicable diseases. Can design encourage people to rethink their relationship with healthy food to gain a balanced diet?
The series of food packaging were created from the observations on personal behaviors. Using the recognizable stereotyping packaging would make people feel more physically and physiologically connected with those daily objects. By giving the good food a little make over, it could contribute the availability of healthy food and encourages people to make a change for their everyday life.
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Doll Box Coffins
This interactive piece called Boys & Girls was made by artist Job Koelewijn, who invites people to take place in the life size coffin–style Barbie & Ken packages, where they are spectated as seemingly lifeless dolls by the rest of the audience. The experience is somewhat uncanny, but I can’t think of a better place to reflect upon your own personal level of ‘cultivation’ as a human being.
The work is currently on display at the conversation-starting-and-altogether-lustrous NIET NORMAAL exhibition in Amsterdam (NL). Besides coffin-style doll boxes the expo also includes works of known Next Nature explorers like Floris Kaayk, Mieke Gerrizen and myself. Thus recommended, nice catalogue too.
