The Animal Sweater

The pattern on the Animal Sweater suggests a new way to experience commercial imagery. The Animal sweater, designed by Karl Grandin, was first shown at The Biggest Visual Power Show in Zollverein, Germany in 2006. The images here are from the Sandberg Institute’s New Work show in Amsterdam in September 2006. Check out the Animal site.

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Stone Typography

On a day trip to Brighton in the summer of 2004, this dude found a stone in the shape of the letter B. And then the rest of the alphabet.

Animatus

A new series of works by artist Hyungkoo Lee called “Animatus” features hand-fabricated skeletons of cartoon characters along with detailed anatomical drawings. According to the artist, the Animatus series started with the “intention to analyze anatomical structures and physical forms of animation characters, within the hypothesis to visualize their possible anatomical foundation.” Lee constructs the skeletons using a hybrid mix of real animal bones and synthetic materials.

More at Arario Gallery | Related post: Extinct Comic, PictoOrphanage

Fruit Tape

Gummed tape with a fruit-like print on its surface. The tape reminds us of the feeling of peeling fruit when opening a box. A design for opening, rather than packaging.

Designed by Nendo

Typing With Water

A technique developed by the German Claus Winterfor an installation artist makes whatever word you type into a computer visible by a “water-curtain”. The video shows the World premiere during the Nuit Blanche in Paris on October 5th. The theme for the presentation was “Paris” itself and words that different artists associate with it.

Check it out!

Animals in advertising

The work of photographer Michael Wolf, amazing photos of buildings, plants, food and furniture. And unicorns.

His website is definitely worth a look.

The infoBreath

A flower arcing from a frosted pane of glass. Rigged with a breath sensor and connected to an internet packet sniffer, the flower is cued in to the wireless network flowing in the space immediately surrounding it. Breathing onto the flower triggers a flurry of text, making visible the wireless internet traffic passing through the air. The plant absorbs this information, analyzing the bytes of data for those aspects that seem more alive, or human-generated, and releases those packets in a more human-comprehensible form.

Check it out.

Digital Stock Market Garden

The Ticker Garden is a stand-alone data visualization application that monitors a stock portfolio. Different flowers represent the real-time performance of selected stocks via the color, height, & radian of animated blossom flowers. A flower grows from the ground and stops at the height reflecting its share price – the higher the stock price, the higher the ‘flower stem’. As soon as it reaches the top, it begins to blossom fan-wise to the degree that reflects the percentage of price change. The color a direction of a blossom indicates a particular stock’s status of ascent or descent in price compared to its previous trading day. A flying bee will show up around a flower if there is recent news of that particular stock.

Digitectonics

‘Woodcat’ by Tunng

I know, this is a nice piece of fantasy rather than Next Natureâ„¢, but still, you gotta love it. Directed by Jan Urbanowski and Jethro Haynes, animation by www.wer3d.com.

Check out the video!

Fruit-flavoured Breathing

A group of manufacturers are selling canned oxygen. It comes in flavors and it’s a bit like bottled water: a thing that you can get for free but might pay for anyway. But why breathe flavorless, odorless oxygen; when you can have the Mountain Breeze, or Mint Escape. They rae are creating all sorts of flavors and essences to add to their oxygen products including lemon, eucalyptus, cherry, mint, and a host of others. The market has proven that ideas such as this – built on a foundation of being pure, fresh, and clean – can be a huge success.

Human Swarms

A video showing a small intersection in India.

It’s hypnotic.

Penguin Fashion

In January 2000 an oil spill near Phillip Island, Australia, threatened the tiny penguins who live there. The penguins’ home was already at risk – in the past 80 years, the penguins have lost more than 3/4 of their Phillip Island breeding area, mostly as a result of human actions.

Dressing the penguins in doll sweaters proved to be a successful technique to keep the penguins warm and to stop them from swallowing oil. The birds’ feathers are coated in natural oils that keep them warm and waterproof. The oil from the spill destroys the animals’ natural oils. Penguins also clean and smooth their feathers using their beaks. If a penguin preens after an oil spill, it will swallow poisonous oil, and probably die.

Knitters in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States set to work, some adding special touches, like little bows or knitting the sweaters in the colors of their favorite sports teams.

Thanks to the hard work of volunteers, the Phillip Island Nature Park now has more penguin sweaters than penguins who need sweaters. But all involved hope that this unique effort will inspire ways to help other marine wildlife.