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.
No, the peculiar image above was not created by an in vitro fertilized child from the combined DNA of Escher, Mondrian and Pollock, but rather by 21th century designer Remco van Bladel. The dazzling image is part of the visual identity of the ongoing Patterns and Pleasure Festival organized by Steim in Amsterdam.
Recommended for both musicians as well as economists – if you happen to be in the neighborhood – do visit the Next Nature lecture at the Gardening Complexity symposium. Contrary to the modernistic approach of simplifying through modeling, we must now embrace complexity and guide its growth. Word up.
Filed under Biomimicmarketing. Pleases your inner monkey. Peelable banana ice cream by Nesle. Thanks Jurrian.
Twenty-first century Fata Morgana. If only. Accidental photograph by Pauline Gerritzen.
Behold the heroic journey of one of the most illustrious creatures on our planet.
Created by the good people of Healthebay.org.
Our peculiar image of the week presents us the lustrous uncannyness of a Beetle car in its embryonic stage. Rest assure: this is fiction, however, metaphorically the sculpture by artist Olav Mooij represents a profound truth we are only gradually getting attuned to: how mankind is co-evolving with its technology and thereby enabling non-genetic evolution.
The beetle egg is currently on display at the Natuur Apps expo at the Gouverneurstuin in Assen (NL), where it will remain until September 1th. The expo is closed with a Next Nature lecture, so if you happen to be in the neighborhood..
So, what do you get when an owl watches too much animated TV cartoon series? An amazing shape-shifting Transformer Owl! Now seriously, we don’t actually think this wondrous White Faced Scops Owl from South Africa was inspired by the Transformer Robot series – rather the other way around. Off topic? Perhaps. We dig it nonetheless. Next nature rocks, but some times old nature just rocks even better.
Associate professor Anne Trubek argues that handwriting will soon be history, because writing words by hand is a technology that’s just too slow for our times, and our minds. A copy-paste summary from her essay:
“Handwriting has been around for just 6,000 of humanity’s some 200,000 years. Its effects have been enormous, of course: It alters the brain, changes with civilizations, cultures and factions, and plays a role in religious and political battles.”
“Most of us know, but often forget, that handwriting is not natural. We are not born to do it. There is no genetic basis for writing. Writing is not like seeing or talking, which are innate. Writing must be taught.”
Looking for a new kitchen counter-top, but can’t decide between a natural or an artificial material? Soon you might be getting both.
Designer Hironori Yoshida is pioneering hybrids of wood and plastic – to be used in interior, furniture and product design. His ‘woodplastic’ is created by scanning & laser-cutting the grain patterns in a piece of wood to subsequently replace the gaps with a polyester resin. The result is a marriage of the made & the born.
Unsatisfied with the variety of vegetables in your local Supermarket? Why not try the Art Gallery? Morphotheque #15 (2011) is a form collection that consists of 27 elements, 1:1 copies of peppers. They’re made out of plaster and finished with acrylic paint. Peculiar image of the week by Erwin Driessen & Maria Verstappen.
Indulge in its cuteness. The Labradoodle brings us the finest blend between the labrador and the poodle. Combining sociability with beauty, they are the perfect human companion. The labradoodle is a manufactured animal. Moreover, its apparent artificiality conceals the fact that Labradors and Poodles are manufactured no less. The dogs distant past as wild gray wolves is an echo long gone.
Wikileaks gone physical? Aram Bartholl’s Dead Drops is an anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space. USB flash drives are embedded into walls, buildings and curbs accessible to anybody in public space. Plug your laptop to a wall, house or pole to share your favorite files and data.
Scrollbars is a series of installations and physical scrollbar-representations created by Dutch artist Jan Robert Leegte. According to the artist, most of us consider the scrollbar to be a virtual object – but in use it triggers reactions such as frustration, which suggests a subconscious acceptance of the inherent “reality” of these objects.
Swallowable Parfum is a digestible scented capsule that works through your own perspiration. Once absorbed, fragrance molecules are excreted through the skin’s surface. A unique odor is emanated, depending on each individual’s acclimatization to temperatures, to stress, exercise, or sexual arousal.
This utterly intimate technology is being developed by body architect Lucy McRae in a collaboration with Harvard biologist Sheref Mansy.
Live size version of the lustrous strawberry cow from Farmville. If only. We would have strawberry milk straight from the farm. Peculiar image of the week.
What are you doing this weekend? If you happen to be in the neighborhood you may want to attend the Next Nature lecture at the Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire. Anthony and the Johnsons are there, so why should you not be?
The rock formations in the High Altitude photo series don’t exist physically, yet they are very present in our society of simulations. The photos visualize the development of the leading global stock market indices over the past 20-30 years.
Each stock market index, such as the Dow Jones (shown above), Nikkei, Nasdaq or the more specific Lehman Brothers stock quote downfall, corresponds to a impeccably rendered unique mountain range. Photographer Michael Najjar used the images captured during his trek to Mount Aconcagua (6,962m) as the basis of the high altitude data visualizations.
Lehman 92-08
Until now, most people have likely regarded bird-feeders as merely a pleasant addition to their gardens. But scientists have now discovered that bird-feeders in the UK are actually having a serious long term impact on bird life – they’ve found that the feeders have brought about the first evolutionary step in the creation of a brand new species.
Historically, European Blackcap birds migrate to Spain to spend their winters, where they feed on fruit and berries. While in the past the part of the population that accidentally flew to the UK had a hard time surviving, since the rise of bird–feeders in the UK things changed.
The food supplied by animal-loving Brits, along with the luxury of not flying over the Alps, have made Britain an increasingly popular holiday destination for wintering blackcaps. And that has set them down the path towards becoming two separate species, Gregor Rolshausen from the University of Freiborg and colleagues write in the journal Current Biology.
Could it? Would it? Naah. Peculiar image of the week.