Acoustic Botany

With his speculative ‘acoustic garden’ David Benqué tries to explore our cultural and aesthetic relationship to nature. He states that the current debate around Genetic Engineering is centred around subjects like food and healthcare but that the altering of nature is no new development. Mankind altered nature for hundreds of years. Think of flowers and mind altering weeds. Benqué wants to question the role of our aesthetic relationship to nature in this age of synthetic biology.

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Medicinal All-Salt

Do you suffer from small health inconveniences and do you like to put salt on your morning egg? Why not combine the two? Medicinal All-Salt provides a low-dosage solution for things like headaches, depression and low libido. You refuse to pay insane amounts for birth control pills? Just season your dinner with the hand-harvested and sun dried salt. Or make it yourself for that matter. Via the site of All-Salt you can find a small guide that will help you to create your own medicinal salt out of the waste-water of your local water treatment plant.

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This interactive installation came out of the Postgraduate Certificate Course in Advanced Architectural Research of the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Graduate Justin Goodyer created this responsive wall that originally was designed to be a décor as well as a performing artist in a dance performance. The wall would react to the dancers by letting its flowers bloom whenever they sense someone is near. Thus creating an interaction between performers and their surroundings.

In the video you can see the wall reacting on the public at the ‘Constructing Realities’ exposition that shows the best project of the postgraduate course.

Augmented Reality Maps

Since a few years the internet in combination with mobile phone technology brought us something that we refer to as augmented reality: A digital projection that is placed over imagery of the existing environment to create a whole new world on the screen.

Earlier this year Microsoft Bing-Maps architect Blaise Aguera y Arcas showed how augmented reality features can be added to digital world maps. Including streaming video. This means that when you switch to the streetview mode you get to watch live video streams, at least when someone is broadcasting there at that moment. It’s also possible to see older footage that has been put in place with geographic photography techniques so ‘video time travel’ becomes an option.

As many mobile devices already support photo and video, we can anticipate digital maps to become “live” within some years. This reminds us of the ultimate sonar system from ‘Batman: The Dark Knight’. And like the sonar system from the movie we can ponder on the ethical implications of a system that records half of the world. Will it add a whole new perspective or simply turn every camera phone into a potential security camera? The Big Augmented Reality Maps Brother is watching you!

Hamster Powered Mobile Phonecharger

We would call this a sustainable technology if only the average pet’s carbon footprint wouldn’t be comparable to that of an SUV.

Where’s your Head at?

The issue of cloning is a much-debated one. Where is the fine line that divides the ethical from the unethical? Let’s say we take it over the top and start cloning away just for the fun of it? Then in the distant future you could end up with something like this video clip made by the Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs.

Also check out their live-set with holographic heads.

Bird + Subwoofer

The Bell Isle Zoo is one of the examples of the decay of the once great city of Detroit. Situated on an island in the Fleming Channel, the zoo was shut down years ago because of lack of money just as many other landmarks in and around the city. The deserted area around the zoo became a popular spot for teenagers to hang around and race their cars. Meanwhile the zoo itself, secretly transformed into a new ecosystem with a surprising variety of wildlife. Especially a great number of bird species.

Artists Paul Elliman & Nicole Macdonald found out about this natural world inside the manmade ruins and reflect on this by documenting everything through audio and video and by creating artistic projects.

One of these reflections can be seen at Casco in Utrecht. A big subwoofer is installed next to a TV that displays the sound of the bird phonetically. The sound of the bird is lead through the subwoofer and is transformed into a deep bass. It’s a reaction on the two worlds living so close together. The teenage kids riding around in their cars pumping out loud music through their car stereos and the birds that try to adapt to their new neighbours.  The only question that arises is; ‘Do you call a bird-sound-emitting-subwoofer a tweeter?’

This installation as well as audio and video fragments of the zoo can be found at Casco until the 3^rd of October.

Subwoofer installation from the expo ‘Teach me to Disapear’ at Casco, Utrecht

This extraordinary concept model that came out of the batcave of BMW shows how textile might be the future of car design. By replacing metal bodywork with a strong but flexible skin the Beamer they call GINA can transform on the spot to suit your mood. Things like opening the bonnet or adjusting your headlights suddenly become something fluid and natural.

For the future it holds the promise that a car will adapt to you and your current needs. Do you have a party and need a sleek saloon or did you just do your groceries and need some more room in the trunk? With a flexible skin this is all possible within one vehicle.

Debugged: ‘Graphic Design Bugs’

The Eindhoven-based design team ‘Edhv‘ made an installation to turn creepy crawlers into genuine graphic designers. By letting crickets, woodlice, ants and many other insects loose in a box with a camera on top of it, they are able to track the path of these little creatures. Through some tracking software and scripting these patterns then get printed on to big sheets of paper. Through modifying the landscape in the box they can create all sorts of logos and typography. As it turns out; each type of insect has it’s own specific pattern so no two prints are the same.