Yesterday in Los Angeles!

Biggest Visual Power Show 2008: Next Nature in LA. More pictures later!

Today in Los Angeles…

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May 17th, 8-10 PM: BVPS Next Nature 2008, Million Dollar Theater, Downtown Los Angeles.

High heels

Interesting image by Julie Rrap.

Cell phone minutes: the next currency

It might just be my old nature mind, but I still find it a daily miracle: being able to walk into the bakery around the corner and trade a piece of paper – called money – for a loaf of bread. We tend to associate virtuality with video games, but when we think further we realize it has penetrated our lives ages ago. Take money; it is as virtual as the Matrix, but as long as we all believe in it its value it works fine.

Back to Africa. We’re not used to Africa taking lead in new technology. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention and it couldn’t be more true in case of Africa, where pre-paid airtime is fast becoming the ‘virtual’ currency, overcoming conventional currency exchange and lack of banking infrastructure.

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Banana Juice Box

This Japanese Juice box is camouflaged from modern box designs and tries to convince consumers with its appealing ‘natural’ look. A schoolbook example of biomimicmarketing; marketing a product using images of old nature.

Via. See also Modernistic Watermelon, Cubic Fruit, How to grow an Orangina Bottle.

Plastic flamingos saved from extinction

Did you know there are more plastic flamingos in the USA than real ones? Plastic flamingos are widely considered to be the stereotypical example of lawn kitsch – the American’s answer to garden dwarfs. Designed in 1957 by Don Featherstone while working for Union Products, the pink flamingo has gone from a piece of Florida exotica to a symbol of trash culture. Featherstone sculpted his 3-D flamingos from clay, working from photos of the birds in National Geographic.

The species stopped replicating, when manufacturer Union Products went out of business on November 1, 2006. However Faster-Form Corporations now purchased the copyright and plastic molds of Featherstone’s original plastic flamingos and will be resuming production in order to save the plastic flamingos from extinction.

See also: It came out of the sea.

Luxalive - The emotionally aware lamp

So you thought that animated Pixar Lamp from the movies was just a fantasy? Not anymore. Luxalive is a prototype of an reading lamp that moves according to the character of its user. For example, when you like to be dominant, the lamp will follow you like a slave. And when you like to help others, the lamp will not work well and ask you to help him to stay upright.

Created by by Ralf Zoontjes, as part of a larger research project aiming to design for specific human values, in order to make interactions with products aesthetically more valuable.

Google DNA search

Last year Google invested four million in 23andme, a commercial research center that maps out your DNA for 1000 bucks. Now Google also invested in Navigenics, a company that does the same. What would Google want with that? I’m feeling paranoid…

Through Businessweek.

The first pregnant man

At first I thought this first pregnant man was a hoax, but after I saw it on Oprah I realized it must be ‘real’. Well, the pregnant man is actually a former woman who had a sex change but kept her his reproductive organs. Welcome in the 21th century! I am telling you: the surrealists were telling the truth all along.

See also the peculiar neighbor responses on CNN Youtube. Thanks Selby.

The Order Electrus

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“Nature adapts, even to human actions that seem to destroy everything. The amazing power of evolution has given birth to a new species of insect. Their ideal habitats are old industrial locations. Some call them electrical insects, others simply speak of a miraculous phenomenon, or even better, a self supporting order; the Order Electrus.”

In the countdown to the Biggest Visual Power Show 2008 in Los Angeles we post some presentations of earlier editions. ‘The Order Electrus’ by Floris Kaayk, was first shown at Paradise by the Laptop Light in 2005 and later at the Powershow 2006 in the German Ruhrgebiet, where this mockumentary was also shot. Floris will present new work at the upcoming show in LA.

And in case you were wondering: No, the good people of NextNature.net don’t find that footage of microchips having intercourse, a very realistic scenario. Metaphorically though, this movie is 100% true.

See also: Killer Robots, Meet the worms, viruses and trojans, It is Nature.. but not as we know it.