“Powerbutton” Button
Powerbutton is a badge. Found on buzzworks.nl.
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 ‘Boomeranged Metaphors’
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Global Warming Mug
Al Gore would love one of these mugs; displaying what happens when the world heats up and oceans begin to rise.
Via Shikake | See also: ScaryIdeas.com | Related posts: Design A Polder | Diesels Global Warming Ready Campaign | Humans to Blame for Global Warming | Eternal Sunset
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Human Tetris
A tribute to the virtual world boomeranging back to the physical world by Mega64. Or do you rather prefer the corny japanese gameshow version? Via Engadget,
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Human LCD
New media technology from South Korea: a gigantic human display compiled from supporters cheering their soccer teams. One pixel per supporter.
See also: Skyscreen, A4 e-paper.
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Slogan: The Future is Analog
I first saw this statement on the Artvertising building. Let this be our slogan of the week.
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my death space
What happens to your digital presence when you die? Does your website, MySpace and Second Life live on? Nope, it goes to mydeathspace.com
Funny enough, the Amsterdam based theatergroup Pipslab made a show about this called DieSpace. It’s playing sept 25 to 29 in Frascati (in Amsterdam).
It also reminds me of Yarif.
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p2p spiders
It looks like spiders are learning from the web and use peer-to-peer technology to build their web:
“Entomologists are debating the origin and rarity of a sprawling spider web that blankets several trees, shrubs and the ground along a 200-yard stretch of trail in a North Texas park. Lake Tawokoni State Park rangers Mike McCord, left, and Freddie Gowin check out a giant spider web at the park.
Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together, or could be the result of a mass dispersal in which the arachnids spin webs to spread out from one another.”
And since spiders are checking out the web, it’s very possible they drop by at Nextnature.net. So… you guys please thay out of my house? Thank you.
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Fake for Real: World View
In ancient times, heroes like Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus explored unknown territories of the globe. The climax of these terrestrial explorations was reached at the beginning of the space age, when astronauts captured the entire earth in a single picture.
Today, world travel has become a teenage tourist activity, but luckily there still are other spheres to conquer. Whether we are roaming the globe with Google Earth, descending into the depths of our genes or traveling to the outskirts of the universe, our world view is fundamentally shaped through interfaces.
From our Fake for Real series.
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Digital trashcan
The TEMPO is a fake product with a real idea. As I am really neat and eager to clean up my digital desk I tend to throw away too much files. This digital trashcan copies the stuff you throw away and stores it in his (or her) own hard drive. You will loose files less often, but more importantly, it reminds me of chasing the garbage truck to get out that thing you didn’t want to throw away.
Too bad it looks like a cup of noodles. Check the site.
See also: Digital trashcan brought to physical Office, Boomeranged Trashcan Metaphor.
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Fake for Real: Reflections in the Cave
The Lascaux cave conserves some of the first images created by man, dating back to around 15,000 BC. The depiction of large animals on the cave walls is considered as a preparation for the hunt; one of the earliest simulations conducted by man. Needless to say, the role of simulations in our society only increased ever since. Nowadays we routinely delve into the virtual realities of television, internet, and videogames (depicted right, a screenshot from the videogame Half-Life). Images are an indispensable part of our meaning-making cycle; without images, no reality.
And the Lascaux cave? Soon after its discovery in 1940 it was visited by over 1200 people daily. Once it was found that, due to the CO2 from the tourists’ breath, the cave paintings were deteriorating, Lascaux was closed for public in 1963. To allow the visitors to see the cave paintings anyway, an exact copy was built just 200 meter form the original site. Lascaux II opened in 1983 and is still a popular tourist attraction.
From our Fake for Real series.
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Fake for Real: Digital Trashcan
At the beginning of the digital era, several metaphors from the physical world were transferred to the digital environment in order to make, otherwise incomprehensible, technology understandable. The digital trashcan from the classic Mac OS is a well-known example. It’s just so much easier to drag your documents into the trashcan to delete, rather than having to enter some series of obscure commands to obtain the same result. But over time some of these metaphors have become so omnipresent that when we meet with the original physical product, it somehow feels like a derivative. Soon we will be transferring metaphors from the digital into the physical domain, in order to relate to what has become this otherwise incomprehensible environment. No?
From our Fake for Real series. See also: Digital Trashcan brought to Physical Office, Delete Key Eraser, Google mapping in Physical Space.
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Digizerk
Henk Rozema displaying his invention (2006), the digital tombstone “Digizerk”. It was only a question of time that global digitalization would be introduced on cemeteries. The digital contents can be viewed only by relatives who own a remote-control device. The newest model runs on solar power. Presenting slideshows of the most important moments of the deceased are perhaps as dull as one could expect from a “new medium” like this. Here’s an idea for Henk Rozema to work on: I think (correct me if I’m wrong) it was in the Fox-movie “I Robot” that – through a StarWars-like-beam-device – actor Will Smith communicates with a holographic projection of the US Robotics-leading scientist (James Cromwell) who just fell from the companies building and died. The device contains some clues and answers on his death, provided and triggered by asking the right questions.
What if in future, people would record and save their ideas and answers to questions in their tombs for the generations to come. Cemetery = library knowledge-base! Bas Groenendaal has done something similar with his project: “Release“.Digizerk.eu | digizerken.nl | video (dutch) | Related posts: Vin memoriam | Pencils made of cremated humans | Human DNA in trees
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Delete-Key-Eraser
Remember no-tech? Back in the days, we would ocassionally write down things with a pencil on paper. If we made a mistake, we would rub something that looks like an delete button over the paper surface, to erase what whe’d written. We would call these things erasers. Today, you can buy them at companies like www.artlebedev.com.
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Playing dreams
Image taken from a playstation campaign
Jayne Gackenbach, a professor of psychology and sociology at Grant MacEwan College, Canada has completed research which claims that video games alter the way the brain works. Gackenbach has been researching dreams for almost 30 years, and in 1997 she polled a group of her students on the effects gaming had on their dreams, with inconclusive results.
In 2004 she repeated the poll and found that frequent video game players have more “lucid dreams” (in which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming) than non-gamers. Often, the dreamer can even manipulate the action or observe it in third-person, much like a video game.
“On an intuitive level, it makes sense,” said Gackenbach. “If you’re spending a lot of time in a changeable virtual environment, it acts as a sort of practice for another virtual reality, dreams.”
I am waiting for the first Massive Online Dream Dungeon.
More here (pdf)
