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 ‘Calm-technology’
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Gameboy Bricks a million years from now
A million years from now that hand would probably look more evolved, but the idea is nice: What if we would mold objects of the now into stone or bricks to preserve them over time and have future archeologists wonder how the technology was used? “Brick Boys” last for eternity!
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The Breathe Table – Visceral Interaction
Now why is that girl so excitingly staring at a few blurry blobs on a flat screen? Is it because these blobs are connected to her breath… What? Yes that is right, you are looking at the breathe table.The project examines breathing as a means of intimate communication. Our breathe takes the form of a coffee table across which two participants converse via patterns of light and color. The blue blobs are connected to the girls’ breath and the red dots are connected to the breath of the person on the other side of the table.
The breathe table is one of the demonstrators in Qusai Kathawala’s Visceral Interaction Master graduation project at Art Center Media Design Program.
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Clear Blue Sky
Who likes clouds anyway? Especially for the people still living in the suburbs of Venray (small town in the Netherlands), artist Helmut Smits made this billboard depicting a clear blue sky.
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Philips Vibe Emotion Sensor
The VIBE – emotional sensing necklace combines conductive ink and textile sensors. The necklace can read multiple biometric signals of the wearer and communicates them to other devices and other wearers.
Will this technology enable us to sense emotions better than we would without it?design.phillips.com
Related posts: Electronic Tattoos | Excitement Clothing | RFID Ladybag | Vanity Ring | Magical Interaction -
Switch Critters – Can you make them switch?
Earlier we discussed the Magical Interaction project, in which Joris van Gelder rethought the boring activity of switching on/off a light by transforming it into a magical experience. His idea was to leave room for imagination while interacting with a product. This should evoke wonder and surprise and make the interaction more interesting for the user.
Hannah Regiers’ Switch Critters also leave room for imagination. But instead of amusing the user with the feeling he is the star of a magical show, these switches have to be persuaded to switch. Their behaviors are influenced by data flows, such as the quality of local air, the load on the power grid and the global carbon index. “Data becomes mood, designed into personality. Switch Critters know something about the world that people can absorb through observation, interaction… and a little bit of imagination.”
At first you think these switches are completely useless and horrible because they don’t switch just when you want them to: you actually have to put effort in them -for instance by holding them still for some time or by tenderly stroking them- to persuade them to make the switch that turns on the light or starts your car. After a while the feeling of un-control becomes more satisfying, leading to a more mindful interaction and awareness of the rhythms in the environment. In old nature the light of the Sun could also not be switched on/off with the push of a button so why should it be any different in next nature?
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Car Navigation – just follow the red cable
Via Ubergizmo via Ohgizmo (so you know it’s a gadget).
Related: Need for Speed
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Bright blind
Made of electroluminescent (EL) sheets, Makoto Hirahara’s Bright Blind simulates a window where none exists.
In all other respects, the artificial blind functions in exactly the same way as a regular blind – ie turning the plastic stick controls the brightness, etc. -
The objectuals
The Objectuals is a series of work by artist Hyung Koo Lee, it features an interesting mix of visual distortion apparatus for the human body. Lee says that he experienced ‘undersized Asian male complex’ when he left home to go to grad school in the States, and began constructing devices like the helmet above, which uses convex lenses to increase the size of features like eyes and mouth. The project features similar devices for arms, legs and torso along with displays of plastic surgery tools.
Related: Animatus
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Botanic Artists
Where other trees grow their branches towards the light, willows seem to want to touch the surface. Tim Knowles creates drawings independent of his own hand and when he attaches multiple pens to the tips of branches, it is as if he gives the tree a microphone, enabling it to tell us what it is doing all day.
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MemorySticks / USB-tree
Now here’s a nice piece of dead old nature I would like to stick in my computer! Notice the beautiful micro-organism-patterns.
Designed by Oooms.nl
Related posts: Sunflower Satellite Dish | USB Flashbag | USB fetish -
Forest clock
TiWalkMe is a clock (still in conceptual stage) designed to track 1,000 years using a forest seeded along a ribbon of land to tell time. Annual tree plantings set the pace, visually representing time passing as they mature and functioning as the clockwork mechanism. The purpose of the project is to make a long progression of time visible as a way to help focus on long-term planning in reaction to the failure of our species to do so.
Over the next millennia the TiWalkMe Escapement will grow in one direction with some sections aging, others regrowing and above all, changing. Future generations are the stewards of future details, but the proposal tasks this generation with locating a site (several have already been determined as good choices), etch the overall plan of paths and trees and set the clock into motion.
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Slogan of the Week
The media are disappearing, Nature takes over. Our slogan of the week.
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Urban Camouflage II
Aaron Larney made these urban camouflage printed hoodies, just in case you need to blend into your dorm’s notice-board. See also: Urban Camouflage I.
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Email Flight Sim
This must be the best worst software concept I’ve seen this year.. An email mailbox represented as a 3D, virtual LAX airport. in this world’s coolest email program, based on the origin or destination of the email, each message is depicted by any of over 80 world airlines (e.g. for UK, it comes by Virgin or British Airways). emails with attachments are carried by the couriers: FedEx, UPS, DHL, and CargoLux. in addition to the pilot chatter & roaring engine noises, the 3D world depicts has both day & night scenes.
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Fake for Real: Romantic Sunsets
Sunsets are loved by people all around the globe. Could this universal aesthetic preference be linked to a deeply rooted understanding of the sunset’s importance? Life on earth could not exist without the gigantic nuclear power station of the sun. If it dimmed, it would mean the end of all earthly life, although because of the enormous distance, it would take eight minutes for us to notice our doom. Regardless of our knowledge, the sun remains a romantic disc in the sky. In 2003, artist Olafur Eliasson created an installation at the Tate Gallery in London that consisted of a large disc with stacks of fluorescent lights behind it, permitting visitors to enjoy an artificial but nonetheless magnificent indoor sunset. Needless to say, people loved it. Luckily, the real sun is expected to remain lit for the next few billion years.
From our Fake for Real series.
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Philips Wake Up Light – Sunrise Alarm Clock
Philips hits the shops with a product that aims to naturalize alarm clocks. The annoying buzzing machines were once invented to cultivate our day/night rhythms, formerly connected to the cycles of the sun. But now they are transformed into some kind of natural phenomenon again. The Wake Up Light simulates a wakeup with a sunrise, when sunlight gradually begins to peek through your closed eyelids. That sends signals to your brain to stop producing melatonin, the sleep-inducing hormone that sometimes seems to kick in at the most inopportune times. This seems to be a much more humane alarm clock than the regular buzzing alarms.
As you would expect their advertising campaign is entirely biomimicmarketing based.
Related: Real Nature is not Green. Watch the One Minute YouTube Review. -
Vanity ring
For all you self-Googlers out there. And yes.. that means you too!
Back in the old days (pre-next-nature) you used to wear gold rings and lots of bling you show off your wealth and therefor how important you are. But that was before the rappers (and Mr. T) made you look kind of silly wearing just one or two gold rings… So now we have the vanity ring showing your virtual wealth, or at least your virtual importance. The ring shows your hits on Google searching for your own name. Get it before Paris or some rapper get word…
Website. See also Biojewellery.
