Fake-for-Real « NextNature.net

Posts Tagged ‘Fake-for-Real’

The Search for the “Real” Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is fake-for-real. While it’s true that there was a minor harvest feast in 1621, held by English immigrants and Wampanoag Indians, the event was never celebrated regularly, and largely dropped off the national radar for the next 200 years. It took the Civil War for Abraham Lincoln to formalize the holiday, a political move he hoped would promote national unity.

Even if the holiday is invented, at least the food is real, right? When Americans sit down to groaning tables on Thursday, it’s tempting to think we’re participating in a culinary tradition not that far removed from the time of the Pilgrims. Thanksgiving food is, after all, as authentic and naturally American as apples (Kazakhstan), potatoes (Peru), and green bean casserole (Campbell Soup Company). Maybe we can find some culinary authenticity hiding between the gravy boat and the cranberry sauce. Hope you’re hungry…

Read more »
Allison Guy
on 23/11/11 Comments »
Tags
- Back to the Tribe | Fake-for-Real | Food Technology | Manufactured Animals | Supermarket
Share
Occasionally Extinct and Virtually Alive

Japanese researchers are currently working on cloning a mammoth, and plan to produce a fluffy new prehistoric calf within four or five years. The bucardo, an extinct subspecies of the Spanish ibex, was resurrected for a few minutes in 2009 before the clone died. ‘Frozen zoos’ now keep the cryo-preserved tissues from dozens of endangered species to hedge their bets against future extinction.

Until we have the godlike knowledge to reconstruct a genome from the base pairs on up, our resurrected zoo will be limited to the animals that we have stored away for safe keeping. Sorry, no dinosaurs, but there are at least 500 stuffed and dried passenger pigeons, 731 thylacines, and one remaining dodo specimen with soft tissue remaining.

Read more »
Allison Guy
on 08/10/11 4 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Genetic-surprises | virtual-for-real
Share
A Rare Giant Crane in Manhattan

In this Petcha Kutcha presentation, Mike Dickison comes to a very funny conclusion: Although Big Bird might superficially resemble other ratites like the ostrich or emu, he is likely more closely related to a group of extinct, flightless cranes that once lived in Cuba and Bermuda. Birds tend to evolve towards flightlessness and gigantism when isolated on islands and, fittingly, Big Bird lives on the most famous island in the world.

Watch: What if Anything is Bird Big
Allison Guy
on 30/09/11 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Hypernature | Hyperreality
Share
Holland Gets an Unnatural High

When the Dutch built the Netherlands, they forgot to add any mountains. The highest point in Holland is a measly 323 meters, compared to 2,962 meters for the highest mountain in Germany. Possibly inspired by architect Jacok Tigges’ proposal for Berlin, Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld recently suggested that the Netherlands deserves a fake mountain of its own. Unlike Tigges’ purely theoretical proposal, the people behind Die Berg Komt Er (video) (The Mountain Is Coming) are taking their landscape-building mandate seriously. The mountain has turned into a movement.

Different designers have different visions for this god-like task. DHV situates their Bergen in Zee, an exact replica of Mount Fuji, in the ocean near the town of Bergen aan Zee. It would rise 2,000 meters, occupy an area the size of Disney World, and provide sustainable power for the mainland. Hoffers and Kruger place it in the land or the sea, and fill up their hollow structure with everything from aquariums to sport arenas to farms. Regardless of the particulars, the Nederlandse Berg would be the biggest and costliest manmade structure in history. If the mountain is actually realized, it will certainly prove one thing: The Dutch will let nothing stand in the way of a nice weekend of skiing.

Via Pruned.
Allison Guy
on 20/09/11 Comments Off
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Hypernature | manufactured-landscapes | Technorhetoric
Share
Essay: Next Nature Services

Intentionality separates culture from nature. A dog is intentional, a fox is not; a park is intentional, a forest is not. Since trash, ruined buildings, and automated computer programs are unintentional, they are also a type of nature. Nature provides human society with valuable ‘ecosystem services’ such as water purification or erosion control. Next nature provides ecosystem services of its own, although they might not be what we expect.

BY BAS HARING

2010 was the International Year of Biodiversity. The United Nations introduced the concept as a way to draw attention to the decline of nature. Advocating on nature’s behalf, a relatively new argument emerged, ‘ecosystem services’: useful things nature does, unbeknownst to us. Forests filter dust from the air, scrub prevents erosion, and insects pollinate our crops. Incidentally, nature provides us with services that would otherwise have cost a fortune. Leaving aside the question of where they could be purchased. Is it conceivable that one day there will be next nature services, delivered in passing and unintentionally by new, future ecologies?

Read more »
Bas Haring
on 04/09/11 9 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | manufactured-landscapes | Plastic Planet | Society of Simulations | Wild-systems
Share
Inventing an Extinct Horse

Along with the Heck cattle and Scottish Highlanders, another reconstructed species roams the Dutch dunes. The sturdy Konik horse, also known as the Polish primitive, is the result of an attempt to ‘breed back’ the tarpan, an extinct subspecies of wild horse. A forest-dwelling horse with a distinctive silver-gray coat, tarpans once roamed Western Europe through Russia. The endangered Przewalski’s horse is the only surviving subspecies of the wild horse, Equus ferus, found only in zoos and in wild herds that have been reintroduced to places like Mongolia and Chernobyl.

The last wild tarpans were extirpated between the 1820s and 1890s, while the last captive tarpans died out somewhere between 1910 and 1920. Sources are unclear whether the final herds were true tarpans, tarpan mixes, or domestic horses that happened to look a lot like their wild relatives. It may be extinct, but the tarpan still clings to existence via cultural memory and scattered genes. The fact that many “primitive” breeds of domestic horse still graze the world’s meadows has tempted hopeful breeders to resurrect the tarpan on at least three occasions.

Read more »
Allison Guy
on 18/08/11 2 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Manufactured Animals | manufactured-landscapes | Progressive Nostalgia
Share
Real women advertise RealDolls

At the 2011 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, a photograph of a flesh-and-blood woman advertises a RealDoll, the life-sized sex mannequin made for people with a fetish for the uncanny valley. This image is a strange mix of the next natural phenomena ‘people becoming products’ and ‘products becoming people.’ The woman in the advertisement has been photoshopped to perfection, valuable and desirable precisely because she is a product. The doll, in contrast, is valuable and desirable because she is a person, or at least a convincing simulacrum of one. Is the doll meant be like the woman, or is the woman meant to be like the doll? There’s certainly a metaphor being boomeranged here, but I’m stumped as to which direction it’s flying. Peculiar image of the week.

Image via 88 Miles West.
Allison Guy
on 07/06/11 2 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Boomeranged Metaphors | Fake-for-Real | Image-Consumption | Manufactured-Bodies | Toys-are-Us
Share
American Hyperbodies

Lady Gaga is famous for fashion that exaggerates or obscures her body, but a few months ago, she made a foray into ‘actual’ body-modification. Gaga appeared on Jay Leno’s talk show wearing two pairs of pyramidal prosthetics on her face, along with cartoon-villain horns on her shoulders. Some sources speculate they were surgical implants, but it’s doubtful that Gaga would risk permanent scars on that million-dollar face; more likely the effect was the work of a clever makeup artist.

Body-mod enthusiasts like the artist Orlan or the Mexican ‘Vampire Woman’ Maria Cristerna may be practicing a form of beauty, but their beauty is predicated on shock. They are in opposition to the standard view of what is acceptable and attractive. In contrast, Gaga’s posthuman prosthetics may have more in common with the French hyperbodies in Erwin Olaf’s Le Dernier Cri.

Read more »
Allison Guy
on 03/06/11 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Fake-for-Real | Hypernature | Manufactured-Bodies
Share
Nintendo Portables Are Breeding Grounds For Sexy Fun

Sexuality and sensuality are phenomena which have been a nature for us as long as we humans exist. Not only humans experience these phenomena; also animals experience sexuality and, more or less, sensuality.

One of the things which make humans distinct from other animals when it comes to sex, is that humans make use of artificial artifacts to stimulate sexual feelings. Have you ever seen a lion which needed a vibrator to make things better?

Read more »
Vincent Klerkx
on 03/05/11 1 Comment »
Tags
- Designed-by-Evolution | Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Symbolic-Overdrive
Share
Fake plastic bags – made from real leather

Fakeness is traditionally associated with inferiority; cheap Rolexes that break in two weeks, plastic Christmas trees, leaking silicone breasts, imitation caviar… However, in a society in which everything is a copy of a copy, the ‘fake’ seems to gain a certain authenticity.

Can you imagine anything more classy and luxurious than these anonymous, brand less, recognizable ‘throw away’ bags re-created in durable, high quality leather by Femke de Vries? Better than the real thing!

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 16/02/11 1 Comment »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Meta-Meta-Reality | Plastic Planet | Symbolic-Overdrive
Share
Dog Modding in China

As a child, I already saw some great tiger potential in my cat and some shark-ish attitude in the behaviour of my goldfish. Personally, I think that since we started domesticating animals, man must have had fantasies about undomesticating them. The thrill of making ‘man’s best friend’ into his enemy again – if only it where for one day: Back to the tribe!

Read more »
Hendrik-Jan Grievink
on 19/07/10 5 Comments »
Tags
- Back to the Tribe | Fake-for-Real | Image-Consumption | Recreation | Suburban Utopia
Share
Nano Product: The Food Printer

Are we creating the penicillin or the asbestos of the 21st century? In the months preceding our Nano Supermarket Project, we share some speculative nanotech products with you. Here’s another one in the Nano Supermarket Products series: The Food Printer. And don’t forget to send in your own project for the Nano Supermarket!

Read more »
Hendrik-Jan Grievink
on 11/05/10 Comments »
Tags
- Design-for-debate | Fake-for-Real | Food Technology | Image-Consumption | Nano Supermarket | Nanotechnology
Share
Geminoid Female

Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro (Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaska University) has done it again! This time in coöperation with robot-maker Kokoro Co. Ltd. Objective: to create a realistic-looking remote-control female android (actroid) that mimics the facial expressions and speech of a human operator. Result: “Geminoid F”.

Read more »
Arnoud van den Heuvel
on 19/04/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Fake-for-Real | Humane-Technology | Manufactured-Bodies | Physical-computing | Plastic Planet | robotics | Technorhetoric | Toys-are-Us
Share
Natural Flavours

Have you ever noticed the ingredient “natural flavor” listed on a food label? I’ve read it on the label of ground turkey that I purchased in the past, as well as listed on various other food items. I didn’t think much of it and now I realize that I was definitely uninformed.

Perhaps there was a part of me that did not want to question it, but I did think that it meant what it said, that it truly was natural. I have since learned by reading “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser, that natural flavoring is anything but natural.

Read more »
Hendrik-Jan Grievink
on 13/01/10 4 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Food Technology | Supermarket
Share
Deliver us from Skeuomorph Prosthetics

No, this is not another example in our fake for real series, comparing an artificial with a human hand. Rather, you are looking at twice the same hand: with and without its casing. The design of artificial hands has improved significantly over time and the depicted Fluidhand, created by researchers from Karlsruhe, is perhaps the most advanced prosthetic hand available today.

Yet, one wonders why the designers or artificial limbs always stick to the somewhat boring and predictable simulations of the human limbs they are replacing. If you have lost your hand and you need a prosthesis, why no grasp the opportunity to go for an upgrade?

Wouldn’t it be liberating if disabled people could receive more creative (and advanced) limb replacements? Think for example of a prosthesis with an integrated GPS–compass, MP3–player, USB–stick, smartphone or a fashionable eight finger octopus design? Yes, yes, we are aware non-prosthetic people might be slightly scared off – or even experience signs of anthorpomorphobia – at the sight of a prosthetic that doesn’t try to look like the human limb it is replacing. But then again, a faked plastic hand, that desperately tries to look like an original human hand but never really makes it, also causes uncanny feelings. So why not create something that’s better, or at least different than the real thing?

Please deliver us from the skeuomorph prosthetic designs, in which the visual appearance of the original human limb is retained merely as an ornament of a lost functionality. Wouldn’t it be much for empowering to transform the disabled into the enabled?

Related: Bionic Woman, High heels, Ear on your arm: why not?, USB finger.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 26/11/09 8 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Biomimicmarketing | Bionics | Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Manufactured-Bodies | Plastic Planet | Skeuomorph
Share
Fake for Real Memory Game

The Fake for Real Memory Game consists of 60 cards that playfully visualize the classical theme of Fake vs Real. Is everything that was once directly experienced in our media society now replaced by simulations? Or are reproduction and imitation naturally part of life? Can you tell the fake from the real? See for yourself. Fake For Real!

The Fake for Real Memory Game can now be purchased at our store.

Design: Hendrik Jan-Grievink. Text: Koert van Mensvoort. Editorial team: Koert van Mensvoort, Hendrick-Jan Grievink, Mieke Gerritzen, Arnoud van den Heuvel, Rolf Coppens, and Edwin Degenhart. Produced by ALLMEDIA @ 2008.
NextNature.net
on 21/05/09 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real
Share
Clean linen toilet spray

So what to think of this? A toilet spray that mimics the smell of clean linen. It is great in the beginning, yet in time your bed will smell like a toilet. Found in the futuristic wondrous world also known as ‘the supermarket’.

Related: A Society of Simulations, Fake for Real Memory, Everything is Fake. Thanks Dennis.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 04/05/09 2 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Image-Consumption | Meta-Meta-Reality | Plastic Planet | Suburban Utopia | Supermarket | Symbolic-Overdrive
Share
A Society of Simulations

An interviewer once asked Pablo Picasso
why he paints such strange pictures
instead of painting things the way they are.

Picasso asks the man what he means.

The man then takes out a photograph
from his wallet and says, “This is my wife!”
Picasso looks at the photo and then says:
“isn’t she rather short and flat?”

INTRODUCTION

This essay aims to increase our understanding of simulations and their impact on our notion of reality. Following on some observations regarding the dominant role of visual representations in our culture, I will argue that we are now living in a society, in which simulations are often more influential, satisfying and meaningful than the things they are presumed to represent. Media technologies play a fundamental role in our cycle of meaning construction. This is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it entirely new. Yet, it has consequences for our concepts of virtual and real, which are less complementary, than they are usually understood to be.

By KOERT VAN MENSVOORT

Before you read on, a personal anecdote from my youth: when I was a child, I thought the people I saw on TV were really living inside the television. I wondered where they went when the TV was turned off and I also remember worrying it would hurt the TV, when I switched it off. Obviously, I am a grown man now and I’ve long learned that the television is just a technological device, created to project distant images into the living room of the viewers and that those flickering people weren’t actually living inside the cathode ray tube. Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 13/04/09 2 Comments »
Tags
- Fake-for-Real | Fake-nature | Global-Image-Economy | Hyperreality | Image-Consumption | Made-to-debate | Plastic Planet | Symbolic-Overdrive | Theory | virtual-for-real
Share