Tropical Dome
The largest indoor beach in Europe, near Berlin.
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 ‘Hyperreality’
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Meta meta reality
Tringo is an online multiplayer game created by Nathan Keir (aka Kermitt Quirk) in December 2004 that runs inside the virtual reality platform Second Life. It is described as a cross between Tetris and Bingo.
Due to the popularity of Tringo there were a lot of compaints of Second Life players that the players of the Tringo game were anti-social, too much occupied with games and lost all touch with social life. That’s a weird reality in reality situation!
Related links: Second Life Online RPG Funeral Gets Ambushed Online gamers unmasked
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Info Toaster
Toasted bread as an information display device (originally developed in 2001 but somehow still intruiging): a toaster that parses meteorological information from the web & then browns bread with an image of what weather to expect, readable & consumable on the way to work. the image is burned on to the bread by one of 3 stencils, representing sunny, cloudy or rainy conditions.
Eventually, the stencils could become more sophisticated, to display detailed weather maps, short text messages & even advertisements on to bread.
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Virtual Miss Germany
Scientists are looking for the most beautiful woman in Germany… At the 2002 Miss Germany pageant, the eight finalists were photographed from the same angle without makeup. The portraits were then mixed into a virtual Miss Germany using computer graphic techniques. The research was conducted by Dr Martin Gruendl of the University of Regensburg.
Related: Software that ranks female beauty, Photoshop Beauties, Natural Breasts.
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Incognito
Incognito.â„¢ is a new skin cream line that let’s you be unrecognizable for the CCTV cameras on the streets and public spaces like banks, city halls ATM’s etc.
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Rock, paper, scissors
A robotic hand controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated by researchers in Japan. Subjects lay inside an MRI scanner and were asked to make “rock, paper, scissor” shapes with their right hand. As they did this, the MRI scanner recorded brain activity during the formation of each shape and fed this data to a connected computer. After a short training period, the computer was able to recognise the brain activity associated with each shape and command the robotic appendage do the same.
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Animals in advertising
The work of photographer Michael Wolf, amazing photos of buildings, plants, food and furniture. And unicorns.
His website is definitely worth a look.
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Wildlife is disappearing II
From the WWF campaign.
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Pimp my heart
The machine and the experience of the machine are becoming one. I’ve seen these kind of things in computer games, but now they are becoming real— Feels like plugging in to the Matrix— Can’t wait for someone with a heart rhythm disorder to come up with some fresh breakbeats!
Pimp My Heart is a performance/vehicle intervention that uses an invented HBBB (HeartBeat Bass Booster) system to amplify the heartbeat of a car driver in real time through an interface with a beefed up car audio aftermarket system. The intervention/invention achieves an ultimate unity between car and driver.
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Wine making = Math
Enologix makes software that predicts how a wine will rate in reviews even before it is made. It claims that wine quality can be measured chemically, and a score assessed, much like a wine critic. In order to achieve the high rating, winemakers invest in processes rooted not in agriculture but in biochemical information. Wine making becomes an information science. Care for a nice norisoprenoid anthocyanin blend?
McKenzie Wark wrote the article “N is for Nature” about this in the Next Nature Pocket. Wired Magazine featured an article about Enologix as well.
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Biosphere 2
Biosphere 2 is a manmade closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona. Constructed between 1987 and 1989, it was used to test if and how people could live and work in a closed biosphere. It explored the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonization (Biosphere 1 is planet Earth).
The experiment showed the difficulty of copying the functions of the natural capital of the Earth biosphere with infrastructural capital constructed by humans. Despite expenditure of over $150 million, this attempt at a new biosphere did not sustain eight humans for a prolonged time. Biosphere 2 is currently exploited as a tourist attraction.
www.bio2.com (see also: Tropical Dome and Kernwasser Wonderland)
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Dock painting
The new Bob Ross has arrived: his name be Gautam Rao.
This painting shows a magnified part of the dock in OSX. I especially wanted to highlight the Picassoesque face on the Mac logo. Sometimes the smallest details can be the most artful. To my knowledge no one else has made a series of Mac paintings. My goal is to find the extraordinary in everyday experience. Visit my blog for more information
Before we used to paint nature, now we moved on to next nature. -
Wildlife is disappearing
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Sababa
The Sababa is the first real time lava visualiser kit of global city flows. It takes the lava lamp one step further by reconstructing it according to the language of the current on-line culture.
The result is a new generation of interactive lava’s that are connected to a growing network of data sources around the world.The word sababa means “cool” and is borrowed from Hebrew low tech slang. It stands in contrast to the hi tech words used to describe the product the Sababa stands for, indicating that behind the hi-tech quality of our product there is also a valued low-tech requirement.
The Sababa might end up being a satire, it might turn to be vaporware, but it is also cool and desirable – it is Sababaware.More here
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Fruit-flavoured Breathing
A group of manufacturers are selling canned oxygen. It comes in flavors and it’s a bit like bottled water: a thing that you can get for free but might pay for anyway. But why breathe flavorless, odorless oxygen; when you can have the Mountain Breeze, or Mint Escape. They rae are creating all sorts of flavors and essences to add to their oxygen products including lemon, eucalyptus, cherry, mint, and a host of others. The market has proven that ideas such as this – built on a foundation of being pure, fresh, and clean – can be a huge success.
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Kernwasser Wonderland
The construction of this nucleair powerplant near Kalkar (DE) started in 1973. After the build was finished, in 1991 it was decided not to use it for political reasons. The complex was sold to the Dutch businessman Hennie van der Most who turned it into a recretionational area.
The mountainlandscape was painted by Florentijn Hofman, Harmjan Timmerarends, Henk Boverhoff and Levan Busurashvillie.
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The Sleeping Garden
How to design an expierience of retrieving in nature in the middle of Holland’s second-biggest city? Design a park, built entirely from used railway sleepers. That was the basic idea of this proposal by graphic designers Hendrik-Jan Grievink and Kim Engbers (TEST), together with Henk Hartzema and Ruby van den Munckhof (ex-West 8 architects). The park was situated in a so-called “leftover space”, an area between three railroads near Rotterdam Central Station (NL). By simply creating a labyrinth of stacked up railway sleepers, a new and exciting urban environment is being achieved. Is it a park? Is it a playground? Is it a forest? Is it a monument? The no-programming of the spot will eventually lead to new and creative ways of using public space. In time, all kinds of flora will grow and take over the wooden structures. The Sleeping Garden was conceived for the competiition “A design for places leftover after planning”, commissioned by Atelier HSL.
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Anabukin-chan
This is one of the weirdest things I ever saw… It’s a commercial for a construction company. The text goes a little bit like this:
Anabukikonten is “Anabuki Construction Co.” and their mascot seems to be
Anabukinchan! (chan means little girl) During this time the narrator says, “This is Anabuki Construction Company’s Campaign Girl, Anabukin-chan! She tries to be good just like any good girl, this Anabukin-chan!”During this time the narrator is saying “What’s this? It seems that the animals of the forest are coming to join her! Everyone is in good spirits!”
Then the narrator shouts “Sei no!” which means a song is coming up!
Everyone: Anabukin-chan! Anabukinchan, [go for it]!
Anabukin-chan: Hai! Okay!
Yume ga fukuramu Expanding dreams,
Sa-basumashon Service mansion!
Kitai ga fukuramu Expanding hopes,
Sa-basumashon Service mansion!
Mune no fukuramu Expanding chests,
Fukuramu fukuramu Expanding, expanding,
Wow! Wow!
Sa-basumashon! Service mansion!
Watch the commercial
