Coke Mutation
We’re unsure on the survival prospects of this oddly mutated Coca-Pepsi-Cola can. This could be the ultimate coke – if only the current species could interbreed. Peculiar image of the week. Designer unknown.
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 ‘Image-Consumption’
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Fat/slim magnifying label
With an optical trick, this German bottle of water is trying to prove its effectiveness for the body. Though drinking water is a necessity for life, the downside of this product is, that it takes approximately 8 litres of virtual water to produce 1 litre of bottled water. Drinking water may look good on the body… The carbon footprint is BIG AND FAT.
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Brand Environmentalism: The Augmented Reality Sneaker
Once, we wore footwear to protect our feet from the hostile influences of our natural environment. But with the replacement of our natural environment by a world of design, the function of our footwear changed along.
From a purely functional piece of clothing, the shoe became a desirable aesthetic object and a status symbol. Many people (at least in the western part of the world) believe that he shoes you wear, kind of make you who you are…
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Stereotype Packaging
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), unhealthy diet is amongst one of the leading causes of the major non-communicable diseases. Can design encourage people to rethink their relationship with healthy food to gain a balanced diet?
The series of food packaging were created from the observations on personal behaviors. Using the recognizable stereotyping packaging would make people feel more physically and physiologically connected with those daily objects. By giving the good food a little make over, it could contribute the availability of healthy food and encourages people to make a change for their everyday life.
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Logorama
Sometimes you come across something that is not directly related to Next Nature, but só well made that it deserves a place on this website. Logorama, a 16 minute animation by the french design studio H5, is such a piece. That said, we can freely explore where this movie dóes relate to what we’re doing here…
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Mirror Neurons – Simulation at the basis of Human Civilization
Within our society, imitation and simulation are typically seen as inferior symbols of a distorted mediated culture – think of fake Rolexes, plastic Christmas trees, silicone breasts and imitation caviar. On the other hand, simulations also occur in old nature as countless insects, flowers, and animals use camouflage or imitation techniques to increase their chances of survival.
In his TED talk, neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran goes as far to suggest the foundation of the human civilization as we know it, lies in our ability to simulate.
Ramachandran outlines the fascinating functions of mirror neurons. Only recently described by Giacomo Rizzolatti, these neurons allow us to learn complex social behaviors through the internal simulation of actions performed by someone else; as though the observer itself were acting.
Ramachandran in his talk claims the emerging of the mirror neuron system allowed people to share accidental discoveries quickly among the population allowing to develop tool use, domestication of fire, shelters, language, in other words culture, over a relatively short time span.
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South Korea rules ‘virtual’ money on par with ‘real’ money
Our regular readers know that whenever we write about money in these quarters, we always feel obliged to write the words ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ between brackets, as money is by definition virtual – and hence, the term virtual money is a pleonasm.
Apparently the supreme court of South Korea agrees, as they have recently made a ruling stating that online games’ ‘virtual’ currency, can legally be exchanged for ‘real’ world currency. The ruling also stated that transactions using this ‘virtual’ money will be taxable.
Now lets wait and see if and when the rest of the world will follow in the integration of ‘virtual’ currencies into the formal economy.
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Medicinal Blueberries
As our scientific knowledge of nutritious food increases, will healthy foods be progressively designed to look like medicines? This blueberry blister packaging created by Chinese designer Daizi Zheng certainly points in that direction.
Although utterly over-designed and unsustainably over-packaged, this might well be a product patients suffering from the healthy eating disease Orthorexia Nervosa would crave for.
Via Core77. Related post: Fresh from the Pharm, Orthorexia Nervosa, Food design in the 21th century, Organic Coca Cola, Nano Care Blueberry Paste Wax. Thanks Ehsan.
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Nano Care™ Blueberry Paste Wax
Surely we are quite attuned to some unexpected flavors in these quarters, but this Nano Care™ Blueberry Paste Wax wins our syncretic mash-up award for combining technorethoric with biomimicmarketing.
Who wouldn’t fall for the prospect of giving your car an all-natural-hi-tech massage with a Nanotech Blueberry wax? The creators of the car wax must have wanted to make sure they would reach all imaginable target groups with their product.
“This easy to use formula uses nano-technology based polishing agents and waxes for enhanced surface penetration, durability and gloss. Nano Care Blueberry Paste Wax is made with pure Carnauba and Nano waxes and contains no abrasives. Because it contains a special non-swirl agent Blueberry Paste Wax is especially effective on dark or bright colored cars.”
Sometimes it seems the surrealists were telling the truth after all. Peculiar product of the week.
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Digital Gastronomy
The food printer seems to be one of those lustrous concepts that continues to pop-up in the fantasy of techno-connoisseurs. Some years ago James King already proposed a printed designers steak after being inspired by the disembodied cuisine project. Since then we have seen inktjet printed sushi, the candy printer and the Philips molecular food printer.
While some are already dreaming of printing human organs, we are still waiting for an affordable food printer to arrive in our kitchen. Perhaps the folks from the MIT fluid interfaces group can take bake the cake with their Cornucopia Food printer concept.
“Cornucopia is a concept design for a personal food factory that brings the versatility of the digital world to the realm of cooking. In essence, it is a three dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients.”
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Virtual Characters tortured for Science
In the classic Milgram Experiment conducted in the 1960s, volunteers were told by an authority figure to deliver electric shocks to another person as punishment for incorrect answers to a test. The other person wasn’t really receiving the shocks, but the volunteers were tricked into thinking they were by shouts of pain and protest. Despite this feedback, some volunteers went on to deliver what would have been lethal shocks.
Professor Mel Slater of the Catalan Polytechnic University has recreated the Milgram experiment using a computer simulated woman, with some interesting results. “The main conclusion of our study is that humans tend to respond realistically at subjective, physiological, and behavioural levels in interaction with virtual characters notwithstanding their cognitive certainty that they are not real.” Some part of the brain just doesn’t know about virtual reality.
Via Medgadget. Related: A Society of Simulations, Autimacy, Avatar Machine, If avatars could vote, WOWOW.
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Shoulder Pads: Fashion tide back to the 80’s?
Fashion has a natural cycle of its own, which is more dependent on market and media forces than seasons or weather. Trends are predicted, recycled, set and followed. Seasons in fashion have shifted, designs are made and sold ‘unnaturally’ early. You can buy your new winter coat when it’s still warm outside and the leaves have yet to fall from the trees.
Though there are people that have a big influence in the world of fashion, it can never be entirely controlled – certainly for the individual consumer, his or her influence is nil. Styles in fashion each have their own life cycle, they go in and out of fashion. Though when they re-emerge evolution is visible. And so, yes, even shoulder pads come back.
