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.
Are sloths mythical animals? This status update reads like a snapshot from our post sixth-extinction future, when most of the earth’s megafauna has quietly shuffled off to the realm of dragons and other legends.
Via Lamebook.
What would a caveman make of this optical illusion? He might simply conclude we are living in a Society of Simulations. Peculiar image of the week.
Anthropologist Setha Low, one of the first to study the subject, defines gated community as “residential developments surrounded by walls, [and] fences” with a “structured entrance”; or, as estate agents nicely put it, exclusive property that sums- for those who can afford it- the much needed three P’s: privacy, protection and prestige.
Known as “Cerradas” in Mexico, “condomínios fechados” in Brasil or more eloquently as security estates in post-apartheid South Africa, the concept of a community defending itself from outside violence is, in a way, an ancient practice (think of Medieval fortress or, even before, walled Romans settlements). At first very popular in The States, where the first “self-contained suburban utopias,” sprung around 1850, gated communities are since the last decade a cross continental rising trend.
When we type “Flickr” or “Facebook” or “YouTube” into a browser, we seek to enter social networks and enjoy secure communication and interaction with a vast number of online users from around the world. Most of us take for granted that these words are understood by others in the same way. But what if rather than type these words on a keyboard we paint them on the walls of slums in Mali, Cambodia or Vietnam. Their meanings would certainly change.
Here’s the solution for all you animal lovers who are also fashion lovers: Instead of a depressing campaign about animals killed for their fur, the genius World Wildlife Fund launched a clothes and accessories brand designed by Boudicca, a London designer’s collective.
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The internet like a black hole that sucks up everything and metamorphoses landscapes, animals, and memories into pixels. Google recently created a map and street view of a small city in Japan, Namie, which is in the nuclear exclusion zone from the 2011 Tohuko Earthquake. Everyone, including the earthquake victims, can now travel to Namie, which remains only as a memory in the digital cloud. What determines our image of “nature” is not only National Geographic and BBC documentaries, but also Google street view.
Primitive man lived in caves. He used the surface of these caves as a canvas (*) to make representations of the things that surrounded him: animals and hunting, stories of magic and ritual, which helped him to make sense of the world.
Over the years, his cave has changed quite a bit: today, it comes on four wheels and in bright, shiny colors. In their turn, tribes of other cavemen use them as canvasses for their own art. An art which in itself has become more primitive and abstract, or minimal and conceptual if you want. It doesn’t nessecarily want to tell a story, or say something about the world outside the cave. Rather, it seems to refer to the cave itself. Instead of making representations of magic and rites, the creative act itself has become the ritual. Now drive me back to the tribe!
Green: It’s the color of spring leaves, little frogs and, apparently, health. According to a new study, consumers overwhelmingly rated candy bars with green nutrition labels as healthier than those with red labels, even when all the data remained the same. While green is perceived as a “green light” to go ahead and eat a sugary snack, the color green is also heavily pushed in biomimicmarketing to imply a product is wholesome and natural – and therefore better for you.
Via the Washington Post.
A few years ago, there was a brief trend of barcode wrist tattoos, which seemed to imply that the human body was just another product to be bought. With this photo, the artist Eddie Lin makes this question explicit. Did he really print QR codes on his skin? We don’t know. However, his work positions humans as consumer products, and puts work at the center of our lives. In this vision, we are defined by our business cards. It’s a scary idea to think that we might be sorted and tattooed like animals, but if you think about it, we’re all already on record.
Via Fubiz.
Opened in 1942, the Akeley Hall of African Mammals in New York’s American Museum of Natural History is perhaps taxidermy’s crowning achievement. But, as an excellent essay from Lapham’s Quarterly recounts, the hall is more than mere artistry. It’s also drenched in the egos of presidents and industrialists, men who were just as eager to preserve the memory of disappearing landscapes as they were to shoot and skin the last vestiges of it. The hall is an emblem of the American attitude towards nature and conservation:
“The Book Club”, a London-based venue, is teaming up with the company “Animal Vegetable Mineral” to create a workshop in which participants are able to create an “expression using all the senses” and then eat it. Along with chocolate model making and “sugar graffiti”, the workshop will include “edible painting-by-numbers”.
The team has created edible paint, inks and sugar-based sprays to daub onto specially designed images of “things like sandwiches and dogs”. This event presents new forms of expression and interaction with the process of preparing and eating food, and points out future directions for food culture. One day we might be seeing an eat-by-numbers based upon in-vitro meat paint. Imagine painting a charming cow out of beef paint and then chowing down on your masterpiece!
Facebook event page here.
For a fresh perspective on modern branding and honesty, and as a parallel to Next Nature’s own vision of the honest egg, have a look at the work of Viktor Hertz. A designer from Uppsala in Sweden, Hertz decided to follow the idea of brand honesty to its logical conclusion by visualizing a complete range of outcomes.
Companies routinely spend thousands to hundreds of thousands on logos and branding aimed at putting a positive gloss over their products. What if the downsides couldn’t be hidden in the small print or conveniently omitted, and had to be up front in the branding? Viktor calls his set “Honest Logos”.
The full set of designs after the jump…
Beautiful Mutation series from Belgian designer Maarten De Ceulaer show how herpes would dramatically enhance the look of your Yves Klein blue sofa. Indeed the velvety series looks more comfortable than Tokujin Yoshioka’s growing crystal chair- although it’s only a biomimicmarketing simulation rather than a truly biological or chemical process.
De Ceulaar explains,” The pieces in this series look like they weren’t made by hands, but have grown to their present form organically. They might be the result of a mutation in cells, or the result of a chemical or nuclear reaction. Perhaps it’s a virus or bacteria that has grown dramatically out of scale. The Mutation pieces make you look at furniture in a different way. Maybe one day we would be able to grow a piece of furniture like we breed or clone an animal, and manipulate its shape like a bonsai tree.”
While society is still discussing futuristic in-vitro meat scenarios, designers are already watching TV on their very own in-vitro furniture.
Story via Feeldesain. Image via De Ceulaer’s website
Rob Rhinehart has found a way to stop eating. Tired of spending time, money and energy on preparing meals, this young American decided to find a new way to survive without actual food. He created a unique mixture called “Soylent”, which contains nothing but the elements the body needs: iron, vitamins, fat, calcium and dozens of other nutrients. This is minimalism in eating: Nothing in this beige milkshake-like beverage can be identified as coming from any recognizable food.
Rhinehart followed a strict Soylent diet for several weeks and was amazed by the results of the experiment. He felt and looked healthier, and saved money and time. You can read the whole story on his website, and even find the recipe to make your own Soylent shake.
People use 3D printing for various reasons, from toys to surgery to yes, even candy-making. The FabCafé in Tokyo allows you to print a perfect copy of yourself as a gummy candy. Personally, eating something with my exact features would give me a bit of anthropomorphobia!
More pictures after the jump. Story via Fubiz
China’s biggest e-commerce website plans to virtually transform 1,500 vacant lots around the country into augmented reality supermarkets. It’s a cheap and near-instantaneous way to use dead space in cities. Each one of Yihaodian‘s AR supermarkets will take up 1,200 “real” square meters, and have about 1,000 products each. Customers will wander around using their smart phones as an interface to buy items, and get their purchases delivered at home.
Unlike Korea’s AR shopping on subway platforms, Yihaodian’s stores seem to require that shoppers go out of their way to look for items that could just as easily be purchased online. Because of this, we’re a little skeptical about the life of this idea beyond its novelty as a marketing stunt. To really draw the crowds to empty areas, AR pop-ups would have to offer something exclusive: products, art, or checkpoints in a city-wide game that sends people swarming over the streets to earn discounts.
Via Pop Up City
Dave Lee, a technology reporter at BBC News, experimented with hiring a women for $5 in order to get the coveted Facebook status: ‘In a relationship with’. “Sophia” – not her real name – offers her services as a make-believe girlfriend through the website Fiverr. According to Lee, many men hire fake girlfriends to look better on social networking sites or to make their exes jealous. Though Sophia was not real, for a few days she was “real” to Lee’s friends and acquaintances on Facebook.
Here is a next natural form of body modification, a 3D printed tattoo. Maria, a 23 year old girl from the Netherlands, printed her skin with a design made from stem cells. For her, two diagonal lines mean rebellion and one horizontal line means peace. For Maria, these three ambivalent lines represent the state of utopia.
During the London International Tattoo Convention, I interviewed Dr. De Jong who performed the operation. He was a tattoo artist until his 30s and has been trying to find a new form of self expression. He confidently said “Tattoo is a very ancient form of fashion and we need to use a new means to express ourselves. I am sure this 3D printed tattoo will soon be fashionable in Amsterdam and Tokyo and will spread across the world”.
This story is actually a fiction; the photo is from Ted Partin’s book Eyes Look Through You. But perhaps it is not entirely a fiction, but a fictional reality. Think about Stelarc’s Ear on Arm, or 3D printing technology branching out to bone, organs and skin. People already do astonishing things with their bodies. Why not 3D-printed modifications?
