Wii Gardening
For people who live small…
Via Gizmodo. Related: Game on, Games become jobs, Boomeranged Metaphors, Simulating old nature on next nature. Thanks Jurrian.
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 ‘Plastic Planet’
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Fruit4Day
Fruit does wonders for your health. No doubt about it. It is recommended to consume two pieces of fruit each day. One.. Sorry, I’ve lost count?
How convenient to have the two pieces of fruit mixed together in one product! Hunting and gathering has become too easy nowadays. Of course, you pay a bit extra for the service, as the retail price of Fruit2Day equals the price of FOUR pieces of fruit in their original packaging.
Related: Image consumption, How to grow an Orangina Bottle, Lucky Fruits, Modernistic watermelon, Cubic Fruit, Hyper Fruit, Banana Juice box. Thanks Hendrik-Jan.
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Rubber Duck XL
This gigantic rubber duck was created by artist Florentijn Hofman and is currently traveling around the world. Unsure how the over-sized bird is related to our explorations in nextnature – besides that it makes an ocean feel like a bathtube. Peculiar object of the week.
Related: It came out of the sea, The love boat, Plastic flamigos saved from extinction.
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Antenna Tree Mast Safari
This picture was taken in Zambia by Sarah Los (NL) while on wildlife safari. Every fairly trained “NextNature spotter” should be able to distinguish the cellphone-tree masts from old-nature trees. But that’s odd; there are three of them in a row and all different species!? Does every cellular network provider plant its own tree family? It surely looks like a competition. Future designs are expected to look better, taller and greener.
Let us do a quick jungle safari ourselves. Read more »
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French Hyperbodies
“Paris, printemps 2019: Oh Darling, you look gorgeous.” Nowadays we are so used to Hollywood hyperbodies – a simulation of a body that never existed – it is good to see a different take on them for a change.
In the French interpretation – everyone knows the French have style – a hyperbody isn’t some simple amplification (read: breast-implants) or restoration (read: botox) of a lost nature. Hyperbodies are high culture, an authentic fake. At least in the vision of the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf who took these pictures as a part of his project ‘Le Dernier Cri’.
We are now awaiting for this French style interpretation of a hyperbody to hit the Hollywood hills. Everyone knows that Americans secretly want to live in Paris and be French, so it shouldn’t take long. Common guys, those boring breast implants are way out of style, your wife deserves something more creative.
Related: High Heels, Objects of Desire, Hyperbreasts, The Photoshop Beauties, A society of simulations (essay). Thanks Tinkebell.
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A hermit crab in a glass house
Never thought I would ever empathize with a hermit crab. But somehow the ‘situation’ the creature is in, provides me with a feeling of recognition.
According to this video marine biologists in New Zealand are using glass shells to study hermit crabs. The crabs voluntarily move into the hand-blown glass shells with 7-10 days of the glass shells being added to the tanks – forcing the crabs in, would not be deemed acceptable by the institution’s ethics committee that oversees all experimental design involving animals and humans. This peculiar image of the week was taken by wildlife photographer Frank Greenaway.
Via Madscientistnz. Thanks Selby!
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Wooden Bankcard
Silver, gold or platinum creditcards? Expensive metals in credit card design used to have a certain luster in the past, yet today we are all (painfully) aware the mimicked material is totally meaningless – In the end it’s all plastic.
So, why not go for something different? Nowadays, many banks provide their customers with the opportunity to design their own bank card. At first I didn’t see the value of uploading a family holiday photo on my bankcard. Only once I realized this was the perfect opportunity to obtain my very own highly stylish and classical wooden bankcard my enthusiasm grew.
I have to admit, I am extremely happy with my wooden bankcard. Every time I slide it in the cash vending machine, I feel the magic of transforming wood into money.
And here is the good thing: you can have a highly stylish and classical wooden bankcard too. I have made the bankcard wood texture available for you download. Simply upload the file to the bankcard customization website of your bank and you will soon have your very own wooden bankcard and feel the magic of turning wood into money. This artwork is my gift to you (If you like I am even willing to sign your bankcard, although that’s probably not a good idea).
See also: Rainbow of creditcards, Datafountain – money translated to water, Flock of Visas.
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Animatronic window dummy
What if the mannequins in the shopping windows suddenly started moving? Would you buy more, or would it just trigger your anthropomorphobic responses? Soon we will know.
Momo is a regular window dummy, upgraded with some mechanics, electronics and software. The mannequin is simple to use: Just put it in the shopping window, dress it and switch it on. Its movements are programmed on a memory stick. Anthropomorphobic object of the week.
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How will Michael Jackson appear in heaven?
Our beloved King of Pop, Michael Jackson, who died tragically at the age of fifty after suffering cardiac arrest, was one of the most widely beloved entertainers and influential artists of all-time. And he wasn’t only a pioneering in music.
Throughout his career, he underwent countless groundbreaking cosmetic operations to recreate his own face according to an ideal he had in mind. Sadly, after each surgery, that ideal seemed to shift, necessitating new adjustments.
Using childhood photo’s of Michael and knowledge on basic aging trends, forensic artists constructed a portrait of how Michael would have looked at age 50, had he never undergone plastic surgery. The difference between the portraits is striking. But which is the real Michael? The man of flesh and blood, sculpted by plastic surgeons or the highly speculative forensic image? Both Michaels are virtual in their own right.
If heaven exists, I am sure Michael Jackson is chilling there now with James Brown. Yet, I have no idea how Michael will appear in the hereafter.
Related: Fake for Real Memory Game, The photoshop beauties: before and after, A Society of Simulations.
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Not so Happy Meals
This week a Brazilian prosecutor asked a judge to nationally ban toys sold with meals in fast-food outlets like McDonald’s and Burger King, because it can lead children to develop bad eating habits. The move comes amid wide-spread concern over the link between some fast food and illnesses such as diabetes, as the U.S. congress considers requiring chain restaurants to disclose calories on their menus to help fight endemic obesity.
Prosecutor Marcio Schusterschitz, a federal prosecutor in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, said fast-food toy promotions encourage children to buy high-fat meals through “the abusive creation of emotional associations” that turn them into life-long eaters of high-fat foods. Read the full article on uk.reuters.com
Toys are us… Apart from the health-aspect and cases of obesity, this article makes me wondering; how much plastic are we talking about on a yearly basis? According to thebluebrick.net, it takes 34 cents to manufacture and package each Happy Meal toy. At 2.5 million Happy Meals sold annually, $850 thousand is spent on those little wads of plastic a year.
You think that is much? Why no; it is good investment. Children really need some entertainment to go with their meals. It is educational, every toy is played with over and over again and almost never thrown away. And when children play, they burn calories. I guess it is the toys that determine the nature we deserve.
Related: Fake For Real: Image Consumption | Hamburger Sneaker | Million Dollar Burger | They are made out of Meat | Where it came from |
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Energy Saving Chandelier
I deem you have to be over sixty to have an object with so many historical layers of media in your house. Let’s analyze.
We are looking at a chandelier in which the candle standards have been replaced with much safer and more convenient electric sockets. How modern! Welcome in the 20th century. Fake wax drippings were added as a reference to the nostalgic, yet outdated, candlelight technology.
There used to be special flaring light bulbs on the market to reach the full candlelight mimicking effect, but unfortunately we have now learned these lightsbulbs are big energy wasters. How terribly unsustainable! Hence, the owners have replaced them with energy saving lights.
On a personal note: This I energy saving chandelier was photographed the house of my parents. Perhaps this explains some of my nextnature thinking.
See also: Your grand-grand parents new media, Steam Horse.
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Popolate
Peculiar image of the week. Created by Janis Pönisch and Anne de Vries.
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Green Vibes
The big lobby to endeavor for a climate neutral lifestyle must have reached its peak. It is common knowledge that recycling electronic and battery operated utensils is better for the planet, but if there ever was a taboo reckoning sex toys to that philosophy; with the Earth Angel it is now shattered. The vibrator in question is completely made from recycled materials and uses a wind-up crank to charge the internal rechargeable battery. Winding up for four minutes gives you half an hour of pleasure.
Saving the earth was never more fun! Read more »
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Bioinstinct
Designer Laura Boffi envisions a future in which human instincts will leap behind on technological progress. For example, once the ‘disease called mortality’ is cured with regenerative medicine, man may start to see death not as a biological event in his life, but as something that may occur to the ‘unlucky on call’. What would be the implications for our instincts for death?
Will human instincts become object of design, and if so, how would that work? Will there be schools for ‘bioinstinct designers’? Will it be arranged by the government? Or will it be a personal choice, depending on religious and cultural views?
To fuel the debate, Boffi created an incubator in which parents can implant certain instincts in their infant. They could agree on the genetic modification for the sake of the social ecology, depending on their ethical values, or they could go for it to suit natural parents’ concern of protecting their baby.
Attributing a cultural use of the biotechnology, rather than a technical use, Bioinstinct is a project about the way man could cope with his instincts in the age of biotechnology.
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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.
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Beauty kit for little girls
Plastic fantastic starts at an early age. Created by Pleix.
Related: Photoshop Beauties, Software that ranks female beauty, Virtual Miss, Natural Breasts.
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Modernistic Meat
This slightly uncanny piece of modernistic meat is actually not made from meat, but from wax, oil, paint polystyrene, stage blood & latex, by artist John Isaacs, who titled it “Further uses of the dead to the living (meat)”. John Isaacs is also the creator of the Blob Man.
See also: Modernistic tree, Modernistic Watermelon, Cubic Fruit, The tissue engineered meat of tomorrow, They are made out of meat.
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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 »
