Progressive Nostalgic Message Service
Digital pigeon post its private, peaceful, none-polluting and secure. Peculiar image of the week.
Via Rising Tensions. Thanks Marco.
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 ‘Progressive Nostalgia’
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Mad Cow Motorcycle
What do you get when you combine bike parts, an electric motor, and a cow skeleton? Our peculiar object of the week was created by artist Billie Grace Lynn.
Seen at Museum of Art & Design. Image NYTimes.
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Milk comes from Bottles
Milk is good for you and we all should drink lots of it. Common knowledge so far, but do you actually know where milk comes from? Supermarket? Factories? Luckily this milk packaging provides you with the correct answer: Milk comes from Bottles. Peculiar image of the week (Sorry for the crappy image quality).
Via SuperdeBoer. Thanks Mark, Dennis.
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Candlelight Switch
Created for the niche target group of nostalgic button freaks, by Aram Bartholl.
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Twitwee Clock
Haroon Baig from Germany has figured out a way to key up the amount of 50+ Twitter addicts.
This progressive nostalgic cuckoo device displays new tweets from any twitter stream or search on the built-in display, “accompanied by the charming yet obtrusive call of a mechanical cuckoo popping out of the clock”.
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iBookshelf: Simulation before Extinction
As technology progresses we constantly have to adapt ourselves to an ever changing media landscape. Designers try to smooth the changes with a ‘progressive nostalgic‘ strategy: linking newfangled technologies with familiar phenomena.
Flipping through the bookshelf on your iPad, provides the owner with the familiar feeling of having an easily accessible library of books. The nostalgic reference to a wooden bookshelf makes the modern notion of a digital book collection graspable. At the same time, the digital storage of books is expected to have a huge impact on the publishing industry and the actual use of books: similar to the first cars that were designed as ‘horseless carriages’ and the ‘envelope’ icon you click to open your email application, which acceptance caused an drastic decrease in the use of actual envelopes, the digital book cabinet is a first sign of extinction for the physical book cabinets it so elegantly simulates.
A technology that already became extinct is simulated in the iRetroPhone rotary dialer application for those who want to dial grandma’s style. -
SMSlingshot
Urban intervention, naughty boy-style! The public media interventionists of VR/Urban have designed a cool tool to intervene into next nature: the SMSlingshot. A wooden, embedded interaction device –equipped with an ultra-high frequency radio, a hacked Arduino board, laser and batteries – to shoot your own message directly onto a building or media facade. With some tucked away beamers, it works like magic. Reclaim the screens!
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Technostalgia
In Next Nature, not only old nature is being idealized. Because of the rapidness of new emerging technologies, we have a tendency to dwell on earlier prototypes. To recall memories, or to give that ‘real’ experience. We call this bittersweet longing for past technologies technostalgia. Technostalgia shapes our memories, our past and thus our present. -
Coca-Cola Vase
Coca-Cola, 2006, Vase from the Neolithic Age (5000–3000 BC), paint, 45.4 x 36 x 36 cm. Our peculiar object of the week was created by Ai Weiwei. Courtesy Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing – Lucerne. Image: Ian Hobbs.
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Mud Tub
Mud tub is an experimental tangible interface that allows people to control a computer while playing in the mud. By sloshing, squishing, pulling, punching, etc, in a tub of mud (yes, wet dirt), users control games, simulators, and expressive tools; interacting with a computer in a new, completely organic, way.
The installation was developed by Tom Gerhard in an attempt to further close the gap between our bodies and the digital world, allowing humans to use their highly developed sense of touch, and creative thinking skills in a more natural way. The current applications are merely demonstrators, but we expect to see some digitally enhanced sandboxes in the neighborhood soon.
If you feel like getting dirty: Mudtub is on display at the lustrous Transnatural exhibition in Amsterdam until 19 March 2010.
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Wifi dowsing rod
Today’s technology advances so rapidly that people are often unable to update their media schemas in time and as a result are left cluelessly in awe of it all. Mike Thompson’s Wifi dowsing rod aims to work against this: By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on ancient technology, the user should immediately feel at home with the device.
Although perhaps impractical and anecdotal, the Wifi dowsing rod is an intriguing attempt of using ‘magic’ as a construct to cope with the technological complexity accumulating around us. A great gift for your grand-grand-parents.
Related: Magical interaction, Your grand-grand-grand-parents new media, Dandella shows you the way, Voodoo communication device.
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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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The Printed Pot
These printed pots were inspired by Southwest Native American pottery and were printed using powdered slip and binder in a three-dimensional printer.
Mixing ancient traditions with emerging technologies. Don’t you just love it when oldnature & nextnature copulate? Pure futuristic-nostalgia!
Related: Reflections in the Cave, Join the Neolithic revolution, Desktop factory, Dishmaker. Via Beyond the Beyond. -
Dandella shows you the way
How to navigate the urban jungle? Adopting the metaphorical image of a dandelion in flight, Dandella is a GPS device that shows you the way.
Inspired by how young sunflowers always point towards the sun, Dandella simplifies the complex interface of current GPS devices to a notion of “follow where it points”. Dandellas can be programmed to track each other and their buds response by pointing towards one another.
The intuitive design should allow its users to find each other by following where the bud points, making it suitable for people of different ages from different walks of life.
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Simulating old nature on next nature
iDail replaces the iPhone keypad with a good old rotary keyboard. For all you nostalgics (and grandparents) out there.
See also: Who wants a Stylus?, 8-bit icon watch, Treetrunk trashcan.
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Magical Interaction
Man’s ability to control illumination is magical in itself but is seldom experienced as such because light switches are purely functional and generally don’t stir up imagination. Designer Joris van Gelder rethought the boring activity of switching on/off a light to bring out its potential to evoke wonder and surprise. The magical lamp depicted in the movie below is an example of Magical Interaction an approach towards interaction design aiming to stimulate people to use their own imagination in the interaction with a product.
http://nextnature.net/data/magical_interaction.flv -
Bone Chair
Joris Laarman‘s Bone chair takes its inspiration from the efficient way that bones grow (adding material where strength is needed and taking away material where it’s unnecessary). Made using a digital tool developed by GM that copies these methods of construction, Laarman says the ironic result of his biomimetic technique is “an almost historic elegancy” that is “far more efficient compared to modern geometric shapes.”
Bye bye modernism. Hello nextnature? I’m really not sure whether this is a sneak preview into our bright future of grown objects or just an illustrative biomimicmarketing of a clever stylist. Anyhow it is a beautiful piece of furniture and I have no difficulties to image living my future primitive life in a whole bone-grown interior. Pity the production process is so incredibly expensive still.
Via Coolhunting. See also: Treetrunk Bench, Folding Chair, How to grow a Chair, Sketch furniture, Living Furniture, Dynamic Terrain.
