Sentient Spaces « NextNature.net

Posts Tagged ‘Sentient Spaces’

Disgusting Switches

If a light switch would be hairy or snotty nobody would want to turn on the light anymore, which is exactly why designer Katrin Baumgarten created some of the most one nauseating switches she could imagine.

One of the switches sprays snot at the one who dares to push it, while another one simply retreats when the finger comes near. A third one has tiny moving hairs to refrain you from switching. The message? Be mindful about your energy use. You really have to need the light before you dare switching one of Baumgartens disgusting creations.

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 19/07/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Design-for-debate | Information-decoration | Officegarden | Sentient Spaces
Share
HappyLife

As our everyday living spaces are packed with electronics and become increasingly sentient, we might one wake up in a house that knows more about your family’s state than you do.

Designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau (remember their lustrous audio tooth?) are investigating if such technology would be helpful or too invasive. Their HappyLife project consists of a visual display linked to the thermal image camera, which employs facial recognition to differentiate between members of the family.

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 01/07/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Information-decoration | Sentient Spaces | Technorhetoric
Share
Physical Scrollbars

Scrollbars is a series of installations and physical scrollbar-representations created by Dutch artist Jan Robert Leegte. According to the artist, most of us consider the scrollbar to be a virtual object – but in use it triggers reactions such as frustration, which suggests a subconscious acceptance of the inherent “reality” of these objects.

Via guerrilla innovation
Koert van Mensvoort
on 17/06/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Digital-Presence | Hyperreality | Made-to-debate | Officegarden | Sentient Spaces | The-map-is-the-territory | transparant-interfaces
Share
ECO Currency – A Proposal to Balance Economical and Environmental Value

Imagine we would have an alternative monetary currency for environmental value. Would the rain forest still be destroyed if there existed an ECO–currency to express its value and pay farmers to let the trees stand? Designers of the Next Nature Lab are investigating how we can link economy with ecology. A proposal on how we can link economy with ecology.

The starting point of the ECO–currency(*) project is the hypothesis that an important factor in the ongoing environmental crisis is the disconnect between the economical ecology and the environmental ecology. With the latter we mean the ecology of plants, trees, animals, and other organic material. Whereas the economical ecology is defined by our financial system of market, money, goods and other economical exchange. Our second working hypothesis states that we could address environmental issues by linking the economical sphere and the environmental sphere in a better way than that is currently the case.

Comparing the two ecologies: The rain forest is a stable, self-sustainable and threatened ecosystem, whereas the financial system is a unstable and threatening ecosystem that feeds on the biosphere.

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 12/05/10 6 Comments »
Tags
- Biopolitics | Economology | Global-Image-Economy | Guided-Growth | Sentient Spaces | Symbolic-Overdrive | Wild-systems
Share
<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/10760162">http://www.vimeo.com/10760162</a>
Transparency Suit

Image consumption has never been as cool as in this brand new clip by Studio Smack, which was created for the upcoming Graphic Design Festival.

The ‘Transparency Suit’ visualizes the unseen flow of information around us into a second skin, a suit that reveals a new field of visual code that increasingly defines who we are. Welcome in the Society of Simulations. Any resemblance with the Matrix is purely not coincidental.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 05/05/10 Comments »
Tags
- Digital-Presence | Hyperreality | Image-Consumption | Information-decoration | Manufactured-Bodies | Sentient Spaces | supermarket | Symbolic-Overdrive | transparant-interfaces
Share
On the Road

Excuse me, I am lost. Can you point me to the information super highway?

Rendering by Chris Baker, photo Erik Pawasser. Via Wired. See also: Car Navigation – Follow the red cable, Need for Speed, Find brain, replace with GPS.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 30/03/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Digital-Presence | Information-decoration | manufactured-landscapes | Officegarden | On-the-Road | Sentient Spaces | Symbolic-Overdrive | utopian-suburbia
Share
<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/3308243">http://www.vimeo.com/3308243</a>
Harddrive on legs

Drive Legs is a portable hard drive which stands up if liquid is spilled near it. Created by James Chambers, who is experimenting with giving products defense mechanisms to maintain their functioning within the unpredictable reality of everyday use. We also like his sneezing Gesundheid radio.

Via Bright. Related post: IVY – harddisk cover evolves with your data, Luxalive – the emotional lamp, The order electrus.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 14/03/10 2 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Manufactured-animals | Officegarden | Sentient Spaces
Share
Miniature Sensor Network for the Office

“Have you seen my stapler? No, but just look it up on Google home office maps.”

CSIRO Researchers have developed miniature sensors that track lab equipment, coffee mugs and staplers in the office.

The sensors are called Fleck Nano and were build on CSIRO’s existing Fleck technology that is being commercially produced for monitoring cows on farms.

Fleck sensors collect data like location and temperature. They form an ad-hoc mesh network, and communicate with static nodes and each other via radio waves.

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 26/02/10 Comments »
Tags
- Sentient Spaces | Symbolic-Overdrive | The-map-is-the-territory | Wild-systems
Share
Monitoring your computer’s activity like a frog pond

Multi-touch designer and developer Richard Monson-Haefel considers sound as an important part of our user interfaces. As an application of “Calm Technology” which revolves around giving feedback about the running state of a system in the ‘periphery’ of our consciousness – a concept introduced by ubiquitous computing pioneers Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown – he proposes to attach a sound to every process running on your computer: an unique croak, chirp or trill – the sounds of frogs, crickets, and cicadas of a small pond at dusk. Resulting in an ambient environmental murmur people should be able to interpret.

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 07/02/10 1 Comment »
Tags
- Calm-technology | Manufactured-animals | Sentient Spaces | Wild-systems
Share
<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/6158274">http://www.vimeo.com/6158274</a>
Friendly Vending Machine

Designer Guus Baggermans was quite annoyed by the clumsy impoliteness of current vending machines, that typically require you to enter some abstract number to select your drink or candy, which is then rudely dumped in the bin at the bottom of the machine – forcing you to bend down to get your treat. He decided to design something better.

For his master graduating project at TU/e Industrial Design he created a vending machine that should interact with the customer on a more ‘human’ level. Inspired by his colleagues Chris Heger and Sjef Fransen, who during a workshop created a hilarious scenario on future food that would fight for the customers attention (crappy video alert), Guus arrived at his concept of a ‘Friendly Vending Machine’.

As you walk by the machine, the cans will follow you and try to get your attention. The user can interact without using any buttons, or browsing menus. Once you decided which drink to buy you slide a coin in the machine after which the tube ingeniously slides opens – It is almost like a ballet – allowing you to grab your treat. The machine is adjusted to recognize a potential customer at a distance of six meters.

Read more »
Koert van Mensvoort
on 26/01/10 3 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Sentient Spaces | supermarket
Share
HP Computers are Racist

These two co-workers found out the face tracking feature of the utterly advanced HP webcam will not recognize or track black faces.

Hewlett Packard says it’s because the program doesn’t respond to “insufficient foreground lighting.” Too bad for those born without “insufficient foreground lighting”? Amazing, what technorethoric euphemisms people come up with to justify racism these days.

So far for the vain hope that computer systems could overcome human defects and bring justice and equality to mankind. Pity. Thanks Michel.
Koert van Mensvoort
on 05/01/10 8 Comments »
Tags
- Anthropomorphobia | Sentient Spaces | Technorhetoric | Wild-systems
Share
The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan

A candid conversation with the high priest of popcult and metaphysician of media.

From “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan”, Playboy Magazine, March 1969. © Playboy

In 1961, the name of Marshall McLuhan was unknown to everyone but his English students at the University of Toronto — and a coterie of academic admirers who followed his abstruse articles in small-circulation quarterlies. But then came two remarkable books — The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) and Understanding Media (1964) — and the graying professor from Canada’s western hinterlands soon found himself characterized by the San Francisco Chronicle as “the hottest academic property around.” He has since won a world-wide following for his brilliant — and frequently baffling — theories about the impact of the media on man; and his name has entered the French language as mucluhanisme, a synonym for the world of pop culture.

Read more »
NextNature.net
on 24/12/09 3 Comments »
Tags
- Back-to-the-Tribe | Designed-by-Evolution | Digital-Presence | Sentient Spaces | Theory
Share

12 3 4 5 »10

Posts Tagged ‘Sentient Spaces’

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share

Tags

Share