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.
The Drive in Wheel is an unique and spectacular giant wheel made especially for cars. The wheel is 100 feet high and takes four cars on one trip. City sightseeing has never been easier: you drive into the city center, into the wheel, view the city from above and drive out again – without ever leaving your car.
BMW aggressively takes on the biomimicmarketing of Jaguar. Peculiar image of the week.
Via Infozaragoza. Related: The Naturalness of traveling with a Jeep, Facing Your Car, Steam Horse. Thanks iPeg.
Make no mistake, you’re not looking at the latest Barbie line: These are the The Pussycat Dolls. Formerly an LA stripper show burlesque show, now upgraded to be pop music sensation and the new face of female empowerment. With virtually every race and hair color represented, the collection of women seemed to have stepped straight out of an adolescent boy’s fantasy.
Yet, their polished perfection also has a certain unheimlich quality: The lips, the breasts, the heavily done faces, the oh-so-perfect noses, the shiny skins, the ‘sculpted’ bodies. Too perfect to be human: this cannot be trusted.
Screenshot from the movie Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Could the female pop group perhaps be the latest manufacture of Abyss creations, the Californian company known from Real Doll life-size silicone sex doll mannequin advertised as “the state-of-the-art for life-like human body simulation”?
The name ‘Pussycat Dolls’ certainly adds to the suspect, but then again their hit singles with titles like ‘BUTTONS‘ and ‘BEEP‘ point more in the direction of a robotics project. Perhaps professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, after his so-so attempts to create a robotic schoolteacher and doppelganger of himself, now exceeded himself with this sexy machinery? Not sure, as the comparisons go on…
Exmovere Holdings, a biomedical engineering company, is focused on government and consumer applications for healthcare, security and mobility. This company developed Exmovere Chariot a self-balancing, hands-free, motorized wearable wheelchair that enables both disabled and non-disabled people to move around in an upright position.
A future in which prosthetic patches prevent bodies from aging? Or a sexists view on femininity in robotics? Read more »
This guy put his work as an x-ray technician and his gaming hobby together and put his (old) gaming devices under the scanner. I was surprised how some of them actually look like nature, maybe there is a clue in that? (Probably not).
Let the robots do the dirty work! This real-life Wall-E Recycling robot, part of the $3.9 million DustBot research program that is trying to improve urban hygiene, collects trash and measures atmospheric pollutants. He – or is it a she? – can also identify residents, and sort their trash into organic, recyclable, or waste.
The robot is nimble enough to navigate where conventional gas-guzzling garbage trucks cannot. The one on the picture is still in the prototype phase and robots aren’t legally allowed to roam around without human guidance in Peccioli, Italy. But who knows — some day soon you may see a friendly green robot zipping garbage down your street.
Via The Guardian. See also: Ladybug cleans the toilet, Killer Robots, the order Electrus.
The Triceracopter is half Triceratops, half helicopter. If dinosaurs and technology evolved at the same time, this is what the helicopter might have look like? Built as a sculpture in 1977 by artist Patricia Renick, crafted of fiberglass and built on the frame of a Vietnam era U.S. Army OH6A/Cayuse helicopter.
The piece is now available for the discerning collector/dinopilot. Peculiar object of the week.
Via Joshspear.com. See also: Aquasaurus, Skeleton Car, Skeleton mouse, Animatus, Pacman’s skull. Thanks Jurrian.
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 »
This one is kinda sporty! Again created by Jitish Kallat – this emerging indian artist must have a whole skeleton-automotive-industry in place by now?
Related: Aquasaurus, Skeleton mouse, Animatus, Pacman’s skull.
Surely, this steam horse illustrates the notion that new media (steam powered carriages in this case) often try to mimic an older medium in order to become accepted more easily. Yet over time, the older medium is superseded and transformed into a cultural relic (horse powered carriages in this case). Other examples of this principle are the electric candle light, electronic mail, and the record collection on your mp3-player.
Related: Your grand-grand-parents new media, Who wants to drive a fish?, Sexy Car, This way for survival.
As soon as the USB Condom detects a virus, built-in software shuts off USB access, verifies the problem, removes the nasty bug, then reopens the communication bridge to your computer.
Gross? Be glad the metaphor isn’t boomeranging in the other direction: before you know it, you’ll be installing anti-virus software on your penis.
Gadgets! You love them when you buy them, but what happens next? Over half of Brits have abandoned gadgets because they don’t know how to use them properly. Seventy-one per cent of Brits admitted they have up to 10 gadgets lying unused around the home. The total tally of neglected and misused gadgets is up to 190 million.
According to the survey conducted by BT Home IT Support, 94 per cent of people who experience problems with their home IT are too scared or proud to seek expert help. Over 80 per cent of those who have a problem try to fix it themselves, or ask family and friends for advice. Men look after their gadgets more carefully than women, the survey found, with 57 per cent cleaning their computer once a month. Only 42 per cent of women clean their PC as regularly.
Source: Webuser.co.uk. See also: The Order Electrus, Humans are the sex organs of Technology.
While time seems to flow in this one direction, some people just know how to walk straight through that fourth dimension; catch it in a videoclip and throw the message into eternity. Ten years ago – summer of 1999 – Bjork and Chris Cunningham knew exactly what it is all about. Let there be love in the Next Nature.
Related: Saturn (Directors Cut) | Robot Asimo Conducts Concert | BicycleBot | Voodoo Communication Device for Lovers | The Telepresence Frame
Human-product relationships increasingly play out in a realm which was previously considered exclusive for human-human and human-animal relationships. Panasonic now redesigned one of the most ubiquitous pieces of modern technology – the remote control. The goal was to create a product that is “waiting to be touched”.
Constructed of a soft, flesh-like gel, the remote appears cold when off. Once turned on, however, it seems to come to life. A soft light emanates somewhere from within as the center of the device begins to slowly rise and fall, mimicking the tranquil motions of breath. Left undisturbed, the remote will slumber peacefully. Buth should a human hand approach, sensors inside alert it to the imminent touch. It stops breathing, grows rigid – the light from within is extinguished. A remote is the ideal meaphor for the disturbance electronic distration poses to life. If we had to interrupt its life before it could interrupt ours, we may think twice before picking it up.
Via The Popular Uncanny, via Adbusters. See also: One remote control to rule them all, Magical Interaction.
The struggle between the born and the made is being fought out in a wardrobe on Saturn.
By: 1stavemachine.com | Related: Sixties Last
Peculiar image of the week. Langley researcher Elton W. Miller stands poised in the Propeller Research Tunnel, as if pondering the future of aviation in this image from mid-1927. Image credit: Nasa.
Fifteen policemen rushed to the scene, after a couple reported to have bumped into a “corpse” while out walking their dog in a mountain forest in Izu, central Japan.
The officers discovered a human form wrapped in plastic and tightly bound around the neck, midriff and ankles, with hair protruding from one end. The body was left untouched and taken away for examination, and the crime scene duly secured by a police cordon.
By mid-afternoon, the body was in the hands of police pathologists. But when they sliced open the wrapping, they were confronted not by a decomposing corpse, but by a life-sized sex doll.
