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.
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.
Japanese design agency To-Genkyo proposes a dynamic freshness label for meat products. The hourglass-shaped label contains special ink that changes color based on the amount of ammonia emitted by the meat (the older the meat, the more ammonia it releases).
Hence you can easily read from the handy label if the meat is still fresh!! But wait.. could you not simple derive from the meat ITSELF if it is fresh? Well, some can perhaps, but nowadays most people can not ‘read meat’, so we need an authoritative label to tell us what we can and can’t consume.
Elegant detail: When the meat is no longer suitable for sale, the ink blocks the barcode at the bottom so that it cannot be scanned at the cash register.
Via Pinktentacle. Related: Forefather Ox cloned to revive delicious steak, Image consumption, Where it came from, Orthorexia Nervosa, The meat of tomorrow.
DNA evidence has been the most bulletproof evidence for forensic sciences in recent years. Not anymore. A laboratory at Nucleix, a life-sciences company, has demonstrated it is possible to manufacture DNA that would be accurate enough to pass forensic scrutiny:
“You can just engineer a crime scene,” Nucleix founder Dan Frumkin told The New York Times. “The current forensic procedure fails to distinguish between such samples of blood, saliva, and touched surfaces with artificial DNA, and corresponding samples with in vivo generated (natural) DNA.”
“Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”
Frumkin and co-authors announced their technological achievement in a paper for the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. Fortunately, the company also offers a solution: one particular methyl group appears in naturally-occuring DNA, but not in Nucleix’s product.
Sources: NY Times, Scientific American, Technology Review, Neatorama. Related: Surrogate Sushi unmasked with DNA test, DNA Synthesizer, DNA as information storage. Thanks Jeroen Bosch.
Meet A.T.R.E.E.M. (acronym for Automated Tree-Rental for Emission Encaging Machine), a device that compares daily activities, energy and products to the growth of a tree.
“From an ecological perspective, CO2 is a byproduct of the living, either directly or indirectly. From the economic perspective, CO2 may become the world’s largest commodity market. What do we consider the price of our own byproducts?
This project aims to criticise the carbon trading system as well as raise awareness of how good we are at destroying the planet.”
Jim Reinders, an experimental artist with a history of using curious media, became so enthralled by the beauty of the famous Stonehenge in England that he had to recreate it. However, Reinders, instead of using stone, decided to embrace a more modern, Americanized approach. Shortly after his father died in 1982, Reinder came up with the idea to build “Carhenge“.
Five years later during a family reunion, with the help of some thirty family members, Reinder used thirty-eight automobiles to mirror the position of the rocks that construct Stonehenge. All the automobiles, which include a handful of cars, a pick-up truck, an ambulance, and a 1962 Cadillac as the heel stone, accurately and proportionately depict the real life structure.
Part of the Fallen Princesses series by Dina Goldstein.
“These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The ‘…happily ever after’ is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues.”
Read more »
Although these next ecologies – like the global financial system and the internet – unquestionably differ in many regards from older ecologies – like rain forests, cloud formations, or coral reefs – there still lies a certain luster in visualizing them as phenomena of old nature.
Already we have seen approaching hurricane$, the ¥€$ datafountain and a magnificent flock of Visa’s. Now there is also the credit card rainbow, compiled of thousands of creditcards, freecards, discount carts and gift cards from around the world.
The piece was commissioned by the Graphic Design Museum in Breda, the Netherlands where is is currently on display until the end of September 2009. After that, I expect this nextnature rainbow will travel the world.
By DAVID BARBOZA
SHANGHAI — China made public on Tuesday regulations aimed at cracking down on the use of virtual currencies amid worries that a huge underground economy was developing out of the country’s online gaming community.
The rules, issued jointly by the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Culture in Beijing, could deal a blow to the country’s fast-growing online gaming industry.
Beijing said the regulations would curtail trading in virtual currencies, prevent online gambling and restrict virtual currency from being exchanged for cash or used to buy real goods.
Among other things, Chinese officials have worried that online currencies could ultimately serve as an alternative to China’s official currency, the renminbi, and have an impact on the country’s financial system.
The recent discussion on boomeranged metaphors reminded me of this 20 pound mouse hand created a some years ago for a Paradise by the laptop light event on Next Nature. The pionter counts 158 LEDs that are programmable per pixel line and was made by: David Menting, Jasper Dekker, Guus Baggermans and Brian Garret.
Parks are not nature. Parks are culture: man-made simulations of nature, carefully constructed to provide walkers, runners and mountain bikers with a recreational, yet confined – no wolfs & bears please! – ‘natural’ experience. As parks are merely images of nature, why not tweak the simulation a bit, while maintaining the calming qualities so highly appreciated by the human brain?
For the Storm King Art Center, artist Maya Lin created a simulation of undulating, rolling of waves using earth and grass. The waves range in height from ten to fifteen feet, with a trough-to-trough distance of approximately forty feet. Because it is executed in the same scale as an actual set of waves, the viewer’s experience is similar to that of being at sea, where one loses visual contact with adjacent waves. Compound curves allow for a complex and subtle reading of the space in the form of an environment that pulls the viewer into its interior and creates a sense of total immersion.
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.
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 »
In the future, every street will be a Nokia street? Perhaps not, however we may expect some changes in street signage due to the arrival of mobile & gps technology. Once everyone is carrying a personal navigation device those bluntly placed street signage may become obsolete – Try and find a cellphone booth in your neighborhood if you are not convinced.
I guess the question is not whether GPS technology will alter street signage, but rather which navigation solution feels more natural. Lets do a quick poll.
Which of the following feels more natural?
A) Finding your way using street signs and a paper map.
B) Finding your way with an interactive GPS solution.
Type your answer + explanation (optional) in the comment box below.
On the Road, Google Manhole, Your grand-grand-grand parents new media, Follow the red cable. Image via Postais Globais.
Chinese workers slaying monsters to earn gold for western consumers. It sounds surreal, but it is a far from virtual reality for the so-called ‘gold farmers’, who are working in 10-hour shifts to help players gain levels, and wealth, in online roleplaying games like World of Warcraft.
For thousands of Chinese workers, gold farming is a way of life. Workers earn between €85-€130 a month which, given the long hours and night shifts, can amount to as little as 30 cent an hour. After completing a shift, they are given a basic meal of rice, meat and vegetables and falls into a bunk bed in a room that eight other gold farmers share. Wages may be low, but food and accommodation are included. You can hire your own gold farming slave employee via wow7gold.com.
According to an extensive report by Richard Heeks at Manchester University (pdf), a few hundred thousand Asian workers are now employed in gold farming in a trade worth up to 730 million a year. With so many gamers now online, these industries are estimated to have a consumer base of five million to 10 million, and numbers are expected to grow with widening internet access. Recently, the Chinese government started taxing gold farmers.
Games become jobs. And where there’s a demand, China will supply it.
Via: Guardian. Related: Cellphone minutes: the next currency, Wow funeral gets ambushed, Millionaire in Second Life, Online gamers unmasked, WoWoW.
Since the days of Plato, the lost city of Atlantis has captivated the imagination of many. The city, if you don’t already know, was said to be a naval power located roughly 600 miles west of the Canary Islands…until it sank.
While browsing through Google Earth’s new underwater search tool, British aeronautical engineer Bernie Bamford sighted a mysterious grid of undersea lines. The strange pattern was spotted in the Atlantic ocean, west of Morocco in North Africa, close to one of the possible sites of the legendary island.
The story was reported by The Daily Telegraph – a national UK newspaper – as well as by UK Tabloid Sun. However, Google later confirmed that the Atlantic floor pattern, measuring about the size of Wales, was an ‘artefact’ of its map-making process. The maps are made using sonar measurements of the sea floor recorded by boats. The area in question was mapped by boats traveling in straight lines, a Google spokeswoman revealed.
“It’s true that many amazing discoveries have been made in Google Earth including a pristine forest in Mozambique that is home to previously unknown species and the remains of an Ancient Roman villa. In this case, however, what users are seeing is an artifact of the data collection process,” she said.
Whether we are roaming the globe with Google Earth, descending into the depths of our genes or traveling to the outskirts of the universe, our world view is fundamentally shaped through interfaces.
See also: World View, Earth rise on Youtube, To boldly Google.., The Metaverse Roadmap.
Tasty realization of the classic Apple rainbow logo, made entirely out of fresh fruit.
The clever creation was made by Richard Thomas from sliced kiwis, bananas, oranges, strawberries, green and red grapes and blueberries. Ironically, not a single apple found its way into the picture.
Source Flickr. Via Technabob. See also Better than the real thing.
By MARCEL VAN DER DRIFT.
Ten years from now, a cell phone gently sinks to the bottom of the river. It’s one of the latest models. The clever design, trendy colours and nifty features make our cell phones look ancient. Everything about it is new. Cell phone isn’t even the right name for it. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is. So I won’t.
Anyway, this phone, for lack of a better word, belongs to Steve, who is on the bridge, feeling generally depressed, but for the moment happy to be rid of his phone. It was a powerful gesture.
Forget about palmistry! MRI scans for candidates in top jobs such as bank directors could soon become part of the job-application package, says Erasmus University researcher Prof Willem Verbeke of Rotterdam, He’s confident brain scans will replace job interviews within 5 years.
Prof. Verbeke heads the department of neuro-economics, (NSIM), at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. He predicts in an interview with Good Morning Netherlands radio station that employers demanding compulsory brain scans from their job applicants will soon become the most normal thing in the world – in fact within five years’ time’, he believes.
