Fake for Real: Image Consumption
Koert van MensvoortHey! That muddy, greasy burger on my plate isn't the firm, fresh, delicious one I picked out from the advertisements above the counter, is it? I vividly remember my first visit to …
Hey! That muddy, greasy burger on my plate isn't the firm, fresh, delicious one I picked out from the advertisements above the counter, is it? I vividly remember my first visit to …
"Do you know what it really reminds me of? ... Tasty Wheat . Did you ever eat Tasty Wheat ?" – from The Matrix. This is a project by pundo3000.com , in which 100 products were …
Today, I had the strangest experience. I visited the dutch MSN website (don't ask me why) and found myself erasing al the content with a flick of my cursor. As I moved the cursor …
For a while now printer ink is probably the most expensive liquid per litre on earth. Still we need our images so badly that we accept this fact. The Human Printer manages to make …
Twenty-first century Fata Morgana. If only. Accidental photograph by Pauline Gerritzen.
During the coming weeks, we will present a selection of our favourite pages from the Next Nature book . This week: The World Card Wood, the worlds' most prestgious and versatile …
Everyone knows some foods have more calories than others. For many people eating turned into an information science, having to continuously read the amount of calories of the …
What happens when brands have sex and make children? The Nike Dunk SB Heineken were a hit amongst sneaker-wearing-beer-drinkers, but unfortunately the child was unofficial. …
Our food production is much more technological than we typically realize. My appologies for disturbing your trance; I realize that sometimes you'd rather linger in the illusion. …
Recently Google slapped our site with a warning that "something's not right here!" It seems that the Drug Enforcement Agency has caught the Next Nature staff handing out baggies …
# Baudrillard wrote that, "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas Los Angeles [is] no longer real, but belongs to the …
If you've noticed candy-colored pigeons flapping through Copenhagen lately, don't blame a freak chemical spill. Artist Julien Charriere and photographer Julius von Bismark have …
Filmmaker Jesse Rosten shows his critical views on body standards by presenting the exclusive beauty breakthrough Fotoshop by Adobé. This revolutionary product features pro-pixel …
Just when you thought the Second Life hype was long gone, meet Ukrainian body artist Valerie Lukyanova who aims to turn Second Life into First Life. They call her the Human …
Cake or death? Cake! The Slice cake is a (vegetarian) vision of the forms lab-grown meat may take in the future.
FabCafe in Tokyo offers a sweet new way to make self portraits.
Illustrators from the 1800s to the 1950s offer strange prediction for the future of meat.
QR and barcode tattoos turn an artist's body into a business card.
Surgery for a cute, cheerful duckface – permanently.
The more we look like ads, the closer we get to some ideal of beauty, the more off-putting we find the results.
Once common, statue-loving has disappeared from the sexual landscape.
"The birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing, they just screech in pain"
New technology can make completely transparent paper.
In the Sanctuary of Caravaggio, Italy, devotees can make offerings just by credit cards.
FB Graffity: the extension that lets anyone “vandalize” the pictures shared by other users on Facebook
Turning a normal stroll through the supermarket into a psychedelic dream (or nightmare) of algorithmic pareidolia.
Technology breaks as an inspiration for names. Among the most popular names of 2015 we can find Instagram filters.
The latest researches showed how AI can recognize human faces even if pixelated and meant to be incognito.
The new Spectacles by Snap Inc. allow you to actually "make memories" (as their slogan claims) while capturing them.
What if a camera would say "no" when you press the shutter because there are already too many similar photos on the internet?
Pic2Recipe is an artificial intelligence system able to recognize ingredients, identify a dish and suggest recipes from a single image.
The image of polluted water popsicles surely tastes better than the real thing, we hope its message goes a long way as well.
The appearance of “seen” has created a new phenomenon: opening messages partially, having a peek at the beginning of the message and assuming the rest so that the other person …
Sex is one of the most powerful, fundamental human drives. It’s caused wars, and built and destroyed kingdoms. It occupies a significant percentage of most people’s thoughts. As …
Not only does this phone case conceal your engagement ring in preparation for the big moment, but it’ll then take a video of your partner as you go down on one knee.
Cosmetic surgeons have always fielded seemingly odd requests to recreate body parts from celebrities: Angelina Jolie’s lips, David Beckham’s calve, or perhaps Salma …
Images largely shape our experience of reality. Just consider how imagery of nature continues to rise in popularity: only a society no longer grounded in their natural landscape …
A team of researchers from Tel-Aviv University developed a neural network capable of reading a recipe and generating an image of what the finished, cooked product would look like. …
If your Instagram feed is anything like mine, it’s littered with timelapses of injected lip fillers, Kardashian-promoted beauty products, and Story filters that “enhance” your …
Image consumption in the overdrive. Peculiar image of the week. Created by Erin Murphy, Victoria Bellavia, Yong Jun Lee & Sanggun Park . Thanks Jeroen van der Meij.
Augmented Reality is supposed to be just over the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" of Gartner's hype cycle . This video, however, is vaulting the technology directly onto the …
If the Korean Virtual Shopping Store becomes a success, all shop shelves will soon be LCD Screens.
Researchers tested 'Fiji Water' against ordinary tap water. What they found is kind of shocking.
Nature is not what it used to be. Or at least that is what we may think, when we look at the way humans and their technologies have treated nature. When we speak of "nature", …
Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft (Wow) has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world. When a popular WoW player died …
"Many people who lose a limb experience the sensation that it is still attached to their body. This is also often accompanied by a feeling of pain in the missing appendage. …
Let's talk about hyperbreasts. Have you ever wondered why men like women with large breasts? Historically large breasts are presumably sexually attractive for men because they …
Alright, we can agree most of old nature has been altered by human activity. We're not just talking rain forest, icecaps and genetically modified fruit and kittens . Now you might …
This ad is made by some people who claim that they eat only meat. Their establishment is called meatatarians/ . We have seen food fights , plants that eat insects, but we haven't …
Unfortunately this stylish refugee is merely an advertising fata morgana.
Art Directors Andreas Junus and Irawandhani Kamarga; copywriter Darrick Subrata and photographer Anton Ismael (Indonesia) went through some trouble , visualizing Photoshop's …
Integrating nature in our technology. There are four different laptops: Floral Blossom (pink), which has a tropical, flowery scent; Musky Black (black), which incorporates a waft …
Using the special cube, stick, and web camera, ARis will appear and move around in the monitor of your PC. When you touch her by the AR Stick, she shows various reactions. You can …
Now this is how you do it. First you take the meat of a hundred animals; chickens (19%), turkeys (17%). Secondly, you blend them in a large tank with water, mais, wheat, oil, fat, …
Famous street artist Banksy left his grafitti spraycans at home and sets to opening a pet store. The difference with this pet store is that instead of looking at pets, you look at …
Schwan Consumer Brands, a leading frozen pizzas brand, has launched a challenging brand: UGLY. The design embraces the rising trend for natural, honest food and the notion that …
IKEA is going to sell furniture with Electronic Arts via The Sims 2 game. Soon, it will be possible for you game addicts, to refurbish your Sims living room into your own …
Face swapping software finds faces in a photograph and swaps the features in the target face from a library of faces. This can be used to "de-identify" faces that appear in …
Fakeness has long been associated with inferiority. Fake Rolexes that break in two weeks, plastic Christmas trees, leaky silicone breasts that cause cancer, imitation caviar. Even …
In 2000 on a Japanese auction site , 20 real live Pokemon Pikachus were offered for 925 million dollars. Roughly translated: We capture each one after your order, so we guarantee …
A local Chinese newspaper, The Beijing Times , revealed some of the staggering fireworks at the opening of the Beijing Olympics were actually not fireworks, but computer graphics. …
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has made a play for online gamers, placing in game campaign advertisements in a series of popular titles from video game giant …
I eat... therefore iHam . ijam.es (by shackleton.es ) | ( Apple has a webapp called iHam... but it's far less interesting) Related: Greener Apple | The Tissue Engineered Meat of …
This gun style camera projects messages on the objects of which people take pictures. It can not be seen by the naked eye, but is only visible on the pictures strangers take of …
This Japanese Juice box is camouflaged from modern box designs and tries to convince consumers with its appealing 'natural' look. A schoolbook example of biomimicmarketing ; …
The Fake for Real Memory Game – consisting of 60 cards that playfully visualize the classical theme of fake and real in our society – has temporarily been taken offline due to …
Some months ago Iran did a test to show off their missile power which turned out to be quite embarrassing because one out of three did not work. Fortunately, they had a good copy …
The people at Preem.se – the Swedish organization responsible for this advertisement – must think this is the way to promote environmental protection with a younger generation of …
"Google has stationed approximately a million computers worldwide to be able to process the 40 billion searches per month. One search request uses as much energy as a low-energy …
Copy and paste the successful and your shop will survive. That's what these Indian entrepreneurs must have figured in the city of Mumbai. Peculiar detail: a trademark on that …
WARNING: Spending too much time behind the computer, may cause the leaking of elements from the digital environment into everyday life. Self control freak Olivier Otten is …
We used to wonder where all the stuff in the shops comes from. So now we know. This shopping tree is actually the latest logo of the Dutch shopping center chain V&D . Thanks …
Earlier we reported software that predicts how a wine will rate in reviews even before it is made . Now, for puber-geek delight, lets try that for women. Tel Aviv University …
Fashion becomes nature down under. 24 Flashers were deployed throughout high traffic areas in chilly Sydney and Melbourne to promote sunny Queensland as a holiday destination this …
Usually we don't realize the hours of photoshopping spent on magazine and advertising images before publication. The raw photographic material reveals a lot about the fine craft …
" Eat the View " is a campaign to plant healthy, edible landscapes in high-impact, high visibility places, whether it's the "First Lawn" or the lawn in front of your child's …
Image created by Lisa Oppenheim using images downloaded from the internet of sunsets taken by soldiers in Iraq, then positioned in front of the setting sun in New York. Via VVork .
Many people tend to eat too fast. As a result they do not receive signals from the stomach that they are in fact full. The result can be overeating and obesity . To encounter …
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, …
LOUIS VUITTON AK-47 GUCCI MP-5 Justin Melnick is an avid photographer, digital artist, and has lived in the Middle East. All of these influences have come together in his latest …
Autimacy [aw-tih-muh-see] - noun, plural - cies. The term was coined by Simona Kicurovska .
This collection of green, leafy, eco, enviro, bio, organic logo's was collected by Andrew Kinnear . See also: Five strategies of biomimicmarketing , Biodiversity in the …
Peculiar object of the week. See also Banana Juice box , Modernistic Watermelon , Cubic Fruit , How to grow an Orangina Bottle .
The eye passes on more information to the brain than the brain will process. In that sense, the brain functions as a filter. But on the battlefield the risk of neglecting …
Male - BMW, Armani, Durex - is looking for a Female - Dolce & Gabana, New York Times, Victoria's Secret. Branddating.nl is a (serious) dating site that relies on the …
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. …
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 …
Perhaps in the long run, historians will consider this as the official end of modernity as we knew it: The comeback of the wonky cucumber, abnormally bent banana, and comedy …
Regular readers of this website know we are keen to speculate that our global financial system is best perceived as an ecology, which although originally constructed by man, has …
Remember the days when the flavor of a fruity drink was simply connected to an apple, orange, strawberry, kiwi, or perhaps – if you felt really exotic – an acai berry? Nowadays we …
I found this ad very ironic; after killing the giant panda (by turning it into a logo) WWF is complaining that the Chinese are killing the living version of it. I wonder if they …
Nice one. I wonder if that wicked spider crane really exists.
This is the first viral internet movie I've seen that's actually aware of being a viral. I just can't wait until this happens for real -including the car stunts- when will virals …
As a kid we used to eat a cereal breakfast with rice pops. On the package of the rice pops there was a little blue bird called Dodo, who seemed to enjoy the rice pops as well. One …
Green electricity, Organic Shampoo, Jaguar convertibles, Red Bull, Bio Beef, Alligator gardening tools, Camel cigarettes and Puma sneakers. Once you develop an eye for it, it is …
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 …
A future in which prosthetic patches prevent bodies from aging? Or a sexists view on femininity in robotics? Either way, the question is whether they are up- or downgrades of …
We are unsure whether it is just an accidental evolutionary recombination, or that the hamburger sneaker was bound to happen – somehow, it feels natural. Our peculiar object of …
Talking about image consumption ... Via scaryideas.com | Related: Some Kids Don't Like Chicken | Banksy Pet Store | Featherless Chicken | Confetti Chicken | FFR Image Consumption
Our peculiar image of the week was created by artist Levi van Veluw , who reinvents the classical fine art of landscape painting, by moving from the traditional 'oil on canvas' to …
Sometimes you just need to settle with the surrogate. Peculiar image of the week. See also (in the baby series): Infant pillow , We are all born in a world . Thanks Hendrik-Jan .
What you see is what you get – at least that is what you hope – with this biomimicked kiwinut juice packaging designed by Naoto Fukasawa. See also: Image consumption , Image …
It's funny how these mixed up brands still feel like they make sense. Peculiar image of the week.
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 …
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 …
Never believed in pots of gold anyway. Related: Credit on Color - rainbow of credit cards | Datafountain - money translated into water | Ceci n'est pas une Roche | Faked Fireworks …
Nice adbust in Berlins subway. Photoshop panels were put over the image to make reassure us that nobody is actually born that beautiful. More images . See also: Photoshop Beauties …
Internet porn graphics transferred to real life objects. A nice photography project by Jean Yves Lemoigne .
I vividly remember being offended throughout my high-school education because 'atoms' where consistently presented as these perfect slick round little spheres. At one time I even …
Getting information as fast as possible and on the spot is the trend. So what could be more direct than having information fired directly into the eye? Today - together with his …
Fashion has a natural cycle of its own, which is more dependent on market and media forces than seasons or weather. Trends are predicted, recycled, set and followed. Seasons in …
Laurent La Gamba makes photographic installations dealing with camouflage. His work juggles with the idea of natural procrypsis in the urban space and deals with the relations …
In the classic Milgram Experiment conducted in the 1960s, volunteers were told by an authority figure to deliver electric shocks to another person as punishment for incorrect …
Have you heard the buzz on virtual money in online games? Some years ago the first virtual millionaire was announced, yet there have also been reports on people being practically …
Found sportswear a d, will be reality some day... (with magical goggles of some sort) Related: Recreation in NextNature | Big Ass Search Engine | If Giraffes lived in the US | …
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 …
Mark Menjivar created a series of portraits of people across the United States, by taking pictures of their refrigerators content. Quote: "For three years I traveled around the …
Visitors of the British amusement park Alton Towers can have themselves wristbanded and RFID tracked in order to buy a "personalised" DVD at the end of their visit. Precomposed …
Once upon a time there were two global soft drink brands. One old brand and another, slightly younger. The older one positioned itself as The Real Thing as it entered the market …
Once, we wore footwear to protect our feet from the hostile influences of our natural environment. But with the replacement of our natural environment by a world of design, the …
Biomimicmarketing wars: While the WWF has worked for years to market the Panda as a vulnerable, cute and cuddly animal, the Egyptian cheese brand Panda needs only five commercials …
Since a few years the internet in combination with mobile phone technology brought us something that we refer to as augmented reality : A digital projection that is placed over …
Blob architecture 1.400 AD in the emperor's garden in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Peculiar image, from China with love.
Though I did not eat as many crayons as PiPi growing up, I’m sure we all remember the first day we tasted wax. How can something *look* so tasty, yet be totally bland. But I …
We're unsure on the survival prospects of this oddly mutated Coca-Pepsi-Cola can. This could be the ultimate coke - if only the current species could interbreed. Peculiar image of …
The food printer seems to be one of those lustrous concepts that continues to pop-up in the fantasy of techno-connoisseurs. Some years ago James King already proposed a printed …
As a child, I already saw some great tiger potential in my cat and some shark-ish attitude in the behaviour of my goldfish. Personally, I think that since we started domesticating …
With an optical trick, this German bottle of water is trying to prove its effectiveness for the body. Though drinking water is a necessity for life, the downside of this product …
Nature demanded that we make a choice between immortality and sex, but the Next Nature of the 21st century may not. For help, we can look back to the 20th Century, which had many …
In response to the latest oil spill famed photographer Steven Meisel made a shoot for the Italian Vogue (the only fashion magazine in the world worth reading, really) that …
So this is what the global village really looks like. Seen in an advertisement at an airport (of course). Peculiar image of the week.
It took some years of evolution to turn sex (between different sexes) from a stricly functional activity attuned to reproduction, into the recreational activity it is primarily …
Language is communication technology. As Marshall McLuhan said, the spoken word was ‘the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it …
Although most biomimicmarketing strategies are oxymoronic , it is nice to see some people take them full cycle. This Japanese Apple fan found a way to naturally grow and harvest …
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: …
Following in the footsteps of a Marco Polo-esque spice trade, next nature explorers Jon Cohrs and Ryan Van Luit travel by canoe past massive cargo ships and factories in search of …
So you thought augmented reality is something new? Guess you are so attuned to the already existing augmentation of reality that you don't even notice it anymore. The short film …
Last week I opened a bag of potato crisps that read: "We know the origins of all our ingredients" . As some crisps had already disappeared down my throat, this made me suddenly …
The Catholic Church is not exactly renowned for its progressive attitude towards technological progress. Just think of the belligerent attitude the Church still has towards …
After making the successful and popular movie Avatar (2009), James Cameron started the Avatar Home Tree Initiative . This initiative consists of building "Avatar" forests on 17 …
Sometimes you come across something that is not directly related to Next Nature, but só well made that it deserves a place on this website. Logorama, a 16 minute animation by the …
In this first review of the works of Manko, we'll discuss the complex sorts of plagiarism in Augmented Reality art that are typical for our contemporary art scene. This introduces …
Last month we discussed how the vacuum played a big role in Manko's life since he lost his right leg. Soon he developed this idea further, beyond the mere notion of extensions …
In the older days, people had to cross natural barriers like mountains for survival purposes. Grains from one side of the mountain was traded with cloth from the other side, for …
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 …
These pencils release allegedly mind-expanding aromas, letting you 'smell your way to smartness while you write'. According to the creators , the fragrance is encapsulated using …
Within our society, imitation and simulation are typically seen as inferior symbols of a distorted mediated culture – think of fake Rolexes, plastic Christmas trees, silicone …
Surely we are quite attuned to some unexpected flavors in these quarters, but this Nano Care™ Blueberry Paste Wax wins our syncretic mash-up award for combining technorethoric …
Are we creating the penicillin or the asbestos of the 21st century? In the months preceding our Nano Supermarket Project , we share some speculative nanotech products with you. …
Hippopotamus: a 2,5cm-long tablet-shaped nonliving chewable animal, member of a multi-species flock known as the Animal Parade, which tastes like fruit and is found in little pill …
As the world is preparing to show off at the World Expo in Shanghai, their pavilions are nearing their final stage. To me, it feels like a lot of them are making references to …
Nature conservation organizations – like the WWF and Greenpeace – typically present nature as a commodity that has become increasingly scarce and will be used up altogether if we …
Nature is an agreement. Just like the nude beach. Here you keep your breasts and your crotch covered, There you drop everything and act like it is the most ordinary thing in the …
* warning: high doses of irony detected in this article * Method #01: Canning Promotional gift 'Nature in a can' complete with soil and bean plant seeds (from DKNY , 2010). Method …
Koyaanisqatsi (1982) is a film with no actors, no storyline, and no dialogue. The only things we see are landscapes, images of cities, and people going about their regular lives. …
During the selection of the top ten of next nature movies we’ve doubted quite a bit between the Truman Show (1998) and American Beauty (1999). The Truman Show tells the story of a …
The sad story of Timothy Treadwell is the ultimate example of the drama a naive notion of nature can bring about. Grizzly Man (2005) opens with the facts surrounding Timothy …
Our peculiar image of the week was created by Ilkka Halso .
Since the intake of medicines has become a mundane ritual nowadays, why not naturalize the interface? French artist Mathieu Lehanneur is rethinking the pill-person interface in …
Original pieces of polar ice will be sold in a shop in Amsterdam from this Friday the 25th. MyPolarIce is a venture led by Coralie Vogelaar and Teun Castelein . They went to the …
You have only two days left to purchase your own piece of history at the MyPolarIce store in Amsterdam and express the value the polar caps have for you – in real money. €24,95 to …
At Tokyo's Shinagawa Station visitors can now select beverages from a 47-inch touch panel. An embedded camera will recognize your gender and age, allowing the machine to …
Our regular readers know that whenever we write about money in these quarters, we always feel obliged to write the words 'virtual' and 'real' between brackets, as money is by …
Our first spot of the month was made by Tijn Kooijmans, who pinpointed the first Dutch Arbor Artificialis Naturalis planted in 1999 by telecom provider Libertel. You too can share …
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), unhealthy diet is amongst one of the leading causes of the major non-communicable diseases. Can design encourage people to …
In millions of offices and homes around the world, people are hard at work planting crops, feeding cattle and tilling their land. Welcome to Farmville , the digital rural world …
On this day (Saturday May 29th 2010), the Dutch nation takes pride in celebrating their first real traffic jam. During the pentecost weekend in 1955, a mass exodus of a tribe of …
As neuroscience progresses, we gain access to previously inaccessible and unexplored areas of the human mind. Consequentially the intricate processes in our brain are cultivated …
Indulge in the paintings by Alex Gross . There is 'something' next nature about them... If happen to have more information on what that 'something' is, feel free to enlighten us …
When techno–optimist and fellow at the Hybrid Reality Institute , Jason Silva, meets with Richard Doyle, author of Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants and the Evolution of the …
That's no reindeer, and it's certainly no moose. It's an Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteous , a deer that happens to be neither an elk, nor really all that Irish. What it does …
Coming saturday, your faithful Next Nature editor/designer Hendrik-Jan Grievink will perform Beyond Recognition – a corporate poem about the image of words , at Sameheads Gallery …
Unfortunately your forest experience does not meet the highest standards at this moment. We are working on a solution and hope to resolve this issue very soon. Our sincere …
The Coca-Cola introduces the PlantBottle . Partially made of plants, this bottle is 100% recyclable. Next step will be a natural bottle fully growing on a plant. In the meanwhile, …
You look at the great dane and wonder what information the QR codes on its pelt might contain. You point your smart phone camera at the dog and realize you’ve been hit by a …
In this video, Geert Mul uses online photos to tap into the divine presence in image search #powershow http://bit.ly/uk79b0
Catalytic Clothing is a fashionably calm technology that aims to tackle air pollution by embedding a substance in the clothing that purifies air when you wear it. The purifying …
Our peculiar image of the week was made by Peter Doig . Oil on canvas, 200x275 cm, 1992. Via De Groene Amsterdammer .
Corporate logos constantly have to adapt to survive. With the lion of the Peugeot car brand this resulted in a parade of poses over time. Peculiar image of the week.
Finally... A gas station in the ocean! If we all rigorously continue filling up our tanks, this fiction can become a reality one day. This is not a photoshop, this is our peculiar …
Different totems, same rituals. Peculiar image of the week by Walter Robinson .
Remember the Information Decoration essay which argued our so-called information society barely employs our human bandwidth, as most of the data in our lives is presented in …
Designer Revital Cohen imagines a future where life-support machines are replaced with life-support animals. In this scenario, a transgenic lamb is allowed to frolic in the fields …
Why wait for old nature to give us rainbows when we have so many ways of making our own? The image above shows solar-powered installation that uses recycled rainwater to create …
In the film Mastering Bambi, artists Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukacs have stripped the landscape of its cuddly, anthropomorphic characters. Over the course of the film, the …
Yale researchers and advertising executives have created the first ad campaign aimed at animals. The targets in question are a group of captive capuchin monkeys with a taste for …
Unsatisfied with the variety of vegetables in your local Supermarket? Why not try the Art Gallery? Morphotheque #15 (2011) is a form collection that consists of 27 elements, 1:1 …
It's no secret that Mickey Mouse has evolved in response to consumer pressures. Once a violent river-rat, he became the boy scout of rodents with good looks to match. Steven Jay …
From Friday 28 January - Wednesday 2 Februari the Nano Supermarket will be opened at the Leidseplein in Amsterdam. Additionally, on the 27th of January we will be opened at the …
Over the coming years, nanotechnology will invade our everyday lives. Nanotechnology, usually defined as the control and manipulation of matter at the nanoscale, will be …
Nature is a terrific marketing tool and corporations know this. Somehow the natural reference provides us with a familiar feeling of recognition and trust. We call this phenomenon …
There’s nothing quite like peeling a piece of fruit, but if you end up with a bottle of Vodka after peeling, you know you have been caught in a biomimicmarketing fantasy. I guess …
In twenty years , the mobile phone has become man's closest utensil. Can you imagine living without this umbilical box? Too bad it's often still a box that we hold to our ears... …
I woke up this morning and grabbed my Iphone to have a browse on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. I looked at pictures of a far away friend and his family on a night out in …
Lovely image of a really fat car by Austrian artist Erwin Wurm . This image is for a Belgian eco-awareness campaign.
Human design brings us ‘natural’ experiences that could not exist without the human hand, but can be appreciated nevertheless. Perhaps we are intuitively faked to believe …
The appliance company Bosch claims that its new technology keeps food so fresh that meat from the Ice Age (and presumably the Cretaceous as well) can be stored without incident …
At the 2011 Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, a photograph of a flesh-and-blood woman advertises a RealDoll, the life-sized sex mannequin made for people with a fetish for …
For other entries and an introduction to the 11 Golden Rules of Anthropomorphism and Design, click here. People have evolutionarily built-in mechanisms that help us to …
In a cheerful attempt to investigate and subvert the image consumption power structures of the contemporary supermarket , designer Marco Ugolini and photographer Pedro Motta went …
A panacea Yoghurt? Cures athlete’s foot, acne and dandruff! Triple irradiated Spinach? Three-week shelf life! Funa sushu? Asian carp fresh from Lake Superior! Minority Report …
Live size version of the lustrous strawberry cow from Farmville . If only. We would have strawberry milk straight from the farm. Peculiar image of the week.
A scientist in Mysore, India has figured out how to color-code his backyard ants. Mohamed Babu's wife noticed that the ants' abdomens turned white after drinking milk, so it was …
We already know that bananas are evidence of intelligent design – by farmers, not by god. All commercial crops have been tweaked by the hand of agriculture, but modern bananas …
Recently, a video clip has been circulating the web that purportedly shows a rabbit born earless due to the radiation at Fukushima. BoingBoing has a convincing take-down of the …
Every time we eat a piece of food, we take a bite out of the world. All these small bites tell a dozen stories. A carton of eggs presents the story of contented hens, a bottle of …
Named after the story of a city girl that washes her hair with pine-needle shampoo and one day walks in the woods with her daddy says "Daddy! The Woods Smell of Shampoo", this …
More real than you think. Peculiar image of the week. Via . Thanks Ton .
Some people like berries, some like tomato's. So what do you get when you get when the two mate? Indeed, the latest hyperfruit spotted on the selves is the Tomberry . This …
Food technology in the overdrive: Pork molded in the shape of a piglet.
When watching a science fiction flick, it can be hard to determine what time in the future it is set, although this is a usually an integral part of the movie. However, it is …
As the second most hardest working people on this planet, Koreans obviously dread their weekly shopping for groceries. It is therefore that Home Plus (Tesco in Europe) plastered …
Kellogg, the proud copyright holders of Toucan Sam, recently asked a the Mayan Archeology Initiative to reconsider their logo . Despite the fact that the two birds have entirely …
On Youtube, there's a whole sub-genera of safari videos that show, in gruesome detail, what exactly it means to live and die in Old Nature. The above film is a particularly …
For centuries the Dutch landscape has been known for its highly cultivated formal structure, however with the introduction of Google Maps a whole new layer of formalization has …
Long for farm-fresh eggs on the table? Dream about going to bed each night worrying about racoons, rats and foxes? Like the feeling of scraping chicken shit off your hands? For …
Media artists Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács created a remake of the Disney classic Bambi from which they stripped all the inhabitants. The removal of the cuddly, …
In more next natural news from Hurricane Sandy, Anheuser-Busch, parent company of the American beer brand Budweiser, has been canning water for victims of the disaster. The …
You may want to spend 24-minutes on this Close Personal Friend. Made in 1996, this film anticipates contemporary phenomena like social media and self-branding.
Coca Cola company is considering to actually bring Organic Coke to the market?
Congrats to Sean Serafini, the winner of our April Next Nature Spotter contest. While we received many images of fake nature , Sean's entry delves deeper into more diverse next …
Just like corn, bananas , and essentially any other plant we cultivate, the Cutie mandarin is the result of a concerted effort to produce an ideal food. Mandarin oranges come from …
Wild salmon gets its robust pink color from a diet rich in red-hued krill. Farmed salmon are fed on fish meal, chicken byproducts, soybeans, wheat and a long list of other …
Magic Meatballs are designed to playfully familiarize children with lab-grown meat.
During the coming weeks, we will present a selection of our favourite pages from the Next Nature book . To kick the series off, we’ll start with a spread about hypernature; the …
During the coming weeks, we will present a selection of our favourite pages from the Next Nature book . This week the thirs one in this series: Tomorrow’s Fossils. Ode to the car …
During the coming weeks, we will present a selection of our favourite pages from the Next Nature book . This week a tool that encourages us to experience local specialties through …
Some reactions from people shopping when they see how fresh their meat is.
If you've turned to plastic Christmas trees because the real ones leave piles of needles behind, science is working to bring live conifers back into your holidays. A $1.3 million …
Most corn has been selectively bred over the centuries to be a single color: yellow, white or blue. Glass gem corn, a varietal grown by Greg Schoen , harkens back to the days when …
Brazilian ad agency AGE Isobar spent two years experimenting in order to grow fruits into the shape of Camp's juice boxes. Immature limes, guavas and passionfruit were packed …
The Happy Meat project combines the basic principles of the meat-industry and the toy-industry in an uncanny hybrid.
Intuitively we expect the 100% organic green clothes to be more environmental friendly and sustainable, but is this really the case? The color of cotton is brown by nature, not green. Most manufacturers use chemicals to bleach and paint the cotton.
On society's search to becoming a meatless one, several new kinds of 'meat' pop up in the food industry. From so called 'hybrid' meatballs, to 'the chicken that isn't', when will …
Why does your food look different in advertising than it does in the store? A Canadian McDonald's marketing manager tries to answer this common question with a behind-the-scenes …
Children can be effortlessly entertained for hours thanks to tablet and smartphone games, but these technologies also provide a solution for the lazy pet owner. More videos of …
Everyday Anthropomophobia : This summer in Norway I discovered it is normal to put images of happy children on your liver pie product. I asked a Norwegian friend about this …
As our scientific knowledge of nutritious food increases, will healthy foods be progressively designed to look like medicines? This blueberry blister packaging created by Chinese …
"Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities," wrote a …
Pump yourself up the "natural" way: Muscle Milk contains no milk, and hopefully no muscles either. Just goes to show that nature is the most successful marketing trope of our …
Do away with dishonest health claims for eggs and uncertain promises of organic, free-range hens. With eggshells that change color according to hormones, medicines, and nutrients, …
As the NANO Supermarket opens discussions on the ethics, purpose and usability of nanotechnology, Frederik De Wilde is researching its artistic possibilities. De Wilde is a guest …
Should made-to-order babies become a reality in the near future, one piece of the design puzzle has been solved now Pantone has release their SkinTone system. Indexing 110 skin …
The pursuit of the cute: Pokemon Hypernature . Please don't try this at home with your own kittens, dear intelligent readers. Luckily our peculiar image of the week is digitally …
We guess the general that ordered the pixelated camouflage pattern didn't quite quite understand what 'digital warfare' is all about.
A while ago we wrote about the Pixelhead mask by artist Martin Backes . Now he informs us that the masks are for sale. Get one while they last!
We spotted these hypernatural rainbow roses at the train station in Utrecht . Indeed they look a bit over date, I guess drinking rainbow ink doesn't make them last any longer. …
Weird biomimicmarketing commercial brought to you by American Airlines.
Apparently the marketeers of Bacardi expect the combination of bats, berries and dragons should help to successfully promote the alcoholic sugar drink in the shops.
Convenience store chain 7/11 is serving up the latest in a line of futuristic near-foods: Instant mashed potatoes from a Slurpee-style spigot. The machine dispenses a stream of …
Created by Cary Huang, this interactive scale of the universe shows the relative sizes of everything from quarks to the Hoover Dam. Be prepared for some cosmic gee-whiz moments …
What do blueberries have in common with sugar, corn cereal, modified food starch, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, artificial flavor, cellulose gum, salt and and Blue …
Writer and NRC journalist Tracy Metz dissects our Image of Nature , how it is constructed, by whom and for what reason. Her conclusion: "Nature is an Agreement. Just like the nude …
Imagine what you could do if you had one million Twitter followers. You would be so rich! Now seriously: Are followers becoming an alternative currency? Perhaps, although we are …
Christien Meindertsma was surprised by the unrealistic nostalgic visualizations of farms on children's coloring plates. She decided to create a more realistic coloring plate of the pig farm.
During the late 1930’s the philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote its widely influential essay ‘The work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility’. While describing a general …
Loosely regulated and largely untested in clinical trials, herbal medicines nonetheless do big business based on their image of being wholesome, natural, and backed by millennia …
An illustration on how market value and expectation can trick the mind.
This stunning graphic, courtesy of Nature & More , shows the astonishing drop in food crop diversity from 1903 to 1983. Lettuces available from commercial seed houses now …
DogTV , a new TV channel available in the US, offers 24/7 programming for the modern dog. There's busy streets, computer-animated moths and frolicking, cross-breed hounds. The …
A new study from the marine conservation group Oceana reveals that a full one-third of seafood across the US is mislabeled. Not surprisingly, the most expensive fish is also the …
Are you blessed with a Maria Callas kind of voice? If, like us, you don't go beyond croaking the occasional " I want to break free" in the shower, watch out. If the artists of …
In what's probably the most fun form of environmental protest ever, Banksy has created a morose-looking dolphin ride to protest the BP oil spill. The ride is complete with fish …
Heather Dewey-Hagborg just needs a strand of your hair to know what you look like.
Made to beat the real thing. By digital artist Andy Thomas .
Vegetarian food products typically mimic existing meat products. The meat flower reverses this principle.
In a time of all-horse hamburgers and E. coli outbreaks, food provenance has become a huge issue. Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the lack of traceability within the …
Is a colorized antique photo more or less "real" than the original?
CouchCachet promises to give you the fully-booked, in-the-know life while you are on the Sofa.
Should digital technology imitate that which exists, or could it also surpass it?
Watch your back: the Disney princesses are feeling murderous.
Paint with meat! is a product for children of 5-10 years old. It allows them to prepare a meat dish on their own and in a very creative, fun and safe way: by painting with meat!
While Next Nature is hard at work normalizing the idea of eating lab-grown meat , a group of British design students are working to bring insect-eating into the mainstream. Though …
A student hopes a blanket will replace her classmate's Facebook addictions.
WWF teams up with designers to produce fur from imaginary animals
You too can experience a life of grinding poverty in South Africa – with free WiFi and optional breakfast.
A 2 million pound investment to hide economic decay with fake storefronts.
A Chinese company wants to transform vacant lots into virtual shopping centers.
How "celebrity endorsements" transformed the potato from the devil's tuber into a global staple.
The world's first – and hopefully last – whiskey aged with radioactivity.
The pictures of Google Street View come to life.
Ultimately existence (or not) for gated communities comes down to the existential choice: should we be afraid of the future?
Google Maps preserves a place that's too dangerous to visit.
Which candy bar you choose depends on the color of the packaging.
Baudrillard intersects with social media in the world of fake online girlfriends.
Hong Kong has a rather cynical solution to the problem of ugly air pollution.
Cheetos and other junk foods are more carefully engineered than the average bridge.
Polar bears bring only $9 million to the Canadian economy, but citizens put their collective value at $6.3 billion. Why?
From the earthquake in Haiti to Hurricane Sandy to the Boston Marathon bombings, Facebook, Twitter and other social media were used to spread information and help citizens and …
Next, we are anticipating recipes on how to turn pork into dinosaur filet.
Simple yet elegant short film on a girl that forgot here phone and realizes the impact of our Society of Simulations.
What does Barbie look like when she has the proportions of a normal 19-year-old?
Is a deep-fried iPad as unhealthy as a McDonald's meal?
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde uses smoke, moisture and lighting to create temporary clouds.
Floris Kayak discusses online hoaxes and the future of technology.
Imagine the devastation when there are more Lego minifigs on Earth than humans...
Last week, Next Nature Lab had the first Meat & Greet to explore the future of in vitro meet.
Primitive man lived in caves. He used the surface of these caves as a canvas (*) to make representations of the things that surrounded him: animals and hunting, stories of magic …
The greatest taxidermy in the world reveals a great deal about our changing notions of nature.
Beautiful Mutation series from Belgian designer Maarten De Ceulaer show how herpes would dramatically enhance the look of your Yves Klein blue sofa. Indeed the velvety series …
A new material can stop toxic off-gassing from plastics, but the 'new car smell' is so valuable the car industry might not change.
An artist envisions our consumer electronics in a century, moss-covered and half-decayed.
Artist Filippo Minelli aims to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies.
An innovative workshop points out future directions for in-vitro meat products.
Can a meal replacer save us money, time, and maybe even save the world?
The surprising reasons why squirrels are so abundant in city parks in the US.
When you look into the anamorphic abyss, the anamorphic abyss also looks into you.
Finally a full anatomical model of the renowned comic figure.
This Bolivian monkey's name is also an ad for online gambling.
Blade Runner becomes reality in China. Just try not to breathe.
Because date rape drugs are odorless, colorless and tasteless, victims don't normally realize they've been attacked until it's too late. In a clever, necessary bit of information …
Viktor Hertz put a painfully honest (and funny) spin on corporate logos.
Scientists are using virtual reality environments to help people quit smoking.
100% pure organic coconut water would be to drink directly from the coconut. So how organic is this product really? 80% Organic? 70% Organic? Or just slightly more organic than the coconut water without the labeling?
Supersonic jet replaces windows with massive live-streaming screens.
Tuscany is known for its natural beauty. But only a few know that this wonderful landscape is actually a really good design work.
Chemistry teacher, James Kennedy, shows us that Mother Nature's products are far sneakier and complex than the lab's.
Inspired by the movement of spider webs in the wind, Dutch designer Jeroen Van Der Meij created Breathing Lights.
During a triathlon ace a drone operated by a local photographer hit one of the athletes.
If this technique become widely accessible it could allow you to regain anonymity in webcam and facetime conversations.
Dutch girl fakes an exotic holiday with the power of Photoshop and Facebook.
In the Ruriden cemetery, in Tokyo, over 2.000 Buddhas statues are illuminated by high-powered color changing LED lights.
The Google self-driving car has driven 700.000 miles by itself, and now it can drive through busy city streets.
Google Maps drew up three different topographical plans of Crimea: one for visitors from Ukraine, another one for Russian users; and the third on the international version of the …
A deceased scrollbar in a Church. What does it mean?
Most people nowadays know more logos and brands than bird or tree species. Go test your own knowledge. Take a look at the leaves and logos above and see how many you can identify without looking them up.
Tinder users beware: somewhere out there a mechanical finger is surfing the popular dating smartphone app. This could be your next match.
A map showing the endless expansion of McDonald’s restaurants.
Textiles manufacturer 'Vlisco' updates African classic pattern to represent personal educational preferences.
Realistic WOII movie Fury had to cater to the gaming generation with hyperrealistic Star Wars style laser shooting tanks.
Spotted near Las Vegas and Hurghada, Egypt. If you know any cellphone tree antenna masts in your neighborhood. Use the Next Nature spotting app for iPhone to add them.
Occasionally you bump into an image that seems related to our next nature quest, but you are unable to verbalize.
If the moon were only one pixel: a scale model of the solar system that shows how big our milky way actually is.
Updating the old paper magazine into the digital realm.
The series Museum of Selfies combines the original art of portraiture with its modern counterpart, the the smartphone self-portrait.
The smog in Beijing has become so thick that only place to hail a sunrise is on the huge digital commercial television screens across the city.
Just like Lego, Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks.
Visit a couple of museums from all over the world in a single day. The world’s most famous paintings are just one click away.
Is it analog, or is it digital? It’s a boomeranged metaphor!
Digital cameras have made us think less about taking a snapshot. Why should you think twice?
he always-available camera in our pockets compels us to shoot photos and videos every minute a day.
Did Vincent van Gogh ever imagine his paintings would be sold for millions?
Remember these? If you are a digital native there is a chance you never noticed one of them.
Want to grow some vegetables but don’t want to get your hands dirty? There is an app for that!
No, the selfie at the top isn’t the latest post of Albrecht Du?rer on Instagram.
Will the children of the future think Mark Zuckerberg came up with the thumbs-up gesture?
Would you be able to recognize these logos if they were in Chinese?
The current technology has not been able to replicate Christ the Redeemer perfectly, until now.
Sixteen-year-old Japanese singer Hatsune Miku grew in short time to a worldwide popstar. With her colourful appearance she counts millions of followers on social media, she …
The popular social network icon has been turned into a potentially lethal narcotic substance.
Time measurement tools are perhaps among the most inventive technologies mankind has produced, as it enables us to articulate ‘natural’ time (in the form of lunar years, sun …
Japan city has launched an online street view map to introduce the view of the city by a cat's perspective.
The multidisciplinary design consultancy Antrepo Team created a project named Minimalist Effect in the Maximalist Market in 2010.
Humans cannot have intercourse with cars or replicate with them, so why would we find cars sexy anyhow?
A few days ago, these images of iconic buildings in Beijing as they look with and without intense smog have been posted on Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media …
When there is such abundance of areas where IoT could be applied, several ridiculous, unnecessary products are inevitable.
My New Flame uses LED technology to faithfully recreate the experience of light from the ancient past
If you experience virtual reality sickness, here some solutions for you.
Researchers discovered that people's reactions to 3D images of facial expressions are more emotional than the responses to classic 2D images.
Using immersive virtual reality and aromatics to make the brain believe we are enjoying a delicious dish.
Your cat might be able to take photos and share them on Instagram by itself soon.
Adblock Plus, world’s most popular ad-blocking tool, just announced they are launching an advertising service for “acceptable” ads.
What happens when our dreams become a commodity and advertisers gain the technology to enter our dreams?
Google's PlaNet will be soon able to tell you where a photograph was taken by simply looking at its contents.
Last week nearly 70 portraits of cats replaced all advertisements at the Clapham Common tube station in London.
How to monitor the effects of El Niño ? The Nature Conservancy wants to take advantage of the massive image production that can be collected using smartphones and drones. From …
Google launched the Mzansi Experience, a virtual tour to South Africa through Street View.
This Instagram model makes her fans wondering whether she is fake or real.
Companies try a new, more secure payment system using selfies.
Since plans for conquering the Red Planet are becoming more serious we should get acquainted with the possible view from up there.
A bright green is the color of 2017, a perfect choice if we take into account some of the positive developments in renewables reached in 2016.
If we'll ever get to go to Mars as tourists , we wouldn't get lost. Ordnance Survey , the official British mapping agency, recently released a new detailed map of the Red Planet. …
To celebrate the 500 year anniversary for Hieronymus Bosch, Studio Smack made a contemporary interpretation of 'The Garden Of Earthly Delights'.
What if we can no longer rely on authenticity of voice recordings? A demo software to alter them premiered recently.
UV Production House reflects on popular online platforms for maker culture.
Pokémon Go is shaping social relationships amongst individuals.
Terrapattern is a search engine that gathers similar elements of satellite imagery, giving surprising results.
Emoji are taking our communication to a faster, simpler level.
United Nations aims at turning a playful technology into a serious medium.
An AI draws streets and spaces stitching together its artificial memories of real places.
Say goodbye to bad selfies with Adobe’s latest AI photo editor.
Barbie has been turned into a hologram version of herself and will now be your kids assistend.
Emoji translator wanted! London firm is looking for an emoji translator, take the test to find out if you're good enough.
A neural network helps computers with image recognition. It is usually tough to fool. But one group of researchers has found a way to reliably trick it.
Scientists have found a way to bring back the lost flavor of tomatoes.
There is a WiFi network illegally configured that interferes with the rain radar creating a ray of "clouds" that won't bring any water.
Sen is a space television network that provides visuals from other planets in order to prepare us for our multi-planetary life.
What if you could unlock your phone by simply looking at the camera? According to Apple, this is precisely how the iPhone X will work. But how secure is it?
Forever by your side. Elrois a South Korean firm developed an app that allows you to engage with your dead friends lovers or idols.
Shazam for Plants app lets you catch around 400.000 plant species left on our planet through the lens of your smartphone.
In New York, observant residents were surprised to see a skyscraper that looked like it was struggling to load its textures.
The Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, has launched a four-year experiment to study how the primates make their mating choices.
Discover the cellular world with stick-on camera lenses for your smartphone.
Using alternative reality as a cure for the socially excluded.
Today, artificial intelligence is doing all kinds of things: It can write an episode of game of thrones , it may revolutionize the teaching industry , and it's drawing new streets …
For those experiencing symptoms of motion sickness in VR , it’s now possible to step inside a real-life simulation of what it could be like to ski on mars. Last week, desert dust …
Submarines feature a special device called a periscope that allows people inside the submarine to see what's going on above water. Controlling such an eye requires hours of …
When perceiving the world around us as a potential Instagram post, some thoughts, stories and situations can easily be packed into a tweet or a photo, while others are harder to …
A recent lip filler trend blew up on social media. 'Devil lips' , or Octopus lips, have attracted divided opinion online. When the body modification hit Instagram, some spectators …
A stack of pancakes ladened with syrup, a frothy latte posed next to a white MacBook, a deep pan pizza oozing with cheese. Instagram has made “food porn” – images that portray …
Recently, Twitter announced it would be clearing all inactive accounts in an effort to free up dormant usernames and prevent the risk of old accounts being hacked. The new policy …