Technomaly » Art

Robot Name:Muon. Function: Looking Great

markracz — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:55:02 +0000

Quick! What do you know about Germany? No, not that! And no, it’s not cool to talk about THAT short dude over and over again! Well, the thing you should know about Germany is that they are developing humanoid robots. Yes, humanoid robots, the awesome add on for our everyday lives ten or fifteen years from now.

At the Humboldt University in Berlin, an industrial design company named Frackenpohl Poulheim working for a lab named ALEAR Laboratory of Neuro Robotics develops MUON, a humanoid robot as tall as an 8 year old (but way cooler). It sure looks cool with that huge eye occupying the entire face (or is “face” an obsolete term?) and the slick, blue leds inside the robot’s knees and hands. There is no word about the actual benefits the robot would bring (beside being awesome), but we can anticipate that it could be used for therapy, commercials and Michael Bay pics (and, considering the hands, to be the coolest cup holder available).

Also, it’s not clear in which development stage the robot is (I wonder if there’s a search for beta testers). Don’t forget to check the german link bellow (hail to Google translate) and read all about the idea behind Muon and watch a cool making of video. I hate that there’s not a “preorder now” button anywhere on the site.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/19/muon-the-humanoid-robot-is-our-ideal-best-friend/

and http://www.frackenpohl-poulheim.de/projekte/myon-roboter/

What Your Email Address Says About Your Computer Skills

J. Matthew Zoss — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:04:14 +0000

What does your email address say about you? Humor site The Oatmeal breaks it down in this handy chart. There’s nothing I can say to add to the brilliance of this creation, so I’ll just shut up and let you enjoy.

Inside Android

J. Matthew Zoss — Thu, 27 May 2010 16:24:23 +0000

Even if you’re not an Android phone user, I’m sure you can appreciate this look inside the platform’s robotic mascot. Look, he’s got a little heart! Artist Garry Booth has made his design “Exploded Andy” available on both a poster and t-shirt, either of which you can buy here.

Science + Art + Mutants = Sweet!

Nick Upton — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:11:43 +0000

A Swiss artist embarked into the nuclear wasteland surrounding power plants and came back with some lovely water colors.

Scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger details these minute mutations in the so-called true bugs she collects near nuclear facilities and areas of chemical contamination.

True bugs don’t travel far, and they “suck the liquid from the plants they live on,” she says. “So if the plant is contaminated, they take a lot of radioactivity into their bodies.”

It’s pretty amazing to see what kind of mutations can pop up even at a well-maintained nuclear facility — especially in such nice painting.

It makes me wonder what that runoff is doing to humans downstream.

Head over to Wired for the whole army of mutant insects.

Wampa Rug is Star Wars Sexy

J. Matthew Zoss — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:30:55 +0000

I really can’t see how any self-respecting Star Wars geek could pass this up. Think Geek has an amazing Wampa skin rug on sale for$100, which is a small price to pay for how much nerd girl/guy action you’ll get from it.

The 62 x 30-inch rug is made of synthetic fur and has a non-slip backing, which is an important feature for many reasons I can think of. Unfortunately, the rug doesn’t include a hot slave Leia.

Sharkbag!

J. Matthew Zoss — Fri, 14 May 2010 17:37:57 +0000

I don’t know what else to say besides “holy crap, I want this!” The shark attack sleeping bag is available for pre-order here. The sharkbag (my term, not the creators) is hand-sewn, hungry for blood and totally awesome.

Techy Bed Lulls You To Sleep With Science

Nick Upton — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:17:01 +0000

I sleep like crap, too much caffeine and too many video games to play put sleep on the back burner.
But if I had this sweet bed, I think I could stop both — and I would probably have to since it would cost a fortune.

Designed for extreme insomnia sufferers, the “Once Upon a Dream” project bed was designed by French furniture designer Mathieu Lehanneur to be more than just soft and cuddly. The bed actually uses white noise and other sounds that create sleep-like brainwaves.

The bed features curtains that automatically close prodding the user to sleep. The temperature and lighting levels are dropped gradually, while levels of gentle white noise rise to block out external sounds. The purr sound created by adding together barely audible frequencies is used to put certain patients into a Non Ordinary State of Consciousness (NOSC) prior to telepathic experiments.

The temperature of the over all room is reduced to between 2° to 19° C. The light dimmers can be activated with a touch by the user, with the help of a plant hanging over the bed. Within a span of fifteen minutes the light dims from 1000 Lux to 0. The bed also has a provision for waking the user through increasing temperature by two degrees and light levels from 0 to 2500 Lux in fifteen minutes.

The bed was created based on extensive research on psychology on insomniacs.
So next time you’re at the Hotel du Marc in Reims, France, try it out and get some techy sleep in a huge fancy bed.

[Via World Interior Design Network]

Brit Artist Wins Award For Trashing Apartment

Nick Upton — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:14:21 +0000

Ever make a batch of rock candy? Yeah, it’s dumb, I know. But ever thought about pumping an apartment full of crystal-making liquid?

One artist did, and he won a prize for destroying an apartment turning the flat into more of a sharp-and-bumpy.

Last year artist, Roger Hiorns was nominated for a Turner Prize with this art installation, Seizure. For this work, Hiorns pumped 75,000 liters of liquid copper-sulfate into an empty public housing flat in London, which resulted in the rooms being covered with stunning blue crystals.

As you can see, the room looks like a blue flat of solitude. It’s probably not the most comfortable looking pad for a party, but the blue on blue crystals are incredibly trippy.

[Via Lost At E Minor | Roger Hiorns]

Printing On Walls With A Paint-Ball Auto Cannon

Nick Upton — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:10:54 +0000

Some crafty Germans used their love of guns and efficiency to create an autonomous robot that paints with paintballs.

The Facadeprinter is a simple, software controlled robot. It consits of a two axis turn table and an airpressure printhead. The printer shoots the artwork from a distanced position dot by dot onto the chosen area.

According to this method inaccessible and also uneven surfaces can be printed on. Buildings can be displayed without costly scaffolding.

The people behind the Facadeprinter really push how efficient it is to put up billboards or art on any wall without actually painting.

At five paintballs per a second, the Facadeprinter can put a massive 8 meter dot image on a wall in no time.
Designed by Sonice Development GmbH, the printer can only print one color, but as the video shows, it’s easy to load up another hopper for multicolored projects.

Check out the Facadeprinter site for a huge collection of works and more information.

[Via MAKE]

Complete Your Enchanted Forest Living Room

Nick Upton — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:07:48 +0000

I always like these crazy designers that blur the line between natural and techy, these sweet chairs do just that.

Designed by Giancarlo Zema for the Avanzini Group, these amazing Bright Woods furniture collection were displayed at the Design in Nature exhibition in the Triennale Design Museum as part of the Milan Furniture Fair.

The chair looks like a some big space nut, crisscrossed with lights. The white is pretty awesome, but the pink, orange and purple could get pretty abrasive in your living room.

The best part, I think, is that when the lights are off, the strips of light turn black, making it look even more like a spooky space nut.

[Via Fresh Home]

iWatch Isn’t Real but Should Be

J. Matthew Zoss — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:59:20 +0000

Before you get too excited, the watch at left isn’t real. It’s a concept cooked up by Italian design firm ADR studio. Here’s what their website has to say about the fictional device:

It is obviously impossible, but ADR Studio has tried to imagine a new Apple style product, able to be with us every day.

Say “Hello” to iWatch.

iWatch is a wrist device with these features:

- Aluminium body
- WiFi and Bluetooth
- Integrated RSS Reader
- 16GB;
- Weather forecast system;
- Possibility to connect to the Bluetooth or WiFi to iPhone / iPad
- LCD projector to show everywhere pictures by your iPhone / iPad
- Available in various colors

Source: Gizmodo

Whale-Shaped Airship First Flying Hotel

Nick Upton — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:05:38 +0000

I can barely afford a Howard Johnson, but I’d gladly sleep in my car to save up for a ride on this sweet airship hotel.

Dubbed the Manned Cloud, the whale of a airship is still on the drawing board, but claims to be the first flying hotel.

Manned Cloud is a whale-shaped airship hotel with a capacity of 40 passengers and staffed with 15 persons, that on a 3-day cruise in 170 km/h permits man to explore the world without a trace: to re-experience traveling, timelessness and enhance the consciousness of the beauty of the world.

The Manned Cloud was developed by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud and the French national aerospace researcher ONERA.

The ship looks like Star Trek crashed into a fish, and instead of cleaning up the mess, they painted it white. I’m not sure that the whale design helps the ship fly any better, but it would be a stunning site to see this thing floating through the air.

[Via Design You Trust]

The Joker comes to iPad

J. Matthew Zoss — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:59:06 +0000

The moment a new piece of technology is released, there’s always someone who does something really cool with it. For example, The Joker and Catwoman pictures you see here were drawn entirely on an iPad using Sketchbook Pro. Granted, they were drawn by legendary comic book artist Jim Lee. Yes, he draws for a living. But drawing with your fingers on a brand-new piece of technology and producing these – well, that’s bad- ass no matter who you are.

Source: JoBlo .com

Camera Allows You To See WiFi

Nick Upton — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 16:21:03 +0000

Panoramic Wifi Camera from Adam Somlai-Fischer on Vimeo.

I am never surprised by the insane things people make, but this “camera” is pretty amazing.

Essentially, the camera can take pictures of the radio spectrum by spotting the varying intensities within the spectrum. The pictures come out looking like a copy from a broken printer, but the it’s the principle people, the principle!

With the camera we can take real time “photos” of wifi (and we’re working towards having video too). These show how our physical structures are illuminated by this particular electromagnetic phenomenon and we are even able to see the shadows that our bodies cast within such “hertzian” spaces.

…

We do this basically by pointing a wifi antenna (or several antennas) and measuring the signal strength throughout a view – the faster we can do this, the faster we can create full-screen images.

The machine also gives a good glimpse at the inundation of these waves that blast us every day from our routers, microwaves and the radio. I’m not saying go out and get a tinfoil hat, but at least some tinfoil underwear.

The machine has the added benefit of looking like something out of steampunk villain’s workshop.

[Via Make Magazine]

Swedish Table Folds Like A Map

Nick Upton — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 16:37:40 +0000

A pair of Swedish designers came up with a fascinating table design, one that folds and entire dinner table to something that can fit in a corner.

Grand Central is an innovative expandable table that transforms from space-saving occasional table to the central piece of the room.

The tabletop is divided into 22 pieces that folds out in a spectacular way through its advanced construction — dramatic and poetic at the same time.

The inspiration comes from a pop-up map of New York.

I’ve stared and stared and can’t see to find hinges or anything holding it together — so I assume Swedish magic is at work here.

[Via Grand Central]

Scientists Pimp Out Their Electron Microscope

Nick Upton — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:26:41 +0000

Some scientists have created a brilliant way to get attention for their desktop telescopes.

They are calling for user submissions for their electron microscope.

You can send your own sample at the Aspex Corp Web site.

Check out a bunch of the user submissions below in the image gallery.

Will You Survive The Zombie Apocalypse?

Nick Upton — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:27:36 +0000

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to survive the inevitable zombie apocalypse, but Game Informer got it pretty spot on.

And the reality? You’re totally screwed — sorry!

Check out the Zombie Apocalypse Flowchart in all its glory at Game Informer.

Designer Combines Bath Rug, Scale

Nick Upton — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:48:45 +0000

This cool concept rug does double duty in the bathroom, adding a scale to the furry rug.

The scale part and the rug part separate for easy cleaning.

It’s just a concept for now, but it could be great for the future of my bathroom.

Hopefully the scale part will be translated into American measurements, since I’m American and refuse to learn stuff.

[Via Design You Trust]

Steampunk Taxidermy Awesome, Not Sexy

Nick Upton — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:12:19 +0000

You can throw a rock at the internet and hit a big pile of steampunk. But Ron Pippin has taken steampunk-styled art to a new level with taxidermy.

Each piece is so incredibly detailed that it looks like his creations could come to life, or back to life as it were.

His horse sculpture has brass hydraulics intertwined with bone and sinew to make an real looking bionic horse that could gallop out of some warped 1930’s steampunk stable.

It’s quite a bizarre art, and though I don’t think I could do it myself (I don’t even like touching raw chicken) I’m glad someone out there is doing it.

His other taxidermy is fascinating too, like the spooky marmot below.

[Via Ron Pippin]

Webcomic Wednesdays: Achewood

Asterios Kokkinos — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:00:16 +0000

Here at Technomaly, we’ve decided to launch new, weekly features designed to turn you onto our favorite parts of the web. Features like “Webcomic Wednesday” and “Flash Friday” will be running until we run out of good websites to turn you onto. Today’s Webcomic Wednesday: Achewood.

This strip is part of Achewood’s most famous arc, The Great Outdoor Fight, which was turned into a book and published by Dark Horse a few years back.

So what is Achewood? It’s a comic following the adventures of a bunch of cats in various social classes, from the incredibly rich Ray to the incredibly poor Roast Beef, and everywhere inbetween. Magical realism, lying robots and heaven all feature prominently in the strips 9 year history, which started out as the adventures of bears living in a house with an otter (the bears and otter remain to this day.)

Achewood has been a staple of the internet as long as Homestar Runner or Something Awful, so if you haven’t given it a try, it’s about time. Read more about it at www.achewood.com.

Concept Clock Creates Digital From Analog

Nick Upton — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:23:04 +0000

This really interesting clock uses several small analog clocks to make up numerals.

It’s a concept clock, so you won’t see it soon, but what an interesting concept.

There is an interesting demo of the clock at the designer’s site.

Creepy LEGO Figure Will Haunt Your Dreams

Nick Upton — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:41:33 +0000

When I usually think of LEGO, I think bright colors, happy yellow faces and fighting my friends for the sweet black axe.

But Mike Foy has turned all those old conceptions on their head with this creepy LEGO monster. It looks like something out of a bad dream, some faceless, clawed monster.

See more of his really awesome Lego designs on his flickr stream

I don’t hold out much hope, but some freaky Lovecraft-esque monsters in the LEGO MMO Game would be pretty interesting.

[Via Brothers Brick]

Centipede Chair Made From Car Headrests

Nick Upton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:21:56 +0000

This really cool chair is made up from a bunch of car headrests and boasts the ability to transform into a variety of shapes from a lounge to a bed to a reclining chair.

The chair is the brainchild of the Italian designer Alessia Massimi and was created using headrests exclusively from the Citroen C2 car, so I suspect they had some involvement.

I’d love to have these sitting in my living room, it could really be an upgrade from my BBQ-sauce-stained gamer floor rocker.

Below are some of the positions the chair can morph into — nothing crazy, but interesting nonetheless.

Aspiral Clock Makes It Fun To Watch The Clock

Nick Upton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:00:52 +0000

Some trippy Brits made one of the coolest clocks I have ever seen.

Instead of a pair of boring hands and a second hand, the clock has just one ball. As the day progresses, the ball stays rolls along as the face of the spiral-shaped clock turns. After 12 hours, the ball falls through an opening at the middle and to the bottom to start all over again.

I would really love to have one of these things, but since the designer and his buddies make them in their “flat,” it’s considered art and comes with a 350 pound ($540) price tag.

Check out a BBC show’s visit to the Aspiral clock factory.

Go to 1:25 for a timelapse of the clock in action if you’re in a hurry.

[Aspiral Clocks]

Curtain Turns Your Slides Into Something Not Lame!

Nick Upton — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:36:58 +0000

I saw this great curtain over at Flickr (Via Make) and I really want to make my own now.

It’s no brain science — easy enough even for my monkey-level crafting skills — but it turns those weird old slides you can find at any garage sale into something really great.

Nintendo History, in Keychain Form

J. Matthew Zoss — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:00:40 +0000

I think we’ve reached the point where it’s socially acceptable to accessorize with video game stuff. At least, that’s what I like to tell myself. The TakaraTomy corporation seems to think so too. The company is launching a new line of keychains that celebrate an important milestone in the history of Nintendo: Game & Watch. These small LCD handhelds were each an individual game as well as a clock, hence the name. If you take a close look at a Game & Watch unit, you can see hints of Nintendo products to come.

The keychain recreations will feature solar-powered clocks, but no playable game, which is a total drag. However, they look cool and will be available for the reasonable price of around $11 this March.

Story and Image Via Kotaku.

Graffiti Gives Glimpse Into Sex, Happiness On College Campus

Nick Upton — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:17:00 +0000

An IT worker turned graffiti researcher unveiled his quirky research and compiled it into lovely graphs featuring all the lovely graffiti one might expect in a library bathroom.

Quinn Dombrowski studied the bathrooms, study areas and whiteboards of a University of Chicago library looking for indicators of a slew of things from happiness to lust, even genitalia.

Dombrowski also put all the information together into a handy little time graph. He postulated a number of things from the graph, but noted that few references to sex might mean people are actually having sex instead of drawing penises on bathroom walls.

My favorite part of his research was how scientific he made smiley and frowny faces.

One possible metric for measuring happiness is the classic “smiley face” and its negative counterpart, the “frowny face.”

On these grounds, students lean markedly towards happiness, with over 63% smiley faces. (See fig. 1.) A superficial look at the textual data suggests an even stronger case for an assessment of happiness, with 10 occurrences of “happy” vs. 3 occurrences of “sad.”
Read more of Dombrowski's research at Inkling Magazine.

[Images via Inkling Magazine]

Related posts:
Google Grabs Graffiti and Goes Global

Sex Robot Created To Honor 9/11 Victim

Supreme Court Blocks Youtube Broadcast Of California Same Sex Marriage Trial

Google Store Sells $300 Scarf, Keeps Straight Face

Asterios Kokkinos — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:00:20 +0000

The Google Store (which before this story I had no idea existed) is selling a ton of high end clothing and accessories, apparently under the impression that any of us have any money these days.

Chief among the items sold? This $300 designer scarf, “inspired by Google.” How a search engine could inspire a long rag you wear around your neck is beyond me, but to be fair, it is designed with the Google colors. Also, designers Alexa Adams and Flora Gill claim the scarf is designed to be worn several different ways, so as to be as “multi-functional as Google itself.”

Yeah, I can think of plenty of ways you could wear this scarf! You could wear it around your neck on a bread line, wrap it around your head at the unemployment office, or use it as a noose when the depression of our nation’s +10% unemployment finally gets to you!

Google’s also selling an $85 t-shirt inspired by Google Maps and a $200 magnifying glass pendant inspired by Google’s ability to search for things. Maybe while you’re searching, you can look up “common sense!”

Source & Image Source: TechCrunch

Swanky Roman Army Knife Beats Swiss By 1,800 Years

Nick Upton — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:04:36 +0000

It might not have the pretty red handle or the Swiss Cross, but this Roman army knife did the trick for one rich traveler at the height of the empire.

The silver gadget included a knife, spoon, fork, spatula, a toothpick and a retractable spike — thought to be used to harvest yummy snails from their shell.

The 3in x 6in (8cm x 15cm) knife was excavated from the Mediterranean area more than 20 years ago and was obtained by the museum in 1991.

The unique item is among dozens of artifacts exhibited in a newly refurbished Greek and Roman antiquities gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum, in Cambridge.

Experts believe it may have been carried by a wealthy traveler, who will have had the item custom made.

It’s certainly not as easy to carry as a keychain knife, but it looks like it would do the trick — I’ll take mine with a spork.

[Via Daily Mail]

Augmented Reality Tattoos Are Awesome

Nick Upton — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:06:55 +0000

Alright, there are a lot of augmented reality things that really don’t seem to do much and a whole lot of hype. But I must say, augmented reality tattoos are really cool and raise a lot of interesting possibilities.

As is apparent in the video, the computer reads the tattoo and displays it as a flying dragon — awesome right? Now what if these tattoos (permanent or temporary) could be stuck on someone and display contact information or connect a user to their Facebook profile, LinkdIn etc. Never have to tag another photo!

And the best thing about augmented reality tattoos, when you get bored of that fairy tramp stamp, you can update it to a bald eagle or a badass dragon — which you could never get bored of.

Art For Geeks: Star Wars Mosaic Last Supper

Nick Upton — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:34:42 +0000

A big, big time Star Wars fan spent two weeks creating a mosaic version of Eric Dechamps‘ Star Wars themed last supper painting — and he created it completely from frames of the movies.

Avinash Arora created the image from 69,000 images, or what he said amounted to one of every 20 frames from the entire series.

… There are mosaic maker programs out there, and that’s how I started. I used a program that does it for you, didn’t like the way it was turning out, and couldn’t process large files. I “hacked” the program and wrote in my own algorithm, which is a slightly modified version of theirs and requires a really…REALLY powerful computer to compute.

Since mine’s just above average it took a long time for the initial composition. Then about 6 compositions later I started working on it manually. By rough estimation, i’d say I replaced about 1200-1500 images manually (cut/crop, etc.) and it improved the image DRASTICALLY. For this reason there are likely to be doubles, but I tried to avoid it.

Arora said that he touched up the colors too to make it look better.

At the end he wound up with a 2GB image that would have measured 5 feet by 11 feet, but the printer’s computer wasn’t powerful enough to open the file. He said he also saw the genius of grommets, but only after his poster was complete.

I didn’t get grommets put in on the first one, and now I’m regretting it… how the fuck do I hang up a 6 foot long 3 pound poster???

For a link to a larger version or more about the process go to Arora’s site; which also provided the images.

Photoshop Phun: The Inventions of The Future

J. Matthew Zoss — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:12:30 +0000

I’m a sucker for Photoshop contests not just because of some of the wacky images that people come up with, but because sometimes those images wind up being pretty good ideas. Sure, a lot of Photoshop contest entrant focus on just being goofy, but every now and again somebody whips something up that’s a legitimately good idea. Creative community Worth1000 recently had a contest to whip up some of the inventions of the future, and there’s a good mix in there of the silly and the smart. The web-enabled coffee mug shown here is one of the concepts I have a feeling will happen some day. The cell phone banana? Not so much.

To see the entire gallery, click here.

Source: Worth1000 via Funlock.

LEDs Turn Funky Foam Into Faux Fancy Couch

Nick Upton — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:29:18 +0000

What looks like a common block of foam becomes — cue dramatic music — a light-up Chesterfield!

It’s a brilliant design idea to take something swirling, cozy and classic and essentially jam it into something square, illuminating and incredibly modern.

It looks cheap and straight forward, but as the couch is a design concept, you can’t buy it. I’d like to see a DIY project for it, but I bet my Chesterfield would look more like a scribble.

The couch would be a great addition to the LED Table, if you’re some kind of rich LED freak.

[Image via Esprit Design (warning French)]

Bad Designomaly: Check Out These Awful Photoshop Smoke Effects!

Asterios Kokkinos — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:56:00 +0000

Design website SixRevisions, which usually provides good design advice, has taken a vacation from that and published an article on the merits of smoke lettering.

You can download the brushes here, but be warned – all smoke effects should be used is for irony purposes only. For example, my entry to the smoke lettering game, which is below.

Source: SixRevisions.com

Enjoy This Parade Of Terrible Robots!

Asterios Kokkinos — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:45:29 +0000

The aptly titled blog Fun Gags has collected an album of peoples terrible homemade robot costumes. Lord knows what dark inspiration set upon their editors, but bless their hearts – these photos are some of the best/worst things I’ve seen on the internet in a while.

Check out my cardboard friend to the left, who looks terrible for so many hilarious reasons. For starters, most robots do not wear sandals. Those that do are smart enough to not wear socks with those sandals. Finally, even if a robot did wear socks with his sandals, he’s likely be smart enough to create adaquate armholes, to avoid falling over and looking even more like a doofus.

Source: Fun Gags

Jeep Produced Techno Again Proves Techno’s Awfulness

Asterios Kokkinos — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:00:51 +0000

Techno music: History’s Greatest Lie. A series of annoying clicks and beeps designed to elicit pleasure from shut ins, techno is the worst thing to happen to music since Buddy Hollies, Richard Valence and The Biggest Boppo all got into that train fight and died.

Nah, I’m just messin’ with you, techno’s fine. And this techno song that’s made entirely with a Jeep Cherokee is pretty great – it took 7 hours to get it all in one take. If you spend 7 hours making a song with all the noises that could come out of a Jeep, I’ll listen.

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Google Grabs Graffiti and Goes Global

Geoffrey Golden — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:57:03 +0000

You might think of graffiti as a strictly a local art form. After all, graffiti artists are painting on the sides of neighborhood buildings. It’s impractical to tear down a brick wall and send it on a tour of art galleries. (Then again, size hasn’t stopped Jeff Koons‘ work from getting around.)

Thanks to Google Maps Street View launching in the UK, Brits have been geotagging their favorite pieces of local graffiti and posting links around the web. Finally, a spray painted penis, captioned with the word “wanker,” can be seen by those of us outside of London.

Actually, there are some truly amazing works of graffiti getting posted, like the awesome “building cat.” Check out this gallery for more.

Blob House Makes Pre-Fab Living Pretty

Nick Upton — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:27:22 +0000

The Blob House from dvmA is a phenomenal exercise in minimalist architecture.

Built on wood with polyester molding, the Blob House is visually stunning, but not obtrusive — perfectly designed to sit in the yard as a guest house or garden fort.

It’s equipped with a bathroom, a shower, a bed (hidden among the shelves). There is a door on the side and the front opens up like the nose of an airplane allowing easy move ins and move outs.

It brings back memories of living in a tent for a summer, but it’s much classier than my pop up tent.

The prototype is currently on display on the Verberke Foundation land; a private European art exhibition space on 30 acres of land. It’s surely not for commercial sale, but it points to really interesting future of modular housing. I can just imagine a vast park of these shiny white eggs replacing a hill of pre-fabricated trailers — suddenly it would be ultra hip to live in a trailer park.

Images by Frederik Vercruysse Via Design Boom and dvmA

World’s Largest Aquarium Made For World’s Largest Bachelor Pad

Asterios Kokkinos — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:25:08 +0000

Ah, “the world’s largest.” Three simple words that set men’s hearts afire. Now we’ve got a new toy to lust after – the AquaDom in Berlin, Germany. It’s currently on display at the Radisson SAS Hotel, where it’s likely getting everyone laid. AquaDom stands 25-meters high, contains 900,000 liters of seawater and is home to 2600 fishes. It’s also a gigantic eyesore. Hey look, a bacta tank! I’m so glad we stayed at the Raddison, they’ve erected a monument to man’s folly!

Other factoids: it holds 56 species of fish, cost 12.8 million euros, and should not be. It simply should not be. We must destroy it, for the greater good.

Source, Image Source: Hottnez

Bacon-Flavored Floss Perfect With My Egg Toothpaste

Nick Upton — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:25:50 +0000

Maybe someday I’ll have the willpower to wake up and make myself waffles, bacon and coffee, but my current extreme level of laziness keeps me in bed until the very last possible moment. Thankfully I can get my coffee, waffle and — most importantly — bacon while I floss my pearly whites with Breakfast Floss

Enjoy the sweetness of waffles, savory bacon and a cup o’ Joe on the go. No need to stop & feast when you can stash all these flavors in your car, desk or even your pocket!

Mmmm, I think I’ll braid them all together and have a delicious breakfast rope. Maybe I’ll throw some Cheerios on there too and make a breakfast necklace.

The floss comes in a complete breakfast set for $12.

Via Fred Flare

Bacon Envelopes Make Me Want To Mail Something

LED Table Makes For Light Meals

Nick Upton — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:18:32 +0000

Ingo Maurer

This awesome table is the brain child of German industrial designer Ingo Maurer, and puts a little space fashion in your dining room.

A total of 834 of white LED bulbs are suspended inside the glass of the table, but the coolest part is that the wiring connecting it all together is invisible. So impress your friends or horrify the local townsfolk with your new table.

I couldn’t find any pricing information, which means I can’t afford it.

The table was designed back in 2003 and is being created on a limited basis. But I hope something similar trickles down to broke people like myself.

See a close up here.

Via Ingo Maurer.

Steampunks Crash A 50s Sock Hop, Make ‘Philco PC’

Nick Upton — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:25:46 +0000

Looking like something out of Fallout with a mix of steampunk and 1950s, the “Philco PC” isn’t real yet, but it looks real pretty.

Designers SchulzeWORKS issued a press release describing their “top three” placing in a design contest.

The design of the “Philco PC” was inspired by the 1954 design classic Philco Predicta, as well as an eclectic mixture of modern minimalism, the steampunk movement, and antiques. As lead designer Dave Schultze explains, “The result is a design aesthetic that blends multiple elements of the familiar, but with some surprisingly fresh styling that just so happens to house a state-of-the-art Windows 7 PC.”

Every part of the computer has its own little feature: the keyboard keys are round and metal-trimmed, giving it the look of a futuristic typewriter. The mouse looks like a chromed piece of metal with a big metal wheel and the same buttons as the keyboard. Even the retro curly cord in the back connects the flashy monitor to the 50s-radio case.

The pictures and the video are both 3D mockups of the design, so everyone has time to drool/save their money.

Philco PC from Dave Schultze on Vimeo.

Music Video Made Frame By Frame Via Web Cams

Nick Upton — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:47:53 +0000

The band C-Mon and Kypski has a really interesting music video/viral campaign/collaborative work of art for the band’s new We Are Square album.

Basically, the video is a collection of people taking pictures of themselves with their webcams interspersed with the band members. The combination makes for a really personal and really fascinating stop-motion video of all the contributors.

This type of collaborative art is really fascinating and it actually puts the fans and the band together closer than any twitter feed or forum could. The fans actually become a piece of the art — for an hour at least.
According to the site, the video is updated every hour to include the latest people to help out. So do your part for art and post for the camera.

Via One Frame Of Fame. More at Band MySpace | Band Site.

Lite Brite Re-Imagined At CES 2010

Nick Upton — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:14:57 +0000

Remember Lite Brite?! Me too; all those tiny pieces to swallow, those bulbs that burn out and are too expensive to replace and those great colors.

OK, so Lite Brite was fun, but it was high time for an upgrade. That’s where Hi-Tec Art’s new design comes in.

Instead of pegs sticking into a lit board, the design offers a thin pad of foam over a 5 watt current. Each of the little LEDs have a pair of prongs that stick through and light up. An addition over the old school Lite Brite is the bendable light wires that Hi-Tec artists can wrap around the diodes — like in the picture.

The offering was one of the few young-kid gadgets, but the fun danger factor is still there for the kids since the prongs at the base of the LEDs is pretty sharp.

Go forth kids and swallow those LEDs and stab your finger — for America!

Avatar: James Cameron’s Billion Dollar Baby

Asterios Kokkinos — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:58:35 +0000

By the time you finish reading this sentence, Avatar will have made another million dollars.

The high-tech fairy tale is already the fourth highest grossing film of all time, and will take the third place spot (Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man’s Chest) within days.

Much has been written about the technology of Avatar – the hundreds of cameras used to capture live performances, the quarter billion special effects budget – but the interesting thing is that it’s an anti-technology film. Spoilers ahead.

The word “avatar” refers to the cloned natives of a distant planet whose resources we’re plundering. Humans can upload their consciousnesses into these bodies, and walk around as if they were the planet’s inhabitants, the Na’vi. It’s an interesting bit of wish fulfullment – if only we could warp into the bodies of Afghan’s or Iraqi’s, we’d be able to better understand them, right?

Well, wrong – the Na’vi hate these avatars. Turns out it’s not what what we look like, it’s how we act that bothers them! The message being: all the technology in the world isn’t going to convince people to like us.

In the film’s climactic final battle, helicopter gunships and mech-suited marines are overrun by flying beasts and charging rhinos. In our villain’s last moments, his mech-suit fails – both examples of the fragility of technology when faced with nature itself.

Finally, the film’s follow character, Jake Sully, chooses in the end to permanantly merge with his avatar through the magic of trees, which is a lot more poetic in the film itself. This final abandonment of humanity is also a rebuke of technology – he’s casting off all his human comforts and getting back to nature.

All in all, sharp ironies from a film whose construction exists entirely within a computer and that cost more money to make than the GDP of some countries.

Futuristic Lamp Controlled By Floating Switch Orb

Nick Upton — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:16:09 +0000

Finally, the Fiat Lux has given me something to replace my adorable koala bear lamp. It’s not quite as cute, but the cool factor more than makes up for it.

Powered by a magnetic switch, the lamp is on when the switch sphere is floating below it — suspended by magnets. To turn it off, the switch orb is set on the lamp, where it stays.

It’s just a prototype, but I cannot wait to see it out in the wild.

The designer, Constance Guisset, created a very, very, very Zen video of the lamp in action, fast forward to about 1:30 if you just want to see her wave between the switch ball and the lamp like a magician (that’s all I wanted to see).

Fiat Lux from Constance Guisset on Vimeo.

How To Make Your Crappy Website Look Less Crappy

Asterios Kokkinos — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:05:26 +0000

The internet design website Six Revisions has kicked off the new year right, with an article about how to turn your terrible website into a terrible but well designed website.

<– See that giant weird graphic? Apparently, that’s how websites are supposed to look – covered in giant pink F’s. I don’t know if that’ll help, but hey, what do I know?

Their other design tips include:

More Dancing Hamsters
Not Less Dancing Hamsters
Taking The Existing Dancing Hamsters On Your Page And Double Them
More Blinking Text (Also: someone make wordpress accept the command)

And much, much more! So check it out, webmasters and webmistresses. And tell ‘em Asterios sent you. Somehow.

Photo & Source: Six Revisions