Comments Off on ZeroN: Levitated Interaction ElementTechnology
When you see stuff like this you really wonder (especially as a father) what kind of crazy ass futuristic shit you’re gonna walk in on one day and see your kid doing and ask ‘whoa, what the hell is that’ and then all smart-like they’ll answer, ‘geez Dad this is the T.V. remote’ and you’ll say, ‘yeah I know, whatever’.
All jokes aside though, this levitated magnetic digital interaction system is really amazing. Brought to you from the minds at MIT of course.
“What if materials could defy gravity, so that we could leave them suspended in mid-air? ZeroN is a physical and digital interaction element that floats and moves in space by computer-controlled magnetic levitation.
by Jinha Lee, in collaboration with Rehmi Post, and Hiroshi Ishii”
Comments Off on Tron Premiere – A Light SessionTechnology
Riders at the Tron Legacy Premiere were deployed in a skate ramp equipped with an ipods and programmed with a custom-built app to measure their air time and trigger graphics whilst in the air and on landing. Radical man.
Well yesterday was the big day and the new iPhone 4 dropped (after all of the ‘prototype’ leakage hubub). It does look like one dazzling piece of technology, but really after the last few years of product releases from Apple, did anyone expect anything less? The most promising new feature, not just for Apple but the entire mobile phone market has to be FaceTime, wifi-enabled video chat. It immediately made me realize that soon my wife will finally be able to speak to her family in Brazil and see them as she does. It’s hard to describe how much that means to someone who lives thousands of miles away from their country of origin and family. The question for me is how soon I will be able to upgrade to one since I just purchased a phone and a plan in October of last year.
I have to say, you have to chop off an arm every time you make an Apple purchase, especially as a small business owner but yesterday I spent the entire day trying to get a wireless modem to work in my studio. I went through two modems, both of which I had to return to the store after several hours on the phone with a help desk service. After an entire wasted day of this I finally paid about twice what I had expected to pay for a router for the Airport Extreme. It was a painful purchase as it has been a very slow month with a lot of expenses but I brought it back to the studio, plugged it in and had a much faster wireless connection speed running throughout the studio within about 15 minutes of setup.
Oh Apple, why must you hurt us so good? I love you, but your like an expensive date that puts out and then when the strings are tied keeps asking for more and more as the relationship evolves. I should have written a prenup.
Artist Nick Gentry has found a muse on our throwaway culture. He paints onto discarded computer disks and cassette tapes.
Here is a a section pulled from his artist statement:
“Since graduating from Central St Martins in 2006, the focus has been to explore how technological advancement is affecting society. Throughout history, information has always been recorded on physical objects. Important documents, favourite songs, videos and more were stored on mountains of tapes, polaroids, cassettes and disks. As media is rapidly absorbed into the World Wide Web the rich variety of formats of the past are becoming obsolete.”
Comments Off on Pranav Mistry: SixthSense TechnologyTechnology
I just stumbled upon Pranav Mistry’s talk at Ted India via the (still and always inspiring) Surfstation blog and was completely blown away by his work at developing what is inarguably some of the most groundbreaking practical application technology out there. Yes, I am prone to exaggeration (I do work in advertising after all) but I am not inflating this. Mistry’s work could really revolutionize the entire computer and interactive industry. His emphasis is on bridging digital data with the physical world in the hopes that we can one day rise from behind our computers and again live physically. It really is something that has to be seen to be believed, but it left me terribly excited. I cannot wait for the day that this technology makes it into the commercial market.
Comments Off on Gordon Brown – Global PoliticPolitics
I just saw this posted at Surfstation and decided (after reading a passionately written post) to listen to a talk by Gordon Brown as part of a recent TED conference. Brown delivers a really unique talk for a man in his position and really espouses some unusual views on how he believes the world is being shaped by emerging technology. The juxt of his position being that we are now in a unique era where we have a genuine opportunity for real change driven by people who are able to connect instantaneously. It’s a ballsy thing to put into the stream of consciousness from a politician but that is exactly why it is hard not to take it as a genuinely heart felt cry for real change and progress.
Two German biotech experts have decided to convert the entire human genome into audio and stream it over the internet. They estimate that it will take about 23.5 years until the entirety of the code has been distributed over the internet. They are also generating imagery that you can see above (looks like static).
Why? I don’t know. Interesting and kind of awesome? Yes.
Glitch art is quickly becoming a popular craze this year. Kanye West’s most recent video (which you can watch above) utilized the effect as well at the Chairlift video I posted last week. So where can you make your own glitch art? There is a really cool site developed between Dimitre Lima (dmtr.org), Tony Scott (beflix.com) and Iman Moradi (organised.info) for New Langton Arts in San Francisco that will take your site, and more specifically the images on your site and glitch them for you. The site is aptly titled ‘Glitch Browser’ and you can try it out here. If that doesn’t satiate your glitch thirst then you can see some readymade glitch art here.
Formfiftyfive was kind enough to put all of these links together first, so be sure to give them a visit as well. Thank you for all your hard blog work FFF.
“Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.”
Such an obvious yet innovative idea. Brilliant and wonderful.
Comments Off on Philip Rosedale on Second LifeTechnology
Philip Rosedale speaks at TED about his amazing creation, ‘Second Life’. I have never actually gotten involved with Second Life but I have always been amazed by the concept and it was enlightening to hear Rosedale muse on the concept. Rosedale goes by the avatar “Philip Linden” when he is living his ‘Second Life’. I really is a fascinating idea that belies a multitude of ramifications and I am sure it will only evolve further and further as time goes on. It will definitely be interesting watching it unfold and what it may inspire in the future.
“The intention for this project was to make sound visible. As there is already a variety of ways in which sounds can be seen (equalizers, sub-titles, etc.), my aim was to produce a device where that representation of sound would be a physical one. I therefore used the sewing machine as the basis for the project as I feel it is synonymous with industry, and making physical products. Due to limitations in my computer programming skills this model of a stereo/sewing machine is a prototype of how I imagined the actual product would look.”
Well, get ready for the electronic Newspaper. I remember reading about how it was becoming a real possibility but had no idea that the technology was still under aggressive development and this video confirmed that fact. It looks pretty damned cool.
Comments Off on The Next 5000 Days of the InternetTechnology
So where is the internet going? It has really only been around for about 5,000 days. So, what will happen in the next 5,000? Well, Kevin Kelly has some ideas.
Alright, I don’t really even pretend to be into cars. I kind of even hate having to own one in all honesty. I wish I lived in a city where I didn’t need one but there is maybe a handful of cities like that in the whole U.S. With that said, this new concept car from Audi did still manage to turn my head. It looks like one of those cars you would see in some movie about the future like Minority Report or A.I. I really thought the design was stunning and it would be pretty interesting to see something like this out on the road.
Here is a little more about it:
“The 2008 Audi O concept was designed by Ondrej Jirec, a design student from the Czech Republic who is beginning studies at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California in 2008.
The Audi O concept was designed to fuse a powerful and innovative audio system with a stylish and sporty four-seat hatchback. The exterior design uses several Audi trademark styling themes, especially at the front where the square grille sits neatly between the LED headlights. The doors feature glass windows running along the bottom edge which provide an interesting shape to the profile of the car. At the rear of the car the pullout door echoes the design of the squared off Audi grille.
The styling of the Audi O was influenced by a variety of sources including the Audi Shooting Brake concept from 2005, the Apple iPod and music.”
You can read more about it and see more images here.
