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1956, The Childs World, Plant and Animal Ways, Various Artists
In his final speech as president of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford will say scientists must speak out against the climate change “denial lobby”.
He will warn core scientific values are “under serious threat from resurgent fundamentalism, West and East”.
“Sadly, for many, the response is to retreat from complexity and difficulty by embracing the darkness of fundamentalist unreason.”
Posted by api at 23:03 - No Comments »
This project looks beyond the computer screen to explore what makes up the screen itself: the individual pixel.
The light system is made from a network structure of 220 independant modules that respond to touch. By gently touching the surface, each lamp will slowly light up or down, stimulating the experience of drawing with light.
Light Brix is an ongoing project currently being developed for manufacture. The concept explores new ways of structuring information within architecture and intends to to inject a sense of performance into urban interiors.
Designed by HeHe asso. Produced by monofunction
Also see the plain old Brix
Posted by api at 10:25 - No Comments »
Welcome to the home of extreme ironing – the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt.
The variety of outdoor activities that can be combined with extreme ironing is stunning. Check out the galleries
Posted by api at 12:05 - No Comments »
Yesterday while I was doing some grocery shopping I spotted a couple with matching windbreakers. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, so the simulated mug shot will have to do. This is a unique Finnish fashion phenomen. Couples with exactly matching windbreakers are not that hard to find. What made this mid-class couple special was that both the man and the woman were wearing a similar ear ring, they both bought a package of similar sausages and top top it off, they both bought a pack of LM cigarettes. Their only shared purchase was a 10-pack of beer.
It is essentially a mini-team that consists only of a husband and a wife that share similar sneakers, windbreakers, walking sticks… anything that can be worn or used in the everyday life and isn’t gender specific. I’m not sure what makes all this happen, but I suspect it has something to do with the female partner being a bit of a control freak, general lack of stylishness and a passion for saving pennies. It reminds me a bit of parents who have kids with mullets.
Posted by api at 12:47 - No Comments »
The CameraKart is a racing go-kart that has been extensively modified to accept cameras either radio controlled or fixed. It will out handle, out brake, and out accelerate any other camera platform in the world. “It took about 3 years to really perfect it”, John states. We have even shot other cars from “under” other cars. The camera was maybe an inch off the ground. Along the journey, through Motorcycle jumping great “Johnny Airtime”, he met Art Lanier, his technician he insists on having on every job. “Art Lanier is probably the most knowledgeable person I have ever met about any aspect of anything to do with a vehicle. He never ceases to amaze me. He has been instrumental in nearly every aspect of setting up all these cars. I turned him loose on the kart to tune and set it up when I first built it at the bequest of Johnny Airtime. I was amazed at what I got back. It was a monster. He is probably the most experienced racing kart mechanic in the world. I simply won’t do a job without him. I can say enough good about the man. He makes sure the cars are perfect and allows me to concentrate on my driving which takes 125% of your attention span if you’re going to be safe about it. There’s simply no room for error.”
John Sarviss is da man! His resume includes a dazzling variety of studies including U.S. Army Special Forces training, electrical engineering, motion picture studies, all sorts of specialist helicopter training and even a BATF Class 3 machine gun dealer license!
His profession? Freelance Motion Picture Aviation Pilot.
Posted by api at 10:59 - No Comments »
Technology, like beauty, is sometimes only skin deep. Our minister of culture recently bought a fake Prada from Italy. I don’t really think there is any excuse for such a high level official to make a mistake like that. Her only comment on the matter was: “In that case I shouldn’t have paid so much for it.” Would it have been OK if she had paid less?
I don’t think she fully understands the concept of intellectual property. She is a former beauty pageant and has made an impressive career as a politician, but she has recently stepped on a lot of toes by promoting the new strict copyright law that comes into effect on 1st of January, 2006. It forbids, among other things, the importing of pirated media from abroad. Each individual is responsible for finding out if an item he or she purchases is genuine or not.
The creation on the right was apparently sold to someone as a Dlink USB Wi-Fi adaptor.
Posted by api at 12:02 - No Comments »
At Wednesday 23rd of April has Ben Pon at meeting with the British. He talks through his ideas about the import of Volkswagens in the Netherlands. But this a special day, as he does something else. He takes his notebook and he makes a drawing of a oblong transport vehicle. As matter of fact it is not more then a soapbox on wheels, in front, the cab and in the back, the engine. How his conversation ends with the British nobody knows. But one thing is for sure. For his time, 1947, his idea is revolutionary. It is brilliantly simple, a large cargo space in a small area. According to Pon, the vehicle has a weight of 750 kilos and the with the cargo being easily 750 kilos as well. Pon’s based his design on the so-called Plattenwagen. A primitive vehicle, the Plattenwagen looks like a push bike with a Moped engine. The Volkswagen engineers had designed it for internal factory transportation at the Volkswagen plant. Like the Plattenwagen his design must be built on the chassis of a beetle.
The VW minibus became the vehicle of choice for nomadic lifestyle lovers such as surfers and hippies.
Volkswagen already resurrected the beetle. They might do the same thing with the minibus. The new version is called Microbus. It’s been around for several years as a concept car, but I have a feeling that it will never go into serial production.
It doesn’t have quite the charm of old hippie mobiles. Kudos for the solar panels in this particular lovebus.
Posted by api at 12:11 - No Comments »
The advent of digital Hi-Vision broadcasting and the broadband network era, along with nextgeneration DVDs, digital cameras and digital video camcorders, is expected to fuel the spread of highdefinition, high-quality next-generation content. These trends have led to demand for larger screens and higher image quality. However, enlarging CRT (cathode ray tube) screens, today’s most common display, entails making the units significantly heavier and deeper. A major challenge facing display manufacturers has been how to develop a new kind of display offering the same picture quality as a CRT in a slim yet large unit. Canon’s SED has successfully met this challenge.
Yet another innovation in the flat screen business segment that is bound to sky rocket with XBOX 360 and the introduction of hi-def DVD formats. I don’t think that SED displays will reach the volume of plasma and LCD displays any time soon, but in the long run they are a serious contender in the high-end home theatre scene. I can’t make up my mind between LCD and plasma myself. I think I’m done with electron emitter based displays though… I don’t want any more extra radiation dosage.
Posted by api at 11:49 - No Comments »
Pepsi has a campaign here in Finland that allows you to exchange 1000 points to a Vaio Laptop prize. Each bottle has a code printed on it and one code is worth one point. I’ve heard of a lot of people who have gone all out and bought 1000 bottles just for this specific purpose. What will all this do to Pepsi consumption graphs during the next few months? I bet they will plummet like a Stuka.
EDIT: Incidentally, there is plenty of Pepsi for sale at the local eBay copy cat site: Posted by api at 19:01 - No Comments »
MIT Media Lab: $100 Laptop FAQ
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Nicholas Negroponte, founding chairman of MIT’s Media Laboratory, answers questions on the initiative.
What is the $100 Laptop, really?
The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop that will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. This rugged laptop will be WiFi-enabled and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel.
Why do children in developing nations need laptops?
Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to “learn learning” through independent interaction and exploration.
This is a really ambitious and noble project. I hope it succeeds in bridging the digital divide. I am, however, quite sceptical. Developing countries are a universe of their own with many, many middle men wheeling and dealing with any kind of development aid. These machines might end up as gambling devices for the adults or spam cannons for the Nigerian e-mail con artists. Still, I do admire the optimism and courage in this idea greatly.
Posted by api at 10:55 - No Comments »
From the series "Stop Your Fighting" by street artist ELBOW-TOE. Acrylic on vintage army hat and toy soldiers and wood blocks, epoxyed to loading dock.
Posted by api at 00:13 - No Comments »
Review: The White Stripes “The Denial Twist” Music Video
Review: The White Stripes “The Denial Twist” Music Video
by Robert Schober
It would seem that The White Stripes have taken Bjork’s place as Michel Gondry’s muse. “Denial Twist” marks the fourth video that the director and band have collaborated on. Leaving in their wake a pile of Legos and 20-some odd drum kits, they now tackle the Conan O’Brien Show. This may seem an odd setting for video- maybe even a bit like shameless plug for The Late Show- but in fact, Gondry is reconstructing a day out of a week in the White Stripe’s life. Many readers may remember when their album ‘Elephant’ was released, the Stripes played Conan five consecutive nights to promote the record.
Gondry has taken this and applied his classic signatures to it: recursion, the one-take on a perspective-distorted set, and the injection of some autobiography. In the video, Jack and Meg are oddly distorted and elongated while Conan is Conan, but with his head grafted onto a dwarf. While you can instantly tell you are watching a Gondry video here, it’s still visually fresh and innovative. There is something uncanny and disturbing about the effects. The integration of two-dimensional imagery from the show’s broadcast with Gondry’s 3-D set leaves the brain swimming from all the spatial and temporal displacement.
After his inadvert plug for our presidential candidate, Tarja Halonen, Conan O’Brien craze has been going on for months here in Finland. The music video above makes the Conan O’Brien Show seem even more surreal.
I like Michel Gondry’s work a lot. In addition to half a dozen projects for Bjork, he has also made music videos for Daft Punk’s “Around the World” and Massive Attack’s “Protection”.
Posted by api at 10:55 - No Comments »
TV ACRES: Admascots – Miss Chiquita Banana
Miss Chiquita Banana – Female banana character (first drawn by artist Dik Browne) who wore a headdress of fruit and sang the trademark Chiquita Banana song (voice first provided by singer Patti Clayton) that began “Hello Amigo…I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say/You eat the banana in a special way/And when it’s fleck with brown and has a golden hue/That’s when bananas are the best for you….” (Music (c) 1945 Shawnee Press Inc.) The Chiquita Banana jingle was created in 1944 for the United Fruit Company by a BBDO advertising team headed by Robert Foreman.
While trying to find out if the recent Chiquita “Rain Forest Alliance” campaign is just a case of greenwashing, I found this interesting database of advertising mascots.
I recognized only some of them including the Marlboro man, Ronald McDonald and Quaker Oats Man.
Posted by api at 12:56 - No Comments »
When TD’s first album, Electronic Meditation, was recorded, there was virtually no electronic music equipment available at all. How did the group manage to create the sounds?
The recording process was rather exotic and had very little to do with the actual generation of electronic sounds. Sounds were made by using everyday objects, such as a sieve filled with dried peas, an old office calculator, 2 old iron bars and parchment paper. These were recorded with a microphone and then run through reverbs and delays to create unusual sounds. The results were not always very tonal and miles apart from a commercial pop sound. Furthermore, the studio equipment they had at their disposal was by best means very sparse. As they did not have a lot of money, everything was recorded directly onto a Revox 1/4″ tape machine. It was rather rough and adventurous and the band would have hardly dreamed that anyone would have liked to release this album. But… fortunately, history proved them wrong
As a teenage computer geek in the mid 80’s I was obviously fascinated with the electronic music scene as well. From my point of view, synthesizers were every bit as cool as electric guitars. I had a friend at school who played the flute and introduced me to some of the synth artists of the time. Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, Jarre and Vangelis had already been around for some time and their albums were relatively easy to find in local record shops.
Last summer, I scavenged a couple of “Neue Heimat” series of new electronic music collection CDs from Berlin and I’ve been listening to them every now and then. Today I decided to find out if Tangerine Dream is still around and spent some time reading about their history. I suddenly realized that this type of music and creative energy has been around in Germany for decades and the modern electronic music scene is, in a sense, really a continuation of the same german underground love affair with electronic instruments.
Posted by api at 12:03 - No Comments »
ESA – Launchers Home – Sloshsat FLEVO
Experiment
The satellite includes one experiment: an 87-litre cylindrical tank containing 33.5 litres of de-ionised water. On the tank walls, 270 sensors will measure the sloshing behaviour by calculating the thickness of the water. At the same time, the temperature, pressure and fluid velocity will be measured at 17 locations while three accelerometers and fibre-optic gyroscopes will monitor the resulting spacecraft motions. Thrusters, powered by a cold-gas nitrogen system, will provide linear and rotational movement to excite fluid motion.
Well, the latest Inmarsat-4 launch was a big success despite initial delay. Inmarsat is planning to provide half megabit satellite internet access for 90% of the Earth’s landmass with these new generation satellites that weigh up to 6 metric tonnes each. Anyway, while I was reading about the Inmarsat launch, the peculiar Sloshsat experiment above caught my eye. It was launched to orbit earlier this year with a Ariane 5 ECA launcher.
As a the ESA launcher history page points out, without a launcher there can be no space program. The European Space Agency’s extremely reliable launcher was named after the Greek goddess Ariadne, who gave Theseus the thread to help him find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.
Posted by api at 12:12 - No Comments »
