Arborsmithing is the the growing of modified and potentially functional plants.
Near Near Future posted this
this about
Lois Walpole. She devolped a process to grow coat hangers and wine racks. After a little searching on google I was able to find this video of a man's
"Arbo-constructed architecture" Reminds me of the famous process to grow a pear of apple inside of glass bottle, something I have always dreamt of doing...
-JAKE
Found this off a non subject link on Core77. Too cool to pass up. A giant mirror that pivots squares of wood so that light reflecting off them creates the images recieved from a moniter or camera.
The Suburbs Are Killing Us Is currently hosting an INCREDIBLE studio track from
Konono No. 1 Konono may be the greatest thing since mixed jelly and peanut butter. Konono play Homemade electrified thumb pianos and hubcap drums. This is some serious Congotronics...
-Jake
Ahh...
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....Dreaming of a Moi wedding ring....
-jake
....Big ideas made "ADD" friendly...
-jake
Conceptual ink that spores out and grows.
As I dig around
Bruce Sterling's world,
Viridian Design comes up often. This ink was a winner of their Embrace the Decay
Contest.
The Viridian Manifesto penned by Bruce explains the organizations intentions
"....The task at hand is therefore basically an act of social engineering. Society must become Green, and it must be a variety of Green that society will eagerly consume. What is required is not a natural Green, or a spiritual Green, or a primitivist Green, or a blood-and-soil romantic Green...
....The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma...
...People with networks, websites and sophisticated sensors should not find this task very difficult..."
There is a lot more to it, so I highly encourage everyone to check it out.
-jake
Every once and a while I like to look at these to remind myself exactly how to be creative. While the suggested thoughts are intended for design brainstorming, they can tranfer to anything. They provide a basic list of ways to challenge an idea. I am especially interested in this process. Recently the book
"Rapid Viz" was suggested to me. The book and cards hint toward a process of breaking the world down, and rebuilding it better. The dream is to have it all be second nature. I am curious about a person's non-instinct to redesign. Perhaps, as the world deteriorates people begin to develope a new sense of rebuilding. When the objects around us don't directly hurt us, how do we realize better ways of building them?
-Jake
You may have noticed that Asher has not been posting as much as myself lately. This is due to his working on the final stages of a theatrical version of Rashoman. The play will feature both pieces of video (which Asher directed) and onstage interaction. I know very little about the project. But I have seen the source movie, and I highly recomend it. Since the story is very much about subjective reality, the two mediums will play into factured experieces. I have high expectations. I can't speak for Asher's interest in the story or goals in the production. While he did not find the project relevant to Shepherd's Pie, I think the medium hopping is. Either way, Asher is on hiatus.
-JAKE
I am not sure what it makes me, I but I wish I could attend this. Discussion workshop through
The University Of Openess??? Dig around the university.
"No Tution Fees! No Objectivity! No Success!"
Maybe I should attend.
-JAKE
I found this little video digging around the so called
"Great List of Interactive Tables"
In the video a young man in a coffee shop places a coin into a little bowl which triggers a touch screen system embedded into the table. Various relevant text and image blurbs scroll along the screen, and he selects one about a missing cat. Pretty cool stuff. I am very attracted to the idea of our personal computers existing only in digital space. There will be enough public computers with such high speed processing, that our personal computer can easily be read in its entirerity anywhere.
Many of these tables are good examples of
"Spimes" They are self aware objects that respond to objects places upon them. Echoing the ideas and objects being traded in the home. However, I think this is may have more use in the workplace. Say, If an office table could remember the paper documents read atop it. These tables have a productive potential that could be accessed with out all the psychologically sketchy tampering with identity they could execute in the home.
-JAKE
The PuppetTool is an incredibly fun little bit of "Shockwave." I am generally bored of interactive little web stuff, but this has to go be the end all device. The versitility and control offered are remarkable. Dig around and check out each of the presets for all the creatures offered. I personally enjoy "Sausage" under the "Female" puppet.
-JAKE
"Creative Commons" is the future.
"...Creative Commons is a new system, built within current copyright law, that allows you to share your creations with others..."
"...a "some rights reserved" copyright..."
A
little comic to help explain
Anyone who is reading their
bOINGbOING (like they ought to) should know CC is no small potatoes. They lisence and idea is really catching on, and with "Mash-Ups" going mainstream the ground is hot for major acceptance. Despite a few
naysaying fools
Check the
CC blog as well. Im gonna add it to my scroll.
-JAKE
Photographer Christopher Morris took some really interesting and sympathtic pictures of President Bush. Including one of Mr. Bush selecting a track on his iPod before going on a bike ride. While looking at the pictures I get a terrifying sense his isolation.
-JAKE
"The mind's extended reach remains to be fully defined in scientific terms, but research on human consciousness suggests that we may have direct communication links with each other, and that our intentions can have effects in the world despite physical barriers and separations. We are compelled by good evidence to accept correlations that we cannot yet explain. It appears that consciousness may sometimes produce something that resembles, at least metaphorically, a nonlocal field of meaningful information.
The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) takes this possibility as a starting point for a speculation that such fields generated by individual consciousness would interact and combine, and ultimately have a global presence. Usually, because we are busy with individual lives, there is little to produce structure in the field, so it is random and not detectable. But occasionally there are global-scale events that bring great numbers of us to a common focus and an unusual coherence of thought and feeling. To study the effects of a possible global consciousness, we have created a world-spanning network of devices sensitive to coherence and resonance in the mental domain. Continuous streams of data are sent over the internet to be archived and correlated with events that may evoke a world-wide consciousness. Examples that appear to have done so include both peaceful gatherings and disasters: a few minutes around midnight on any New Years Eve, the first hour of NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, the Papal visit to Israel, a variety of global meditations, several major earthquakes, and September 11 2001."
Incredible. Except I think the GCP is as simple as a Google graph. Or
Tecnorati, which searches within blogs only.
I became aware of the GCP from an article in the petered out
21C Magazine. I highly recomend the magazine to Asher, and everyone. Nearly everything featured within the two issues is stimulating. I especially like
This Super Mario Hack, and
this article whose link was a description of the GCP.
-JAKE
This is some of how I spent New Years Eve 2005. Four friends and I rented bikes and participated in the
New York City Critical Mass. From there, we went to a bottle of Champagne. Then we journeyed further onto a party in a space called "*"[asterisk]. Everyone there had style and cocaine. Particuraly the
Beatmaster with the hidden identity. He provided the thumping groove which drove us wildy into the new year. I hope Everyone had a succesfully executed celebration and movement into two thousand and 5. Please share how you spent the crossover...
-JAKE in 05
This conceptual "time piece" was a runner up in
the Core77/Timex clock competition. Dissapointingly, the focus of the competition was to new kinds of watches and clocks available 150 years into the future. Generally the designers assume a future of massive cheap microchip production and micro engery sources. Those being the main stopping walls to the creation of these devices today. The timespieces feature some brilliant new ideas. Most of them very much along "Transhuman" lines. Clocks which don't just project the time to you, but project your time outward.
The "Engeryistime" and the "Orgarhythm" both tap into your body for new kinds of monitering effects. Allowing us to balk our energy consumtion. Perhaps one day these devices will be cheap enough to warrant their production. The competition points out the fact that
Bruce Sterling made really clear in his "Spime" speech. Which is that the simple digital watch itself is a revolutionary device. You can buy a chinese made digital watch in any dollar store. Enginering and manufacturing history has made them shockingly high quality and cheap. Little improvement is "needed." So, the whole project reeks of profit potential. Not to discredit conceptual redesign. I think there is really cool stuff here.
-JAKE
AN ACT
To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled
Happy New Year!
fuck
