iPatch™ revisited
Last year I presented the iPatch™ (complete with ironic trademarking) as a satire on the way we look to technology to solve problems often caused by technology. In this case the vast amount of information we recieve via a growing number of technological media. At the same time the iPatch™ is a recognition that the pace of technological change and →
Of Value
Please check out this reading list from the "Life Itself" seminar co-taught by Rita Raley and Bhaskar Sarkar at UCSB: http://lifeseminar.wordpress.com/syllabus/ For those who haven't read it, Melinda Cooper's "Life as Surplus" book is phenomenal, really.
What New Worlds look like
Across Plastic Futures, we have often discussed what the future looks like (or, more precisely, how it is imagined and depicted). In Plastic Futures 1, for instance, we noticed that images of the future (often sci-fi) quite often involve grandiose scenes of enormity in which people become minute figures. So, in Plastic Futures 2 with the next group of participants, →
the news on Barbie
The gossip on Barbie. And she's coming to town in an exhibition at Federation Square, June 26 to July 12. As it coincides with the Salvador Dali exhibition down the road, I'd say this is a very Vermilion Sands moment in Melbourne.
Another one
Nice video. All those future cities/settlements...
Creating Synthetic Life
Ted Talks: Craig Venter on DNA and the Sea (2007) and On the Verge of Creating Synthetic Life (2008) I think we might have to put this one on the to-be-watched list for Plastic Futures 2. An outline on Venter from the TED site: In 2005, Venter founded Synthetic Genomics, a private company with a provocative mission: to engineer new life →
Science fiction and crochet
I'm not going to go on about the connection I am making here, I am just going to say that there is a neat little affinity between what Dr Daina Taimina discusses re her crochet, if you follow this story at IFF (Institute for Figuring) and what Warren Ellis cleverly summarises about what Sci-Fi does in the quote below (taken →
A good heart is easy to find.
Interesting article in New Scientist. "The idea is fairly simple: take an organ from a human donor or animal, and use a mild detergent to strip away flesh, cells and DNA so that all is left is the inner "scaffold" of collagen, an "immunologically inert" protein. Add stem cells from the relevant patient to this naked shell of an organ and →
“Strandbeests”
Have you seen this work?!?...Theo Jansen is a Dutch artist who has been working with sculptures that move on their own. He calls them “Strandbeests”. Besides the built-in functions I very much like the elegance of movement (dancing) compared to the rather dramatic scull like look of it. It also corresponds to a comment, I think by Girish, that people/life →
Impacts of rising sea-level on coastal salinity
http://www.connectedwaters.unsw.edu.au/resources/articles/coastal_aquifers.html
rug thing…..
i keep trying to explain to various people the umbrilter blanket idea. to get feedback. last night someone, whom i study with told me about this one.... i was imagining this network of nodes, for my blanket... hmmmm...... somebody kind of beat me to it! http://www.dezeen.com/2009/05/06/wooden-carpet-by-elisa-stroyzk/
The Future: It’s not for everyone (2049 release)
*under construction:* The Future: It's not for everyone (2049 release) Got a talent for cancer? Have a high plasticity rating? Keen to develop your bio-becomings with all the labware you'll ever need? If so, consider testing out for a life in The Future. The Future is an exciting new bio-secure community estate currently being constructed on the most isolated, protected, stable →
brain-computer interfaces become cheap, ubiquitous consumer items…
Technologically assisted mind control is soon to reach a store near you. Check it out: http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/53629/mind-over-matter?page=0%2C0 Here's a taster: You slip the wireless headset on. It looks like something a telemarketer would wear, except the earpieces are actually sensors, and what looks like a microphone is a brain-wave detector. You place its tip against your forehead, above your left eyebrow. A few →
Crown Casino: ‘A snarling, digitised mutilation’
“The consumer society is a kind of soft police state. We think we have choice, but everything is compulsory. We have to keep buying or we fail as citizens. Consumerism creates huge unconscious needs that only fascism can satisfy. If anything, fascism is the form that consumerism takes when it opts for elective madness.” -- J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come (2006). "But →
Recycling/Pee-cycling
Sort-of looks like a coconut... http://www.thedesignblog.org/entry/agua-h2o-converts-pee-into-fresh-water/
Deep Ecology
The Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy site (thanks Peter) contains a good overview of some of the environmental ethics questions we have been wrestling with. This section is about deep ecology. I thought it might appeal to some of our forest defenders. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-environmental/#3
Filter Scarf
http://www.yankodesign.com/2005/12/16/filter-scarf/
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson is probably the philosopher i most closely identify with. This article on him deals a lot with some relevant issues to us all. i've interested in this greyness he presents. he wrote seminal texts on memory and perception paste the link. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/#4
BODY TECHNOLOGIES
http://fashioningtechnology.ning.com/ lots of really great effects produced through sound/light/movement/breathing etc... all triggered with body The RCA site is down still.
PROTRUDE FLOW
look up protrude flow-Sachiko Kodama + Minako Takeno on youtube-its AMAZING description at: http://www.kodama.hc.uec.ac.jp/project/protrude.html
Camus on mask, individual, energy
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus
butoh-flow
Wishing now that I had made all of the PALS do the butoh workshop, if moments like these grew from those seeds: Facebook Yun Bettergood is flowing in between bodies in stealth Yun Bettergood is feeling her way through the mist twitter (Peter) is still sensing the walls and meowing like a cat... butoh....
sounding out the future
I happened to hear the third episode of a radio documentary on the weekend, called 'The Nerve' by the Canadian Broadcasting Commission and being played on ABC Radio National's 'Into the Music' program. Very good doco, which had me thinking about how important it might be to consider WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE SOUND LIKE ? Having gone back and listened →
Future City
Thinking of a future city made me think about a question which was raised in the Parallax Workshop. What happens outside of the Seastar city? Looking at an object like the Seastar model makes you think of a distinct environment, different from the rest, the outside world, because objects provide borders. The question is; who is included and/or excluded →