Category Archives: technology

INVISIBLE WOOD has been invented.

Well this is something unexpected. Reading about innovations like this sometimes reminds me that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

Full article at Co.Design

“The advantage of transparent wood over something like glass is that it has all the strength of opaque lumber—but still lets in light. Berglund’s process, then, could be used to create everything from transparent wood structures to load-bearing windows that never crack or shatter. “We’re getting a lot of interest from architects, who want to bring more light into their buildings,” says Berglund. It’s also as biodegradable and environmentally friendly as regular wood. Berglund even imagines that his composite could be used to create entirely new types of sustainable solar panels, made out of wood instead of chemically treated glass.”

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murmur: a dialogue between a human and a wall.

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This is spectacularly cool.   Using technology, an interface has been made for people’s voice to be made into a physical entity and interact with a dynamic graphics display on the facing well.  What results is something I would really like to try.  A collaboration between multiple studios including Chevalvert, 2Roqs, Polygraphik, and Splank.  More details at Design Boom and make sure you watch the video at the bottom of this post to understand what this is all about!

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Video:

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structures and scaffolding.

wonderful series of illustrations by Atelier Olschinsky.

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unnamed soundsculpture.

This is beautiful and fascinating.

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by Daniel Franke and Cedric Kiefer:

The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating
a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person. For
our work we asked a dancer to visualize a musical piece (Kreukeltape by
Machinenfabriek) as closely as possible by movements of her body. She was
recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the
images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud),
so we were able to use the collected data throughout the further process.
The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free handling of the
digital camera, without limitations of the perspective. The camera also reacts
to the sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the
performer. She moves to a noise field, where a simple modification of the
random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering
a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality
of the sound sculpture is already contained in every movement of the dancer,
as the camera footage allows any imaginable perspective.

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Studio Zimoun.

zimoun

These days i’ve been really appreciating installations.  As I enter my 2nd wave of minimalism (my original minimalism phase was back in 2000-2002 where i literally lived with nearly no possessions), the idea of specific isolation seems more important than absolute reduction.  These installations by Studio Zimoun are fascinating for the detail they transfer when a specific object is placed in an organized manner in a limited space.

src: minimalissimo

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history of typography.

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I am in love with fonts.  In a different life, i would sit in a studio all day designing fonts.   I am perpetually looking at fonts: on signs, on websites, in films, on cars, on badging, on artwork, in books, in magazines, old, new, ugly, beautiful—they just fascinate me!

Here’s a wicked and creative video flashing the history of typography in  5 minutes, by Ben Barrett-Forest:

src: huh

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quiet motion.

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I am loving the idea of this…movement in silence.  There is something very epic about the sounds of silence….if one can appreciate sounds extensively, one increases their appreciation of silence.

This installation was done by BMW in relation to their “i” sub-brand.

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video explaining the installation:

src: intersection (fr)

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quote of the month: mediocrity.

I’ve never read anything that a gentleman named Norman Mailer has written, however while perusing Nolan Bushnell’s twitter feed, I came across this quote which is just phenomenal.

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Match.

I need this lighting in my life.  “Match” is marketed by Vidia and designed by  Jordi Vilardell & Meritxell Vidal

“This innovative product stands as a new lighting concept based on co-creation. Match allows you to create structures arranged chaotically, automatically planned on-line and adapted to fit into the room and the space available. The result is infinite artistic configurations based on thin rods of aluminum and LED light terminals, forming a light sculpture that illuminates central themes of space and interior decoration.”

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src:  minimalissimo

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Fovea.

When i sit quietly staring into my own eyelids, i dream of places like this.

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“How long can we respond to our visual perceptions and sound together? Working on the positioning and distance of light, sectioned on multiple reflective surfaces, the installation will be focusing on the idea of dark adaptation and how the contrast with light movements and illumination can heighten our senses. Sound will reflect on the repositioning of light on each reflected panel to create an intensified live performance.”

src: florenceTo via iLikeThisArt

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M5 brochure.

No, not that M5—-the 1971-1975 Leica M5.  Some of my favourite excerpts from an original M5 brochure.  In my opinion, the most beautiful camera ever made by Leica!

src: keh

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BeoSmart phone concept.

Well here’s an idea by designer Hugo Andre Costa Fernandes Vieira which incorporates a Bang & Olufsen stereo system, Leica 12 mp CMOS digital camera, Gold headphone jack (?), and a 3.5 inch OLED display mated to an Android OS to create what is known as the ‘BeoSmart‘ concept mobile phone.

Well it’s not a real phone, yet…and while i’m not generally a big mobile phone enthusiast, i do use my iPhone quite a bit and it is arguably the most important and useful device I use on a daily basis.  I have been daydreaming of a really kickass camera mated to iOS for a while (although the iPhone camera is no slouch really)—-however a Leica mobile phone camera?  My wallet is ready for action.

I doubt this will ever get made…as Leica doesn’t strike me as a company that interested in stepping down to mobile phones.  That being said, i can see them putting their name on a mobile phone camera lens like they do with some of the entry-level Panasonic point-and-shoot cameras.

src:  yankoDesign

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Leica ABCDE (1970) and Leica S1 (1996) prototypes.

Well here are 2 very strange prototype cameras.

The Leica ABCDE looks like a GREAT SLR design from 1970 (albeit with possibly the worst name ever for a camera…lol).  Why didn’t they use it? I haven’t the slightest clue.  Not much is known about this concept, however it was seen on a Leica Factory Tour in 2009 by DPReview.com (the link to their tour, unfortunately, does not work—however the pictures are found in search).

 

The Leica S1 (below) from 1996 has to be one of the least useable camera designs ever!  I cannot even imagine focusing while holding a gigantic ring—-or maybe it’s genius!?  Who knows….all we know is that it seems to have cool digital buttons on the top.  The colour is right as well.  It may make for a nice steering wheel though.

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Deconstructed.

Todd McLellan does  some really cool deconstructions and shows the extraordinary detail of things we consider ‘ordinary’.   He has some videos on his site as well…so make sure you check them out.

 

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self-projection.

This is so wicked. The future of presence.

Experiments into the Kinect for live 3D capture and overlay projection.  Coded by Sarat Babu and Stefan Dzisieswki-Smith.

 

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photomanipulation….before photoshop.

I’m not a fan of Photoshop for photo modification, as i find it cumbersome and overused by people.  That being said…there is something more primitively charming about photomanipulation BEFORE the advent of computer software aids.   Does it make it any more acceptable? No, not really!  But they are interesting to look at.  Somewhere in the future…some kid is going to read (absorb?) an article like this about Photoshop and say “oh how primitive they were back then!”

src:  the excellent brainpickings via the book “Faking It”

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Silica-ESC.

The future of computing and net social interactions? I hope so!  A visually interesting and conceptually weird and wonderful short video made by Vladimir Todorovic

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Space Shuttle Through the streets of Los Angeles.

A wicked surreal scene of the Space Shuttle going through L.A streets!  Lovely time-lapse video by the Los Angeles Times.

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Character: Recycling Typography.

Take old letters from neon signs, swap them for LEDs and place in nice, dark, mysterious locations.   That’s what Aleksi Hautamäki has done with this Character series.

I am obsessed with fonts…and in another world, in another time, I would have devoted my life to finding the perfect font.  However, in this one I am relegated to simple appreciation.

if you follow the link at the bottom, you can buy one of these light filled giant letters starting at 200 euros.

more info: character.fi

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Side By Side

Digital photography and videography have completely changed the landscape of imaging in all realms of life; creative to scientific to archiving.  “Side By Side” is a documentary investigating what changes have occurred in the modern film industry to utilize the new technological developments brought forward to digital video technology and where that leaves the original reel film mechanism.   Reel film seems so bulky, inflexible, and archaic compared to what we can now do with digital film.

The ‘big time’ hollywood aspect of this documentary is a bit naff….especially with overblown and overdone filmmakers like George Lucas (rubbish)….however the topic is interesting.

In the end, the quality of the film is not determined by what kind of mechanism it was made on—-but the mind of the filmmakers/writers and the strength of their ideas.

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swarm lights.

This is a beautiful installation done by rANDOM international.

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Assembling the Leica M9.

I’m still really excited about my Leica M8.1, however I always wondered how these cameras are made.  Leica always states these are hand  assembled, and this fantastic video shows the M8 successor, the M9 in its assembling phases. Very cool attention to detail, and this is part of the reason why their products cost so much.   The factory (laboratory?) is also very very german….which is a good thing!

Unfortunately the embedding function does not work on this video (not sure why)…but click through this link to watch: http://vimeo.com/6551861

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