Aerialist over Williamsburg Bridge
Vimeo Direktfly, via Laughing Squid
Im Sommer ist Seanna Sharpe auf die Williamsburg Bridge geklettert und hat in rund 100 Metern höhe illegal Kunststückchen vorgeführt. Dafür wurde sie verhaftet und angeklagt, die Kaution kam innerhalb einer Stunde über Twitter zusammen. Als Strafe musste sie schließlich fünfmal gratis ihre Rumturnerei für Kids aufführen. Im Video sieht man nicht nur die Aktion selbst, sondern auch die Faxen, die sie (und ihr Freund) mit der Polizei abzieht. Großartig!
This summer, 24-year old Seanna Sharpe did an illegal acrobatics show 285 feet up the Williamsburg bridge (11 stories over rush hour train traffic) hanging from the double-silk cloud swing she invented.
DIY Synesthesia-Mask
Für den Science Hack Day 2011 in San Francisco haben ein paar Leute eine Synästhesie-Maske gebastelt, mit der man Optik auf der Haut fühlen kann. Dazu haben sie eine Webcam gehackt, deren Auflösung auf 3×4 Pixel reduziert und in einem 1-Bit-Modus laufen lassen (schwarz/weiß), die Signale haben sie an die in die Maske eingebauten Lautsprecher geschickt, die angeschaltet wurden, sobald die Kamera etwas sah. Schöne Idee!
Synesthesia is a condition in which one sensation (sight, hearing, etc) gets mixed up with another. This can cause situations in which someone “smells” sounds, or “sees” touches.
For this hack, we designed and built a full head mask that allows the wearer to feel images in real time. The mask is arrayed with 12 speakers that contact the skin of the face. When an image is captured with a webcam and converted into a 12 pixel black-and-white representation. The computer activates arduinos that control the speakers. If the pixel is white, the corresponding speaker is turned on. If the pixel is black, the corresponding speaker is turned off. This allows the wearer to feel (via the vibrations of the speakers) on their face.
Crashed Ferrari Table
Fantastisch! Ich weiß nicht, ob Charly Molinelli erst seinen Ferrari kaputtgefahren hat (oder ob das überhaupt seiner war) und dann auf die Idee kam, oder ob er einen Ferrari für die Idee geschrottet hat. Aber ich liebe kaputte Autos als Möbel. Was soll man auch sonst mit den Stinkbolzen anfangen.
Crashed Ferrari Table (via Make)
Streetart-Doku: Here comes the Neighborhood – Trailer
Vimeo Direktmiami, via Winkelsen
Netter Trailer zur kommenden Streetart-Doku „Here Comes the Neighborhood“, die in Episoden im Netz veröffentlicht wird. In der ersten Staffel geht’s um die Wynwood Walls in Miami:
In 2009, Urban Visionary and Placemaker Tony Goldman partnered with Jeffrey Deitch (Deitch Projects Soho and now director of MoCa Los Angeles) to create the Wynwood Walls. What began with a series of parking lots, loading docks, and drab rundown factory buildings, became a curation of high caliber murals from Futura, Shepard Fairey, OS Gemeos, Kenny Scharf and others in its first year. The Walls opened for Art Basel 2009, and now two years later the collection has expanded to include over thirty artists from around the world, becoming a “Town Center” in a district that has grown into one of the largest concentrations of commissioned public art murals in the World.
HERE COMES THE NEIGHBORHOOD explores a unique juncture in history as a new community emerges and evolves. A progressive urban revitalization campaign is examined in the first person, using this year’s new Artists and their commissions as a lens to explore a neighborhood in transition. The Series is framed by colorful overview and concluding episodes, providing the scope of past, present and future. Each episode is accented by images from legendary Documentary Photographer Martha Cooper, who has been capturing The Walls since they began in 2009.
Obey Giants updated Hope-Poster for the 99%
Shepard Fairey hat sein Hope-Poster von der Obama-Kampagne 2008 für Occupy Wallstreet aktualisiert. Nette Bemerkung am Ende seines Postings dazu: „I’m still trying to work out copyright issues I may face with this image“ in Anspielung auf den Copyright-Rechtsstreit mit AP damals. Auch schön: Jemand hat die Bank of Amerika ziemlich subtil verschönert und Alexis Madrigal hat beim Atlantic einen tollen Artikel: A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful.
The most fascinating thing about Occupy Wall Street is the way that the protests have spread from Zuccotti Park to real and virtual spaces across the globe. Metastatic, the protests have an organizational coherence that’s surprising for a movement with few actual leaders and almost no official institutions. Much of that can be traced to how Occupy Wall Street has functioned in catalyzing other protests. Local organizers can choose from the menu of options modeled in Zuccotti, and adapt them for local use. Occupy Wall Street was designed to be mined and recombined, not simply copied.
This idea crystallized for me yesterday when Jonathan Glick, a long-time digital journalist, tweeted, “I think #OWS was working better as an API than a destination site anyway.”
Pizza Sleeping Bag
Im Etsy-Shop von Brook konnte man bis grade eben noch Pizza-Schlafsäcke kaufen, die komplett mit 5 Gemüsekissen („2 mushrooms, 1 broccoli, and 2 olives“ geliefert wurden. Leider schon ausverkauft. (via Gizmodo)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Big White Shark-Sleepingbag
Taun Taun-Sleepingbag-Hüpfsackrennen
Anatomical Sleeping Bag
Experimental, interactive Leporello retells Night of the Living Dead thru QR-Codes
Vimeo Direktpixels, via cpluv
Volumique machen wahnsinnig tolle Buchprojekte. Unter anderem haben sie vor einer Weile ein experimentelles Leporello (Wikipedia) gebastelt, das per Falz, QR-Codes und iPhone-App eine Art interaktive Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-Nacherzählung von Romeros „Night of the Living Dead“. Fantastisch, ich bin grade sehr, sehr begeistert.
Graphical Book with multiple combinatorial reading possibilities through an original Folding System. With a smartphone, the book follows your pathway within the pages. And depending on your Choices it interactively completes the story with original Video segments. Silkscreen Print of one hundred numbered and signed copies for this book.
Auf ihrer Website gibt’s noch interaktive Boardgames, Bücher, die nur zwanzig Minuten lesbar bleiben, bevor sich die Seiten schwarz färben und noch weiteren solchen Schnickschnack. Großartig!
Inside a Magic Truffles Factory
Vice hat ein sehr schönes Interview mit den Betreibern einer Psilocybin-Trüffelfarm in Holland, wo man im Jahr 2008 Magic Mushrooms verboten hat, diese Trüffel sind nun die letzten legalen Shrooms. Auf Youtube findet man noch ein nettes Commercial der Magic Truffels Factory.
In the bucolic pastures of Hazerswoude-Dorp, nestled in verdant fields of ruminating Holsteins, lazy windmills, and pert tulips, lies a quaint Dutch farm that functions as the world’s largest psilocybin-containing-truffle factory. […]
In 2008, the Dutch government banned virtually every known psilocybin-mushroom species but neglected to outlaw the humble hypogeal sclerotium. Overnight these scleroid nuggets of fungal flesh—truffles—became the only legal source of psilocybin in the Netherlands, and so I flew to Amsterdam to learn about their history and propagation.
Before the ban, mushrooms were your most popular item, much more so than sclerotia, correct?
Murat: Yes, the truffles were just for the connoisseur. It was a side product at that time, accounting for less than 20 percent of our business. We have been growing them steadily for 15 years, but we grew them mostly because of their novelty. Then the ban came. What the government did was add a list of 186 more or less active mushrooms to the Opium Act. When we took a closer look at that list, we noticed that sclerotia weren’t mentioned. If they are not mentioned they are not illegal, so we continued growing our truffles.Why do you think they neglected to list sclerotia? Was it intentional, or was it an oversight?
Murat: They were aware of sclerotia, because it was discussed at length in Parliament, and they started asking the Ministry of Health questions about truffles. The Ministry came to the conclusion that truffles are weaker so they are less dangerous, and that’s why they were not listed. But to my knowledge, the truffles are more potent than many mushroom species. Of course, we were not going to be the ones to argue that before Parliament.
Shroom Ban means more Magic Truffles for the Netherlands (via Reddit)
Faster than Light-Neutrino confirmed
Vor ein paar Wochen ging die Meldung durch Science-Blogs, dass Wissenschaftler am National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italien Neutrinos beobachtet hatten, die sich angeblich schneller als das Licht bewegten. Dazu hatten sie Neutrinos vom CERN in den OPERA Neutrino-Detektor des Laboratori Nazionali im Gran Sasso-Gebirge geschossen und die Teilchen kamen 60,7 Nanosekunden früher an, als es die Lichtgeschwindigkeit erlaubt. Das ergab natürlich ein riesen Bohei, viele Wissenschaftler aus dem Team wollten das Papier mit den Ergebnissen nicht unterzeichnen und sowieso ging man allgemein von einem Fehler aus, so auch ich, weshalb ich erst gar nix dazu gebloggt hatte. Das alles erschien mir viel, viel, viel zu unwahrscheinlich um kein Fehler zu sein. Neil deGrasse formulierte das neulich bei einem AMA auf Reddit so:
What are your thoughts on the reports of neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light?
Three options:
1) Mistake in the data
VERY DISTANT 2) New particle traveling backwards through time. No need to modify relativity.
EVEN MORE DISTANT 3) Need to modify Relativity.
Das Problem ist nun: Sie haben das Experiment wiederholt und erneut Neutrinos gemessen, die sich schneller als das Licht bewegten. WHOA! Ich verstehe vielleicht die Hälfte der Artikel, die ich gleich verlinken werde, aber ich verstehe das hier zu hundert Prozent: Sollte sich das Testergebnis noch einmal wiederholen, dann ist das ziemlich sicher die wichtigste Entdeckung der Wissenschaft seit Einsteins Relativitätstheorie und all das wird dann die Physik komplett auf den Kopf stellen.
OPERA beginnt nun mit einer neuen Testreihe, die sich ein paar Monate hinziehen wird und MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) am Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois kalibriert grade sein System, um das OPERA-Experiment nachzustellen, Ergebnisse werden für Anfang nächsten Jahres erwartet. Ich bin extrem gespannt, was da noch kommt.
One of the most staggering results in physics – that neutrinos may go faster than light – has not gone away with two further weeks of observations. The researchers behind the jaw-dropping finding are now confident enough in the result that they are submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal.
“The measurement seems robust,” says Luca Stanco of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy. “We have received many criticisms, and most of them have been washed out.” […]
The result also unsettled those within the OPERA collaboration. Stanco was one of 15 team members who did not sign the original preprint of the paper because they thought the results were too preliminary.
One of the main concerns was that it was difficult to link individual neutrino hits at Gran Sasso to the particles that left CERN. To double check, the team ran a second set of measurements with tighter bunches of particles from 21 October to 6 November. In that time, they observed 20 new neutrino hits – a piddling number compared to the 16,000 hits in the original experiment. But Stanco says the tighter particle bunches made those hits easier to track and time: “So they are very powerful, these 20 events.”
New Scientist: More data shows neutrinos still faster than light (via Reddit)
Science2.0: OPERA Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light!
Nature: Neutrino experiment affirms faster-than-light claim
Wikipedia: Neutrinotests – OPERA, Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso
Hine Mizushimas supercute Felt-Strangeness
Hine Mizushima macht sehr schöne und seltsame Dinge aus Filz. Oben der Bug-Eating-Plant-Bug, ein paar weitere nach dem Klick und auf Behance (meine Favs dort: Unnatural History Museum Part 1 und 2), Etsy, Flickr und auf ihrer Website. (via Laughing Squid)
Max Payne Infomercial: Creating a Cutting Edge Action-Shooter
Youtube Direktmax, via RPS
Rockstar haben gestern ein Max Payne Infomercial rausgehauen und das sieht alles sehr, sehr toll aus: „The Design and Technology Video Series offers a detailed look at the targeting mechanics, movement and animation, enemy intelligence and other technical design innovations going into building an advanced, intense and immersive action-shooter with Max Payne 3.“
Christian Nuts: Star Wars-Figures can be demonic!
Youtube Direktdemons, via Cyn-C
Dieser Gentleman erzählt uns, dass Star Wars-Figuren von satanischen Dämonen besessen sein können. Das erklärt einiges. Von Youtube:
Yes, I have a sick obsession with watching low budget Christian television. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I know I’m not alone!
Episode 6: Star Wars, Smurfs, Pokemon, Harry Potter
Advocating book burning, homophobia, Ouija boards cause birth defects – this episode presents a true potpourri of superstitious fundamentalism. I’ve tried to tone down my picard-palming as requested (it’s a challenge), and am experimenting with some new techniques… on-going process.
In response to some comments: This isn’t parody or trolling, these people are completely serious.
Antikythera Mechanism rebuilt as a Watch
Die schweizer Uhrenmacher von Hublot haben den bekannten Antikythera-Mechanismus (Wikipedia) – ein Analog-Rechner, den die alten Griechen vor zweitausend Jahren zur Berechnung der Bewegung von Himmelskörpern bauten – in einem Armbanduhrwerk nachgebaut. Das Teil ist leider nur eine Konzeptarbeit für eine Ausstellung nächstes Jahr, wäre allerdings ohnehin unerschwinglich. Awesome!
This video is a tribute from Swiss clock-maker Hublot and film-maker Philippe Nicolet to this device, known as the Antikythera Mechanism, or the world’s “first computer”. The fragments of the Mechanism were discovered in 1901 by sponge divers near the island of Antikythera. It is kept since then at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.
For more than a century, researchers were trying to understand its functions. Since 2005, a pluridisciplinary research team, the “Antikythera Mechanism Research Project”, is studying the Mechanism with the latest high tech available.
The results of this ongoing research has enabled the construction of many models. Amongst them, the unique mechanism of a watch, designed by Hublot as a tribute to the Mechanism, is incorporating the known functions of this mysterious and fascinating ancient Mechanism.
Hublot painstakingly recreates a mysterious, 2,100-year-old clockwork relic – but why? (via /.)
Vorher auf Nerdcore:
Ancient mechanical Computer rebuilt in Lego!
Topographic Rainbow-Map of Moon
Die Nasa hat eine wunderbare, riesige, topografische Karte vom Mond veröffentlicht. Hier gibt’s das Teil von vorne und hinten und zum Reinzoomen. Und wo wir grade beim Thema sind: Wired hat eine tolle Galerie mit Vulkan-Karten.
The science team that oversees the imaging system on board NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created.
This new topographic map, from Arizona State University in Tempe, shows the surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon with a pixel scale close to 100 meters (328 feet). A single measure of elevation (one pixel) is about the size of two football fields placed side-by-side.
NASA: RO Camera Team Releases High Resolution Global Topographic Map of Moon (via Laughing Squid)
The Awl: A Survey Of Moon Maps Since the 17th Century: „How do you map something 238,856 miles away? You can’t just send out a team of surveyors. At least, you couldn’t until relatively recently. Before then, lunar cartographers (technically, selenographers) could only rely on telescopes and their own artistic ability to draw a detailed portrait of the lunar face. They managed some pretty dazzling results.“
A Timelapse-History of the Sky for One Year
Youtube Direktsky, via Jason Kottke
Nettes Timelapseprojekt von Ken Murphy, der (fast) ein ganzes Jahr Himmel über San Francisco zu einem Video-Mosaik aus 360-Minifilmen zusammengefügt hat, die jeweils einen kompletten Tag zeigen (zumindest die Stunden mit Tageslicht).
I installed a custom camera rig on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in SF, which captured an image of the sky every 10 seconds, around the clock, for a year. From these images, I created an array of time-lapse movies, each showing a single day, arranged chronologically, and playing in sync. My intention was to reveal the patterns of light and weather over the course of a year.
