Robot Jazz Band! Hope the next update includes Robot Jazz Hands! Hah-CHA!
via Weird Asia News
Designer Chris Tsevis created these clever icon mosaic portraits of tech celebrities for the book Gadgets, Games, Robots and the Digital World. Here we have Space Invaders developer Tomohiro Nishikado composed of tiny pixelated invaders and Bill Gates composed of PC iconography. See more over on Tsevis’ site. That’s so meta!
I’ve been catching up on the many, fantastic episodes of science/storytelling podcast Radiolab, to the point where it has become my new obsession. Every episode is full of wonder, thoughtfulness and curiosity. It’s great.
I’m cherry picking between the seasons as I go, so today I’m listening to Space, which kicks off with a short (but very sweet) interview with Ann Druyan, former Creative Director of the Voyager Golden Record and wife of the late Carl Sagan.
She tells the tale of when she first fell in love with Carl (which almost moved me to tears), but she also talks about the process of thought that went into curating the content for the Voyager Golden Record. The concept of the record itself is fascinating, and the actual record itself is stunningly beautiful (shown above) with the title “The Sounds of the Earth” etched on the label. Definitely worth reading about on Wikipedia, and hearing about on the podcast.
It made me wonder, if there’s other lifeforms out there, whether they too have sent their golden/moonstone/unobtanium records out into the universe in hopes of someone hearing it billions of light years away. A very romantic idea, millions of alien records slinging through space in hopes of reaching new galactic ears. In love with the idea, actually.
Elena Belmann sculpted this cool looking 3D sculpture of a QR Code. Love the wooden blocks, and it looks pretty neat when lit up!
via Neatorama
Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future
“Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I’m here to stop it ever happening.”
This ingenious Panoramic Ball Camera by Jonas Pfeil contains a total of 36 cellphone cameras around its surface, and takes a 360 panoramic photo when the ball is thrown up into the air. What I would give for this device!
via Design Boom
Team “I Luminate” put on a pretty rad show on America’s Got Talent, sporting “iLuminate” wearable wireless lighting systems. The light choreography is thrilling! Glowsticks are cool again!
When will these Tron suits be available to the public? I want to hook a few iLuminate outfits up and rig them to play Johann Sebastian Joust!
via The Hairpin
Fascinating computer generated images created by a variety of “Big Bang” experiments conducted by the scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Science (also known as the home of the Large Hadron Collider). See more at the Daily Mail.
Daily Mail via Neatorama
QR Code fashion accessories by Thorunn Arnadottir pair the aesthetic of traditional African beading with the modern patterns of identity expressed through the QR Code. Arnadottir proposes the QR Codes could express the wearer’s digital identity, or in the case of a high profile move star, expose promotional material for any fan to instantly download to their mobile phone.
Virtual reality is still alive and kicking, demonstrated by the “Immersive Digital Entertainment” system made by the Japanese company Cresent. With content developed in part with Takahiro Akiyama, the visual effects art director for Final Fantasy, this VR system uses super HD motion-detection cameras to simulate a 360-degree virtual space.
The game demonstrated in the video looks like some sort of shoot-the-J-Pop-star-with-the-heart-gun (before she turns into a Kappa?), so that needs some work. But Akiyama suggests that the system can be applied for “relaxation or for biofeedback”, allowing the environment to change with the user’s thoughts. A cool idea, and I really dig the transparent room moment at 2:16 in the video below!
