The ExoHand from Festo — an active manual orthosis with sensitive fingers.
The ExoHand from Festo is an exoskeleton that can be worn like a glove. The fingers can be actively moved and their strength amplified; the operator’s hand movements are registered and transmitted to the robotic hand in real time.
CogniGame is a reinterpretation of a well-known video game that was launched on the market in the 1970s. As in table tennis, the players used a joystick in order to move a bar up and down the screen to keep a ball in play. CogniGame – control by thought
Jurema Action Plant is an interactive bio-machine. It consists in a customized machine which interfaces a sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica).
Jurema Action Plant aims to empower plants by enabling them to use similar technologies as humans use. It is also explores new ways of communication and co-relation between humans, living organism and a machine. Much like humans, animals and machines, the plants have an electrical signal traveling inside them, but they do not have nerves like humans and animals; nor wires and cables like machines. This electrical signal travels inside the cells of the plant. Inspired by this phenomenon, I collaborated with professor Bert van Duijn from the Biology University and the Hortus Botanicus, both from Leiden, on a research into the Action Potential of this plant. At V2_ , we settled upon a solution in which a signal amplifier reads the differences in the electromagnetic field around the plant to determine when it is being touched. These electromagnetic variations trigger movement of the robotic structure, on which the plant is situated, by means of a custom-made circuit board. The thresholds for response are set in such a way that only touching the plant makes it move away from the person touching it.
“Their movement however generally remains invisible to us, because their muscle and nerve-like systems operate at a very slow timescale and their rooting in soil confines their motion to the movement of branches and leaves. These restrictions give plants an enormous disadvantage compared to their main aggressors: animals and humans, in many instances resulting in a loss of biodiversity and even extinction.” (Michel van Dartel, curator V2)
To measure the Action Potential from the plant some electrodes are placed in its branches. When the leaves and branches of the plant are touched this signal changes. This electrical signal travels in the plant and the Action Potential can be measured in any part of the plant, not necessarily where the electrodes are placed. If the plants can fell the touch and this signal travels inside the plant and be can be measured in any part, does it means that plants have memory, consciousness?
The ultimate dream of flight – soaring through the air, with total freedom in all three dimensions, not within a heavy and complicated machine but with only one’s body and sensations – a dream everybody had at least once in their life.
Hamburg´s garbagemen portrait their city in the Trashcam Project – with their garbage containers. Standard 1.100 liter containers are transformed to giant pinhole cameras. With these cameras the binmen take pictures of their favorite places to show the beauty and the changes of the city they keep clean every day. The Trashcam Project was developed by Christoph Blaschke, Mirko Derpmann, Scholz & Friends Berlin and the Hamburg sanitation department. Special thanks to Hamburg based photographer Matthias Hewing (www.matthiashewing.de/) for his professional advice and the challenging lab work with the giant negatives.
Garbageman Hans-Dieter Braatz is taking a picture with a 1.100 liter garbage container transformed into a pinhole camera. It will take 2 minutes of framing and one hour waiting. Picture taken by Mirko Derpmann with a fuji gw690 on Fuji Velvia.
St. Georg is a part of Hamburg where one can find clear signs of gentrification and quite an organized oppositional movement. This site should be occupied by a massive glass and steel cube by now. But somehow the process seems to have slowed down mostly due to the financial crisis. Photographed with a pinhole garbage container by garbageman Roland Wilhelm, Christoph Blaschke and Mirko Derpmann. Shot on a 106×80 cm sheet of ilford multigrade with 10 minutes exposure time. In the front you can see the shadow of the bin.
The Fleetschloss in Hamburg photographed with a pinhole garbage container by
garbageman Hans-Dieter Braatz, Christoph Blaschke and Mirko Derpmann. Shot on a 106×80 cm sheet of ilford multigrade with 45 minutes exposure time.
CHALLENGE:
The “nav-u” U35 is a personal navigation device you can put on a bicycle.
We wanted to demonstrate the device by using the attractions of Tokyo, a city whose roads developed in irregular and complex ways.
IDEA:
Using the running log function of the bicycle navigation system, we started the project by drawing gigantic animal geoglyphs over Tokyo. People tweet what animals they want us to draw. From their requests, our staffers draw animals over the map.
The bike group rides all over Tokyo, logs the routes and uploads the drawing to the website immediately. Progress status with drawing and running footage are posted on Twitter in real time every day.
Fifteen animals are completed in 40 days.
RESULT:
The project was featured in TV news shows, newspapers, magazine articles, and over 80 online news articles. In addition, it was mentioned innumerable times on blogs and tweets. Moreover, it was also reported in other countries, and we received lots of positive feedback, support and messages of encouragement.
Before the campaign, Sony held third place in the market for navigation systems, but it rose to the first just two weeks after the start of the campaign.
A promotion for a bicycle navigation system also became a promotion for the city of Tokyo. The Tokyo Zoo Project
Via Popupcity
The Onanizer is the root of Onania. Designed to mould seamlessly to the user’s body, the ‘limitless pleasure’ machine invites its users to a realm of singular focus on themselves. Sophisticated advertising tricks are played on our atavistic compulsions of fulfilling basic instincts.The Onanizer reflects the ultimate aim of Onania, which is the most perfect and heightened existence of blissful solitude.
Through the RedBall Project I utilize my opportunity as an artist to be a catalyst for new encounters within the everyday. Through the magnetic, playful, and charismatic nature of the RedBall the work is able to access the imagination embedded in all of us. On the surface, the experience seems to be about the ball itself as an object, but the true power of the project is what it can create for those who experience it. It opens a doorway to imagine what if? As RedBall travels around the world people approach me on the street with excited suggestions about where to put it in their city. In that moment the person is not a spectator but a participant in the act of imagination. I have witnessed it across continents, diverse age spans, cultures, and languages, always issuing an invitation. That invitation to engage, to collectively imagine, is the true essence of the RedBall Project. The larger arc of the project is how each city responds to that invitation and, over time, what the developing story reveals about our individual and cultural imagination.
A darkly humorous and shocking exposé of the celebrity obsessed media, that uncovers the real reasons behind our addiction to fame and blows the lid on the corporations and individuals who profit from it. Directed by Chris Atkins, BAFTA nominated for Taking Liberties, Starsuckers exploded into the news in October 2010 when it emerged that the team had been selling fake celebrity stories to all the British Tabloids. This became a news sensation in it’s own right, and was followed by the darker revelation that Atkins had secretly filmed four journalists for three Sunday tabloids trying to buy medical records.
When Loren Amelang bought land outside of Philo, California in 1973, it was a place to “live like hippies on the weekend”. Years later, his Silicon Valley employer put in florescent lighting and wouldn’t let employees bring in their own lights so Amelang decided to move full-time to his off-grid property and to create a space where he would have total control over his environment.
At first he lived in a tiny cabin he had built in the old sheep barn, but deciding he needed more room for his solar panels, he began building a home that would help him generate “free hot water, free power and a decent chunk of free heat”.
The entire south side of his home is covered in solar capture devices: 1600 watts of photovoltaic power, solar hot water panels, a sunroom/greenhouse and a solar hot air collector.
“The sunroom/greenhouse provides most of the free heat,” explains Amelang, “the ‘solar flue’ moderates it in warmer weather or circulates some of it into the house when needed, and the concrete walls stabilize the temperature over time”.
Putting his technical skills to use (he’s a pioneer in C++ programming), Amelang wrote over 10,000 lines of code so that his home’s water and electric systems could be operated more efficiently and automatically. An added benefit is the ability to control everything remotely, by even just a smartphone.
A retirement crisis is looming. As people live longer, one study finds that half of all households are at risk of coming up short on retirement money. And while many working households may feel they simply don’t have enough to spare for retirement, experts say some of the biggest barriers to saving up are psychological.
Now, new research has found a way around that barrier: providing a virtual glimpse into the future that could help motivate young people to save more for retirement.
Meet Your Future Self
“When you make a decision now about yourself in the future, that distant self almost feels like a stranger,” says Hal Hershfield of New York University’s Stern School of Business.
In fact, when we think about ourselves in the future we actually use the same part of our brain that we use when we think about a stranger. Hershfield and a group of researchers wanted to help young people vividly imagine their own old age, so they recruited college-age men and women, gave them goggles and sent them into a virtual reality laboratory where they encountered a kind of mirror.
Excerpt of an article written by Jennifer Ludden at NPR. Continue HERE
In 1962, an undergraduate at the University of Michigan named Tom Hayden drafted a document that would launch a decade of student protest and mass action for a more democratic society.
Five decades later, we assess its impact and enduring legacy. — Boston Review
Tom Hayden
The Port Huron Statement’s core message is timeless but not dogmatic: we all need participatory democracy.
APRIL 10
Kim Phillips-Fein
The economic inequalities of our own day were anticipated even at the height of postwar affluence.
APRIL 11
Bill Ayers
The ’60s remain a prelude to the necessary fundamental changes to come.
APRIL 11
Angus Johnston
Advances in student power have shaped the course of American higher education and the nation.
APRIL 11
Eric Mann
Like the signatories of the Port Huron Statement, the Occupiers need to expand beyond the narrower interests of their original members.
APRIL 12 Kirkpatrick Sale
The Statement was nothing less than a proto-ideology for a New Left.
APRIL 12 Danielle Allen
We cannot be free without being equal.
APRIL 12 Jennifer Hochschild
On the left we see a vacuum where traditional class-oriented populism used to be.
APRIL 13
Trevor Stutz
Only moral clarity will transform alienation and apathy into action.
APRIL 13
Bernardine Dohrn
The Statement was a clarion call for people to take control of key social institutions and of their own lives.
APRIL 13
Crack The Surface takes a look at a small collection of explorers who risk it all to access and infiltrate closed or forgotten spaces, and focuses on their participation and experiences within their local and global exploring community.
According to Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner, which tracks users across the web with a cookie, dozens of adult destinations populate the top 500 websites. Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit. LiveJasmin isn’t much smaller. YouPorn, Tube8, and Pornhub — they’re all vast, vast sites that dwarf almost everything except the Googles and Facebooks of the internet.
While page views are a fine starting point, they only tell you that X porn site is more popular than Y non-porn site. Four billion page views sure sounds like a lot, but it’s only when you factor in what those porn surfers are actually doing that the size and scale of adult websites truly comes into focus.
Excerpt from an article written by Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech. Read it HERE
Introducing Rolling Words, Snoop Dogg’s smokable songbook. A promotion for Snoop Dogg’s Kingsize Slim Rolling Papers created by San Francisco agency Pereira & O’Dell.
Each page is a rolling paper with Snoop’s greatest songs and lyrics written on them – in non-toxic ink – for your rolling pleasure. The pages are perforated making them easy to detach.
The book is made of hemp-related materials, with the cover, binding, and internal lining all made from hemp seed paper while the spine of the book is a match striking surface.
They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time.
The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes.
It’s 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s quietest place, but stay there too long and you may start hallucinating.
‘When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly.
I had an idea. I will make a toothpick. From a tree, by hand.
* Artist’s statement (letter of intention, January 2011).
The starting point for Wannes Goetschalckx’s Toothpick Project, was an immense poplar installed at the Casino Luxembourg, which was to be carved with his own hands into one toothpick. From September until December 20011, he has been harnessed to this colossal task.
Metachaos, from Greek Meta (beyond) and Chaos (the abyss where the eternally-formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks in precise morphology, and it is characterized by mutation and mitosis.
In fact the bodies represented in METACHAOS, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality they are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, an hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct of violating the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a philological continuum in human species, bringing the status of things back to the primordial broth.
STATEMENT
METACHAOS is a multidisciplinary audio-visual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography and mix-technique paintings. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and of its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate. An accretion of feelings that are metaphorically represented by specific visual forms, which are abstract conceptually, but concrete and tangible formally. The application of acid and monochromatic tints, besides the strong contrasts, makes everything intentionally more oppressive and tragic.
In order to obtain a more immersive and plausible version, the shot was taken adopting the camera live technique. The extreme and frenetic motion of the shoulder camera, similar to the subjective one, becomes a main constant, so that, along with the persisting cuts used to edit the video, create a bigger sense of instability and danger. In fact, thanks to the dissemination of Technology, it is possible to notice that the unconscious-esthetic potential of the shots available on Youtube, characterized by a pseudo-documentary and amateur approach, often offer an unexpected emotional involvement, which trigger an exhibitionistic-voyeuristic interchange between the author and the consumer.
The irrational gesture and action of the bodies, as if a collective form of madness controlled them, are inspired by artists like Bosch and Bruegel who, between the ‘400 and ‘500, produced an iconography where irrational images show sickly madness and pain.
The project has been realized using different techniques: live shots taken in discharged industrial sites, CGI animations, tracking and motion captures, besides various other analogical ones.
American Jeff Ensign, aka Evolution Noise Slave composed the original sound track, which has been progressively updated during the video production. The musical score was inspired by 6 separate pieces Jeff had previously created that were then combined into a hybrid. The composition was also based in part from a sonic interpretation of the ideas presented in Antonin Artaud’s the Theater and Cruelty overlaid on Bavari’s images.
Metropia takes place in a not-so-distant future. The world is running out of oil and the underground train systems have been connected into a gigantic subway network beneath Europe. Whenever Roger from Stockholm enters this system he hears a stranger’s voice in his head. He looks to the mysterious Nina to help him escape the disturbing web of the Metro, but the further they travel, the deeper he’s involved in a dark conspiracy.
Velocommerce is commerce that is dependent on the bicycle (from the French word ‘velo’ referring to bicycle). India is a fantastic place to observe velocommerce in action.This project has opened our eyes to this crazy universe of activities, products, services, design, economy and humanity that is mobile using bicycles. The interesting thing about being on a bicycle is that it immediately frees you as an entrepreneur from the shackles of immovable real estate. Velocommerce is all about the mobility of property, and it challenges notions of ownership and private capital. It is special because it exists at the intersection of entrepreneurship, mobility, sustainability, grassroots innovation, cultures, local economies and decentralized, last-mile service delivery.
Short synopsis: The non-verbal documentary ROBOT WORLD depicts the evolution of robots from a mechanical somnambulist to an autonomous sensorium. The neoclassical violinist Matt Howden emphasizes the film’s message: these artificial people are our alternate doubles.
About the film: ROBOT WORLD is a compilation. The source material for this one-hour film comes from robot laboratories at universities, from private footage at industrial fairs, military archives and corporate videos from the robot industry. Motion pictures of old 16 mm films from the 1930’s were added. This non-verbal documentary was recycled from far in excess of one hundred hours of raw material. ROBOT WORLD is the second film in the “Technology & Mind & Evolution” series of Munich filmmaker Martin Hans Schmitt. The first film in this series, HIGHWAY WORLD, deals with highway worlds and in 2008/2009 was successful at international film festivals.
Robot World – A Meeting with Your Alternate Double will be screened at Robots and Avatars
A new study in the Journal of Adolescence looks at motivations in online accounts of self-harm and gives an insight into the various ways young people describe their actions.
The research aims to examine ‘magical thinking’ in explanations of self-harm but this doesn’t necessarily mean magical thinking in the sense associated with psychosis (i.e. unknown forces and jumping to conclusion) but in terms of how metaphors and symbolism and woven into the young people’s explanations.
Part of the article gives examples of various forms of symbolic ‘magical thinking’. It’s a bit wordy but it illustrates some of the psychological complexity of self-harm.
“African governments don’t want us thinking that “homosexuality” is within the realm of their “traditional values”. So apparently these leaders, even Nobel Peace Prize winning ones, use that as an excuse to justify the persecution and lack of protection for some of their most vulnerable citizens. Well, it seems that the Angolan government who currently seem to have their hands full (of money?) can’t be bothered to check whether or not popular Kudurista, Titica, fits within that value system… and we’re glad for that. Now, I don’t know the frame through which Angolans are seeing Titica. A little forum and youtube scrolling reveals a divided public (as always).”
Official designation: State of Sabotage, Abbreviation: SoS
SoS is a secular, sovereign and democratic state.
All citizens of the SoS state are to adhere to these principles.
The Constitution is the highest law of the SoS state and is binding for all SoS state authorities. The SoS State Constitution was publicly recited and resolved on September 4, 2005 and has been valid and legally binding since that time.
The SoS state symbols are the colors black and white, the coat of arms in the state flag, as well as the state anthem. The two official SoS state and diplomatic languages are German and English. The assets of the SoS state are the creation, protection, mediation, and positioning of art and culture. SoS is the first sovereign cultural state according to international law. SoS fulfills all criteria required of a sovereign state (territory, population, and state organization), as well as education and training in terms of artistic freedom.
The Institute domiciled in Zurich organizes an annual three-day silent film marathon with live music centered on a clearly defined theme, which will be treated extensively and in depth. Furthermore, the Institute organizes smaller events and film cycles in other Swiss cities and abroad, presenting the season’s highlights to a larger audience in various regions.
The live music performances take into consideration cultural and social variety and aim to consider musicians, sound artists, bands, ensembles and orchestras of various age groups and styles of music. This is, among others, intended to actively promote the exchange between the various genres.
The participating musicians largely hail from the Zurich region and to a smaller part from the rest of Switzerland as well as occasionally from abroad.
For the 2011/2012 seasons, events are intended in Zurich, Baden and Lausanne. For the following year events are foreseen in other Swiss cities as well as in Beijing and Shanghai.
A gun accident fifteen years ago left Richard Lee Norris without his lips, nose, and with limited movement of his mouth. Now after a marathon 36-hour surgical procedure described as “the most extensive full face transplant completed to date,” a team led by Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez at the University of Maryland has restored Mr. Norris’ quality of life.
D-Fibrillator.
Holy Smoke
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