wafaa bilal has been living in an art gallery for the past month getting shot at by a web-controlled paintball gun, kind of like the way armed aerial drones in iraq and afghanistan are flown by pilots sitting in an office the US – hurry! only two more days to shoot him!
Author Archives: leo
product tattoo
lately it’s become trendy to decorate things with personalized etchings, like these lasercut products by adafruit. it’s just like a tattoo: adding decoration to a minimalist design. it makes me wonder why consumer electronics are so plain, and whether they couldn’t be more ornate (like ancient instruments) – and whether they couldn’t be more meaningful […]
Posted in open objects
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extreme recycling
there’s almost no such thing as true recycling, because almost all post-consumer materials are re-made into a material of lesser quality (down-cycling). but RE-USE is very easy and allows an material to retain its functionality through multiple product life-cycles. unfortunately, people don’t seem to value re-use as much as they could – until now, when […]
Posted in product design, upcycling
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better living wall
while the aesthetics of plant walls are important, these chunks of living architecture can also act as active air filters, reducing VOC’s and carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. this bio-wall at queen’s university has a live web presence to report on the air quality in real-time. via paul schuette
Posted in livingbreathing
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signed work
this morning my office neighbor jim discovered something while taking apart a joystick: the plastic enclosure’s baseplate is embossed with the signatures of the design team, visible only once you unscrew the plastic base. this is special: first, for acknowledging the role of individuals in the design of a commodity object, second, for expressing pride […]
Posted in open objects
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banana roots
dole has been giving its produce a voice: organic bananas are labeled with farm codes that, when typed into http://www.doleorganic.com/, provide information about the farm where it originated. these are the happy farmers from farm #759: if you peer deeper into the page, you can also download the farm’s coordinates for google earth and see […]
Posted in possessed products
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nutritional products
in 1994 the US food and drug administration mandated that all food sold in the US contain a table of ‘nutrition facts‘. the label (above) quickly became a graphic icon, and soothed an obese population with a sense of control over diet through proper labeling. as a result the graphic convention was rapidly and widely […]
Posted in visualization
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living wall
patrick blanc creates tropical plant walls in urban environments by growing carefully selected plants in complex hanging structures made of synthetic felt and steel and plastic under strong lights. i was first awed by one of his creations at the manhattan girbaud store: a lush living wall of plants hanging in the middle of an […]
Posted in livingbreathing
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