orpheus x at the american repertory theater in cambridge (ma) is remarkably entertaining: the dynamic lead vocal (who wrote the opera) plays orpheus as a rock star and euridice is a minor poet who was run over by his taxi cab. aside from the angrogenous persephone/music agent character, the 90-minute opera was energetic and beautiful: […]
Author Archives: leo
pneumatic architecture
while inflatable buildings have been around for a while, they rarely take advantage of the natural dynamism of pneumatics. since festo’s original pneumatic building (top), inflatable building members have been used for dynamic structures such as muscle (middle, via interactivearchitecture) and the proposed whowhatwhenair (bottom) which is being fabricated for the mit campus as we […]
Posted in architecture, materials
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harmony is preferable
my old mit perception ta josh mcdermott and mark hauser propose that humans evolved to prefer consonant sounds over dissonant sounds. the way they show it is by placing monkeys in a V-shaped maze with musical chords playing at one end and cacophonous tones at the other. while monkeys prefer soft sounds to loud ones […]
Posted in perception
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berlusconi blunders
for the first time 3.5 million italian expatriates are voting in this election – here is a web page dedicated to videos of berlusconi and his party’s most fascist moments (some are in english). via walter nicolino
Posted in product design
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robot therapy
now that we can touch and feed our pets remotely, we may not even have to – recent findings suggest that robot pets confer some of the same health benefits as real ones. the paro seal type mental commit robot pictured is designed for just that – this video of him playing with japanese senior […]
Posted in evil robots
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digital camouflage
in 2004 the us armed forces switched to new camouflage patterns designed according by computers using fractal-based algorithms that create large and small-scale textures using only four colors of dye. these have a 40% lower chance of being detected from 200 meters away that traditional olive drab. guy cramer “designed” these patterns for hyperstealth, they […]
Posted in materials, perception, product design
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color therapy
after reading about how a blue stripe on the walls of prison cells could promote truthfulness, i tried to find out about the elusive field of color psychology. it turns out that there is very little direct connection between color and emotion: it seems to vary widely between cultures and individuals. for example, the color […]
Posted in perception
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sensory chairs
gaetano pesce designed the UP chairs in 1969 – they are made of polyurethane foam upholstered in fabric, shipped vacuum-packed in flat boxes (left bottom) that self-inflate when you take them out.
Posted in fabrication, materials, soft/glowing
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