news that a woman can control a prosthetic wrist elbow and hand through nerve impulses captured at the shoulder brings us one step closer to not only smart prosthetics, but also the potential future ability to have extra-strong and maybe just plain extra limbs. drill attachment, anyone?
via engadget
in terms of ecological footprint the ideal house is one that can grow out of the ground by itself. coming close to this ideal are the hedges of the alhambra and generalife in granada (spain).
kiwon park‘s installation at the reina sofia museum in madrid features two rooms with walls coated in industrial grease and the floor covered in what appear to be once-inflated vinyl tiles. while most rooms don’t make you want to touch the walls, covering them in disgusting grease has at once the effect of making you need to touch them – just to check – but you can’t, or you’ll get all greasy. hmmm.
Haptics, the technology behind vibrating video game controllers, are not just going to be used to simulate touching artificial objects. Artificial touch technology can also be used to enhance the way we touch each other – as this product demonstrates. Vicon‘s ring of love is a disposable vibrating cockring with a tiny vibrating motor and battery inside a soft silicone casing mounted on a rubber ring. One advantage of this technology is that it doesn’t replace the naturalness of the act, it just adds to our expressive power.
one definition of open source is when the knowledge and tools for making something are available to anyone. take LEGO’s Digital Designer: a free software design tool that lets you build three-dimensional LEGO models, upload them and have them delivered in the parts and colors you want with customized instructions and even a custom-designed box! you can download anyone else’s design from the on-line store (think 3d OPENSTUDIO). the cell phone case i was designing came to $8.40 delivered (below).
now that most traffic lights use LEDs, why not animate the content? this is a little video of the crosswalks in granada that animated with a dopey green walker instead of the old ‘walk’ sign
i love flickr but i’ve never before used it as an artistic presentation medium – these handy little notes are intuitive to make and easy to read without interfering with the image viewing process – perfect for overly symbolic art among other things
toby mckey’s laptop became famous for inadvertently taking and uploading pictures while it was being repaired at some ‘secret’ facility, although in the meantime the photos mysteriously disappeared (the one above was salvaged and purportedly shows a flextronics facility in tennessee). as in airplanes, a ‘black box’ for products could become part their value rather than a liability to manufacturers. imagine if the products you owned had a complete record of where they were and what they saw along the way? sure beats the ‘inspected by’ slip of paper in your jacket pocket…
via tuaw