my friend alexandra ginsberg sent me this link to another sensory experience: a glowing ceiling made of sheep intestines by julia lohmann. isn’t it beautiful? and delicious. a whole new material interpretation of the soft ceiling and the cloud ceiling for sensory rooms.
this beautiful app by jos stam generates animations of the rippling light at the bottom of a pool – a physical phenomena called ‘caustics,’ which can be described by the legendre collapse:
ever since i saw the amazing cascade of plastic chairs video at SIGGRAPH 2004, I have been addicted to doug l. james’ work on collisions between deformable models – another way of saying floppy things running into each other. although he may have legitimate research in mind, there’s nothing but pure emotional attachment to plastic in these videos: a pile of 12,201 white plastic chairs dropped from the sky, or in this case the ubiquitous laundry baskets.
architects beware – entire cities can be generated faster than you can ink a threshold: procedural city building is a common tool for generating complex backgrounds in movies and animations. several approaches are discussed, and a few like this one by stefan greuter which generates cities randomly complete with billboards and rooftops in nice, self-contained applications.
long before newton, galileo galilei determined the first laws of physics – including the acceleration of falling objects (the total distance covered, starting from rest, is proportional to the square of the time) and that a mass moves at a constant speend unless acted upon by another (like friction). he performed his experiments by rolling metal balls down inclined planes and accurately measuring their speed. in this inclined plane from the museum of the history of science in florence, the inclined plane serves as a demo: as the ball rolls down, it strikes bells along the track. although each bell is twice as far from the last, they sound at regular intervals, making gravity audible.
persuasive technology (aka captology) can be a bit heavy-handed at times but not in this case: an electric toothbrush capable of making sounds, paying music or talking to make toothbrushing more entertaining for children.
via gen-eric
my old friend zach nagle sent me this link to an installation at skidmore college by lee boronson similar to the cloud ceiling in sensory decor – beautiful inflated plastic forms like clouds with rays of materialized sunlight poking through.
many companies offer therapeutic products to create soothing, richly textured sensory rooms – tfh combines the typical with a handy graph that evaluates the senses and skills targeted by each device – including from top to bottom a cloud ceiling, a sound sensitive bubble column, a school age corner colossus and interactive musical squares. while these are only being developed for assistive special needs, there is obviously a universal appeal to trampolines,ball pools, hammocks, fiber optics, etc…