reBlog
| Current Reblogger: Kaho Abe |
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Kaho Abe is a designer interested in improving social and personal experiences through the use of technology, fashion and games. She is currently a fellow at Eyebeam. |
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[Yoshi Akai] built a sequencer that is part steampunk, part injection molded plastic. The LEGO sequencer MR II has eight steps in a loop that is manipulated by adding the colorful blocks to a green base plate. Each color corresponds to one particular sound which can be modified by building skyward. On the other side of things he’s added a beautifully crafted control area for knobs and switches. We didn’t see much info about what is inside the device so, watch the clip after the break and then feel free to start the speculation in the comments.
This is a similar concept to the coin sequencer. From the picture above it seems the blocks have been altered and perhaps use light to identify the different blocks.
[Thanks Fuzzthed via Westword]
According to NewYorkology, artist Jan Vormann has been busy repairing some holes in New York City buildings with Legos! Vormann’s website now has a DispatchWork—New York section, which documents the latest Lego frenzy. He writes, “In cooperation with the Gallery Jarmuschek+Partner and the kind support of Henk Holzheimer (LEGO Graffity Styles Convention), I went to New York City, as part of the VOLTA artshow, to support Mayor Bloomberg in his everyday-struggle to make this city even more amazing." We think he succeeded.
We're now handing the reblog over to one of our new fellows, Kaho Abe. Kaho is a designer interested in improving social and personal experiences through the use of technology, fashion and games. As a fashion designer, Kaho has worked for small couture houses to large corporate labels, as well as costume work for film and theater. She also designs and constructs custom evening dresses for weddings and special occasions. She has always been intrigued by the story our clothing tell, as well as fabric manipulation on the human body. Intrigued by the combination of logic and creativity, and the potential for games to be an enriching social experience, she has integrated her interests in games into various projects. For example, Hit Me! is a two-player hyper-interactive, physical game that tests speed, agility and the ability to take good snapshots. Her work has been shown in various shows and conferences in New York, Boston, Tokyo, Osaka and Beijing. Kaho's projects have also appeared or been discussed in I.D. Magazine, NY1 and Asahi Shimbun. Her other passions include film, music and day dreaming.
Recognizr, an application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them -- combining computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality -- has been developed by The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), a Swedish mobile software and design firm.
A user points the phone's camera at someone nearby. Software then detects the subject's face and creates a unique signature by combining measurements of facial features and building a 3-D model. This signature is sent to a server where it's compared to others stored in a database. Providing the subject has opted in to the service and uploaded a photo and profile of themselves, the server then sends back that person's name along with links to their profile on several social networking sites, including Twitter or Facebook.
(Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/24639/?a=f)
German automaker BMW has announced that it is gearing up its Leipzig factory to manufacture electric vehicles, which are expected to roll off the factory floor starting in 2013. The news comes as the company recently debuted their Active-E concept EV at the Detroit Auto Show in January. Known for its precise engineering, the German company is certainly capable of making a big splash in the auto world now that they’ve made a serious commitment to produce electric vehicles.
Read the rest of BMW to Manufacture Electric Vehicles at Leipzig Factory
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Post tags: Active-E, alternative vehicles, BMW, electric vehicles, green design, Leipzig Factory, Megacity Vehicle, sustainable design, zaha hadid
From a collection of “hate mail from third graders” sent to the director of the Hayden Planetarium, via NOVA.
General intelligence is found in several specific places in the brain, determined by a network of regions across both sides of the brain, researchers at CalTech, the University of Iowa, the University of Southern California, and the Autonomous University of Madrid have found.
The researchers mapped the locations of brain lesions of 241 patients and correlated that with each patient's IQ score to produce a map of the brain regions that influence intelligence.
The brain regions important for general intelligence are found in several specific places (orange regions shown on the brain on the left). The big orange regions in the right image are connections between the brain regions in the image on the left. (PNAS) (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news186071954.html)
Shaquille O'Neal curated an art exhibition that opened this weekend at Flag Art Foundation in Chelsea.
Do you ever get time to visit museums?
I used to go a lot with my kids. Donald Trump is a great friend, and he has four or five Picassos on his plane. And that's where I would look at them. One time, I was at a museum and tried touching a Picasso. You break it, you buy it, they said. I was told it would cost $2 million.
Tags: art basketball NYC Shaquille O'Neal sports
Forty years ago, Yuichiro Miura skied down Mount Everest.
"When I planned to ski Everest, the first thing I faced was 'How can I return alive?'" he recalls. "All the preparation and training was based on this question. But the more I prepared, I knew the chance of survival was very slim. Nobody in the world had done this before, so I told myself that I must face death. Otherwise, I am not eligible."
Miura's exploits were the subject of The Man Who Skied Down Everest, which won the Oscar for best documentary.
Tags: Mount Everest movies skiing sports The Man Who Skied Down Everest video Yuichiro Miura
Topological insulators seem to be the latest hot topic of study in condensed matter physics. This review, which presumably will soon appear in Rev. Mod. Phys., provides a comprehensive review of our understanding of this complex and rich system.
Abstract: Topological insulators are electronic materials that have a bulk band gap like an ordinary insulator, but have protected conducting states on their edge or surface. The 2D topological insulator is a quantum spin Hall insulator, which is a close cousin of the integer quantum Hall state. A 3D topological insulator supports novel spin polarized 2D Dirac fermions on its surface. In this Colloquium article we will review the theoretical foundation for these electronic states and describe recent experiments in which their signatures have been observed. We will describe transport experiments on HgCdTe quantum wells that demonstrate the existence of the edge states predicted for the quantum spin Hall insulator. We will then discuss experiments on Bi$_{1-x}$Sb$_x$, Bi$_2$Se$_3$, Bi$_2$Te$_3$ and Sb$_2$Te$_3$ that establish these materials as 3D topological insulators and directly probe the topology of their surface states. We will then describe exotic states that can occur at the surface of a 3D topological insulator due to an induced energy gap. A magnetic gap leads to a novel quantum Hall state that gives rise to a topological magnetoelectric effect. A superconducting energy gap leads to a state that supports Majorana fermions, and may provide a new venue for realizing proposals for topological quantum computation. We will close by discussing prospects for observing these exotic states, a well as other potential device applications of topological insulators.
Zz.
