amazing images
via fresser

turn waiting time into shopping time

inhale, exhale

One Hundred and Eight – Interactive Installation from Nils Völker on Vimeo.

let them sing it for you

i totally forgot about this one.

silent cities

a few weeks after i moved into my flat in this big city, i woke up very early in the morning. something was different, it felt strange. neither good, nor bad, just strange. it took me a while until i realized: it had been snowing. a thin white layer spread accross the streets, trees, cars, buildings. and the cars had to slow down and the snow silenced their movement even more. it was really quiet for a short time, until the snow had melted half an hour later.

today i went to a brilliant talk by adrian van hooydonk, chief designer of bmw. one of the things he spoke about was how the fact that a hybrid car produces no sound will affect the design of the car:
speed and acceleration (=power) cannot be expressed by the sound of the engine anymore and therefore have to be communicated via the design. (at the same time the design has to express that this car is part of a new era, an era which is maybe not so much about speed anymore but more about mobility/flexibility).
two side-effects of a silent engine are:
sitting inside you cannot hear whether your car is actually running. instead you will hear a lot of other noises, maybe uncomfortable noises, that used to be drowned by the sound of the engine.
and people on the street will no longer notice a car approaching them from behind or the side, which might be dangerous.
sound designers are therefore working on sounds to simulate what we are used to now and will no longer have. and it might even be possible that you can download those sounds from the web and make your own car-sound-mix.

the idea of a more silent city thanks to silent cars is totally exciting to me. just imagine what effect it will have on the real estate market. living next to a huge junction or even a motorway will no longer be a problem. and it will change our mode or perception and alertness when moving through traffic. and what are all the sounds, maybe uncomfortable sounds, on the streets we will suddenly be able to hear instead?
i am sure it will have many more effects that i cannot even imagine right now.

the one and only apple store kid

art follows technology

digitale passfotos

 

http://www.laphotocabine.fr/

aging

"1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are."
from How to stop worrying and learn to love the internet, written yesterday ten years ago by Douglas Adams.
thanks grisi

"Did you know that CNN has an algorithm that checks what people are twitting about and according to that they pick what content to show on TV?"
via a friend on facebook

re-constructing reality through a group effort of unrelated people

"In this project, we consider the problem of reconstructing entire cities from images harvested from the web. Our aim is to build a parallel distributed system that downloads all the images associated with a city, say Rome, from Flickr.com. After downloading, it matches these images to find common points and uses this information to compute the three dimensional structure of the city and the pose of the cameras that captured these images."
thanks kevin

drawing in space

like how calder did his drawings with wire.
more about rhonda

group of like-minded people+self expression+instant feedback

analog version of what the web is good at (go to 12:20) - before the web was around.

Joanie 4 Jackie from Miranda July on Vimeo.

timetraveling for real

informationen aus der zukunft können entscheidungen in der gegenwart so beinflussen, dass diese wiederum ebendiese zukunft verändern können.

sanduhr, sanduhr

song

Ich und mein Computer
Wir waren mal ein Team
Plastik mit dem Apfel
Ich werd dich nie verstehen

Zehn Stunden Arbeit, kein Back-Up gemacht, Programm abgeststürzt, Computer kaputt Alles ist weg, Festplatte voll, Falsche Version, Update verpasst, Kein Handbuch dabei, RAM zu klein

Sanduhr, Sanduhr,

Prozessor zu langsam, Cracks runtergeladen, Virus eingefangen, Netzteil vergessen, Akku ist leer Druck mir das mal aus! Düse verstopft, Patrone ist leer Kabel zu kurz schick mir das mal rüber! Ist nicht angekommen falsche Version, Update nicht verfügbar Viereckige Augen, Bildschirm ist schwarz Bei Google gesucht, gar nichts gefunden Auktion verpasst Software gezogen, ist schon wieder alt.

Ich und mein Computer
Wir waren mal ein Team
Plastik mit dem Apfel
Ich werd dich nie verstehen

Passwort vergessen Gerät nicht gefunden, Kein Steckplatz mehr Wackelkontakt CD nicht beschriftet Fehler unbekannt, Seite läd nicht hoch Kreditkarte gehackt, alles weg Plug n' Play, versteh ich nicht Drag n' Drop, versteh ich auch nicht Deleten und Error

Sanduhr, Sanduhr

kein Dongle dabei, keine Flatrate Posteingang voll, Trojaner eingefangen Software am Arsch, Kontakte gelöscht PIN Code vergessen, Überweisung nicht möglich Mauszeiger bewegt sich nicht Datenüberschuss, kein Wireless Lan E-Mail nicht beantwortet, Spam beantwortet zu wenig Megabyte

Sanduhr, Sanduhr
Sanduhr, Sanduhr
Sanduhr, Sanduhr
Sanduhr, Sanduhr

Ich und mein Computer
Wir waren mal ein Team
Plastik mit dem Apfel
Ich werd dich nie verstehen

analog audio

thanks phil

analog=real?

most articles about the internet talk about "the internet and the real world". what is "not-real" about the internet? didn't anybody coin a good phrase for the "offline world" or the "analog interaction" or the "non-digital communication" or "physical research" yet? there must a good word for it somewhere out there.

i remember the first time somebody showed me photoshop. i was totally disappointed. i expected a completly new and for me strange way of interaction and creation. instead i found a pencil, a brush, a rubber and a ruler and many more features i knew from the "real world".

facebook profiles = poesiealbum
sms = sending notes on the back of your name card with a messanger in eg paris of the 19th century
bounced email = rohrkrepierer

my educational method: "i don't know how you'll understand it. anyway i am going away"

For further information and videos, please visit UOC UNESCO Chair in e-Learning blog

Sugata Mitra's "hole in the wall"

....update 25.5.2011: the links above are dead. but not this one:

blinking and gazing

"...the blink is either something that helps an internal separation of thought to take place or it is an involuntary reflex accompanying the mental separation that is taking place anyway" (Walter Murch). more about the girl.
thanks, lucy

raw data

wolfram alpha makes me think of titus matiyane
"The Panoramas, which he has been makings since 1990, give the impression that the artist has intimate knowledge of the cities and has observed them aerially, whilst in fact he only flew for the first time in 1998 and works from maps that are commercially available"