Pete Oyler (RISD ’09) has a great project called Rip+Tatter which hammers down large corrugated honeycomb cardboard pieces to make for some great little chairs. I’m not sure how long they will last, but for $55 it’s pretty awesome. I wonder if there is an adult version?
Some pics from Petes site after the jump.
Neat idea. Wear nature with ya!
“A Wearable Planter
Why should your plants stay at home? They help clean the air you breathe, are beautiful, and create a wonderful conversation starter. Carry a sprout, a succulent, or a flower you found on your morning walk.”
Pretty slick looking are these Inner City Bikes, which seem to essentially take 2 unicycles and stick them together for a fast looking 1:1 ratio bike. I’m not sure how they feel, but they do look pretty futuristic and the build quality looks nice. I’m questioning structure a bit but hey, it looks good. No pricing has been set. Watch the youtube video of this bike in action after the jump or here.
What appears at first to be a flock of smart starling birds doing their thing around an invisible box between the US and Canadian border near Vancouver is actually a billboard sculpture by Lead Pencil Studio built from thousands of metal rods swarming a shape as if a billboard to draw attention to the living landscape behind.
“Borrowing the effectiveness of billboards to redirect attention away from the landscape… this permanently open aperture between nations works to frame nothing more than a clear view of the changing atmospheric conditions beyond.”
This project reminds me a bit of the CityScape project though using several wooden 2×4’s with a mix of the ad free billboard law in Sao Paulo.
Multiple images by Ian Gill courtesy of Lead Pencil Studio, via fastcodesign, after the jump.
Wow. It’s mind boggling think about cultures and groups of people that have been uncontacted in our world, living incredibly different lives, away from technology, the industrial revolution, print, the internet, science, air transportation, and everyday things we take for granted. Watch the video above, and read tons more about these uncontacted tribes at UncontactedTribes.org. I’ll mirror a few of the astonishing pictures after the jump.
” Video of an uncontacted tribe spotted in the Brazilian jungle has been released, bringing them to life in ways that photographs alone cannot.
The tribe, believed to be Panoa Indians, have been monitored from a distance by Brazil’s National Indian Foundation, a government agency charged with handling the nation’s indigenous communities. Many of the world’s 100 or so uncontacted tribes live in the Amazon.
Until 1987, it was government policy to contact such people. But contact is fraught with problems, especially disease; people who have stayed isolated from the mainstream world have stayed isolated from its pathogens, and have little immunity to our diseases. Brazilian government policy is now to watch from afar, and — at least in principle — to protect uncontacted tribes from intrusion.
Unfortunately, uncontacted tribes usually live in resource-rich areas threatened by logging, mining and other development. There’s often pressure on governments to turn a blind eye. Videos like this, released by tribal advocacy group Survival International and produced by the BBC’s Human Planet program, are legal proof that uncontacted tribes still exist, and deserve protection.”
video via wired science
Wired story and pictures mirrored after the jump
Wow, these are beautiful! love it! I wonder what I would do with 2000 pounds of salt.
“Motoi Yamamoto uses the ubiquitous white mineral to design unfathomably intricate — and deeply personal — floor sculptures.
Motoi Yamamoto has to be the most patient man in the world. A Japanese artist, Yamamoto uses salt to create monumental floor paintings, each so absurdly detailed, it makes A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte look like child’s play. He calls them, fittingly, his Labyrinths. ”
via fastcodesign (pictures mirrored after the jump.)
I’m not sure what to think here, but this project by Jarashi Suki at IAMAS Ubiqutous Interaction Research Group, is one of those projects that make you go woa, wow, oh what if this and that! Watch the video above as these dominos are enabled to fall over at a set time and you can do a variety of, well, lets just say interesting things… I want a set!!! Check out his vimeo site of projects, and his website which I must say is one weird home page, but fun!
The Noun Projects is a visual library of icons representing everyday things we stumble upon daily, but this library is free to the public for use under Creative Commons. Pretty sweet project, and they also have Kickstarter page if ya want to help them out.
Heres a bit more about them:
Mission
“sharing, celebrating and enhancing the world’s visual language”
The Noun Project collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world’s visual language, so we may share them in a fun and meaningful way. Here is our pledge to you:
FREE
The symbols on this site are and always will remain free. We believe symbols can not be effectively shared with the world if they are not free.
SIMPLE
Everyone like simplicity. We want you to be able to come to our site and effortlessly find and obtain what you are looking for. Simple as that.
FUN
We think a language that can be understood by all cultures and people is a pretty amazing thing. We also think our symbols and the objects or ideas they represent are works of art worth celebrating. Check out our store.
HIGHEST QUALITY
We get excited about things like scale, proportion, and shape. We are committed to design and quality in everything we do.
BUff diss on Flickr has a nice stream of Tape Art images. I’ll add some here after the jump, otherwise look at the rest on the stream.
Photographer Jordan Matter has a great project of dancers in nyc doing their thing in public spaces making them stand out quite a bit. Makes me wonder what life might be like in a city full of dancers. Take a look at the fascinating gallery here, otherwise, I’ll mirror some of my favorites from his “Dancers Among Us” after the jump.
For those of you that could not make it to the DLD conference in Munich this year like myself, there is a livestream of their lectures all 3 days. Take a peek at their schedule then grab some food and watch the all day series of talks. Keep in mind the schedule is in Munich time, so I think about 5-6 hours ahead of EST.
*they also have a great archive of each video in that livestream url. Watch these anytime.
As snow poors across the world it reminds me of when I attended RISD where I met several international students whom had never experienced snow before. At times, I’d see these students sit outside in a corner just watching the snow for hours as it collected on their shoulders, but then I’d pile them up into theh snow, telling them this was the full experience.
Anyhow, the video above reminds me in this experience. Panasonic has a new Insulator and to demonstrate how good it is, they made a snowman in Japan, packed it up inside this new material, then shipped it o Bahrain 8,000 kilometers away. Besides the incredible feat, what grabs my attention even more is a reminder in how amazing snow can be. It’s amazing to see how these kids from Bahrain react. I do wonder I I first reacted seeing snow? Do you remember your first time?
For more details on the project and the story behind it:
http://eco-ideas.net/sparks/snowman/“