Stamen’s use of watercolor lends an calming, handmade quality to these data-driven maps of San Francisco. Zoom in for more detail, or order a print for your home!
Beijing’s Water Cube, the site of Michael Phelps dominating 2008 Olympics performance, has been transformed into a waterpark of Alice-in-Wonderland-tastic proportions.
(via Fast Company Design)
Many worried the building would become an empty blight, but a Toronto architecture firm has turned it into anything but. The park replaces the pool which people could swim in for $7. Now it is more of a monument to Michael Phelps’ recreational habits than his professional ones.
Video coverage from CNN below:
Aquascript is a computer system & software that synchronizes hundreds of valves expelling single water drops on demand which result in a freely definable bit-map display.
Explore more water sculptures here.
If you like Planet Earth, you’ll love this. The BBC has a new series called ‘Life’ narrated by David Attenborough about the survival mechanisms of plants and animals, captured using some ultra-fast digital cameras.
Below is a clip showing the curious behaviour of the Basilisk lizard, ‘which rears up on its hind legs and runs across water to escape from aerial attacks. This survival trick earns it the nickname of the Jesus Christ lizard.’ The slow-motion parts of the clip were filmed with a Typhoon TD4 high-definition camera at 2,000 frames per second, 80 times faster than real life.
According to the show’s producers, these digital slow-motion camera’s record continuously into a memory buffer. “When the cameraman hits the trigger button he downloads the action that took place a second or so before that moment. Whenever a lizard sprinted past the cameraman over the water the cameraman hit the trigger, desperately trying to keep the lizard in the frame and in focus.”
The technology is certainly impressive, but kudos to the camera guy who’s able to actually operate the thing!
Cool story in Wired about personal subs of the future that will let us explore the underwater world. So cool! I want one!
“Seventy-one percent of the Earth’s surface is water, and the realms below it offer enormous possibilities for exploration, recreation and education. Yet those depths remain inaccessible to most people. A growing number of explorers and entrepreneurs hope to change that with personal submersibles, an emerging type of watercraft that carry two or three people and fly through our underwater world.
Three companies have shown their craft in California, promising a new era of underwater exploration. Hawkes Ocean Technologies unveiled its latest winged sub and is offering “flights” in Monterey Bay this month. Super Aviator Systems and Seamagine recently demonstrated their watercraft in Lake Tahoe.
These companies push submersibles in a new direction. Most submersibles work like hot air balloons, diving and rising or moving forward and back. Persubs move more like airplanes — or, in the case of the Seamagine, a helicopter. They bring the dynamics of flight to the sea. The technologies could open new avenues of discovery and change how we interact with our endangered seas and lakes.”
Following on from the genius of Kutiman’s Thru-Yu and the lovely inbflat – here’s another quirky collaborative music project done by a bunch of people getting creative with webcams and some clever editing.
enjoy…
This music video was shot for Sour’s ‘Hibi no Neiro’ (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album ‘Water Flavor EP’. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.
Directors: Masashi Kawamura + Hal Kirkland + Magico Nakamura + Masayoshi Nakamura
PureSense, a California-based irrigation software company have developed an innovative iPhone app that help farmers cope with the current drought in California. The app delivers real-time updates of soil moisture levels recorded by underground sensors that are installed near the roots of crop.
Farmers can use the app to monitor the state of their crop remotely and manage watering levels so plants are not over watered – which can slow growth for example.
The underground sensors have helped one farmer increase his farm’s tomato yields by double by using less water.
According to the NPR ‘Central Valley and other California farmers produce the bulk of the nation’s fruit, nuts and vegetables. The iPhone application is being used to help them maximize the growth of less-thirsty crops, such as wheat, safflower and seasonal vegetables’.
Xixinobanho translates to: “Pee in the shower”. Apparently you should… to help save H2O.
Believe it or not, by peeing in the shower every morning instead of the toilet, this environmental group in Brazil claims you can save up to 12 liters of water a day!
“Swiss start-up Minsh consists of an underwater 3D navigable world where each fish represents a Twitter user. The concept behind the virtual world is that the social behaviour of fish will represent what people are talking about online. In the world of Minsh, people writing about a given subject find themselves swimming in the same school. When a person updates his or her Twitter status, the fish swims away to join people with similar thoughts on their minds.”
(Richard Banks via infosthetics)
Next release is July 13, but here’s some info from their blog if you’re interested, and some screens of how it works.
While the biz model seems unclear, I can definately see brands using twitter + 3D + DV to create their own ‘minsh’.
Link seen in Creativity.
“An interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it.”
Remember Tamagotchis? This kind of reminds me of those.
Take a look at the beautiful stills from the motion graphics artist who worked with an apparently very talented Theodore Watson for the Moomah/the Creative Arts Cafe to make this.
Installations are limited in their reach, though very cool, but I can imagine doing a site with a similar interactivity.
