Hasta La Gadget!

When voice actor Brock Baker went to visit Arizona’s Wildlife World Zoo & Aquarium, the animals magically started to speak up.

Now we’re wondering, what would happen if Brock ever went to the zoo with Randall, the narrator of the viral “honey badger” video?

Yeah, we know, the Internet would probably explode.

A short, five-minute documentary tells the story of what happens when ballet dancers work with robotics to capture the moving beauty of dance.

Titled, simply, “Ballet Meets Robotics,” the film experiment follows San Francisco Ballet principal dancers Maria Kochetkova and Joan Boada as they dance the choreography of a Yuri Possokhov piece while a robotic camera traces their leaps and lifts.

Director Tarik Abdel-Gawad used a motion capture studio to complete the work, outlining the dancers’ movements with sensor-equipped body suits and synching that data with the tiny “robot.”

The results are above — packaged in the form of a short film titled “Francesca da Rimini.” To see more behind-the-scenes beauty, watch the documentary below.

Jeff Koons’ gradual takeover of New York City continues with the unveiling of his special edition “Balloon Dog” handbag — a collaboration with H&M that debuts in a handful of stores across the country today.

The bag features an image of the artist’s famous balloon dog sculptures, of which an orange version recently sold for $58.4 million dollars. The H&M version of the stainless steel work will cost a much less $49.50.

H&M’s handbag, of course, coincides with Koons’ massive retrospective at the Whitney Museum, which the popular Swedish retailer sponsored.

“The partnership with H&M was really exciting for me and the chance to showcase one of my most popular works to a new generation of people was inspiring,” Koons recently said through a statement.

Earlier this week, a variety of socialites, celebrities, and models were at hand to fete the artist and his leather bag. Koons will continue the celebrations today at H&M’s newest Manhattan location on Fifth Avenue, where Forbes reports the brand will transform the location into something that resembles a museum plastered with yellow dogs. Head to 589 Fifth Avenue at noon, if you’re into that sort of thing.

And if you are, or just can’t get enough of artist-fashion collabs, check out Damien Hirst’s own commodification of art in the form of a newpill-shaped jewelry line.

The architecture giants at Agence Chartier Corbasson have imagined a design feat worthy of a green future.

Their new, London-based conceptual project, “Organic Skyscraper,” proposes a high-rise building built from the recycled materials of its residents. The building would essentially “grow” vertically as inhabitants discarded waste like plastic bottles and paper, their garbage turning into insulated panels for floors to come.

The Organic Skyscraper is proposed for Shoreditch High Street in London

Just imagine a building that self-generates like a mound of coral, while a skeleton of metal tubing holds the structure together until completion. The team estimates that it would take just one year to accrue the amount of trash necessary to construct the building’s up-cycled facade. Which, for those familiar with the amount of time it takes to bring a skyscrape to life in an urban center, seems like no time at all.

Bonus: the hollow tubes would also help generate electricity, minimize wind load and ventilate the space. And the gradual building plan would allow the team to work as investments grow.

Inspired by the use of bamboo scaffolding in parts of Asia, the building materials would be manufactured on-site, with a reconditioning plant installed in the top of the building as the construction area lurches up, and recuperation containers on the bottom floor to collect the paper and plastic used in the office building. There’d be no need for tower-cranes, amounting to an entirely new vision of what urban construction might look like.

“The scaffolding structure allows a continuous growth, inspired by the vegetal world, while developing an aesthetic of this evolution,” the architects wrote in a statement. “By using exclusively one single size of tube, profile or structure, not unlike bamboo scaffoldings, work on site is limited to assembling (no cutting, whether the structure be made of wood or steel). All elements prefabricated, limiting nuisances on the site and allowing cohabitation of offices.”

h/t Arch Daily

I recently thought about Pascal while crossing Terminal B of the Philadelphia International Airport.

No, not Pascal the computer programming language. I mean Blaise Pascal, the 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician for which the programming language is named.

A line of his came to mind as I looked up in irritation at one of the dozens of televisions blasting CNN throughout the terminal. The racket reminded me of the piped-in music that passers-by are subjected to while strolling down the sidewalk outside of strip malls near my home in the Philly suburbs. And the overly loud pop tunes that are regularly played as not-quite-background music in restaurants these days.

Which brings me to Pascal’s haunting aphorism: “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.”