Digital artist Camille Utterback makes installations that combine cameras, projectors and custom software to create interactive, playful paintings.
Stand in front of her work, and you’ll soon be waving your arms, walking around, spinning or hopping to figure out how your movements get translated into the abstract, colorful strokes on the screen.
“What it feels like is that the visuals are just responding to your body,” Utterback says in this video produced by Wired.com.
In these artworks, cameras track the movements of people standing in front of them, computer software translates those movements into abstract imagery according to a defined set of rules, and a projector throws the ever-evolving digital painting onto a screen in front of the viewers.
The work also invites reflection on the relationship between our bodies and the technology that surrounds us, Utterback says.
Utterback was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2009. This $500,000, no-strings-attached “genius grant” will enable her to continue producing her art for the next five or more years.
Remember B.O.B, the shape-shifting blob from Monsters vs. Aliens? B.O.B may soon have a real-life counterpart.
Robotics company iRobot has developed a soft robot that can roll around and change its shape so it can move through small spaces, such as holes and under the doors, as easily as it can on flat ground.
The robot called chembot or chemical robot was shown last week at a conference on intelligent robots and systems.
iRobot is no stranger to creating practical yet interesting automatons. iRobot has sold more than 5 million robotic vacuum cleaners and mops, known as the Roomba and the Scooba. The company also supplies robots to the U.S. military.
Chembot seems to be a machine designed for military use. At first glance, the chembot looks like a rather ugly balloon. The robot’s skin is made of off-the-shelf silicone, says IEEE Spectrum. The flexible skin encloses air and loosely packed particles. When air is removed, the particles shift to fill the void left and this results in a slightly different shape. By controlling the inflation and deflation, the robot can be made to roll around.
It’s a neat idea and researchers are now reportedly working to include sensors and even connect different blobs together. DARPA, which is funding the project, is expected to use the robot for surveillance.
The umbrella is, like the chair, something designers can’t seem to stay away from. The portable, ribbed rain-protector has been modified to do all kinds of double-duty, from melon and head smashing weaponry through death-dealing, spy-killing poison delivery device to the hands-free numbrella.
Now there is an umbrella which actually enhances the core purpose of the brolly — keeping the rain off. The Inside Out Umbrella folds down after a shower like any other brolly, but it has a double skin, the inside layer of which can be pulled out and wrapped around the outside. This keeps the brolly drip free for quick trips inside.
The Inside Out Umbrella is a concept design, but the Brit in me has his miserable, rain-wrinkled fingers crossed for a production model.
When it comes to phones, notebooks and portable game consoles, smaller is nearly always better. But sometimes a gadget just needs to be really, really huge.
True to their size, gigantic contraptions accomplish tasks enormously useful to our everyday lives. Take for example the Bagger 293 (above), a 31.3-million-pound bucket-wheel excavator capable of mining 220,000 tons of brown coal in a day. And if the only cost-effective way to get the Bagger 293 to the mine is to drive it across the Rhineland countryside, so much the better. Because people love to gawk at gigantic machines.
Ever seen a giant wind turbine? Any idea what a crawler transporter does? How about a building-sized solar furnace? Read on for a glimpse at some of the biggest, baddest “gadgets” on Earth.
Bucket-Wheel Excavator Towering 310 feet high and weighing 31.3 million pounds, the Bagger 293 holds a Guiness World Record as the largest and heaviest land vehicle in the world. The machine, shown above, looks and sounds intimidating, but its operation is actually quite simple: 18 gigantic buckets are attached to a giant wheel; when the wheel rotates, the buckets scoop up earth and dump it onto a conveyor belt. Each bucket is capable of holding 1,452 gallons of earth — about the equivalent of 80 bathtubs. The Bagger 293 now resides in brown-coal mine in Hambach, Germany, awaiting the day when it will again be free to roam the Earth.
After several practice runs, Joby – maker of the jointed, grip-anywhere Gorillapod tripods – has finally, really, truly come up with an iPhone-specific model.
Essentially, the Gorillamobile for 3G/3GS is the standard Gorillamobile with a slide-in case for the iPhone. You pop the handset inside and on the back is a slot that marries up with the locking, slide-in tripod head. The idea is that this provides a more secure mount for the iPhone than the previous options, which were to use the included suction cup or sticky pads. These accessories still come in the box, along with the tripod screw for mounting real cameras.
This adds just $10 to the price of the kit, which we have already tested out and recommend, bringing it to $40. Compare that to the average $30 for an iPhone case and it looks like pretty good value. The only problem we see is that if you have another utility case for your iPhone, you’ll have to do some swapping. One day, somebody will fix all this by making a combined battery pack/tripod/close-up lens/strobe case. Of course, it’ll make your iPhone the size of a laptop, but at least you will have everything with you.
I find it easy to wake up in the morning. I simply laze around in bed until the guy downstairs starts playing his bagpipes (or really loud recordings of talentless people practicing the bagpipes — it’s hard to tell). But some less fortunate people actually have to set an alarm. And some of those don’t have a cellphone with clock. And an even smaller subset of those doesn’t even have a night-stand on which to put a clock.
Fret no-more, phone-less, table-less, bagpipe playing neighbor-less sleepy-heads. Greg Wolos is here to take 130 of your dollars in exchange for Emily, a rather stylish brushed aluminum and red LED alarm clock which mounts on the wall. And what at first looks like lazy design – keeping the display in the orientation it would have if put on a table – is in fact very smart. If you lie down in bed that is, which, unless you are a vampire, you almost certainly do.
Most TV commercials are annoying, but the tech industry takes the cake for making ads so bad that you have to question if it was intentional.
Ever seen Snakes on a Plane? Now imagine that the creators were given the Microsoft account and told, “Make us look cool with one of those ‘viral videos’ that we hear the kids are so excited about these days.” What else explains the awfulness of these commercials and infomercials?
Who, in their wildest imagination, would think a video of a woman puking on her husband — three times — would increase the appeal of Internet Explorer 8? Or that a creepy, unbelievably diverse group of weirdos hosting a “Launch Party” would help sell Windows 7? We were close to puking ourselves.
Those are just a few examples of what you’re about to witness. Here, we round up a list of the 8 most God-awful, weird, and horrible-beyond-apprehension tech video ads we’ve ever seen. In Jay Leno fashion, we’ll run down the list in reverse order, from least offensive to most offensive, for the sake of your stomachs. Hang on tight.
8. MSI’s Butt-Crack-Compatible Notebooks
We can only imagine the altered mental state that MSI’s marketing team was when it concocted this bizarre ad. We’re sure these spandex-clad actors aren’t really catching notebooks with their butts — and it’s a little funny — but geez Louise, it tickles us. That doesn’t mean we’re perverts, does it?
7. Nintendo’s Cross-Dressing Legend of Zelda
In conversations about the Legend of Zelda videogame series, we’re well aware that a lot of people mistakenly call Link, the main character of the game, Zelda. That’s a funny mistake, because Link is the dude, and Zelda is the chick. Perhaps Nintendo was poking fun at the Zelda-Link mixup when the company decided to cast a woman to play Link in this old Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past commercial. That or Nintendo is just weird. Actually, the rap song and the dancing make the latter theory seem stronger.
6. GE’s Soulful Tribute to Its Locomotives
Why are there even GE Locomotive commercials? Who the hell is going to go out and buy a locomotive after watching a video on YouTube? We can tell this was an attempt at a clever joke, but the grizzly, bearded actors, who are probably just glad to have jobs at all in this day of industrial offshoring, don’t deliver. Bonus: There’s a keytar! (Thanks for suggesting this one, @CycleFreak!)
5. Pets.com’s Tone-Deaf Sock Puppet
Pets.com should’ve taken a tip from the Taco Bell chihuahua, who was a charming cutie. Boy was this website lazy with this sorry excuse for a puppet. It looks like it was haphazardly stitched together by Rosie O’Donnell’s character in Another One Rides the Bus. If you’re a pet community website, just use a real freaking dog! And this video, which features the sock puppet singing in a painfully off-key way, is the worst of the bunch. Even the nameless Wired.com staffers who kinda liked the sock puppet hate this commercial. (Good call on this one, @AlexisMadrigal)
4. Palm’s Creepy Ice Maiden
An affectless, eyebrowless lady soft-talking like Christian Bale certainly sent shivers down our spines, but we doubt it really helped sell Palm Pre phones. Bonus: parody videos like this one!
3. Microsoft’s Cringeworthy Songsmith Spot
Microsoft should publish a book called How to Annoy Consumers and Humiliate People. In American Idol fashion, Microsoft must have done a casting call for people with laryngitis, just to demonstrate that Songsmith can give even the worst vocalists the power to sing. Well, the ad convinces us of the complete opposite. Thanks to the trauma from watching this video, I probably have a psychological trigger that compels me to immediately punch a person in the jaw if I ever see them singing in front of a computer. (Kudos for calling this one out, @a1by and @pushkin504!)
2. Microsoft’s Cheesy Windows 7 Launch Party
This one’s especially astounding because the Windows 7 operating system is surprisingly cool — so it was difficult to conceive that the product’s marketing team could be so utterly lame. You’d have to be a neutered space alien to identify with any of these soulless beings gathering for a “launch party” for Windows 7. Because, sure, sane human beings do that. The last time I saw a video with such an awkwardly eerie vibe was when I wrote a research paper on the Heaven’s Gate cult. Yeah, you know — that video they shot right before they committed mass suicide. Same feeling. The only thing that saves this informercial is that there’s a shorter parody video, which is hilarious.
This video is so bad, it almost takes the cake for the most horrible tech promo video of all time — except for the fact that Microsoft made one even worse earlier this year.
1. Microsoft’s OMGIGP, a.k.a. That Puking Video
When Microsoft met with me to talk about Internet Explorer 8, the company reps said Microsoft’s goal with IE8 was to erase perceptions of Internet Explorer 6. Apparently lurid images of puking were part of that strategy. Sorry, Microsoft, but I still remember the atrocious IE 6 as clearly as the time I suffered from near-death pneumonia. And your puke-fest video makes me want to keep a more-than-safe distance from IE 8.
If you want a small pocket notebook that looks just like an iPhone, you’d better act quick. Australians Inventive Labs and Jacky Winter have teamed up to make this three-pack of Notepods which not only taunt Apple’s notoriously protective lawyers with the “pod” suffix, they copy the appearance of the iPhone, front and back.
The notebooks are US$18 for a pack of three, and measure 60 x 110 mm, and 100 pages thick. Presumably unintentionally, they also add in a frustrating design decision, much like every Apple product ever. In this case it is the gridded paper inside. Why? This was useful when I was five years old and learning to write and add up, but now? I’m fine with blank paper, thanks.
Three weeks ago we showed you Mavic’s magnetic shoe/bike pedal combo, which drew some interesting comments about their efficacy. Reader Reubennz:
If it’s strong enough to hold the foot in place through the second part of the rotation how do you ever release from the pedal? If the magnet is weak enough to release straight up then it could never allow any kind of power advantage.
We agree, and we see the exact same problem with this version from Proton Locks. While it has a big advantage over the Mavic EZ-Ride pedals in that it comes with magnetic plates to bolt onto your own shoes, rather than requiring you buy a specially made pair, it still suffers from a lack of locking. Toe clips and clip-less pedals are meant to keep you foot on the pedal however hard you pull, for maximum power transfer. As Reubennz points out, if the magnets could do that, you’d never be able to remove your feet.
The Proton pedals have another disadvantage. They cost $145 for the mini pedals and $165 for the full-sized, against just $60 for the Mavics. On the other hand, you don’t have to drop another $90 on the Mavic-compatible shoes. Me? I’ll stick with my regular sneakers and cheap cage/strap setup.
I really want this to be sincere, I really do. But the fact is, I don’t think this could possibly be for real. This video is most likely a social experiment conducted by the Carnegie Mellon psychology department with a partnership through Microsoft. It’s like the folks at Redmond took a page from Arthur Kade’s playbok. There really isn’t any other viable explanation. Don’t believe me? Check out the hilarious “edited” video below and tell me the original clip wasn’t produced with parody in mind.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
