R.A.D.

Sure, you've heard of CAD but now we have RAD (Robot Aided Drawing). Jen Hui Liao has designed and built the Self Portrait Machine to assist the sitter with drawing themselves. The machine "takes a picture of the sitter and draws it but with the model's help. The wrists of the individual are tied to the machine and it is his or her hands that are guided to draw the lines that will eventually form the portrait." Ok, so you may be asking, "So, what's the point?!" This may help explain:

The project aims to explore the cooperation process of human & machine. The designer explains: I found some the relationship between human and machine are amazing and could be horrible (like this one that shows how we human invent machines then put human inside to it to manufacture goods), The final object - A machine is a miniature of what I understand through the process of research, and the aim of the machine is to let people have a chance to feel the condensed process of how we generate our self identity from external point of view as from the society, which is a big machine we all in.

You can read more about the project >HERE<

Mos Def in Nippon

Definitely worth watching! Check the Ecstatic Mos Def on tour in Japan and get some perspective on where his head's at, the importance of hip-hop and how the culture affects the world. Oh, and go get the new album, The Ecstatic!! One of the top 10 albums of the year...sure, there were plenty of good songs (Drake, Kid Cudi, Kanye, Jay-Z, etc...) but very few good albums...in hip-hop, the only full hip-hop albums worth getting this year are the new Raekwon, Q-Tip & the new Mos Def...period. It's a RAP!

I'll Kill Her

Beautifully done video by Joerg Barton as his thesis project!

I´ll kill her from Joerg Barton on Vimeo.

Visualizing Music

Really dope motion graphics by Belgian artist Gwen Vanhee exploring new ways to interpret music. Finding new and innovative ways to translate sound to visuals and vice versa always fascinates me. The graphics by themselves are great but the context and execution really brings them to a higher level. I highly recommend checking out some of his other work on Vimeo and Flickr.

Flat paper speakers..the future of sound?

If you're slightly crazy like me, you've thought about the possibility of flat, flexible speakers and if you're even partially out there you've considered paper speakers. Well, our dreams our becoming a reality. Scientists in Taiwan have developed a flexible paper speaker by sandwiching paper and CNTs together.

”Aside from use in family, stereo, or automobile hi-fi equipment, it can also be used in earphones or for industrial antinoise purposes,” says Johnsee Lee, president of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), where the technology has been under development since 2006.

The device, named fleXpeaker, is basically a sandwich of paper and metal filled with an electroactive polymer that contracts and expands with an audio signal’s electric field.

”It’s soft [and can] easily fit in different curves,” says Ming-Daw Chen, division director of ITRI’s Electronics and Optoelectronics Research Laboratories. ”Therefore, the product customization can be done in diverse fields, such as art for public facilities, interior design,...costume accessories, and others.”

I doubt these will ever fully replace traditional cone speakers but for many applications these will hopefully become the standard.
Read more about it >HERE<

We Were Once A Fairy Tale

Crazy new video from Kanye West...say what you will but the man's got talent, vision and balls...yeah, he makes mistakes too, just like a normal human being...plus, the dude vomits and bleeds rose petals!!

UPDATED- sorry...didn't realize the Vimeo link was broken..Kanye posted it on his own site so you'd think it was legit..anyway here it is..

WE WERE ONCE A FAIRYTALE BY SPIKE JONZE & KANYE WEST
by teleTOC

Stelarc

I'm sure many of us have thought about the possibility of adding to our body's natural architecture. Well Australian artist known as Stelarc (Stelios Arcadious) actually does! Seen here is one of my personal favorites called simply Ear On Arm. The artist went through a series of surgeries to have a prosthetic ear implanted into his arm with a microphone that would send audio to the web. Yeah, really intense and just in the name of art. Think about the possibilities. Here's a brief explanation in the artists' own words.

I have always been intrigued about engineering a soft prosthesis using my own skin, as a permanent modification of the body architecture. The assumption being that if the body was altered it might mean adjusting its awareness. Engineering an alternate anatomical architecture, one that also performs telematically. Certainly what becomes important now is not merely the body's identity, but its connectivity- not its mobility or location, but its interface. In these projects and performances, a prosthesis is not seen as a sign of lack but rather as a symptom of excess. As technology proliferates and microminiaturizes it becomes biocompatible in both scale and substance and is incorporated as a component of the body. These prosthetic attachments and implants are not simply replacements for a part of the body that has been traumatized or has been amputated. These are prosthetic objects that augment the body's architecture, engineering extended operational systems of bodies and bits of bodies, spatially separated but electronically connected.

Definitely go to his site and learn about his other crazy projects such as 1/4 Scale Ear and Ping Body. Click > HERE <

RFID Radio

One of the best things I've seen crossing boundaries between music and design is RFID Radio concept by someone by the name of D.A.R.Y.L. His idea is that these paper radios with RFID chips will be programmed only to play a certain station. You would need to subscribe to the station via iTunes and have a special speaker also with an RFID tag. I guess the radio would have a passive tag and the desktop speaker would have an active tag? Honestly, RFID is probably NOT the best technology for this product but it's still a great concept and is along the lines of Yuri Suzuki's Graffiti Radio concept which is also brilliant.

Check out more of D.A.R.Y.L.'s creations at Real Tomato

Back On-Air

Well, it's that time again....finishing up my last year of a degree is really kicking my ass! Like I've said before, DO NOT GO BACK TO SCHOOL! haha...Seriously though, think twice before you do.

I'll do my best to make up for the lost time these last few weeks...SOOOOO much content to sort through! Don't be alarmed though, we're going strong even when the posts are less frequent.