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summary: it’s all gear and bandwidth baby.

Originally by del.icio.us/filmstreet::filmstreet from unmediated on February 22, 2006, 10:12am

Documentary filmmakers have created, through their professional associations, a clear, easy to understand statement of fair and reasonable approaches to fair use.

Originally by del.icio.us/rybesh::rybesh from unmediated on February 22, 2006, 10:55pm

Director Aryan Kaganof has shot a feature film using only camera-equipped mobile phones. “SMS Sugar Man” was filmed using eight phones over 11 days with three main characters at a cost of $164,000.

Originally by del.icio.us/filmstreet::filmstreet from unmediated on February 22, 2006, 10:13am

The 2F Folding Chair is so named because it has a profile of less than an inch, and a different appearance on each side. Designed by Hannu Kähönen, the birch plywood chair can be stored completely flat, and generates virtually no waste wood during production.

Originally by justin from Treehugger on February 22, 2006, 10:22am

Farmers are working with scientists from Oregon State University to make biodiesel from their own soybean, canola, rape and mustard seed crops. Using microtechnology, the scientists have developed a new, faster way to create biodiesel. Goran Jovanovic, professor of chemical engineering at OSU, serves as lead investigator in the research. Jovanovic keeps a design prototype in a sandwich bag in his office. It’s a plastic plate with 30 microreactor channels running parallel to each other, each about the width of a human hair. The entire plate can easily fit in the palm of a hand.

Originally by justin from Treehugger on February 22, 2006, 10:53am

”That’s it in a nutshell. The problems and the hand-wringing begin when people in power decide the principal role of farming is not to feed people but to supply wealth, and to try and treat farming simply as a business like any other.” The subtitle of Colin Tudge’s book is ‘What’s gone wrong with the world’s food — and how to fix it.’ That first quote summarises the problem, and the solution is what he terms enlightened agriculture: ”These, then, are the physical and logistical requirements: good, plentiful food for everyone for ever; a fair deal for producers; labour intensiveness - a maximal number of good jobs, giving rise to working rural communities; benign husbandry; and wildlife friendliness. These desired end-points will not arise by default. They must be expressly written into the strategy …” Colin, an award winning science writer believes that agriculture is indeed the saviour of humankind, but not as it currently practiced. Us grown-ups often ruminate on the awkward notion that kids today have no idea where milk comes from. Yet reading this volume will be very confronting for many adults who’ve held an idyllic view of farming.

Originally by warren from Treehugger on February 22, 2006, 11:30pm

Great wall art for car enthusiasts. Jellio Design has created a limited edition (only 10) wall sculpture called Turbo that takes its inspiration from plastic car kits of days bygone.

related links

Jellio Design: Turbo Wall Art (Limited Edition)

Originally by adnan from sensoryimpact.com on December 21, 2005, 2:00am

From Paolo Soleri, Arcology: City in the Image of Man, 1969

Asteromo, basically arcology-in-space conceived in the 60s by architect Paolo Soleri, who coincidentally started the desert techno-ashram Arcosanti, is “an asteroid for a population of about 70,000 people. It is basically a double-skinned cylinder kept inflated by pressurization and rotation of the main axis…the weight of a person will vary from zero at the axis to a fraction of his earthly weight on the ground. He will be able to fly without the need of any power devices. There will be Dantesque promenades at different levels of physical prowess -— from weak (center) to strong (periphery).” Class stratification as a function of gravity.

“Complexity, miniaturization, frugality, inwardness, interdependence, ecological balance, 3-dimensionality -— all principles of arcological design -— are all necessary characteristics for a space habitat.”

Although in/on/within an outside-inside ellipsoidal earth doubly functioning as sky -— i.e., when the earth is the sky is the earth (and even when a wall is a floor is a ceiling is a floor is a wall in zero and near-zero gravity) -— one can certainly imagine less differentiated, more egalitarian self-organizing bee-line trajectories. That or some vomit-inducing Mannerist path(less) system.

An asteroid Asteromo. (Illustration by Roy G. Scarfo)

While Soleri’s design involved metal-clad cylinders, a prior plan by futurologists Dandridge Cole and Donald Cox proposed using actual asteroids, fusing and sculpting them with the heat from solar mirrors to form the gigantic geodesic interior chamber “in much the same way as a glassblower shapes a small solid lump of molten glass into a large empty bottle.”

As described here: future landscape architects will knock out an asteroid out of its gravitational orbit and then “[d]rill a hole down the middle of [the] asteroid —- about a kilometer (3,280 feet) in diameter -— and pack the cavity with water ice. Reseal the ends with the original material and heat the mass with giant mylar-film solar mirrors. By the time the heat reaches the center, the mass will be semi-liquid and the explosively expanding steam that results when the ice at the core is heated to the same degree will inflate the molten asteroid like a balloon.”

Which really is no different from the construction of the International Space Station.

“Man, standing head toward the axis of rotation, will be enveloped in a solid ecology.” (Illustration by Roy G. Scarfo)

Moreover, attendant to Asteromo is Cole’s concept of the Macro-Life: “This vehicle or creature of the Macro-Life could move (with rocket propulsion), grow (given to a food source under shape of natural resources drafts from other asteroids), could answer to the stimuli through its optical sensors and electronic, to think with the brains of its human colony and its computers, and, finally, reproduce.”

So one asteroid then two then four and pretty soon Earth will have its very own Kuiper Belt of geosynchronous bioplanetoid organisms in constant mitotic cell divisions.

And in death, they’ll simply drop down to Earth in a blazzing, funerary meteor shower towards their cratered necropolis.

The astronaut training site Crater Field in Cinder Lake, Flagstaff, Arizona as a prototype for the Roadside(memorial)america© Asteromo Cemetery.

In the Archives:
The Physics of Space Gardens
Pedestrian Levitation

Originally from Pruned on February 11, 2006, 2:12pm

While browsing around here for images to use in a previous post, I was reminded of the Hill of Crosses near the city of Siauliai, Lithuania.

From the Catholic Church of Lithuania: “In the beginning of the 20th century the Hill of Crosses was already widely known as a sacral place. In addition to many pilgrims visiting, it was also a place for Masses and devotions. The Hill of Crosses became of special importance during Soviet times – this was the place of anonymous but surprising persistence to the regime. The Soviet government considered the crosses and the hill a hostile and harmful symbol. In 1961 wooden crosses were broken and burnt, metal ones used as scrap metal and stone and concrete crosses were broken and buried. The hill itself was many times destroyed with bulldozers. During the 1973–1975 period about half a thousand crosses used to be demolished each year without even trying to do this secretly. Later the tactics became more subtle: crosses were demolished as having no artistic value, different ‘epidemics’ were announced forbidding people to come into the region or the roads were blocked by police. The Hill was guarded by both the Soviet army and KGB. In 1978 and 1979 there were some attempts to flood the territory. Despite all these endeavors to stop people from visiting the Hill, crosses would reappear after each night.”

(All images lifted from Flickr.)

Links:
Hill of Crosses @ Wikipedia
Hill of Crosses from the Catholic Church of Lithuania

Originally from Pruned on February 8, 2006, 6:54pm

While searching for images of Asteromo, I stumbled upon Fabio Feminò’s gargantuan futurological collection. Not content simply to lift two images from the site, here’s a selection from one of the galleries, Il Futuro Visto dal Passato.

A 3D model of Archigram’s Plug-In City

A nuclear power plant as imagined in 1939

Operations in Antarctica

The future peninsulas of San Francisco

A domestic setting in Broadacre City by the part-time futurologist Frank Lloyd Wright

A bird’s-eye view of Broadacre City with the Mile High in the distant

The washable metallic, retroprefab Lustron House

The iPod-Segway 2.0 from Syd Mead

The Mind Expanders of 1968

Undeground lunar settlements as illustrated by Roy G. Scarfo

A city under a geodetic cupola and its primordial landscape

Link:
Fabio Feminò

Originally from Pruned on February 11, 2006, 11:55pm

Winston Churchill’s future disembodied chicken spotted at Fabio Feminò’s Encyclopedia Retrofuturologica

In 1930, British statesman Frederick Edwin Smith imagined a society in which “[i]t will no longer be necessary to go to the extravagant length of rearing a bullock in order to eat its steak. From one ‘parent’ steak of choice tenderness it will be possible to grow as large and as juicy a steak as can be desired.”

A couple of years later, Winston Churchill reiterated Smith’s prediction: “Fifty years hence we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.”

Not much happened in the intervening years, but last year, according to The Guardian, “Researchers have published details in a biotechnology journal [Tissue Engineering] describing a new technique which they hailed as the answer to the world’s food shortage. Lumps of meat would be cultured in laboratory vats rather than carved from livestock reared on a farm.

“Scientists have adapted the cutting-edge medical technique of tissue engineering, where individual cells are multiplied into whole tissues, and applied them to food production.’With a single cell, you could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply,’ said Jason Matheny, an agricultural scientist at the University of Maryland.

“According to researchers, meat grown in laboratories would be more environmentally friendly and could be tailored to be healthier than farm-reared meat by controlling its nutrient content and screening it for food-borne diseases.”

And it goes on: “Vegetarians might also be tempted because the cells needed to grow chunks of meat can be taken without harming the donor animal.

“Experiments for NASA, the US space agency, have already shown that morsels of edible fish can be grown in petri dishes, though no one has yet eaten the food.

“Mr Matheny and his colleagues have taken the prospect of “cultured meat” a step further by working out how to produce it on an industrial scale. They envisage muscle cells growing on huge sheets that would be regularly stretched to exercise the cells as they grow. Once enough cells had grown, they would be scraped off and shaped into processed meat products such as chicken nuggets.”

From the Disembodied Cuisine project, pre natal sheep skeletal muscle cells cultured onto/into a degradable polymer (PGA) scaffold to create the semi living steak

So, while you’re growing your new replacement face and the new patio addition, you’ll be cultivating and harvesting coqs au vin and stuffed roast turkeys and chicken caesar salads in your front yard in the meantime. The American lawn meets vegetable garden meets farm meets abattoir.

Articles:
P.D. Edelman et al., “In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production.” Tissue Engineering (Volume 11, Number 5/6, 2005)
Ian Sample, “When meat is not murder.” The Guardian (13 August 2005)
Press Release from the University of Maryland (6 July 2005)

Links:
New Harvest
Semi-Living Food and “Disembodied Cuisine”

In the Archives:
Edible Estates

Originally from Pruned on February 13, 2006, 7:55pm

View high resolution

Another from the USGS Landsat Project: “A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China’s XinJiang Province.”

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!

Originally from Pruned on February 13, 2006, 4:08am

More asteromo aftershocks: these microscopic slivers of the moon — extracted from a report by the Lunar Regolith Materials Workshop, organized by NASA “to establish requirements for the production and distribution of terrestrial analogs of lunar regoliths.”

As luminous on earth as it is in the firmament.

Might we soon expect self-illuminating lunar regolithic hardscaping, ionized and prismatic? A future market in moon pavers irradiated with the solar wind. Mini-auroras in the backyard. That or I’d settle for a sequel to Bedrock: The Film.

More shimmering microscopic moon rocks here.

In the Archives:
“Ground truth”: or, Wanted: Fake Moon Dirt

Originally from Pruned on February 14, 2006, 12:58am

what this is, but I like it.

link

Originally from New Art on February 23, 2006, 6:12am

Cindy Wright, Skin 2, Oil on canvas (2004)

What I like about these works is that beyond their apparent photo-realism hides a playfulness only possible through painting. It is as if we discovered that beyond the surface of things lie some other levels of things which make them differ. Thus, real skin is different from a photo, a photo is different from a painting. And, mind you, the skin above is different from yours: it hides different shadows.
Different shadows.
Oh, and one more thing: doesn’t this man seem a little crazy? (Maybe not crazy? Maybe wild enough?)

It’s Jan Fabre. Nice touch.

Originally from New Art on February 10, 2006, 1:56pm

Teddy: A sketching interface for 3D freeform design (in Java). Noodle around with the online applet (see the tutorial for instructions; there’s also a demo in .avi format), or download the program so you can save your creations. An even niftier upgrade is available, SmoothTeddy (.avi demo), but SmoothTeddy doesn’t have an online version to play with.

Originally by Gator from MetaFilter on February 22, 2006, 11:21am

The real Jewish Underground ? During the Nazi occupation of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were killed or transported to Nazi concentration camps. In 1942 and 1943, thirty-eight men, women, and children aged 4 to 74 years survived by living underground in two caves for nearly two years (their 344 day stay in Priest’s Grotto beat Michel Siffre’s 1972 NASA research study.) Emerging at night to cut firewood and steal food, these unwilling troglodytes returned to the cave before dawn to avoid capture. Spelunker Chris Nicola first discovered their survival story (PDF, pp. 6-12) in 1993.

Originally by cenoxo from MetaFilter on February 23, 2006, 12:12am