via Pruned, a Dutch endeavor called Waterpleinen – a now-commissioned set of public spaces that serve both as locales for community gathering/play and stormwater repositories. From the Waterpleinen site:
Most of the year the Watersquare will be dry. It is only during heavy rainfall that the square will be filled with water. Streams, brooklets and ponds [...]
Heavyset
Ephective Ephemera
Public (Water) Squares
Liberation from Clusters of Sameness
via Johnnie Moore, Jack Ricchiuto on potential new models for change in social network behavior:
The possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they [...]
Fallow Field Farming
An interesting post last week over at Idea Sandbox on the concept of fallow field farming, and whether brands ought to explore a methodology that halts short-term growth to allow operations/markets to replenish:
What about the notion of letting the business rest for a season to allow it to rejuvenate? Instead of aggressively building new stores [...]
Pondering Smarter Parking
GOOD has a blurb today on a pilot program in San Francisco that is utilizing wireless parking meters equipped with sensors that can identify vacant and occupied spaces. Here’s the demo:
I wonder what Donald Shoup would have to say about this. Could these sensors drive the kind of elastic-pricing parking policy that Dr. Shoup espouses? [...]
Point and Shoot Translation
via CScout, another great utility designed to enable, among other things, urban exploration.
PicTranslator is a point & shoot app for the iPhone that promises to translate signage and other text content from 20+ foreign languages into English. Check out the demo below:
While I can imagine all manner of applications for the app, the ability to [...]
Enter PLAYLIST
Greg Smith over at Vague Terrain has a terrific writeup on a new installation at the Mediateca Expandida de LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, entitled PLAYLIST:
The core of PLAYLIST will be the exploration of the “8bit movement”, spread out from the manipulation of obsolete game technologies in order to create new instruments to [...]
Hats off to Hack Day
The good folks at Poke London shut their doors this past week for a day to engage in their first day-long hack around the broad topic of food (this, of course, being an area of particularly English expertise).
It’s a great idea. Color me impressed.
Iain Tait has a rundown of the first hack: The proper cappuccino:
Today’s [...]
The knowledge / implementation gap (in cookbooks)
via ChristmasGorilla, a link to a fantastic New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik (@adamgopnik) on the ways in which we use cookbooks, highlighted by this nugget:
Handed-down wisdom and worked-up information remain the double piers of a cook’s life. The recipe book always contains two things: news of how something is made, and assurance that there’s [...]
Queuing Theory and Checkout Design
Via Jeff Howard over at Design for Service, a post from Katherine Alsop that explores queuing theory in the context of service efficiency as applied to a supermarket checkout.
It’s a fantastic, well-authored post with implications across a broad range of user experiences, and I’d be loathe to try to explain it in any detail – [...]
10/GUI:
10/GUI:
This video examines the benefits and limitations inherent in current mouse-based and window-oriented interfaces, the problems facing other potential solutions, and visualizes my proposal for a completely new way of interacting with desktop computers.
via Vimeo
Augmented Reality Music Mixer
5 Gum Augmented Reality Music Mixer Demo
A very intriguing use of Augmented Reality for content creation, not just informatics and product demonstration. Now it gets interesting.
(via 5gumFrance)
Immaterials: Readable RFID Volume
Immaterials: the ghost in the field
In order to study the readable volume around an RFID reader, we built experimental probes that would flash an LED light when they successfully read anRFID tag. The readable volume is not the same as the radio field, instead it shows the space within the field in which an RFID tag and an RFID reader will interact with each other.
via Touch
Tactile Holograms
World’s First Ever Touchable Hologram
Researchers from The University of Tokyo have demoed a touchable hologram at Siggraph 2009. The project, called Touchable Holography, involves the use of Wiimotes placed above the display to track hand motion, and an airborne ultrasound tactile display created in the university’s lab to create the sensation of touch. The result is a holographic image that produces tactile feedback without any actual touching, and without degrading the image itself.
Amphibious Architecture
Amphibious Architecture:
A temporary installation by the Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Environmental Health Clinic at New York University.
This network of floating interactive tubes houses a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared ecosystems. Blue lights mean that the dissolved oxygen level is higher now than last week, and red lights mean the reverse. The lower lights turn on when fish are underneath. The upper lights blink when someone is text messaging with the fish.
via Vimeo
Linking up with the Pneumatic Amplifier
For The Roadshow: Architectural Landscapes of Canada — “a series of linked, broad-based national events that focus architectural discourse in Canada at the level of the public, the profession, and the schools of architecture” — participating architect Marc Boutin designed the Pneumatic Amplifier, a “massive inflatable projection device that [acts] as an architectural propaganda machine.”
(via A Daily Dose of Architecture: Half Dose #68: Pneumatic Amplifier)