Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 709

Neri Oxman: Computationally Enabled Form Finding

*Okay, that scheme probably needs a buzzword that's been boiled down to two syllables, but it's still the nifty. It's what Gaudi and Frei Otto used to do by, like, throwing sheets of flexible stuff over pointy sticks. Except done with MIT hardware.

*I definitely need more computationally enabled membranes in my life. Like, I'd love to go to a PopTech in Camden where they'd removed the music hall and the fold down chairs, and there was nothing but, like, a wavy technicolor tent and a...

Spime Watch: FedEx SenseAware

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/fedex_joins_the_internet_of_things_with_senseaware.php

"International courier giant Fedex has just released a new tracking device and web service for packages. Called SenseAware, it keeps tabs on the temperature, location and other vital signs of a package - including when it's opened and whether it was tampered with along the way. Fedex is running a trial period of about a year with 50 health care and life science companies, for tracking delivery of...

Rotating Kitchen by Zeger Reyers

*That thing is so Finance Crisis.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/3120

rotating kitchen from Zeger Reyers on Vimeo.

Augmented Reality: Augmenting Shibuya

*And, it's Shibuya being augmented by a giant department store. I'd be guessing that Shibuya is already a giant Tokyu Hands store, and it's just a matter of spreading the price tags.

http://blog.cyber-media.co.jp/2009/12/01/new-social-bookmarking-and-augmented-reality-app-for-shibuya/

California in ruins; I blame the dominant ideology of the Whole Earth Catalog

*Uh, well, sorta. Take it away, Kazys Varnelis:

http://varnelis.net/blog/complexity_and_contradiction_in_infrastructure

(…)

"But a Californicated America would have no room for public infrastructural spending. Instead, the exemplary infrastructures of the 1980s and 1990s—telecoms after deregulation, the mobile phones, the Internet—are privatized. Here, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron describe the legitimizing narrative for such ventures as the Californian Ideology, a union of hippie...

Today's emerging multinational street gang

*MS-13, La Familia, Los Zetas, Red Command, Pagad, and friends

http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/john-p-sullivan-adam-elkus/global-cities-–-global-gangs

METROPOLIS Next Generation Design Competition

*Go for it.

http://www.metropolismag.com/nextgen/

Augmented Reality: Layar 3.0

*Getting all iterative over at Layar.

http://layar.com/layar-30-launched-5-cases-to-show-the-power-of-the-platform/

UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE Google sites

*I'm trying to come up with some witty and off-the-wall to describe this UNESCO press release. I dunno. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you oughta be able to annotate a wack development like this all by yourself.

UNESCO Press Release No. 2009 – 144

Google and UNESCO announce alliance to provide

virtual visits of several World Heritage sites

Paris, 3 December – Sites inscribed on the World Heritage List – the Palace of Versailles in France, the historic centre of Prague in ...

Augmented Reality: Battle of Branchage

*Urban projection-mapping. Nice use of gridwork about 1:10. Obligatory techno soundtrack. What would a properly augmented projection-beamed soundtrack sound like? Sounds coming from "spaces" that aren't there?

Battle of Branchage from seeper on Vimeo.