prosthetic knowledge

ROM 

Kickstarter project to fund a new publisher of high-end design books of videogame history, debuting with a book on the great Sensible Software:

Sensible Software 1986–1999 from Darren Wall on Vimeo.

The definitive biography of Sensible Software, one of the world’s most pioneering and best-loved games companies, and the flagship title for Read-Only Memory, a new publishing company specialising in high-quality video game products. 

Sensible Software 1986–1999 will tell the story of Sensible through interviews and anecdotes from those who were there – including Jon Hare and the Sensible team – and a feast of visuals celebrating the company’s idiosyncratic, groundbreaking style.

With your support, we want to publish the ultimate retrospective; immaculately designed and brilliantly written.

More Here

GIF Sound 

Simple mash-up project from Reddit users combines Gifs with Youtube audio.

You will need a Reddit account, and as far as I can tell can only use image files hosted on imgur. Other than that, you are free to do as you please (though NSFW images have their own subreddit)

More Here

EDIT: Embedded below is a video compilation of examples put together by users - some NSFW:

Papercraft Mechanical Walking Robot 

Ongoing project by kikousya290821 creates a mechanical robot purely from paper and elastic bands - embedded below is a video of the stages of construction:

Here is a video of another attachment - an elastic band Gattling gun:

The project page is in Japanese, but more can be discovered here

GIF 3D Gallery 

Fun experimental web project by akihiko taniguchi where you can place an animated GIF onto a 3D plinth in a virtual gallery room which you can move around (controls are the same as a PC FPS, but controls are available - see picture 2 above).

You will need the URL of the GIF to be able to view it here (you cannot upload a file, but there are plenty around Tumblr and the web to try out)

The above examples are Max Capacity (you can try it out here) and V5MT (here)
[… and yes, the third image is a gif of a gif of a gif in a gif gallery …]

Try it out for yourself here - discovered via Triangulation Blog

Zineth 

Free game combines a colourful low polygon world with game elements of Tony Hawks Skateboarding and Prince Of Persia. Developed by The Arcane Kids as a student project:

Zineth is a student game made over a few months meant to celebrate speed, movement, and twitter.

Here is the release trailer, embedded below:

Details of where to get hold of the game can be found at their Tumblr blog here

The Rosetta Disk

Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project have created a miniature archive featuring all of the world languages laser etched onto a small disc that can fit in your hand:

The Rosetta Disk is intended to be a durable archive of human languages, as well as an aesthetic object that suggests a journey of the imagination across culture and history. We have attempted to create a unique physical artifact which evokes the great diversity of human experience as well as the incredible variety of symbolic systems we have constructed to understand and communicate that experience.

The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’

… The pages are microscopically etched and then electroformed in solid nickel, a process that raises the text very slightly - about 100 nanometers - off of the surface of the disk. Each page is only 400 microns across - about the width of 5 human hairs - and can be read through a microscope at 650X as clearly as you would from print in a book. Individual pages are visible at a much lower magnification of 100X. The outer ring of text reads “Languages of the World” in eight major world languages.

Here is a video by Scott Oller about the Rosetta Project:

Rosetta from Scott Oller on Vimeo.

You can find out more about the project here

Sunlight Graffiti 

Part of the Little Sun project by Olafur Eliasson currently running at the Tate Modern, where participators can create their own light graffiti and locate it online via an interactive sphere:

The Sunlight Graffiti sphere is by artist Olafur Eliasson, conceived as part of his larger Little Sun project. Little Sun, a work of art that works in life, is a solar-powered lamp that Eliasson has developed with the engineer Frederik Ottesen. The lantern is one element of the artwork, but the way it connects us and what it tells us about energy and energy access is all part of the art.

Currently, an interactive Sunlight Graffiti installation is set up at Tate Modern, London, on level 2 as part of the museum’s Poetry and Dream exhibition (28 July – 23 September 2012). Visitors are invited to do a work of art here by dancing, jumping, and writing out loud with a Little Sun in their hand. Their Sunlight Graffiti are captured and uploaded to this site and shown as part of the sphere.

Also presented at Tate Modern is Eliasson’s new artwork Your light movement, 2012, a video about physical movement, light, and life. Watch it here.

‘For this project at Tate Modern – the former power station turned into a museum – I have thought a lot about light as something that is more than just a means to illuminate something else. Light generates action. The Sunlight Graffiti project has been developed to foster human creativity and movement, driven by the power of light.

Little Sun responds to the situation we face today, where natural resources no longer abound. Energy shortage and unequal energy distribution make it necessary to reconsider how our life-sustaining systems function. I see Little Sun as the wedge to open up this urgent discussion from the perspective of art, to raise awareness about the need to improve energy access and the distribution of energy today.’

–Olafur Eliasson

You can look around the interactive light graffiti globe online here

Recycled Cardboard Bike 

Environmentally friendly, strong, and extremely cheap ($9!) - via Made In Israel:

They are made of recycled cardboard, can withstand water and humidity, cost nearly nothing – and might the concept of green vehicle. Izhar Gafni is a Kibbutz resident, who decided to prove to his fellow engineers that he could make a bicycle at nearly no cost.

“They said it was impossible”

Izhar Gafni, originally from Kibbutz Bror Hayil in the Negev, took the most popular and widely sold vehicle in the community and decided to turn it into an entirely green private venture.

Gafni’s bicycle redefines the idea of green transportation in every way, being environmentally friendly from early stages of production all the way through creation of the final product. The bicycles are made out of recycled and used cardboard.

… Gafni said that the production cost for his recycled bicycles is around $9-12 each, and he estimates it could be sold to a consumer for $60 to 90, depending on what parts they choose to add.

Here is a 6 minute video, where the inventor guides us himself how this project came about:

Izhar cardboard bike project from Giora Kariv on Vimeo.

You can read more about it here

The Akira Project 

A live-action fan-made production trailer of the manga / anime classic:

We are creating a live action fan trailer of the renowned manga-turned-anime “Akira”. Ever since Kodansha first published the manga in 1982, Hollywood has been trying to adapt it into a feature film. In 2002, Warner Bros acquired the rights to the film and has tried four times to make production happen. Each effort was cancelled for various technical, scripting, budgetary and casting reasons; most recently in January 2011 with the story location having been moved from Neo-Tokyo to Neo-Manhattan.

We, as fans, felt like we ought to take a shot at making our own adaptation. A chance to stick as close to the source material as possible. A chance to do Akira Justice.

More Here

The Humble Velocipede 

Kickstarter project to produce small handmade kinetic art / walking machines made from bamboo - video embedded below: 

The Humble Velocipede is a small-scale evolution of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest kinetic sculpture. This meditative toy is designed to scuttle over countertops and coffee tables. Its stride is human powered, but the Velocipede really holds its own on shallow inclines.  

This project started when we built a life-size plywood Strandbeest. The big machine was gorgeous, but bulky and inconvenient to transport. Curious about what it would look like as a toy, we built one just for fun. It turned out better than any of us expected, so we refined our design for production. Instead of shrinking down Jansen’s original, we recast that organic appeal for a domestic space. We think we’ve made a playful desktop sprite that is as captivating around the house as Jansen’s are on the beach. 

The walking mechanism behind the toy is inherently complex. With production in mind, we made our design as simple as possible …

More Here

Kittydar 

Face recognition tech for cats (written in javascript) - online demo allows you to drag a cat photo to be analysed:

Kittydar is short for kitty radar. Kittydar takes an image (canvas) and tells you the locations of all the cats in the image …

Kittydar is best at detecting upright cats that are facing forward.

You can test the demo here - if you want to know more from a programming level, there is more at it’s Github page here

Summer Camp by Kayla Mattes 

Awhile ago, I posted some pieces of fashion inspired by both the internet and the 90s by Kayla Mattes, work that came about before high profile, well-established designers took to the runways this year.

The designer is now running a Kickstarter campaign for a knitted jewellery line, inspired by the 90s craze, and have a geometric, neon aesthetic:

The collection grew from a piece in my RISD thesis print/knitwear collection ‘NEO-90ies’, that was partially constructed from plastic lanyard/gimp/boondoggle/scoubidou, or whatever you prefer to call it!

… the entire collection embodied the nostalgia associated with the kitschy and artificial nature of the toys, food, media, and technology of kid-culture in the 1990’s.

After making the NEO-90ies collection, I still found myself intrigued with this almost dead craft trend. I used to have a box where I kept my lanyards and that is pretty much where they stayed.

Since then I’ve been integrating this kitschy craft hobby in my textiles practice. When paired with knitted elements “boondoggle/gimp/lanyard” is translated into something entirely new!

The SUMMER CAMP collection both manipulates and pays homage to the lanyard braiding phenomenon, resulting in a collection of contemporary and unconventional geometric necklaces.

You can find the Kickstarter project page here

Kayla’s Tumblr blog can be found here

Neticones 

Online net art project can turn a webcam photo into a mosaic made from Facebook icons.

Try it out here

Glitch Embroidery 

Project found at 割かとナイスコミュニケート which (appears) to create clothing with embroidered logos, whose sewing machine files were corrupted to output glitched stitching.

”Glitch Embroidery” incorporates ‘Glitched’ (Binary Hacked) embroidery data for a sewing machine.

You can see more examples (and GIFs) here

BONUS LEVEL: REVOK VS. GIANT 

Diego Bergia sent me an email, about a project involving arcade-style pixel art and graffiti artists:

Now that I’ve got two graffiti legends down with the project, I figured I’d create my version of the Street Fighter 2 car destruction bonus round. I’m working on a longer piece right now, but couldn’t resist getting this out in the meantime.
twitter: @whereislepos
theprimaryinvasion.com

Here is the short video preview, a Streetfighter-style Bonus Stage between REVOK and GIANT: 

BONUS LEVEL: REVOK VS. GIANT from Diego Bergia on Vimeo.