“We knew that only so many people would be motivated by the need to be good – but if we made it a functional, beautiful, nice to use product, that would really get people to continue using it” – Baggu’s co-founder Emily Sugihara
“This guy walks the line of cheating death”.
Taking things to a whole new level, Danny MacAskill turn the urban environent to a play ground for stunts that run the risk of maximum damage. I think riding up a tree and back flipping on the bike could take the cake.
Woody Norris, the extraordinary inventor, has developed a system to play true binaural or hypersonic sound. To explain this, Woody uses the analogy between light and light bulbs. Light bulbs emit omni-directional and uncontrollable light, the same is true for loud speakers – the sound goes wherever it wants to.
In the case of light, we now have lasers and projectors, which controls the direction of light, in the case of the laser making the light waves coherent. While we have had sound systems for 80 years, no such mechanisms have been available for sound – until now.
Woody has made a system that can put sound anywhere and in any range you want it, whether that be different sounds for different sides of your head (true stereo), or noise cancelling for traffic and snoring bedfellows.
Using low level ultrasound, which makes sound at a billion independent points in a column of sound, sound is made right where you want it, without sound levels dropping off once they leave the emitting source.
Currently Sony and the American Military are the key customers of this technology.
Saturday April 11th 09 saw the the third installment Duane Pitre’s Artist in Residency performances at ISSUE Project Room. This show involved a 17-piece string/woodwind ensemble performing the long-tone composition, ED09 (Ensemble Drone 2009). Duane simultaneously conducted and played bowed guitar at times, while he also “mixed” the performers in real-time.
I describe Duane’s drone compositions as minimalist symphonies. They are incredibly melodic with a strong narrative. 
For me, the most compelling part of the ED09 piece is the second movement – the quarter tone cluster.
Duane conducts his performers in a unique score approach of classical notation and hand gestures. The quarter tone cluster begins when Duane’s interlocked hands are above his head. What follows is a delightfully unsettling period in which every performer plays a different pitch, each exactly one quarter tone apart. Inspired by Krzysztof Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima, the sound scape is remisinscent of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick sound tracks. This comes as no surprise, considering Penderecki wrote the score for ‘The Shining’.
For a teaser of the show check out the ED09 performance at Roulette, SOHO.
To celebrate the reopening of the Whitechapel gallery in London, five top contemporary artists took over the Art & design site of the Guardian newspaper. The first installment saw the Chapman Brothers filmed by their Staffordshire bull terrier Kylie.
Listening to the grunts and battles this beast has with the web cam, as well as the overall effect of the ‘dog’s eye view’, results in a playful and engaging video experience.
“The people of Northern Thailand also have a variation on sky lanterns. These are known as Khoom Loy. Northern Thai people use sky lanterns all year round, for celebrations and other special occasions. One festival in particular is the Loy Kratong festival in which lovers and partners gather on the riverbanks to float flowers and candles, launch fireworks and release sky lanterns together. It is considered good luck to release a sky lantern, and many Thais believe they are symbolic of problems and worries floating away.”
Source: Wiki
Wimp.com has a beautiful video of sky lanterns, including the afore mentioned fireworks. The effect of these lanterns aggregating in the sky is incredibly beautiful – like being closer to the stars for a fleeting moment.
“OhBoyObama! is the grassroots think tank of the Obama administration. Created by Obama supporters during the general election of 2008, this forum now serves as an online sounding board for those who have ideas or suggestions about how the administration can lead us to become “a more perfect union.”
These types of efforts combined with the Obama administration’s approached to transparent government and community contributions to legislation are great steps towards a more digital democracy
A set of aerial photographs by Jason Hawkes featured on Boston.com’s “The Big Picture”.
These shots were taken from a twin-engine helicopter using two separate gyro stabilizing mounts, mounted together into one larger mount to get the stability required for incredibly crisp images.
“I have specialized in aerial photography from helicopters for 19 years so am used to the other difficulties, i.e. cramped and very noisy condition. You fly with the door of the helicopter open wearing a headset to direct the pilot. In daylight without a mount you have to shoot at 1000 sec because of the vibration caused by the rotor blades, so having to shoot at very low shutter speeds at night it takes quite a while to change your habits in order to correctly use the gyro. Flying over cities you need a twin engined helicopter that costs £1100 ( GBP ) per hour, so its a very expensive technique to perfect.”
See full interview with Jason Hawkes
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