Spatial Engineering and Aesthetics

Theo Jansens’s Mechanical Pneumatic Beasts

Imagine beaches across the world populated by inorganic autonomous mindless beasts, dependant only on the earth’s wind for their mobility. No I am not talking of the army of plastic bags currently populating our city streets; I am referring to the Strandbeests, the kinetic sculptures created by artist Theo Jansen.

Jansen’s Strandbeests are constructed of light materials in order to utilize the wind for mobility. Primarily constructed of interconnected PVC tubing, these sculptures exhibit a pneumatically driven movement.

“The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds” says Jansen in the YouTube video embedded below.

He also explains, “a part of me is an engineer who wants to map the progress of mobility, another part is an artist, who want’s to sculpt the earth that surounds us and give it shape.”

That’s some pretty deep stuff and his work, which is very visual, clearly expresses his beliefs.

Johnny Chung Lee Presents: Head Tracking using Wii Remote

I saw this cool video using a Wii controller (Wiimote) to turn a 2 dimensional flat screen display into a three dimensional surface that moves with the user’s line of sight.

The video is presented by Johnny Chung Lee, a Human Computer Interaction Graduate PHD student at Carnegie Mellon University. His website has a number of projects that revolve around the Wii and the Wiimote.

The premise behind his head tracking device is placing the Wiimote in front of the TV and the sensor bar on your head (this is the opposite of the normal setup), and he even takes it a step further and uses protective glasses with built in LEDs and replaces the LEDs with infrared nodes which communicate with the Wiimote.

I recommend watching the video and check out his website and blog.

The Retro Future of Technology and Transportation

The future seemed so cool, what happened?

I stumbled across this video segment titled “Magic Highway USA.” Apparently it is an old Disneyland TV show segment about the technological future of human civilization (scroll to the bottom of this post to view the embedded video).

Over the course of watching it I realized that not much of the previously predicted future has come to fruition, though I did note about six technologies mentioned in this film short that do exist in our current reality.

1. Rear view cameras:

Once the thing of science fiction these rear view cameras exist in a series of cars. I actually drove a car equipped with one this past August when I rented a car in Ireland (it came in especially handy there considering I was confused by which shoulder to look over).

2. Automated Parking facilities:

Now these may not be entirely mainstream but I have read about a few facilities that offer these services (Automotion Parking Systems, Robotic Parking, etc.).

3. Moving Sidewalks:

I think that these devices are most prevalent in airports where the space between terminals is great and there is often a time constraint, but to place these things in malls just seems a little ridiculous. Maybe that’s because we now have the internet to shop from, which wasn’t known about by these retro futurists.

4. Punched Card Computers:

I hear they were big in the 60’s

5. Vehicles which have all the features of home:

Between RVs and newer minivans, this aspect has been pretty accurately predicted.

6. Tubular Highways:

Big Dig… Need I say more?

On the list of the technologies I wish were invented from this film is the “Sun Powered Electro-Suspension Car.” I guess we’ll just have to wait around for that one.

(via Next Nature)