Bigshot DIY Digital Camera Kit

is a fun camera for kids and adults alike since it teaches anyone how a camera works. The camera can be powered with a battery or with a dynamo, where 6 cranks equals one picture.

Here in this video, Professor Shree Nayar talks about the purpose and development of the Bigshot camera project.

I really like the frontispiece rotating wheel framing lens and wish other cameras had a similar option.

The amphibious WaterCar Python

is promoted as the worlds fastest amphibious vehicle, driving on land and boating in water.

Dave March, founder of WaterCar, Inc., has been building cars & boats since 1976 and by 1990 realized that car and boat manufacturers were "were using lightweight high-performance automotive-type engines.  while Car manufacturers were  incorporating light-weight marine-type composite and alloy bodies and chassis." These coincidences crystallized into Dave's invention of the WaterCar.

There are two distinct versions of this vehicle, The Python which is factory produced complete build with your preferences in engines and body. The Gator (or Amphigator) is the almost pure engineered invention, consisting of the Gator Body and the Patented WaterCar Transmission, all other parts can be gathered from a Volkswagen donor car or bought right off the shelf from other sources.

The video here convincingly demonstrates the speed and agility of a Corvette powered oil burning gas guzzler and judging by its entry/exit at the waters edge highlights the need for leveled underwater surfaces, thus restricting its use to landscaped bay estuaries.

Since its up to the owner to choose their own motor, it may be possible to use an electric engine, such that  Plasma Boy employs in his White Zombie: Electric Vehicle Dragster ?

Source

"We Live in Public" Trailer

"Ten years in the making and culled from 5000 hours of footage, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC reveals the effect the web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes of “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of”, artist, futurist and visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director Ondi Timoner documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives.

Harris, often called the “Warhol of the Web”, founded Pseudo.com, the first Internet television network during the infamous dot-com boom of the 1990s. He also curated and funded the ground breaking project “Quiet” in an underground bunker in NYC where over 100 people lived together on camera for 30 days at the turn of the millennium. With Quiet, Harris proved how we willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire, but with every technological advancement such as MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, becomes more elusive. Through his experiments, including a six-month stint living with his girlfriend under 24-hour electronic surveillance which led to his mental collapse, Harris demonstrated the price we pay for living in public."

Living in a studio house with 99 people for 30 days under 24/7 video surveillence without an opportunity to take a walk in the park seems to be completely unhealthy and unhuman thing, let alone a quite remarkably stupid thing to do, hey ?

Tokyo Scanner : Flight View of Tokyo

This video is ripped from an experimental documentary (a promotional DVD for Roppongi Hills), directed by Mamoru Oshii, a Japanese filmmaker and writer famous for his philosophy-oriented storytelling. Oshii has stated his approach to directing is in direct contrast to what he perceives to be the Hollywood formula, i.e. he regards the visuals as the most important aspect.

Tokyo Scanner has been described by a forum commentator as:

"Basically it is a fly over view of several areas in and around Tokyo. It is shot with a very high-tech gyro stabilizing zoom lens that allows for a small area, perhaps 20M x 20M, to be zoomed in on from a great height but the image is still rock steady. At various times the image is overlaid with some graphics that suggest a targeting device, some text, and accompanied by audio that is supposedly from the scene." Source.

Radar sourced video of the Moon

Bruce Campbell, from the Smithsonian Institute presents here a video, that was

"created from a mosaic of radar images collected using a transmitter at the Arecibo Observatory (AO) in Puerto Rico and receivers at the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Radar maps can look like optical images, but they represent the amount of energy reflected back toward the transmitter by any given part of the Moon's surface. These maps are created by measuring the echo strength as a function of the round-trip radar time delays and frequency changes (Doppler shifts) that correspond to different locations on the Moon. The radar wavelength of 70 cm penetrates 10 meters or more into the very dry lunar surface, revealing variations in the abundance of rocks larger than about 10 cm in diameter and differences in the chemistry of rocks that form the Moon's crust. The movie begins with a view of the north pole of the Moon - the center of the side we can see from Earth is at top. The rotation carries us around the visible edge of the Moon, past the south pole, the giant Orientale basin, and back to the north pole."

The 4G Flash drive Harmonica

Jim McLean, the backyard harmonica teacher, from Riverside Illinois has invented a 4G flash drive with a mini playable harmonica. The harp comes with a 10-minute Quicktime harmonica lesson, preloaded.  Watch Jim introducing himself in this other video, and or go buy it here.

Augmented Reality

or AR seems to becoming the next big mover and shaker in the mobile WiFi smart-phone world. In this video, CNN's Kristie Lu Stout demonstrates how this new software application works and how it can assist us, locate context relevant information with directions, products and services, around us.

"Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, like for example sports scores on TV during a match." Source

Fabio Viale Sculpts a marble boat

Fabio Viale an Italian Sculptor, based in Turin,  decided to make a working marble boat, he calls Ahgalla. The video here provides us a token insight into the labor and effort he made in carving his boat, he then takes it for a spin in the bay.

Fabio Viale has a sculpted a number of other marble pieces, that on close view, have a surface  that resembles lightweight Styrofoam. Fine art blogger Yatzer has observed

"Who ever thought that marble would offer such opportunities in creating distinct contemporary pieces that speak the language of today with the know-how of yesterday ?"

Dystopian Dreams

is a dreamily seductive media art video by Ben Marzys with music by Gui Boratto;

"takes a closer look at the city's fabric as a site of sensorial explorations. The viewer is plunged into dramatic city-scapes where the notion of time and place and their boundaries are being blurred by the use of subtle morphing techniques. From derelict landscape to underwater city, one is being transported between dreamlike hybrid places, brought alive by the interaction of human activity."

goat understands physics

Somewhere in Eurasia someone has videoed  a goat climbing a ladder, walking a tightrope with a monkey perched on top, performing a couple of amazing tricks, 2 metres in the air.

Dnfmanagement

is by Nitin which appears to be the beginning of a media art laser dance spectacle.

A Fun Japanese pop culture music video

is a minimal animation by Takeuchi Taijin with
music track TV Boy by Masahito and Kotubi.

Although I don't understand one word of the lyrics
I can't resist replaying it too many times,
posssibly because the visuals are so simply cute.

Subwoofer effect on organisms

A cat enjoys a  good shake while cleaning itself on top of a sub-woofer.

Alfred Sirleaf, the Monrovian Analog Blogger

Liberia, a country ravaged by war has had no functioning utilities for over 14 year, no sewage system, no water, no electricity, no telephone. Thus Alfred Sirleaf, delivers the news of the day via a folding out blackboard he calls the Daily Talk. He says “I like to write the way people talk so they can understand it well." And in order to reach the common man, he places symbols of the main stories, like a UN helmet near a story about them for the people who can't read, of which there are many.

Alfred Sirleaf  is reported to have founded his blackboard newspaper because of his belief that a well-informed citizenry is the key to the rebirth of Liberia.

Each morning, Alfred Sirleaf wakes up and heads down to his bulletin board to write up the day’s news, putting together a slate of stories his countrymen might otherwise never be aware of. Grateful readers line up in droves, on foot and in cars, to read these updates, in what has been described as "the country’s—and probably the world’s—only analog blog."

Playing with Kenneth Snelson's Tensegrity.

With the symmetry of the dodecahedron tensegrity  Japanese Origami Book publishers have reinterpreted Kenneth Snelson's invention. The Tensegrity.


Go here for more of their videos.

(English trans.)