Waltz of the polypeptides

Seen on BoingBoing, the Waltz of the Polypeptides is a sculpture that truly merges art and science. 80 foot long and up to 10 feet high, it depicts the synthesis of a the BLyS protein in ribosomes. The shapes are as realistic as possible - the artist (Mara G. Haseltine) used electron microscopy and NMR to create the design. The sculpture is set in a landscape intended to represent the cell that surrounds the ribosomes:



The work was commissioned by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US and sits in the grounds of their headquarters.

The form and visual appeal of biological structures always interested me more than the way they work (which may explain my degree result...) and Mara Haseltine's art perfectly expresses this interest. She has worked on several large-scale projects with a similar theme to waltz of the peptides, including SARS Inhibited which is a bronze sculpture depicting the SARS protein inhibitor and a beautiful rendering of the Follicle stimulator hormone (used in fertility treatment).

Computers as Art

An article was listed on Digg as 'bored sysadmin makes arch from old monitors'. It peaked my interest, so i clicked on to the link to have a look. It's a pretty impressive feat, but reading the digg comments revealed that the story was misleading. The arch wasn't made by some bored IT crowd-types but was the work of Sandy Smith who founded computersforart.org, a project setup in Glasgow to promote the re-use of redundant technology, such as old PCs and monitors, by artists. It seems the project didn't take off as well as it should, but Sandy now has his own site to exhibit his work, including the brilliant installations he created with PC equipment. The wall below is called Mauritian Sunset:



It's made, of course, of old PCs and monitors connected to them displaying different coloured backgrounds combined in the wall give the idea of a sunset. The back of the wall with the workings can also be seen on the artist's website.

Domino Rally Pool

I think i'm getting a bit addicted, but here for your viewing amazement is Domino Rally Pool - the rally is started by a cue ball and as the dominos fall, pool balls are perfectly pocketed - on 4 different tables:

Cushions that look like rocks!

The always excellent BoingBoing reported on a series of cushions made by French company Livingstones (living - stones, geddit?...) designed to look like large pebbles and boulders, they're available in textured grey, black and patterned fabrics. The effect is so realistic! They look ace piled up in a large group, indoors or outdoors:



The perfect experience of cognitive dissonance! (cognitive what?)

Invisible home electronics

Gizmodo posted this article last week on the latest trend in Japanese home electronics - transparent cases. Showcased at a convention in Tokyo were a transparent washing machine, Air Con unit and a fridge:



I love the idea of it, but you'd have to be constantly cleaning and tidying it... on the plus side it would answer the question does the light go off when the door's closed!

Monster Machines

Now, i've been sitting on this for a while (not literally! god it would hurt...) since i saw it via Neatorama on The Thrilling Wonder Story - a pretty cool blog written by the Abrams family with lots of posts about fantastical machines. The one i saw is by far the most impressive, and scary:



It's the biggest moving machine in the world - the giant bucket wheel excavator 'Bagger 288'. A mining machine, 300m long and weighing 45,000 tons - this monster chews up the ground then moves from one mine to another when its job is done. The photos are from the last move in 2001 when it crawled 22km. This required removing powerlines, planting special grass to smooth the way and took 3 weeks! The blog has a load more photos, including the scary series showing a bulldozer that got chewed up in the massive cutting wheel:



The Bagger was made by Krupps, who specialise in mammoth machines for mining and other operations. Their site has more examples, including this transporter moving a semi-mobile crushing plant, looking very sci-fi:

More domino rallies!

I think i'm developing a thing for domino rallies. Since my Diet coke and mentos and £10,000 domino rally posts, i've found two more videos on YouTube.

The first was funded by GSK (big companies seem to like these rallies as a viral marketing tool). This one's based in a house and uses CDs, Books, DVDs, soap, reams of paper, anything that happens to be around:



The second is for the Fatboy Slim song Champion Sound. The song's nothing special, but the rally is great! Again, it's in a house, with CDs, DVDs, but also has LPs, board games, biscuits, pizza boxes and videos. The ending's great as well...

Flying alarm clock

Following a link, i ended up browsing Shiny Shiny, a very pink blog with all sorts of gadget news and reviews aimed at women. This flying alarm clock, winner of a technology design award, grabbed me:



When it goes off, the rotor on the top is launched up in the air. To turn the alarm off and stop the extremely annoying mosquito noise it emits, you have to find the rotor disc and put in back on the alarm. It will make you swear and curse, but you'll be awake... and judging by my lateness record at work, i think i should invest in one!

Paintball Cannon

My friend Chris posted on SlashGear about a scary 6 barrel paintball cannon, and with my post on Tankball a few weeks back, i had to mention it here. The man responsible is a special effects builder and he's done a pretty impressive job, but i for one am going nowhere near it!



His website has a quicktime vid of the gun being tested.

Geo-greeting

Found via Neatorama, Geo-greeting is the idea of Jesse Vig, who has used Google maps aerial photography to find buildings that look like letters and numbers and worked a bit of magic to create a page where you type in any text you like and it displays it, in building form. Try it out.

Nordic Trendshop

The annual Nordic Exceptional Trendshop (NEXT) will be held at the beginning of December this year, in Copenhagen. It's a combined event with exhibitions of the latest developments in technology to come out of nordic countries, with a conference on the ideas and technologies of the future. Some of the exhibits look damn good! Highlights include Nano clothing (shirts that don't stain, socks that don't smell), the hug shirt (activated by bluetooth to give the sensation of being hugged), bacterial photography (differential growth of light sensitive bacteria) as well as a host of 3D gaming equipment and devices using renewable energy sources.

Two exhibits caused a particular stir on blogs recently - Transparent concrete and the concrete VDU from Litracon and Innovation Lab:



Both are essentially simple ideas but have huge potential - anywhere there is concrete, there could be a display, whether it be displaying advertising on walls or images on flooring and ceilings. Check out the video, and the potential applications on the Litracon site.

Along with all the slick exhibits are more simpler concepts. One that paticularly grabbed me is the Cutting Scale.



It has an integral area on the cutting board that can be used for weighing food, combining two appliances in one. Simple, but a genius idea.

£10,000 Domino Rally

Hot on the heels of the Diet Coke and Mentos video comes another fantastic domino rally, all done with £1 coins. I got it off neatorama:



There's a bit of dispute as to whether the stacks of coins the rally goes up and down count in the 10,000 total... but who cares when it looks as good as this. Thank god for boredom!

Tropical Islands

Browsing on Wikipedia, i ended up looking at an article on the largest buildings on earth, whether it be by volume, area or mass. One that caught my eye was the Aerium - a massive hangar built to house an airship that was never made. Looking so alien in the landscape, it reminds me of the old pictures of moon colonies and artist's impressions of where we would live in the future...



It's in eastern Germany and lay empty for years. Recently, a Malaysian company bought the site and have turned the hangar into an artificial tropical resort with a rain forest, beach, artificial sun and palm trees - open 24 hours a day, every day of the year! Sounds brilliant. The official website is all in German, but there's some cool photos, including this one of a basejump from the roof:

Orion Nebula

Orion is my favourite constellation, because it's outline is so striking in the sky, and easily recognised anywhere. Its Nebula is the closest to Earth and has given us some of the most spectacular images of space. The image below has just been released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.


It shows the nebula in a riot of infrared, ultraviolet and visible light colours - described by the JPL as "painted by hundreds of baby stars on a canvas of gas and dust, with intense ultraviolet light and strong stellar winds as brushes"... elaborate analogies aside, it's a really striking image.

Flickr-ing

I've been browsing Flickr sets a bit recently, so thought i'd do a composite of the user sets i liked the most...

First up is spidrwegian. He's taken some amazing, atmospheric photos from around Scotland and the rest of the UK. The ones that really caught my eye are in his Camera Toss set. Camera tossing is the risky art of tossing your camera in the air so it takes a photo mid-flight. (remembering to catch it again!) The technique results in some beautiful abstract images - visit the Camera Toss Flickr Pool for over 2000 great examples.

On a similar project theme is the set Project 365 '06 from Taylor McKnight, who garned attention two years ago with his project to take one photo a day for 365 days. It was a big success, so he's repeating it this year with some great results. It's a fascinating way of documenting your life and a brilliant means of refining your photography skills. He has a link on his pages to an article with tips if you fancy trying it!

I have a thing for montage, and a bit of a soft spot for all the collectors of number photos on Flickr - brilliantly executed in the Clockr screensaver. One user to bring this all together is Claudecf with her mosaic of alphabets and numbers. She's a talented and very prolific photographer. Her other sets are well worth a look - ranging from the collections (including squircles, medallions, knobs and handles) to the thousands of photos from her holidays and trips across the world.

Finally, for a bit of a relaxing view are some evocative photos of Greece from moritz. It looks such a beautiful part of the world in these few images. Makes me want to quit my job and emmigrate!

Tapes n' Tapes

I mislead you! I'm not in fact writing about the (very good) band Tapes n' Tapes which i'm a big fan of, but about cassettes. This picture caught my eye on Neatorama the other day:



It was in a post about tapedeck.org, the website that showcases cassette tapes and the quirky variations in design, from the 60s right up to the present day. With a growing collection of 138 images, you can search by manufacturer, playing time and quality to find the ones you used to (and may still) use. It's perfect geeky nostalgia, and makes it seem like such a long time since they were commonplace. It used to be all i had, back when CDs were brand new and still had the old compact disc logo on the cases... i'm getting all misty-eyed!

Skate Invaders

I've long been a fan of space invaders, not just the game itself but the whole cult that's sprung up around it - illustrated clearly at space-invaders.com. They sell a range of merchandise with the invaders image on (including trainers i've been eyeing up for a while). Now they've teamed up with very cool skateboard makers Mekanism to produce three space invader boards:



The company is a small-scale enterprise based in Paris, run by people with a passion for skateboarding, and cool design. They collaborate with artists to produce limited edition boards. My favourite of this series has to be the Rubik's cube design - a winning combination of two truly geeky icons.

Click the title to see more of Mekanism Skateboard's designs. Also, you can see photos of the Space Invader invasion on the Flickr stream.

Rapping Paper

It's a bit cheesy, a bit obvious, but when it involves a play on words - i love a bit of obvious cheese... the rapping paper in question is actually (W)rapping paper. Simon Hill, who runs Si Hill Design has come up with the idea of printing Rap lyrics on wrapping paper:



The four types so far feature House of Pain, NWA, Vanilla Ice and the Sugarhill Gang. My favourite is Jump around- See close-ups on the website. The paper isn't currently in production, but fingers crossed might be soon. Lets hope he adds some other artists to the line-up as well... Nothing says Happy Christmas like Cypress Hill lyrics!

Crabs and Insects...

A picture caught my eye browsing round, the bizarre Hawaiian Pom Pom Crab (above) which is one of the many new species that's been discovered by scientists at the French Frigate Shoals

I was going to make a big post about it, linking to brilliant galleries of the weird and wonderful new creatures... but, such pictures don't exist, the website is a bit crap... a missed opportunity by whoever runs the project.

Instead, i'll have to share something from dry land - the NSECT, featured over at uncrate.com. Looking like something out of Naked Lunch, it's a remote controlled insect with colour changing eyes and motorised mandibles to grab whatever's around. But, the main feature is the integral missile launcher (a common feature of insects) - which can fire foam missiles 20 feet! I love the idea of it:



Perfect for scaring insect-phobic people... in fact it should be creepy enough to make most people take notice! Read more at iwantoneofthose.com

Diet Coke and Mentos...brilliant

I had no idea what happened when you added mentos to diet coke. i didn't really know what mentos were. Regardless, adding one to the other gets an impressive reaction!



The video comes courtesy of the guys at EepyBird.com who used 251 bottles of Diet Coke and over 1,500 Mentos mints to create an exploding domino rally. It's a spectacular chain reaction of fountains, sprays and sprinklers - truly genius creation by people who freely acknowledge having too much time on their hands!