Architectural projection mapping

A colorful work of augmented reality that speaks for itself.

Via Bruce Sterling

Philips brings natural behavior back inside the home

We view nature as being outside, instead of inside our homes. Our houses are basically meant to take us away from the perils and unpredictabilities of the natural environment. The design team at Philips Design's Probes department challenges this ingrained assumption, and in their latest project "metamorphosis" brings the good and beautiful elements of nature back into our homes.

Their design work includes a series of technological objects that channel sensory patterns from the outside of the home to the inside. A few of these objects include technology that physically adapts itself according to conscious or unconscious user interactions. For example, there is the bed that adapts itself to the posture of the person using it, and there is the wall that can reshape itself by bulging and straightening its flexible elements. Other concepts show behavior that feels naturally through other sensory modalities, such as a structures that direct light through fiber optics elements in order to nourish plants, give rise to a certain mood, or have a healing effect on the human body.

The designers - undoubtedly involving Bart Hess and Lucy McRae - have also created a movie that shows the collection of objects in a wonderfully playful and dynamic way. So make sure not to miss that either:

Nodal patterns of sound

Sound made visible is almost always interesting to our synesthetic minds. Ernst Chladni started studying nodal patterns of vibrating surfaces in the late 18th century, with the resulting knowledge being applied in the design of musical instruments such as guitars and violins. He also invented the method of using sand or flour to visualize the vibrations of sound on a physical surface. Below you will find a beautiful example made by contemporary researchers at St. Mary's University in Canada that shows what exquisite patterns can emerge.

So have yourself a little meditative moment and connect to your senses.

Touchable holograms

The virtualization of the physical world continues with the technology of touchable holography. Japanese researchers have devised a way to make a virtual object respond to touch, and at the same time remotely give ultrasonic vibrations on your skin, so you feel as if you were really touching something. And all that without having to wear or operate any special type of equipment.

Visualization of a country's mood

This cartogram shows the mood of US citizens over the course of a day. The data was gathered from 300 million messages on Twitter, by analyzing keywords in those messages according to a list of affective words. The bigger the area on the graph, the more Tweets were sent out by that state, and the greener the area is, the happier the messages.

What we can learn from this?
- People in the USA are happiest early morning and late evening, and in the weekends
- People on the west coast are happier than those residing on the east coast
- If you like happy moods, go live in California, Florida, Arizona, or Delaware
- If you like negative mindedness, especially go to West Virginia, New Mexico, Mississippi, Indiana, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, and the Dakotas

Also watch this movie that dynamically shows the data throughout a single day:

Electric toy butterfly

This artificial butterfly does an impressive job on looking so much like the real thing that it might actually prevent children to go out and do their form of animal cruelty. It responds to vibrations by flapping its wings and is powered by 3 AA batteries. Replacing nature is not cheap though: the electric butterfly will cost you 100 US dollars, including shipping.

Robotic shoes to change your height

Sometimes we all wish we were a little bit taller. Height is one of those basic properties of the human body that we would like to be able to change, depending on the situation. Well, if it's up to Adi Marom it won't take long before we can do exactly that. Her robotic platform shoes with iPhone interface and scissor mechanism are a lovable early version of what hopefully turns out to be a beautiful shoe with a smooth interface and quick operating mechanism.