Monday 31 August 2009

Nucleus 2009 Demo Reel 3D Medical Animation




This video is a 3D medical animation demo reel showing examples of surgery, anatomy, mechanism of action, and physiology produced for medical devices, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology, marketing agencies, lawyers, and more.

Nucleus Medical Art is a U.S. business that creates and licenses medical illustrations and animations.


The musical score is composed by Daniel Brown.

Saturday 29 August 2009

Eco Friendly Underwater Motorbikes


In 1994 a former car worker Andrew Sneath unveiled the world's first underwater motorbike he named Bob which works on the "displacement theory" as in when one submerges an upturned glass into a bowl of water, a pocket of air is trapped in the glass, except that in the the case of Bob, fresh air is constantly circulated into the bubble and a motor thruster is used to move you around. Read more about Bob here.

Since then he has created a number of innovative and groundbreaking inventions such as Roboshark and Rocket 4 UCV (Underwater Camera Vehicle) both of which were commissioned by the BBC for natural history programme making

He is currently working on the building of the worlds largest immersive entertainment facility - the Hydrodome which

" is a unique leisure, training and conference facility. Themed around a futuristic interpretation of the underwater world, the Hydrodome will be fully equipped with submersibles, diving equipment and teaching facilities to offer private and corporate clients alike the opportunity to learn about – and enjoy – water sports in a temperate, controlled and fascinating environment."

Friday 28 August 2009

"Brain Bucket" :: A Better Brain Scanner


Lawrence Wald, a biophysicist at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in collaboration with Siemens have developed a new MRI machine called the "brain bucket" which is basically a helmet featuring a myriad of sensors and coils connected to a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.

"In magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a magnetic field generated by a large magnet sends protons in the brain spinning. Specially constructed coils of wire in the machine detect changes in the spin, which differ in different tissue types, as the magnetic field changes. Computer algorithms then use measurements from different parts of the brain to create the anatomical picture."

Continue reading about the ultra-high-res MRI technology.

Thursday 27 August 2009

Mr Doob: Chrome experiments not your mothers Javascript No.2


Google gravity, and the search field apparently remains active !

I must say I seem to be waiting to long for a suitable OSX version of Chrome. The feature that should be prevalent in all contemporary browsers, Tabs at the top, isn't !

Safari 4 Beta had it for a short while, but alas when I updated to the next version the feature had been written out. Damn shame about that. Although I read a hint on macosxhints.com, and tried to do it, and seriously missed out on re-enabling them, likely because I didn't quite understand the doing of the hack.

Tabs on top of the browser window allows one to cascade the windows and see at a glance where pages are in all opened windows. So I remain hopeful that tabs on top will return for the eagerly anticipated Snow Leopard.

Incidently here is Mr Doob Chrome experiments not your mothers Javascript No.1

Wednesday 26 August 2009

Poly-Rhythm Orchestra de Cotonou Dahomey with Gbeti Madjro



Here is a music video from a Scopitone Jukebox, with "Gbeti Madjro" from the compilation "African Scream Contest" released on Analog Africa Records.

Scopitone Jukeboxes were prevalent in the 1960's at dance bars and clubs apparently only in the USA and some EU countries.

"Based on technology developed during World War II,[2] color 16 mm film clips with a magnetic soundtrack were designed to be shown in a specially designed jukebox. The first Scopitones were made in France."

Tuesday 25 August 2009

The High-Speed Robot Hand


from Ishikawa Komuro Lab's, is a cutting edge marvel of contemporary mechanical engineering and visual sensing processing, among many other on board, extraordinary technologies. In the video, we see the high-speed robot hand, performing impressive acts of dexterity and skillful manipulation. Among its repertoire of capabilities, we see, the manipulator dribbling a ping-pong ball, spinning a pen, throwing a ball, tying knots, grasping a grain of rice with tweezers, and tossing / re-grasping a cellphone!

Phew!

And it does many activities at such a blindingly high speed, that its impossible for our minds eye, discerning anything, much, other than a blur!

In real terms, the hand uses high-speed actuators with harmonic drive gears. The hand can close in 1/10th of a second!

Monday 24 August 2009

Filmmakers Used Spy Tech to Catch Dolphin Slaughter


In the waters off Taji, Japan, occurs an horrific event of a gruesome dolphin slaughter, where at least 2,000 dolphins are taken around September each year.

World renowned Filmmaker Louie Psihoyos has made a documentary movie capturing the horrors of a "thriving operation that captures dolphins, the healthiest and handsomest of which are sold to aquariums worldwide. The rest are slaughtered, often ending up as food for human consumption, despite high mercury levels."

Louie Psihoyos recruited an expert team of divers, special-effects artists and sound specialists and used state-of-the-art equipment to infiltrate the remote cove and film the dolphin slaughter.

"The cove is like a fortress. It’s protected on three sides by steep cliffs. To get in, you need to go through a natural tunnel system that’s protected by a dog and a sensor"

The video here details the making of The Cove, (trailer), and gives us a vivid insight as to the levels of difficulty that were congruent with its actual shooting.

According to one of the experts on the team, from TV's Flipper, Ric O'Barry,

"Japanese fishermen, think of dolphins as being in the same category as fish, because the Japanese character for "whale" translates literally into "monster fish."

Louie Psihoyos comments that the cruelty inflicted on these intelligent creatures, is

"the most telling violence comes when the violence is over. When the dolphins die, their bodies sink. Divers are sent to retrieve them. Afterwards you see them smoking by the campfire with a blood-red sea behind them. There’s something so banal about it. The most revealing part is that they just had a hand in that atrocity, and life goes on.”

Thanks to alex for the tip, re-comment in Meet Sara the Walrus

Sunday 23 August 2009

Mexican Bumblebee Transformer






The lad in the costume probably did this little street performance while on his 15 minute break from McDonalds !

Nevertheless the video appears to be a publicity moment in the marketing campaign of the 5th generation Camaro in Mexico.

Saturday 22 August 2009

India Monkey King Jyoti Raju


who taught himself rock climbing and acrobatics to escape poverty in India has become so accomplished at Parkour, and he’s been given the title “The Monkey King.”

Jyoti Raju here demonstrates his self-acquired skills to entertain visitors at the Chitradurga Fort in India's southern state of Karnataka.

According to Indian blogger Shrinidhi Hande; An over enthusiast guide was overheard explaining to his customers: “Sir it is a very expensive hobby sir, the powder he is using-it is imported one sir- costs Rs 500 per kg sir…” For the record, rock climbers use chalk powder (Commercially known as Calcium Carbonate, CaCO), to keep their hands dry.

Friday 21 August 2009

EniCycle a prototype self-stabilizing unicycle


Slovenian Aleksander Polutnik has invented a motorized unicycle he calls Enicycle, featuring an electric motor, a three-hour battery, gyroscopic stabilization-assistance (helping to keep it upright) and a spring damper.

No pricing information has been announced on the inventor's website, since he only has two working models and is in the process of seeking mass manufacturing.

We can see the EniCycle in action here, where Ortis Deley from The Gadget Show learns to ride one in just under five minutes. It certainly looks fun and easy enough to ride, but I wonder how easy or painless it is to maintain that semi crouching position ?


Source

Thursday 20 August 2009

Golden Power



Competitors of the 6th International Circus Festival of Budapest, 2006.

The gestural theater play of these gymnasts echo Graeco-Roman cultural athleticism. They perform a near perfect demonstration of human strength, physical control, with dexterous precision and no wasted movement.

The music track is Conquest of Paradise from 1492 soundtrack.

Wednesday 19 August 2009

A 360 Degree HDR Timelapse


Jay Burlage presents us here with a shift from the conventional cinematic experience to a flattened panoramic escarpment.

I guess time will tell whether movie directors will exploit the technique.

Nevertheless more than a mere experimental gem, Jay Burlage has mooted the music well (Denilio by Galdson) and blissfully glides us through a 720p living room digital frame expose.

Tuesday 18 August 2009

Livescribe: The Pen is Still Mightier than the sword !


First came the personal computer now arrives the pen-audio computer, from Livescribe, reminiscent of Apple's PDA the clever realization these people made, was that, the pen is mightier than the sword.

The Pulse Smartpen allows you to write or draw on specially designed paper and transfer those scribblings into a computer as image files, then the words in those files can be converted into text, with software.

Livescribe's device is an excellant accessory for taking notes at lectures and meetings, since it is also a digital audio recorder. On top of this, it links sound and scribbling together in real time. You can tap on a word in a note and what was being said at the moment will be played through the pen. On the desktop, you can click on a word for a similar effect.

Here, Chris Brogan provides a quick tour of the pens use and functionality. Here's an eyeview review of the software for the Pulse called "MyScript for Livescribe", be sure to check out the video of Steve Wozniak releasing the product in San Fransisco at Axiotron. The Livescribe comes in two models; a 1GB ($150US) and a 2GB ($200US).

Source

Monday 17 August 2009

180 degree Panorama Timelapse video



by MediaMarc is,

"Experimenting with images taken with a 180 degree circular fisheye. Remapped the image and projected onto 3D geometry to create a depthlike effect."

This example 3 2 1 ignition from backyard is the result of inverting the polarity of the image.



For many more images, video's and accompanying notes, go here, but you will have to be patient for the page to fully load !

Saturday 15 August 2009

Dilemma Facing the Galapagos islands


Gunter Reck Professor of Ecology and Galapagos resident, experienced first hand from 1973 when the total population of the island was 4,000. Now there are more than 60,000 tourists and 20,000 citizens. Professor Reck documents in this video the destruction wrought by overpopulation in the Galapagos Islands.

Overpopulation is the big pink elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. Where Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution, presenter Andrew Marr warns that The Galapagos islands, are faced with a multi dimensional set of problems, habitat destruction, lack of basic resources, significant lack of waste and sanitation management for the islanders, to name a few.

"Speaking at a dinner at Christ's College, Cambridge, to mark the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, Mr Marr warned that the islands' habitats face ruination unless human development leaves space for the wildlife."

Friday 14 August 2009

Meet Sara the Walrus





Sara, has learned how to play the saxophone and dance the tango. Her musical training has made her the main attraction at a zoo in Istanbul, Turkey.

She must have been relocated from Alaska ?

Thursday 13 August 2009

Eccerobot: Engineering a new era of Robot development


The Eccerobot research company claims to have initiated a new paradigm in robotics. They are attempting to echo the kinetic motions of human movement by building robots to imitate or copy every detailed structure and action of human limb performance:

"a new kind of robot is just beginning to emerge – the anthropomimetic robot. Instead of just copying the outward form of a human, it copies the inner structures and mechanisms – bones, joints, muscles, and tendons – and thus has the potential for human‐like action and interaction in the world. Unfortunately, there are as yet no established methods for controlling such robots, or even for describing their intrinsic movement patterns."

Although not evident in this video, the company is aiming to engineer their robots into having cognitive features, in order to involve robots in human interaction. Perhaps these developments will help alleviate from us many mundane tasks that doormen in hotel lobby's fulfill or hospital orderlies assisting laborious tasks.

Source

Wednesday 12 August 2009

Virtualgravity: the physical weight of data


"Virtual gravity is an interface between digital and analog world. With the aid of analog carriers, virtual terms can be taken up and transported from a loading screen to an analog scale. The importance and popularity of these terms, outputted as a virtual weight, can be weighed physically and be compared. Therefore impalpable, digital data get an actual physical existence and become a sensually tangible experience."

Make of that quote what you can ! But this media art project by Silke Hilsing attempts to arrest and quantify something that is generally considered ethereal except that he has created a real object to demonstrate a concept, a machine desk, seen half way into the video. The minimal ambient lighting and the collection disks that he motions over a cool interactive display selecting and slicing tags off the table, rounds out a suitable allegory of how we ourselves do desktop tidying up duties, moving files into folders and then into partitions of hard drive allocation -- in a sense weighing up our data of the day.

Andrea Bassi created the Sound design for the project.

Tuesday 11 August 2009

Entanglement


happens, as is evident in this video, to a huge number of marine and bird species like the Stingray pictured here, strangled by fishing tackle. Similarly far too many seabirds consume and suffocate having ingested on a feast of plastic pellets, bottle caps, polystyrene, et al.

There is a huge acreage of swirling plastic debris collectively drifting off the West coast of North America via the worlds natural oceanographic currents. This insidious plastic swirling soup in the North Pacific is being investigated by a team of researchers and scientists, Project Kaisei who are looking into ways to remove the plastic debris and turn it into fuel.
"We're working on capture technology, all in our effort to figure out the most energy efficient way to collect the debris in the ocean,"

Their first task is to invent a successful capture technology that can be scalable, thus the plastic could go from ocean trash to recyclable treasure.

Monday 10 August 2009

Sydney City to Surf Fun Run, Panorama


The City to Surf website says its now the “World’s biggest running event."

"You can see about a quarter perhaps of the 75,000 runners — waiting to start — in this panorama. The race starts quite early in the day and it is often chilly — whence the tops you can see discarded on the hedges in the panorama."

Michael Shelley won the 2009 Sun-Herald City2Surf, crossing the Bondi finish line with a time of 41:02 minutes. And Melinda Vernon was the women’s champion in a time of 47:46 minutes, almost two minutes faster than her time last year.

See more panoramas by Peter Murphy, here.

Sunday 9 August 2009

Nissan: Conceptual Art Video



Say this is one profoundly huge machine

"Directors Josh and Jon Baker of TWiN were shooting a new commercial for Nissan and required some left field ideas for an ultra large machine that was capable of pulling the sun from night to day."

Saturday 8 August 2009

Mystery Monolith on Mars Moon; Phobos


In this video, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin speaks about the future of space exploration and says the public would be interested in a monolith on Phobos, one of the two small moons that revolve around Mars.

Astronomers estimate the rectangular structure measuring five meters across, was photographed by a super high resolution camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The giant monolith juts out of the planet’s surface casting a huge shadow below. The monumental structure resembles the black monolith seen in Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie the structure is believed to be a key to man’s evolution.

Although there is much hype about the monolith such as an alien species placed there, or is a remnant left over from creatures once living on the red planet. I can imagine two other possibilities. Either it is an optical illusion or one huge crystal. What do you imagine it to be ?

Friday 7 August 2009

3D Video; Waltz of the Flowers


Break out the 3D glasses to view this YouTube 3D HD Test.

To watch this video in 3D, select viewing style first from 12 options of drop down list box named "3D View Style", below the video frame. Red/cyan, amber/blue etc. requires 3D glasses. Some other options, parallel and cross etc. don't require any glasses. No viewing style with polarization type glasses like Real D is supported by YouTube 3D so far. 3D view style drop down menu may not appear unless using latest browser and player plug in.

I liked the Mirror Split version and the music is The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky.

Thursday 6 August 2009

Original Cultures: between Japan, Italy and the UK


"Original Cultures is a non-profit project that aims to create, facilitate and promote cultural exchange between European countries and Japan through the medium of modern performing arts in new and unique ways. The idea for the project came to Laurent Fintoni shortly before leaving Japan in June 2008, following many discussions with Hiroki Sakaida (owner of the POP GROUP label) and Japanese artist Goth Trad. Upon his return to Europe in September that year he put the wheels in motion to turn the idea into reality and create a non-profit project that would allow cultural exchange between Japan, Italy and the UK at the level of modern performing arts, starting with music and visual arts. With the help of Cristian Adamo, Yassin Hannat and Alessandro Micheli, both based in Bologna, the Original Cultures project was ‘born’ in November 2008."

Here is an interesting video edit of what happened during day 3 of the Original Cultures pilot featuring footage of the visual arts workshop, sound-check and the seminar at the Modo Infoshop. The first event is planned to take place in the UK in November 2009.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

Dominic Hargreaves Invents folding bicycle


Dominic Hargreaves from Battersea, London, has just won the James Dyson Award for Innovation, which awarded him £10,000 for his brilliant folding bike, he calls The Contortionist.

He said he wanted to create a decent folding bike after the one he was using collapsed. "I couldn't find a folding bicycle I liked, and so I wanted something that could take a bit of punishment and that you could have fun with. So I made one myself."

Competition founder James Dyson said: "The clever bit is how the front wheel can be rotated and repositioned so that the whole of the bike's frame fits into its circumference."

Amazing to observe that his original bike collapsing must have inspired him. Dominic is in contact with various manufacturers and hopes to, soon get the bike into production.

Source

Tuesday 4 August 2009

Autodrive: Pleasure from here to there and back.


is as described by the artist, as a 360° All-dome video. I beg to differ however, I think of it as a Spherical Panorama video.

Owi Mahn created this video specifically for the new video laser system in the Carl Zeiss Jena Planetarium. And looking at the building here, its not unlikely that this video was or is on display within the ceiling of the dome.

So this video is a flat single view rather than a completely immersive experience and is difficult to imagine the full impact it would otherwise have in situ.

Monday 3 August 2009

Concerto for Infrastructures


"This video was conceived as part of a collaboration between the Bauhaus Foundation Dessau and Muoto Architects on the theme "Urbanity and Infrastructures". It offers an interpretation of the industrial and infrastructural landscape of the Saxony-Anhalt region in Germany. A mirror effect makes the landscape appear flooded. Water covers the ground, but reflects and reveals the sky. The video was originally shown as a series of 11 loops displayed on 11 screens. The similar rhythm of the videos played simultaneously raised the feeling that infrastructures form together a mechanical orchestra rehearsing an abstract concerto."

This video, by Gilles Delalex (Muoto Architects) is one of the 80 videos which have been selected for presentation within BEYOND MEDIA 2009, VISIONS, which is about the evolution of cities to prompt a deep, appealing reflection about our current concerns: urban conflict, social interaction, ecological resources, mobility and tourism and the evolution of cities.

Sunday 2 August 2009

PingWire: Sharing Pictures Is Easy with this new web toy


This looks to be an interesting solution for those who love pictures. PingWire is an (almost) live feed of images being posted to twitter with Twitpic, yfrog, and Twitgoo.

The web page displays them in a never-ending stream of thumbnails. Clicking on a thumbnail will take you to the full sized photo. Mind that you will have to be quick to succeed at getting the picture you thought you hit.

Saturday 1 August 2009

Freeno & Olaf


This charming little animation was made by cat weasel for the Modified Toy Orchestra and was recently shown as part of the London Short Film Festival at the Roxy Cinema.

"Live, it gets introduced as a story about the most forbidden of all loves, you can make up your own mind as to what that should be before watching, see if it meets your expectations ! The music as with all Toy Orchestra material is entirely made with circuit bent toys, no samplers or midi involved "

In the live shows the Modified Toy Orchestra accompanies silent animations such as Freeno & Olaf. Go here to see more videos of the band.

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