This beautiful time-lapse movie shows the process of making sheet steel from raw materials in Magnika, Russia. It’s easy to imagine this process far removed from us until you consider every piece of metal within an arm’s reach went through this form and reform process.
from the vimeo page:
Shot in Magnitogorsk. The footage was edited in precise correspondence with the sequence of technical operations in sheet metal manufacturing at the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Factory. The result is a serious film with deeply transcendent subject matter.
This clever chinese design shows how a future bullet train might only need to slow down when changing out a small number of passengers. Yes the sound is wonky.
Developed by Masaaki Kumagai and Takaya Ochiai at the Robot Development Engineering Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku Gakuin University, Japan.
In Alan Turing’s 1936 paper on computable numbers, he presented a thought experiment. Turing describes a machine that has an infinitely long tape upon which it writes, reads and alters symbols. He further shows that a machine with the correct minimal set of operations can calculate anything that is computable, no matter the complexity.
My goal in building this project was to create a machine that embodied the classic look and feel of the machine presented in Turing’s paper. I wanted to build a machine that would be immediately recognizable as a Turing machine to someone familiar with Turing’s work.
San Francisco enjoys many public artist events but perhaps few have been going as long as the Soap Box Derby races (officially city sanctioned or not). The first movie chronicles the 1975 making and racing the cars from the artist’s point of view often explaining their motivations for their creation. These artists received official city support as part of a fund raising activity for charity. The second video is from the 2007 version which is not formally organized with no official sanctioning from the city (and questionable legality) built entirely with the funds of the artists themselves.
Swiss artist Zimoun creates kinetic sound sculpture installations which often use repetitive elements to magnify the impact of the sound characteristics.
The Happiness Hat is a wearable device that detects if you’re smiling and provides pain feedback if you’re not. An enclosed bend sensor attaches to the cheek and measures smile size, a servo motor moves a metal spike into the head inversely proportional to the degree of smile. Through repeated use of this conditioning device you can train your brain to smile all the time. This is the first in a series of Tools for Improved Social Interacting.
In a follow-up to a very early post regarding Fritz Kahn’s 1926 Der Mensch als Industriepalast, Henning M. Lederer has created industriepalast.com which includes the above animation and an interactive application.