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Obama and Biden tax calculator discovered on Annoying Design.
Yes I cannot vote because I’m French, BUT I must admit this tax calculator designed by Obama and Biden is pretty straightforward. Very much so for families under the 250,000 bracket …
A tax calculator is better than 1000 words :)
-> Link
I am working with my friend Marisa Jahn on a new project. It will be super fun, artistic and hopefully design noir! More soon… but in the meantime I want to share her latest creation with Steve Shada, “Pleasurecraft“.
A kit for any klutz who wishes to woo a potential lover, ‘Pleasurecraft’ is a vehicular kit that choreographs gesture and landscape to produce an outting full of splendor and romance. The potential lover wil find PleasureCraft’s luxurious pullows and easy-to-reach champagne cooler irresistable. Suitors will love PleasureCraft for its easy-to-use instructions that make Romance easy - one, two, three!
The suitor begins when he/she steps in the boat and first begins to read the operator’s manual. Pictures indicate what to do next–comb the moustache, don the bowtie, bust out the TicTacs — then uncork the champagne, what tempo to follow, etc.
Often, a clumsy serenade can be attributed to an overwhelming amount of details and a failure to attend to the right ones in the right order. But PleasureCraft solves this problem through its built-in water wheel, perfectly callibrated to the RPM of the River Seine. By listening to the music and glancing at the operator manual, the suiter knows what cues to follow and when.
(‘Pleasurecraft’ questions the human agency in constructing the pictoral imaginary and an ethnographic examination of our species’ mating rituals.)
“Stelarc Ken” by Zoe Khamsin.
Now children can play with cyborg toys!
Stelarc is a poet and scientist of contemporary times and his body, that he himself defined as ‘obsolete’, and others has defined as ‘posthuman’, is the end of the religious principle of body’s inviolability. Moreover he made a mutual correspondence between his body and his art, and this led to his iconic definition. The artist creation - ‘Stelarc Ken’ - builds upon the idea of iconic individuals being replicated in toy form.
Another neat technique in the vein of SnOil, a physical display Based on ferrofluid that reacts to magnetism. Shade Pixel is a type of physical display that uses deformable skin to represent information.
It is very pretty, the dots on the white look like steps in the snow. Notice how the sound from the solenoid works really well with the “clock” idea! A nice trick to deal with such noisy technology. You can see a video about Shade Pixel here:
The blogosphere is certainly the best place to find gadgets. Personal blogs care to mention their favorite new tech gadgets, and more corporate blogs like Gizmodo, Engadget add a humorous flavor to the catalog! Everyday I discover new gadget blogs. A most recent one, Gadget Advisor, is kind of cool because it presents product releases and news items that are the most significant, useful, or particularly cool, instead of just a list that ends up resembling a catalog… The items are hand-picked as a “best of the best” resource for computer hardware, software, gadgets, and tech news, from universal remote control, network media player, to online backup services! In my research I am interested in the difference between the accumulation of information and its discrimination. By specializing and discriminating, the blogger collects information and curates media. A blogger represents a new generation of curators!
DIY is the new black for the gaming industry which has adopted not only the DIY but also the craft culture in its new game for Playstation 3, Little Big Planet. In little big planet, users create their characters (their mascot) with textures, zippers, colors, attitudes and their own levels, events, design their difficulties and can then share their designs with their peers and play online.
The level creation is the most intriguing, because you got to design triggers and events like switches and buttons. It can be pretty simple if it is just to open a door to the next level but pretty rad ;) when designing a multi-phase boss fight against millions of tech spiders! Also the sharing component is pretty elaborate as other users can rate your game and offer descriptive keywords to your creation, from “brilliant” to “repetitive”. So be sure to invite the right friends who can understand your style!!! You can also invite guest mascot stars! Isn’t that amazing?!
You are only allowed to create 3 levels that you share on the server side. If on the server the company deems that you are good at creating levels, you can then create some more. If the company decides that your levels are not good enough, then you are stuck and you need to cancel these levels until you are being granted the right to create some more! So that is interesting because it shows that the company is afraid that users aren’t gonna design levels good enough and that this game relies heavily on people’s ability to create neat levels. If users are not gonna create brilliant designs, then this will be a failure because it only comes with 3 small levels … This is like a creation suite for gamers that welcome creative individuals into playing, creating and sharing! I cannot wait to try it. If only they would send a free copy to designers, they would have great levels designed!!
In the meantime, here is a video of the trailer:
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
Technorati Tags: animation, video, culture, media, DIY, craft culture, video game, playstation, Little Big Planet, mascot
In the series I love animation, I found this graffiti animation that is really fun to watch.
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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