The Wonderful Caddis Worm: Sculptural Work in Collaboration with Trichoptera
Artist:Hubert Duprat
February 20, 2013, 4:29am
“[Interviewer]: I think when most people think about synthesizers and computers, the last thing they imagine is something organic or natural. What does it mean for you to use these “artificial” technologies as a mirror to hold up to nature?
”
King: It’s funny, because a computer is made up of silicon, one of the most abundant elements on Earth, and copper, which is found in abundance in the Earth’s crust, is used for circuit boards. These are natural elements, which we don’t think of as natural because they are encased in plastic, but their ‘essence’ is organic in the beginning. So in a sense, once you know this fact, you dont think of the hardware as artificial. The funny thing is with the mirror idea, you’re essentially showing nature how it looks in a new outfit (plastic).
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Interview with King Britt at Create Digital Music on his latest project with Data Garden, “The Bee and The Stamen”, which combines electronic audio with nature …
… also an interesting thought for the day …
(via prostheticknowledge)
Indeed.
Reblogged from prosthetic knowledge.
October 19, 2012, 10:42pm
It’s a cold world out there, sometimes I feel like I’m getting a little bit frosty myself.
November 23, 2011, 5:32pm
Gömböcs: The only shape that always rights itself to the same position
Gömböcs in nature
While the Gömböc made a good job of hiding from mathematicians, it didn’t escape the penetrating gaze of evolution. Thinking that Gömböc-like shapes must appear somewhere in nature, Domokos turned his attention to tortoises. Being turned on its back is a potential disaster for any tortoise, so much so that the males in some species try to turn over their rivals during their battles for females. So any tortoise that’s able to struggle back on its belly has an evolutionary advantage. Some species of tortoise manage to turn themselves back over using their muscular necks as a lever, while many others can’t self-right at all.
Domokos started an extensive search in pet shops and zoos, turning over tortoises while their owners weren’t looking, and finally found what he wanted: “Suddenly one day I came across the first little tortoise that was doing exactly what it was supposed to do,” he recalls, “it was acting like a Gömböc!” The shell of this high-domed species is similar to a Gömböc — it contains no stable equilibrium point, so when an individual is put on its back, it automatically flips over into the only stable position: lying on its belly. Domokos conducted an extensive study of tortoises using a complex three-dimensional model of their shell, and identified two species, the Indian star tortoise and the radiated tortoise, which use their Gömböc-like shells to self-right. The results of his research were eventually published in the biological journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B in a paper co-authored by Várkonyi, and biologists have accepted that the Gömböc-like shells are indeed a result of natural selection in favour of the ability to self-right.
Thinking about tortoises in this way seems so intuitive, yet, I had never considered it. I guess I didn’t know it was this hard to find a shape that does that. How about snails?
June 20, 2011, 5:20am
thedailywhat: Damn Nature Are U Kidding Me With This of the Day: Absolutely unreal footage shot on the University of Alabama campus of a mile-wide tornado inching toward downtown Tuscaloosa.
Tornadic supercell thunderstorms stretching from Texas to Tennessee have left widespread destruction and numerous casualties in their wake. Alabama has been hit the hardest, with at least 25 fatalities across the state, and an entire city in ruins.
The record-breaking storms are expected to move out of the area by midnight. Watch live reports on ABC 33/40 via Ustream.
[cnn / waka / nyt / video: @49foyamind49.]
Yeah the weather has been nuts the last few weeks. Isn’t it a bit early this year? My girlfriend has to fucking move out of her house. Are you kidding me nature?
Reblogged from The Daily What.
April 27, 2011, 10:41pm
