Trendy|DNA
                                           

by Greg Tate

How much oxygen did your furniture produce today? In our version of
the future, the things we loaf about on indoors will be as beneficial
as the stuff that grows out back. In the meantime, sculpt lawn
furniture from the lawn itself. Unlike your standard-issue sofa, this
lush greenery is totally organic, requires no synthetic finishes, and
can be brought to life, Golem-style, from salvaged dirt. St. Augustine
tiles create a seamless, living upholstery, or try wheatgrass for a
durable alternative. Ask your nursery about planting tips unique to
your sod. Note: Couch may require mowing. Read more…

[Via readymademag]

Mark Frauenfelder: Stefan Jones says: “In addition to esoteric brands of soap, shampoo, and other grooming products, Sesto Senso sells chewing gum and bubble bath packed in some very strange novelty packaging. They’re like real-life Wacky Packages. “My favorite: Happy Dead Clown Gum.”

[Via BoingBoing]

The Audio-Technica ATH-CM7ti Titanium Stick Earphones are the World’s first stick earphones made entirely with Titanium.

The CM7Ti delivers excellent harmonics, crystalline highs and solid
bass. They are very efficient, so you can play music loud and with no
distortion. The earphones use a neodymium magnet for maximum energy in
minimum size; ounce for ounce, Neodymium is far more powerful than
conventional Samarium Cobalt or Aluminum magnets, they have a High
frequency response of 10 - 45,000Hz.

The Audio-Technica ATH-CM7ti Titanium Stick Earphones retail for $159.00 USD and are available through Audio Cubes.

[Via motherdigital]

The May 2005 issue of Popluar Science has an article on Munich’s annual Recorder Race.
It’s a competition of classic “Walkman/Boom Boxes/Ghettoblasters” that
have been modified with wheels, gears, spoilers, etc. so that they can
race each other down a 15m gym floor powered by their tape drive
mechanisms. Obviously they would all want to run in “fast forward”
mode. Here are the Recorder Race mission and rules.

[Via laughingsquid]

Erez Kikin-Gil ’s Eco Pod

is a TUI-controlled system that mimics the growth of a plant and allows
children to keep track of their class garden and learn how the
different natural elements influence it, and each other, over time.

One pod represents the wind, another the sun’s heat, a third one the
light and the last one represents the rain. Each pod can be manipulated
with a movement or action characteristic of the natural element it
represents. If you blow on the “wind” pod, you’ll see on the computer
screen the effect wind can have on a flower, if you pour water onto the
“rain” pod, the flower will be watered as well, etc.

The Eco Pod keeps track of daily changes in the plant environment,
by employing environmental sensors, they monitor the water level in the
soil, the amount of light, the temperature, and the wind. The system
also captures daily images of the plant.

Every now and then, the child can take the Eco-Pods to the
information retrieval system and transfer the data to the “plant diary”
software. This way, the kid can see the changes of the different
elements over time, draw conclusions about their impact on the growth
of the plant, but also internalize Systems Thinking concepts, such as
feedback loops, stocks and flows, and changes over time.

[Via we-make-money-not-art]

By information aesthetics::inf*

1,000 individually controllable LED lights ordered in a 10x10x10 matrix act as a low resolution 3D television display. live video or audio data are transformed in dynamic light sculpture ‘visualizations’ in real time. [jamesclar.com]

[Via infosthetics]

The Digital Cube PuMP DAP100 is what we call a “silly little flash player” here at Gizmodo Labs. The magic of the DAP100 is that it slides over to expose its glistening USB 1.1 port like some junk demon straight out of Naked Lunch. Rub some of the powder on my lips, indeed.

Comes in 256MB and 512MB, little LCD screen, FM-tuner, voice recorder, yadda yadda yadda.

Product Page [via i4u + gizmodo]

Why create audio devices that are beautiful and sound incredible when you can create audio devices that essentially are horrible looking and sound like someone screaming into a Quaker Oats box? Don’t ask us. Ask some kid named Chay. This musical abortion contains a speaker, a mini-amp, and a battery. He’s offering to sell it, if you want to give it a good home.

Speaker Cone [Breakbeaterro via Music Thing + gizmodo]

Nobuhisa Ishizuka’s Heaven’s Eye is a creative installation from 2004 wherein a monitor is placed on the floor face up, with video playing of a cityscape beneath it. Creating the impression of a window to a non-existant space beneath you, the user can move the monitor along the floor, and with it, the view they see in relation to the movements. Move the monitor up and the view will shift appropriately, as if you’re carving a hole through the ground and shifting the hole. I enjoy Nobuhisa’s final point: “Chasing people from above the sky, you may feel as if you became someone like god. But your movement to chase people with monitor is controlled by the movement people walking inside the monitor.”

Project Page [iamasJP via WMMNA + gizmodo]

By Cory Doctorow:

My pal Rick Lieder is one of the best science fiction and fantasy
artists in the field today (he’s also the husband of fantastic
splatterpunk turned young-adult author Kathe Koja), but he got his
start as a photographer. He’s returned to his roots, and has taken his
camera to his Michigan backyard to shoot intense, macro-focused
pictures of insects walking on leaves and twigs, using natural light,
without a tripod. These shots were compiled over two and a half years
by Rick, who crouches patiently and silently in his garden, waiting for
the insects to strike the perfect pose before he hits the shutter. I
spent half an hour today looking at printouts of these and giving out
involuntary exclamations of surprise and delight.
Link

Update: Here’s an alternate link — Rick exceeded his bandwidth limits.

[Via boingboing]