Hey guys, it’s the future! Motorola uses the image above to announce their new RAZR2 phone, partying like it’s cybergoth circa 1999 and brandishing a phone that looks it doubles as a light saber dildo. There’s a kind of sadness to this campaign, an aching desperation to make you feel the cutting edge of what’s basically just another souped-up fliphone, aged forever by the likes of OpenMoko and the iPhone.
Apparently, in Motorola’s perfect future, ladies will have disproportionate mutant man-hands. Or maybe it’s just an old trick for making cell phones in pictures appear more sleek and thin. In the future, the clothes get shinier, the cheap tactics stay the same.
On the morning of Sunday 7th May the little girl giant woke up at Horseguards Parade in London, took a shower from the time-traveling elephant and wandered off to play in the park…
Watching this immense puppet filled me with all the awe that watching the awkward rubbery Japanese androids never could. She is absolutely alive, curious and..hungry. What’s interesting is that both the Little Girl Giant and the skinjobs are essentially human-operated, though the robots are programmed beforehand. Wearing pseudo futuristic outfits, some of them even eerily emulate human expressions with facial “muscles”, while the little girl can only blink and open her huge accordion mouth. To me it’s almost disappointing – I want amazing robots! I want technology sophisticated enough to impress me with its humanoids! I know the day this happens can’t be too far off [right?], but until then this Little Girl Giant PWNS.
Photo via Ben Heaney over at http://www.digitalviolin.com.
This was originally a guest-blog written several years ago at the request of my dear friend Warren Ellis, for Die Puny Humans (may it rest in peace). Now with visual aids!
I have a new beau. Well, not so new. He’s probably quite a bit older than I am, actually. A big, brass Stroh violin, aka a phono-fiddle:
Photo via Ben Heaney over at http://www.digitalviolin.com.
The phono-fiddle is much louder than a conventional violin, but its timbre is thinner, with eerie phonographic overtones. Vibrations from the strings are conducted to the center of an aluminum disc that acts as a diaphragm (like a very old-fashioned amp), propelling the sound back out through the large horn and smaller ear trumpet.
Sometimes, the Stroh sounds like a human voice playing through a hand-cranked Victrola. Other times it sounds like a tenor saxophone gargling a cat…
Cheeky monkey Emily Rishea submits her fashion label, Artifice Clothing, through our submit form: “hey why not, I feel shameless,” she writes. Okay, we’ll bite! Artifice does a great job with all the classics and invents some new ones, such as these Victoria’s-Secret-meets-the-Rocketeer light-up mechanical wings. The range also has bit of a sense of humor, as can be seen in this Bunny Lolita ensemble, which the site describes as “terrifying”. But my absolute favorite item on the site has to be this Cybertek Collar, which makes you look like a Dr. Who villain from the Tom Baker era. In an era of Victorian future, the one person who rocks up wearing this as part of an outfit inspired by bad 1970s sci-fi tech will be the envy of the tea party indeed.
Hats off to Mr. Leland Sprinkle, inventor of the world’s largest musical instrument, the one-of-a-kind Stalacpipe Organ. Located deep in the bowels of Luray Caverns in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, its 3 1/2 acres of cavern stalactites produce resonant tones when electronically tapped by rubber-tipped mallets rigged to a large organ console in a centralized chamber.
Sprinkle, a mathematician and electronics whiz employed at the Pentagon, began his colossal project in 1954. For three years, he prowled the caverns with lamp and mallet, tapping thousands of stalactites in search of formations that would precisely match each of the 37 tones needed for a musical scale tuned to concert pitch. After this was accomplished, two master carpenters, Loyd Almarode and Richard Beaver, were brought in to build the beautiful inner and outer consoles of the organ itself.
I first heard the haunting, unpredictable music of Luray Caverns several years ago on a mix tape and had no idea what was producing it. Later on, the wonderful radio station WFMUdevoted a segment to the invention. Everyone I know who has experienced the Stalacpipe Organ in person says no recording –not even one using the most fancypants binaural mic in the world– could ever compare to the live experience. I gotta get out there someday SOON. Road trip, anyone?
This building is called the Wolkenbügel, or Cloud-Iron. It was designed – though never built – in 1925 by artist El Lissitzky. That’s right – 1925! As in many of his other works, which spanned vastly different media, the Wolkenbügel underscores Lissitzky’s belief in the beauty of industrial production and a desire for pure monuments of technological progress.
There’s something very dark about Lissitzky’s propaganda art. Not dark in any sort of contrived “I’m trying to scare you” kind of way; on the contrary, his still, supreme and aphotic images are filled with nothing but love.
