No, you are not the center of the Universe!

Just a short video to remind us of how relative things become, when we look at the bigger picture. (nicely done by the way)

Bionic Innovation

An air-jelly-fish or a mechanic bird. The future is here, just watch it unfold #biomimicry

On the recent TED Global 2011 – The Stuff of Life (Edinburgh, Scotland. July 11-15, 2011), it was presented the artificial bird by Markus Fisher, and digging a bit more into it, there is an enormous quantity of projects carried out by ‘Festo’ that mimick life and develop technology with inspiration from nature.

Festo is a leading world-wide supplier of automation technology and the performance leader in industrial training and education programs. Through the Bionic Learning Network, they have been researching and developing projects with biomimicry principles since 2006, and you can see them all on their website.

Pepakura & Origami

“Between the folds” Documentary about the art & science of folding paper in the modern world through an ancient technique.

Widely awarded and acclaimed in film festivals, this movie covers the ancient technique of Origami (paper folding) and Pepakura (papercraft) originating from Japan, and how it is used nowadays by renowned scientists and artists, MIT and NASA included. They do it as a way for representing mathematics, to experiment with geometry and prototyping, or just to express beauty through art. I strongly recommend watching this inspiring and revealing film about a intriguing technique with plenty of potential.

Directed by Vanessa Gould from Green Fuse Films

And for the ones wanting to step further, you can download and experiment with Pepakura Designer, a program for converting 3D objects into paper sculptures. Or take a look at the work of other artists for inspiration, like Richard Sweeney, one of my favourites, or Isaac Salazar and Taras Lesko. Also, there are some good websites around this, like Pleat Farm and huge Flickr Galleries with examples.

Icosahedron by Richard Sweeney	Read Cursive by Isaac Salazar

You can see the Trailer of the movie below and if you like it

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Catalytic Clothing

#Fashion meets #Science [VIDEO] Public experiment in #ecodesign

This hybrid project from Helen Storey (artist) + Tony Ryan (scientist) develops the concept of purifying the air around us directly with the clothes we wear. It is based on an original idea, and as they state on their website Catalytic Clothing, it´s still work in progress. I hope we can see more of this in the near future and eventually a product we could try/test/buy, but so far the presentation it´s very attractive. It has been crafted nicely with an attention to detail, and leaves you with a hunger for more. I will surely keep an eye on it.