From Make: Japan: Beatfly is a small illuminating blimp for entertainment. Its light and movement can be controlled via various interfaces such as MIDI controller, iPhone multi-touch interface, Flash interface on a web site, computer keyboard, mobile phones and voice, and music. It flies, filling the space with colorful light, producing diverse styles of performance […]
These are not standing waves; they appear momentarily and then recede. Which is still pretty amazing. The machine, at Japan’s National Maritime Research Institute, is being described in the English-language blogosphere as having been designed to conduct water-safety tests. [via Neatorama]
Japanese toy giant Bandai is set to release a series of nifty kanji figures that transform into the shapes of the animals they represent. The shape-shifting critters, called Mojibakeru (moji means “character” and bakeru means “to change”), come in six varieties — 犬 (dog), 虎 (tiger), éš (fish), 馬 (horse), é³¥ (bird) and ç«œ (dragon) […]
Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich created this installation, simply called The Swimming Pool, for The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. A 10cm layer of water over a piece of glass separates above from below. It must be a pretty serious piece of glass; some back-of-the-envelope math based on the published dimensions gives 1,100 kg (2400 lbs) of water that it has to support. Plus its own weight. [via Dude Craft]
Tokyo/Glow is a short film, written and directed by Jonathan Bensimon, about the little glowing guy from a cross-walk sign who jumps down from the sign, at night, and wanders around Tokyo gawking at all the lights. I don’t think there are any CG effects. The film’s amazing look was achieved by combining a real actor in a custom glow-suit with a bunch of photographic hi-jinks: stop-motion, time-lapse, long exposure…did I miss anything?
I’m not sure what’s going on here but it appears to be an ode to space elevators. The uploader’s YouTube channel also has similar videos saluting the Pioneer and Voyager space probes as well as one talking about terraforming Mars. [via the Space Elevator blog]
This may be the end of civilization as we know it. [via Neatorama]
