Two aliens contained in suspended animation chambers. A central control unit monitors and sustains life support functions. The control screen is a looping flash animation. Every few minutes, a malfunction state is triggered. Sound and graphics announce the error, and a Make Controller board is used to trigger emergency flasher lights and a fog machine (simulates a cryogenic coolant leak).
Virgil England installed and photographed this life-size dragon skeleton in Chugach National Forest in Alaska in 1990. In his own words:
Peter Johansson is building a medium-format film camera. Like, from scratch. He’s about 80% done and has done a wonderful job documenting the build. [Thanks, Billy!]
Reader Dave Adams submitted this cool Pac Man pumpkin display, complete with ghosts, dots, and fruit. Shown immediately above under regular and UV light. [Thanks, David!]
Halloween is so two days from now. Which might as well be last week in the blogosphere. I’m moving on to Xmas. From Berlin artist Oliver Fabel.
901 documents the dismantling of the offices of famous U.S. designers Charles and Ray Eames following Ray’s death in 19XX. The Eames office was a kind of maker fantasy-land, with finished and unfinished projects scattered about, meticulously organized tools and supplies, and wonderful little gewgaws in every nook and cranny.
The first few minutes of the film feature a delightful bubbling xylophone soundtrack that is eventually revealed to be coming from these prototype toys designed by the Eameses themselves, and installed in their office for their own amusement.
The towers are wooden boxes six inches square and about 15′ tall, fronted with acrylic, and having sides slotted to accept metal xylophone keys which fit loosely enough to allow free vibration and easy rearrangement. The slots for the keys are angled toward one another, slightly, so that the surfaces of the keys present a series of alternately-sloped platforms for a small hard plastic ball which, when dropped from the top of the tower, will plunk its way slowly down to the bottom, playing a little tune as it goes. The balls are injected using a manual pneumatic piston which shoots them up a pipe to the top of the tower.
That’s no treehouse, that’s a foresthouse! The Worlds Greatest TreeHouse
