robotmonkeys

the monkeys know all

  • Jeff Wall’s Invisible Man

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    BOOOOOOOM! highlights the work of Jeff Wall. The above photo is of course an interpretation of the narrator’s room from Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man”.

    When I was in junior high or early high school, my mom gave that book to read. I put it down after that scene (which if I remember correctly occurs on page six). “The man’s crazy,” I said. The idea that someone could, or even would, steal that much electricity just because he could, was beyond me. Now that I’m older, it’s one of those books that I need to revisit.

  • Koralie in Portland

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    France’s own Koralie‘s “HAÏKU” show is running all this month at Fifty24PDX (23 NW 5th Avenue, Portland OR). If you’re in or near the city with the world’s first vegan strip club, go and check it out.

  • Giles Walker at Kinetica

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    Kinetica is running this weekend at London at P3 (35 Marylebone Road) and the aptly named Kinetica Museum (274 Richmond Road)[*]. One of the highlights of the show is Giles Walker‘s “Peep Show” seen above. No word on if Captured By Robots is performing.

    artmachines has the low down on some of the exhibitions.

    See below for a CNN interview with Giles and some other highlights of the show.


    [*]: The Kinetica Museum is sponsored by Steorn. You remember them right? They’re the guys with the perpetual motion machine. Let’s just hope that Homer Simpson doesn’t show up

  • Blinds + Light = Blight

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    For Core77‘s 2009 Greener Gadgets competition, Vincent Gerkens of Belgium applied photovoltaics (similar to the ones seen before) to one side of venetian blinds and a electroluminescent foil to the other side to create Blight. During the day, it blocks light, but at night it releases it (so to speak).

  • Solar Batteries

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    Knut Karlsen designed the above trickle charge some NiMH batteries with a wraparound flexible photovoltaics.

    Completely impractical, but the idea of simply laying some depleted batteries out on a table to recharge does appeal to me.

    Since the relaunch, almost every post references solar panels. Solar is often billed as a cure-all for our climate and energy needs, but as Knut links to photovoltaics themselves are nonrenewable due to rare elements required for their manufacture.

  • We’re All Going to Die

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    Simon H&#248gsberg‘s We’re All Going to Die is a 100 meter composite photo of 178 people walking on the same railway platform in Berlin in the summer of 2007.

    I have no idea where this is installed, but it’s available online for your enjoyment. It really appeals to the voyeur in me, seeing all these people just go about their day, most of whom don’t notice the photographer. I especially like the featureless background. The composition, along with it’s provocative title, made me contemplative, and a little depressed.

  • March 14: Roller Derby Returns to Santa Cruz

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    17 advance, 20 day of show.

    If you’re in the SFBay proper, you’re still in luck.

  • Photonsynthese

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    Vivien Muller designed this tabletop solar usb charger. Designed to resemble a bonsai tree, it comes with multiple interchangeable parts allowing one to groom the tree, so to speak.

    I really like the finish on the metal trunk and how it contrasts with the blue photovoltaics. Solar trees, aren’t new idea, but rarely is it pulled off so stylishly. One thing that I think that would be pretty cool with one of these would be if the panels would move with relation to the light. If you were going to moving leaves, the movement really should be silent, perhaps with nitinol or something.

  • Relaunch

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    Last December, I realized that the majority of the websites I read tend to be art/design sites. I decided I wanted to share these links in a relatively nonintrusive way so obviously I thought about (re)blogging them. Originally, I was going to create a whole other site just for this, but I could never come up with a decent name for it. Also, I realized what I had here was incredibly boring hodgepodge of stuff. So I swept it all away.

    At some point I should go back and add everything back again, but maybe not. I have 450 items I flagged in my newsreader since I decided to make a design blog. That’s more than enough to keep me busy for quite a while.

  • Media Cabinet

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    A couple of years ago, just before I moved to California, I made a cabinet to store my CDs and DVDs. Ironically, I never took it with me.

    I grew tired of my CDs and DVDs simply sitting a shelf, and appearing nothing but a big wall of media. I wanted something that could store the CDs behind a door, but not use those individual slots, since they can’t handle double CDs, and keeping CDs in order when new CDs are purchased is just too annoying. This meant I needed shelves, but I didn’t want huge shelves. I solved this problem by creating a series of bins, each of which can hold either 20 standard CD jewel cases, or 8 standard DVD cases. (8 DVD cases are almost exactly the width of a CD case.)

    This cabinet has 24 bins, for a total capacity of either 480 CDs or 160 DVDs. The bins are wider than a standard CD jewel case, so that they can store the widest CD case in my collection, Johnny Cash’s Unearthed Box Set. (My other box sets have to sit on top due to their book-like formats.)

    Below are the initial plans I made for the cabinet, along with photos of the final project.

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