Xylophone Bicycle Bridge: Designboom Contest Entry

Fantastic Xylophone Bicycle Bridge Plays Music As You Ride | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the World
Inhabitat posted about this beautiful design for an environmental instrument. As a cyclist rides over the bridge the keys play a tune. The design was an entry in the Designboom's Seoul Cycle Design competition, and the article includes a map with the potential sites in Seoul. I love this not just because I'm a musician and a cyclist, but because it contributes to the sonic landscape in the city.

There's so much noise on the roads here in L.A. During the recent CicLAvia I was struck by the silence of the street full of cyclists. You could hear people talking as they rode along, children laughing, a quiet background of clicks and whirs as chains adjusted and gears shifted. Now and again a bell was rung. The Xylophone Bridge gives the bike and the river a voice to sing together. A crossing is celebrated, and  I think this is art because of the symbolism.

Spiral Wall: Processing with Arduino and Servo

SPIRAL_WALL: PROCESSING ARDUINO SERVO on Vimeo Pretty cool concept here. The fabric is being manipulated by motor controlled by the laptop. Its easy to see the application in theater, or some large venue on an entirely different scale.Gotta love Arduino; you can make anything with their parts, judging from what I find online. I’m drooling over an accelerator-midi thing myself.

Sound and Space

Hear Here – an acoustic theatre – Ric Lipson | Interactive Architecture dot Org
Its kind of a complicated and wordy article, but I love the images of this space. Its acoustic and intimate, sculptural and functional. The physical properties of sound are fascinating, and often overlooked: though invisible, sound has shape and size, and you can feel it with your skin (the booming bass when a car passes).

Bio-Concrete, Explained.

Here's a thought. Some brilliant engineers inoculated concrete with bacteria and organic matter which produce calcium carbonate when exposed to air. The result is a self-healing concrete. Of course, the best part of this is the hot, but geeky guy explaining the science.

The Apple Store Wasn't Very Helpful For Me Today

A discussion of the Pantheon on an architecture blog linked to this gem on YouTube. Built with 3D Studio Max, a software that only works on PC, the ending was like a punchline to me. I went into the Apple store with a minor issue after loading Windows on my laptop; I need a double boot system so I can better troubleshoot my web design. I ended up having to answer my own question online. I wish they would hire geeks instead of 'promoters'. I'm actually enjoying working on another OS; makes me feel like I have a choice.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but you can work on it all night.

I admit, I hadn't even thought of CAD for urban design. Here's the software in action; CityEngine can be yours for a mere $4950. Of course, you need a pretty mean machine to run it well. Combined with an omnidirectional treadmill, and some groovy goggles, you can take a stroll through Pompeii (as seen on the BBC)

All that is solid melts into the air.

kultnation.com/
echolab.tv/
I've seen this piece slipping between the cracks of the web for some time already. It combines sculpture, animation, and sound design into a formalist expression. What kind of art is it? Multimedia, I guess. The soundtrack by echolab is a critical part of the tension in the work.

People Playing with Giant Multitouch Screens

Multitouch Barcelona
is a group working with various kinds of interactive technologies. In this video, we see people playing with several distinct programs, each of which is scrupulously designed with its own parameters and characteristics. The potential for installations is boggling.

Projection on Buildings

On Spatial Robots a incredible video demonstrates an interplay between graphic art and architecture: animations projected onto buildings. What a wonderful way to enjoy a familiar building anew. Its a project of NuFormer Digital Media in the Netherlands.

Egg-Shaped Sludge Digesters

Pruned While assembling a collection of rss feeds featuring architecture, I came across this site. Great eye, you'll no doubt see me link here again.