If woodworking was like chopping lettuce
Pretty clever use of stop-motion animation and sound effects.
Cars of the future
Lots and lots of interesting innovations coming to a car near you.
Interesting Mercedes concept car: the Mercedes AVTR.
Or this new Rolls-Royce Vision Next 100 concept car:
Or maybe the BMW Vision Next 100 with sealed wheel wells that morph and shift as you steer.
Audi Skysphere Roadster
There’s also some more whimsical and interesting stuff coming from mini that incorporates more of the idea of a lounge space:
Or uses side panel lighting effects to highlight interaction with the car:
Or give a look at this list of other equally interesting recent concept cars.
Glass instruments
Dennis James shows us around 2 of the more unusual musical instruments – ones that require wetted hands that make their glass parts sing. The Cristal Baschet and Glass Armonica are fascinating historical glass instruments.
The Glass Armonica was invented by Benjamin Franklin and was purported to be dangerous to both players and listeners by driving them mad or even killing them.
The Cristal Baschet was developed by the French brothers Bernard and Frncois Baschet as a sculpture that could be played to produce music. They also invented an inflatable guitar and an aluminum piano.
Pulsing alien-like sculpture
Yunchul Kim created this kinetic sculpture which looks like some sort of segmented alien robot. It’s on display at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy through Nov 27 2022.
Ai-Da creates art – sort of
AI is increasing at ever fast rates and in all conceivable parts of our lives. We have commercially viable AI driving cars, AI that can identify pictures and elements in pictures, teach robots how to run/walk/jump and navigate, language bots that can write news and informational articles that are indistinguishable from real writers, comprehend and explain jokes, and even generate art.
Ai-Da is an AI enhanced robot created by Aidan Meller that generates art. It uses its cameras to observe, and then generate a variety of art based on what it sees. You can see her work on her instagram channel.
It appears that Ai-Da is likely just a camera, image filters much like you’d find in Photoshop, and a computer controlled limb to generate art using her robotic arm. The creators seem to also enjoy putting words into her mouth. Lots of them – even to the point of giving a Ted talk. It can come off a bit pretentious, and I even feels like there is a touch of deliberate misleading going on. Folks that don’t understand there is ‘someone behind the curtain’ pulling the strings and putting the words in her mouth might believe it’s the AI’s opinion – which it really isn’t.
Still, it’s an interesting accomplishment – I just wish the creators would be a bit more honest about what they’re doing and no try to convince people the AI itself is coming up with the words and that her artwork is more a product of well-known image algorithms as opposed to intelligence – let alone consciousness.
Les Mystères de la Passion, de la Résurrection et de l’Ascension du Christ
For Christians, we are about to enter the mysteries of Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem, is crucified by the temple leaders, and then rises from the dead – an act which opens the gates of eternal life for humanity. There is so much going on in such a few short days, one can barely keep up with it all. It’s no wonder the different events of Holy Week have been the subject of countless masterpieces over time.
On my first trip to Paris, I did the tourist things like visiting the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa. But what’s much more interesting is that when I left the hall, I saw a painting that captivated me far more than fair Lisa. A painting by Antonio Campi called The Mystery of the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ (1569).
Click the image below to see a full-sized scan (4018×3212 px (4,9 Mb))
What is fascinating about it is that the more you look at it, you see all the events of Holy Week until the Ascension of Christ in one picture. I spent a lot of time looking at it and finding all the different parts. There is so much detail in this one giant painting! Just some of the events are:
- Meeting of the women while carrying the cross
- Jesus is stripped and his garments nailed to the cross
- Soldiers throwing lots for his garments
- Crucifixion with the 2 thieves at Gogatha
- Removal of the body from the cross by Joseph
- Wrapping in burial cloth
- Burial in the tomb
- The Harrowing of Hell
- Resurrection and frightening of Roman guards
- Apostles finding the tomb empty
- Mary encounters Jesus in the garden
- The appearance on the Road to Emmaus
- Thomas places his hand in the wounds of Christ
- Jesus meets the apostles fishing and Peter swims to shore
- Cooking of the fish together
- Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep
- Jesus’ final discourse and ascension into heaven.
- The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles
Give this little video clip a watch to see what events you can see.
Links:
Kapla plank tricks
Similar to dominos, Kapla are long thin planks you can use for building things – and set up to fall over like dominos. I was really impressed – especially the sequence right around 0:12 in which there are multiple back and forth movements using the same planks. Crazy!
Oberammergau Passion Play
The history of the Oberammergau Passion play begins in 1633. In the midst of the Thirty Years’ War, after months of suffering and dying from the plague, the people of Oberammergau – a small town south of Munich, Germany – pledged to act out the passion: the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ once every 10 years.
Normally it should have happened in 2020, but was delayed due to Covid. Instead, it was moved to this year: 2022. The 5 hour play will now have performances from May 14, 2022 until October 2, 2022. If you are in the area, you should catch it since it won’t return until 2030.
A small video bloggers life
Jacob ‘The Carpetbagger’ has a wonderful little Youtube channel in which he adventures around the country and does very down-to-earth video blogs on everything from small roadside attractions to Disneyworld. What I particularly like is that he does it all himself on a simple camera without the sponsored pre-canned messaging, fancy instagram treatments, and other disingenuous coverage that are used by many glossy online personalities. As someone that plans travel around the quirky things along the way, I love all the little places he visits – including one from my old back yard.
Recently, he did an update that discusses the serious experiences and impacts of running his small video blog. He talks about how he started posting quick weekend video adventures while working a normal day job. As it started picking up and got to the point it could pay for itself – that’s when things started to get more complex. He tells of his encounters and learning how to deal with very negative people and feedback (everything from how he holds the camera to what he would eat). He talks about the emotional and psychological toll it took on him. He talks about how people figured out where he worked and started harassing him and his coworkers to the point that his manager told him that he need to pick the job or the blog. He also talked about his transition from a 9-5 job to blogging full time and the effects on his marriage.
I think this is critical information that anyone looking to do what he did needs to know. I believe these impacts are also a topic we need to keep discussing as an increasingly online society. With a decade of social media under our belts, we’re now into our adult years and time to evaluate and put mature limits on social media.
Stop motion light painting
DARIUSTWIST uses 686 individual light photos to tell the story of a skeleton in a cowboy hat traveling around California through magical portals, collecting precious gemstones.