Dancing Cells, Bleep Orchestra, Ugly Fruit
From The Archives ~2015
You’ll recognise this problem: it’s almost impossible not to follow the links. It was an innocent foray into Facebook—you only wanted to check the addictive little red boxes for some more (digital) life affirmation and maybe see that latest set of dribbly baby pictures from your recently encumbered mate. (Or dribbly night out pictures from the stag do.)
But you, as much as everyone, know that this behaviour is much more than harmless procrastination. (Oxymoron.) It is a feed of traps. (Don’t you love that word, ‘feed’? We are hungry for updates and malnourished by the lack of notification.)
Ignore the top 16 reasons why you know you’re a real person reading a computer list from this specific part of the world silliness. Do not answer that quiz. You do not need to know which kind of currency you are. Or what style of amoeba you’d be. Or which kind of roast dinner best describes you. Inane. That is not fulfilling or meaningful. These are lazy, mind-numbing distractions that do not make life better. The only possession you have is time, right?
I’ll get to the point and stop wasting yours. (Yo soy verbose.)
Some link traps can be fantastic. It’s how I find out some incredible curiosities and, since I discover batches of them per week, I decided I would share a few of the biggies in a digest of some kind. You can find them all yourself, organically, or you can see where my brain’s been this week in a sort of mind map game of hide and seek-what-I’ve-been-looking-at.
Wow. What a preamble. Anyway.
1. Dancing. Mother-flippin’. Celaphod cells.
I know, right? I actually did a cry-laugh over it this morning. Especially because they chose the song for the pun-factor. In one quick blurb: Squid pigmentation changes to reflect mood. (In danger, in fights, in courtship.) They cell signal. Using bioamplifiers, these heroes (Backyard Brains) made the chromatophore ’dance’, demonstrating it beautifully.
Discovered via ifuckinglovescience.com
2. (More Than Just) Coded Bleep Orchestras.
This is all rather exciting: Ge Wang (this awesome musician and computer scientist chap) has made a laptop orchestra using music programming software, which he developed, and ‘instruments’ made from gaming console controllers, which began life as tools to measure your golf swing. Can’t quite get your head around that? Watch the TED talk. It’s amazing. It goes beyond just music, too, and morphs into social connection across the world.
What’s more—he uses IKEA salad bowls to DIY speakers. J’adore. Want to play? ChucK is open source, so give it a try.
Discovered via TED.com
3. Ugly Fruit Become Swans
You’ve seen one before—an unfortunate potato that looks like a… yeah. We laugh, mercilessly, but these vegetables have feelings too. Scratch that: these vegetables and fruit get grossly wasted based purely on aesthetics, which is nuts. (Does that class as a pun?)
Gwaaan Intermarché. Check out their slick campaign, starring inglorious fruit, for a great cause. 300 million tons of waste is ridic. Discovered via my lovely friend Sara and mobiledia.com