I deeply respect Amer­i­can sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, the way one respects a wound­ed hip­po. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

The White Sav­ior Indus­tri­al Complex

Nice restrained inter­ac­tion design project by Sebas­ti­aan Pij­nap­pel. Some com­ments on the design from a Co.Design arti­cle:

He [Pij­nap­pel] says he took spe­cial inspi­ra­tion from lay­ing amidst high grass in a park.

As you lift your head up slight­ly you can just about see a few peo­ple walk by. You see them, but they don’t see you, or at least that’s the sense of secu­ri­ty and pri­va­cy you have,” he says, “You low­er your head back down and every­one and every­thing is blocked from your sight again. Just as eas­i­ly, swip­ing the grass halms aside expos­es you, putting you in the same space as them and allow­ing you to say hi.”

This, and what fol­lows when you click “fol­low him”, is indeed a small but won­der­ful exam­ple of what comics on the web can do. (Point­ed to by Rus­sell in this post who got it from Matt.)

Maybe we’ve been so busy break­ing the 20th cen­tu­ry record­ing industry’s machin­ery that we’ve for­got­ten to invent tru­ly new, 21st-cen­tu­ry music.

Music For Shuf­fle Sketch #09

Been read­ing up on this fas­ci­nat­ing project by Matt Brown. Short bits of music that fit togeth­er ran­dom­ly and are thus suit­ed to play­ing on shuf­fle mode.

In the end, the ques­tion I lodge against Home­less Hotspots and eVolo’s sky­scap­er pr0n is the same — is, in fact, the same I ask of all provo­ca­tions, pro­to­types and “design fic­tions”: what spe­cif­ic, his­tor­i­cal spaces, rela­tions and expe­ri­ences are they fore­see­ably like­ly to bring into being, for peo­ple and non­hu­man par­tic­i­pants both?

Week 62: In dreams begin respon­si­bil­i­ties | Urbanscale

Some on-the-spot cri­tique of Home­less Hotspots from Adam in these Urban­scale weeknotes.

Turns out fight­ing bulls is kind of hard. Sur­prise Bull­fight by Messhof. The dodg­ing and stab­bing is quite well done here. It has a nice loose­ness to it, sim­i­lar to NIDHOGG’s duels.

Odd bit of video which appar­ent­ly records the first encounter between Bel­gian film-mak­er Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and a Papuan tribe which had nev­er come into con­tact with “the white man”.

What dis­turbs me is the fact that, except for the bit at the end, the sound­track is replaced with some type of world music. It’s also impos­si­ble to tell to what extent this is staged.

But it did make me try to imag­ine nev­er hav­ing seen your­self in a mir­ror. And the bit at the end, where tribes­men play with a tape recorder does have sound, and is there­fore by far the most interesting.

Jean-Pierre Dutil­leaux (via The tribe of Toulam­bis comes first into con­tact with white | Video­Man)

I’m a suck­er for coop­er­a­tive boardgames. This one — Flash Point: Fire Res­cue — was point­ed out to me by Tijn, the pro­pri­etor of my favorite local game store Sub­cul­tures. Need to play it soon.

Mechan­i­cal­ly, the abil­i­ty to car­ry over action points to sub­se­quent turns is interesting.

And of course, you’ve got to love the mon­tage of stock fire­fight­ing pho­tos set to music here. To hell with objec­tive reviews.

(via indieboard­sand­cards — Flash Point: Fire Res­cue)

Just post­ing this because I linked to it in the pre­vi­ous post but the imagery is just too won­der­ful not to include.

A device to wres­tle with the STRONGEST ANIMAL IN THE WORLD: the rhi­noc­er­os bee­tle. This device includes a head-and-body mount­ed dis­play that equips humans with the appendages required to inter­act (with the males at least). In addi­tion it scales us and our forces to the bee­tle pro­por­tions grant­i­ng us sim­i­lar manip­u­la­tive capac­i­ties and even play­ing field; an archi­tec­ture of reci­procity.” (via Chris Woe­bken I Bee­tle Wrestler)