brent stirton's photos of vanishing ethiopian tribes
Brent Stirton is a senior staff photographer for Getty Images and a LIFE.com contributor who routinely spends nine months of the year on assignment, all over the world, covering everything from narco-wars in Afghanistan to "fog harvesting" in Nepal. In 2007, Stirton spent two weeks in Ethiopia's Omo River Valley, documenting tribal groups that still live largely as they have for centuries. "This is a woman of the Mursi tribe, wearing boar's tusks, which traditionally would be considered men's decoration. The Mursi women are famous for their clay lip plates, a symbol of beauty. A woman would literally have a little hand bag with three or four of them featuring different designs. Sort of their own version of Prada." (via life.com)
mad catz' cyborg r.a.t. gaming mouse: if life has steam achievements, this will unlock them all
New line of Mad Catz gaming mice ships in Spring 2010, different models between 50 to 130 euros. The knobs, the color combination, the hidden needles! (via gizmodo)
tina root sings reaping beauty about bayonetta (and tina fey)
Last year at Comic-Con, everyone was talking about Bayonetta, this new game about a witch who comes back from hell and tries to find her way home. Beefy, Random and I wrote this song about how Bayonetta looks like Tina Fey and got Tina Root from the 90s industrial band Switchblade Symphony (back with the LA band Small Halo) to sing the hook which she wrote. The song was produced by Jason Bazinet from SMP. (download reaping beauty from mclars.com via kotaku)
the future is nao
The robot ad that ROCKS because of the soundtrack, a perfect blend of Boy Robot, Hecq and Lassigue Bendthaus. The rest? Oh, the rest. SingularityHub has a longer article on NAO: movable telepresence, facial recognition, text-to-speech translation sound solid, 15 thousand dollars for it more so. Check the ad in which robots lie and then humans get the moral upper end by literally kicking them in the back.
dubai: xero error, dubai 2010 and the star wars mockups
I wanted you to see Cédric Delsaux's Dubai Star Wars mockups first. IO9 has a longer post for you with all the construction images Delsaux so eloquently filled with Vaders, AT-ATs and Jawas. Among other geeky boytoys.
This satire of the classic Hollywood movie trailer was created by Dubai-based post-production house Rolling Thunder. The tongue-in-cheek clip depicts a futuristic Dubai, complete with skyscrapers, space shuttles and underwater space stations. The creative concept, script and all VFX shots were done in-house, supervised by Hermann Venter and Henrik Friberg. (read io9's comments for the starship homages)
In the future Artificial intelligence [AI] is superceded by Natural intelligence [NI]. The story centers on XE7, a cyborg on a spiritual journey who discovers the unknown. He begins to realize that things in recorded history contradict with facts he has observed in real life and begins to open up his mind to the supernatural. He finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, at a major crime scene, leading him to a Cyber-terrorism scandal and trouble with FACET - The First Authority in Cyber Espionage and Terrorism. Packaged as a slick, futuristic thriller, the compelling storyline keeps you guessing till the end. (xero-error.com, extra info in the article via thenational.ae)
UPDATE 1: Just seeing there was a SF short released in Dubai entitled Alliance, any more infos about that, anyone? (The film, set in the 24th century, begins with a planet under attack from a shadowy extra terrestrial race who launch brutal and inexplicable raids on Earth at the same time that a decades-old anarchist movement plunges the planet into cycles of terrorist attacks and destruction.)
the marionette unit: steampunk ballet torture film
SYNOPSIS: This film is set in an alternate Victorian England, a world where steam-punk technology has developed rapidly and in a world where all creativity, art and individual expression is state-controlled. The Marionette Unit is a theatre show where machine and human have been fused together. A musical machine that resembles a twisted tortured church organ, run with valves, steam and electricity, is connected by a mass of electrical cables to three ballet dancers, who have the wires fused into their bodies. The dancers are controlled by the machine much to the amazement of the Victorian audience.
We follow the story of Smith, an enigmatic character connected to an underground society of artists, hunted by the police. He has come to watch the prize ballet dancer, Georgette try and escape the wired clutches of The Marionette Unit. Will she be able to wrestle free and escape with Smith, or will she succumb to the powerful forces that hold her captive? What follows is a stunning and imaginative display of the human spirit fighting to be set free. (the marionette unit official site via io9)
the first post of 2010: the machine that turns itself off
Instructables has instructions for building this Claude Shannon-style box that turns itself off. (via boingboing)