sanzhi ufo houses
Came across yusheng's superb flickr set about an abandoned housing complex near Taipei. According to yusheng, this place was built in the 70s as a resort but was later abandoned. I couldn't find any definitive explanation about why exactly it was abandoned, however. There's some talks about failed partnerships and/or real estate bubbles. The original source at notcot also lists another flickr gallery with some interior shots and also speculates that the complex was apparently built in the early 1980s as a series of vacation homes marketed towards affluent Taipei residents seeking to get out of the city. (via notcot, recommended by dH!)
syd mead: the visual futurist behind blade runner and tron
Half the tech/design blogs in my blogroll ran this post and I don't really know who to via this for, really. This very flickr set features some 18 pics by "visual futurist" Syd Mead, the guy who did all the design work for Blade Runner and Tron. If this is not enough for you, CGSociety has just had a brief resumé on Mead so check that out as well while you're at it.
I see the future as a contest between human intelligence being degraded by dogma, and human intelligence being allowed to invent itself to solutions and to its own credit.
vexille: uk trailer online, uk theatrical release date set
Fumihiko Sori's new cyberpunk/biotech movie Vexille gets a UK trailer and all you lucky British cunts can watch it from the 9th of May on them huge frigging screens. The UK trailer is really here, the YouTube above is just the Japanese version with English dubs. Here's the synopsis if the title doesn't ring a single bell. (via)
"The year is 2077 - 10 years has passed since Japan had decided to leave the United Nations to go into isolation. They have completely blocked the islands with an ultra magnetic field which prevents anyone to see what is going inside. This was a result to opposing to a treaty which UN has passed, preventing the development of all bio and robot technology which has evolved drastically and has become a threat to the human beings. When Japan finally begins to move, the US government sends in a special force team SWORD, lead by a female commander Vexille, to find out what is really happening inside the country."
doomsday: where eating people is standard procedure
DOOMSDAY apparently -and unfortunately - evaded my attention for the past few weeks and I really need to have at least two different fingers chopped off for that. Neil Marshall, completely unknown in the cyberpunk/postapoc scene signs this as both director and screenwriter and he's got the tough-ass chick vs epidemic meme spiced up with Mad Max and a hairless villain with a mohawk - very similar to John B himself. (Really.) IO9 has some extra scenes to soothe the thirst until the official debut on the 14th. Anyways, one of the best-looking fetish horde on the screens in the past years.
and mankind finally has an expiration date
Great Britain, 2007. A deadly plague, known as the "Reaper Virus," has broken out, killing hundreds of thousands in its wake. In desperation, the British Government evacuates as many survivors as it can out of the infected area, and then builds a wall, preventing the remainder from escaping. Thirty years later, with the wall still up and the victims all but forgotten, the virus breaks out again. The Government decides to send a crack team of operatives, led by Major Eden Sinclair, into the hot zone to investigate the possibility of a cure.
haujobb - we are
wireframe meets neon meets seventies funk craze meets slipstream meets new york meets demotune meets haujobb
march 8th: happy [eat me out day]
And Michael Manning had a hand in this. (and this is not via, but please lick fleshbot)
end of an era: spiderlike cyberpunk chandelier
If Big Brother had a chandelier, this would be it. "End of an Era" is an art project created by Ian Burns that attaches 16 small black-and-white TVs to a chandelier-ish frame. Each screen displays a live video feed (presumably received via the extended antennas in the pic), and from the looks of the screens, it's the same one on each. Well, that's kinda boring. I want 16 different live video feeds, Ian. I want this thing to look like some kind of 24 scene cutaway run amok — think you can handle that next time? (via dvice)
future vehicle prototype porn
The Quaranta borrows its hybrid powertrain from the Toyota Highlander Hybrid and the Lexus RX400h: a 3.3-liter V-6 and the Hybrid Synergy Drive system with a combined output of 268 horsepower and 213 pound-feet of torque. Italdesign claims the car will return a city/highway average of 33 mpg, and a pair of fuel tanks that together hold about sixteen gallons of gasoline provide a 620-mile range. "E-Four" is, in fact, a fancy name for Toyota's part-time all-wheel drive system (called "4WD-i" in the Highlander Hybrid), which uses a separate, 68-horsepower electric motor at the rear wheels that kicks in during acceleration or when slippage is detected. (via wired)
The EMBRIO Advanced Concept is a one-wheeled recreational and commuting vehicle for the year 2025, designed by the Canadian company Bombardier Recreational Products. Although the riding position is similar to that of a motorcycle, the vehicle uses sensors and gyroscopes to balance up to two passengers on a large single wheel whilst driving. (via thecontaminated)
The Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is developing another bus, which is able to operate on designated tracks. Future Bus is able to operate at very high speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour (155 mph) and could therefore be an alternative to high-speed railway lines. This highly streamlined electric bus can also be driven at lower speeds on existing roads and bus lanes. With a length of 15 metres (49.2 ft) and a width of 2.5 metres (8.2 ft), the Superbus has similar dimensions to a conventional bus. Due to the seating arrangement without a centre aisle however, the height is just 1.7 metres (5.6 ft). The low aerodynamic drag (less than 0.2) makes the Superbus more efficient than a passenger car. (via thecontaminated)
venetian cyberpunk carnival masks
Sieghai (new addition to the everchanging blogroll) found this awesome pic off flickr, that's a Venetian shopwindow with some sweet cyberpunkish carnival masks. This actually sets off a tremendous shopping and travelling urge in me. Send me more wicked neo-antique.
appleseed: ex machina (new dvd trailer)
március 11-től lehet megrendelni az amazonon az új appleseed: ex machina 2DVD-s verziót. már keveri mindenki a blu-ray, hddvd és szimpla dvd, valamint az ezekből összeállított szimpla, dupla és collector's edition verziókat, egyesek szerint angol-spanyol-francia nyelvű audiotrackek vannak rajta, az eredeti japán nincs is, úgyhogy sanyarú szívvel kell megrendelnem kipróbálásra ezt is az eredeti appleseed coll-ed meg az új vexille mellett (ami viszont csak május 20 után jön ki). de azért csak mellékelem a higgadtzenés-majdnemnégyperces prada-verziót is.
moltensteelman - walking beast
"The Walking Beast is a mechanical creature that walks on 8 legs! (...) Its current weight is 11,300 Lbs. When finished it will be approximately 6 tons (12,000 lbs)! It stands 11 feet tall, 8' 4" wide and 23 feet long! It is capable of transporting 8 people including the driver. It has a step height of 41" and a stride of 5 feet!"
Hell of a post-apocalyptic strider for those with an apparently infinite amount of time to pop some scorpions in the middle of the fucking desert. With a Chevy V-8 engine. Srsly. (link)
trembled blossoms
Directed by the performance artist James Luna and based on James Jean's Nouveau-esque wallpaper seen in the ad campaign, the film is an ambitious narrative fantasy depicting a cyber woman's journey through a magical, illustrated forest.An army of CGI operatives were enlisted to show her morphing from a Lalique-like blossom, through a pastel coloured meadow and into a splendid, seductive glade, where she meets Pan. The fashion element is subtle yet cleverly handled. She begins as a sort of pale neuter cyborg wearing nothing but PRADA heels and then a mysterious character (a sci-fi stylist?) emerges from the trees and clothes her in the stand-out red and blue check sheath dress from the S/S '08 collection... (via)
superplonk: AR, stross style
one experiment in my ongoing surveillance series simulates superplonk with images of network cameras. via motion detection i am reconstructing a place’s image without people and cars. all moving objects are becoming ghosts. only people and cars who are standing still are becoming visible. movement makes you invisible. jan covers this topic in his master thesis, too. (link, via)
sleep wa(l)king robots interprets dreams via dance
The Sleep Waking robot is the result of a collaboration between Fernando Orellana and Brendan Burns. Orellana spent a night in The Albany Regional Sleep Disorder Center in New York. The staff wired him up and collected data of every conceivable kind: EEG, EKG, rapid eye movement - you name it. Orellana describes the use of the data to animate the robot (...) (link)
german djs and their living rooms (and spiders on drugs)
Found this amazing (and at the same time pretty much outdated) photo selection of living room interiors that belong to certain German DJs off Digg.. Vaguely reminds me of the page where you had all the photos of drug-induced spiderwebs and visually it turned out that caffeine messed up your brain in a much more dramatic way than mescaline or cocaine. Just think about how these DJs handle the music and their decors. Awesome! (link)
DJ HELL
RICARDO VILLALOBOS
RICHIE "PLASTIKMAN" HAWTIN
synesthetics - microdots
A microdot is text or an image substantially reduced in size onto a 1mm disc to prevent detection by unintended recipients. (...) Historically, LSD solutions were first sold on sugar cubes, but practical considerations forced a change to tablet form. Early pills or tabs were flattened on both ends and identified by color: "gray flat", "blue flat", and so forth. Next came "domes", which were rounded on one end, then "double domes" rounded on both ends, and finally small tablets known as "microdots". (source: wikipedia)
Tökéletes példája az oldschool, alagútban fejjel előre zuhanó goa-tekerések középszintjének, a demót eredetileg XBOX360-ra gyártotta a Synesthetics (STS), második helyezést ért el a tavalyi Assembly-n a combined demo versenyen. (via pouet)
the new chiba
Chiba Ákos képkeretező után újabb névrokon, aki foglalkozása szerint (igen megalomán módon jelezve) kardos. Köszönjük. Még mindig fogorvos és utcaiszamuráj, valamint szervizes Chibákat keresünk.
missing pages (amended version)
Jerome Olivier decently kicks fellow movie-makers in the teeth with his fotomation, the technique that enables him to create a 24-minz movie out of HD stills. (Think Broken Saints, done really properly.) The whole movie in high-def is freely downloadable off the original page, so you're all better off if you download the zips and start watching right away.
Because that's where things get really confusing. If you've done your primer in sci-fi, you'll know time travel (which the whole movie is about) is inherently bad and involves fucking your parents, dedicated savants are known for not maintaining social relations and there's gotta be at least one traitor in a movie. You have all these. With the sweet addition of butoh dancer group Dairakudakan (they're the time-traveling vampire Core security guys) and time travel gadets that look like steampunk dildos, your synapses can start shooting away. This is one of the best short movies in SF I've seen in a while, also one with too many cliches - so we end up giving it seven outta ten. (link)
hello kitty gasmask fetish
The greatest achievement of the February 10th protest against the Church of Scientology was the Hello Kitty gasmask girl. Gief, now. (via)
operabál 2008: miss thailand greets planetdamage.com!
Stiller kolléga örökítette meg a pillanatot az idei Operabálon, amikor is lekapta a minket (és egyben titeket is) üdvözlő Miss Thaiföldet. Hálát adok a pontosan időzített SMS-eknek, hálát.
warren ellis via'd me, yay!
You might remember the unearthly-looking video that I dubbed "japanese liquid magnetic sculpture". Turns out that there's another one like that and the artist behind them is Sachiko Kodama. Funny thing is, it's all on Warren Ellis' new blog, grinding.be (God bless him and for the Doktor Sleepless series, but that just goies into another post) and I've just been via'd, which is - sue me, but - a great piece of news for this week. The other video is included above.