comments and pictures

I enabled comments now for the posts (I thought that my be good for some feedback). So don't hesitate to give your opinion. You can leave your comment at the bottom of a message once you've clicked on that message.

Also I added some new pictures to facebook (click the logo at the right)

Slime molds

I'm working with slime molds at the moment to see if I can create images with them. I successfully made new subcultures from my initial culture. They should respond on certain chemicals and to light. making images is mostly to explore their behavior and see if I can use them for some interesting things.

Wine tulips

First tryout for a field of tulips made of wine glasses. Each tulip in the field has a different height and an amount of water in it corresponding to its own height. A big fan will make them move in the wind. the clashing against each other should produce a variety of sounds (due to the different amounts of water).

Big breakthrough in transparent display technology

As you can see on the picture above I made some great advancements in the field of transparent display technology ;)

I want to experiment with water injected bubble wrap. Very low-tech and very analogue. By using a syringe I inject water into the individual bubbles and can create patterns or pictures. A laser pen creates an amazing pattern on the wall ones traveled through the water bubble. very different from the pattern when it shines through a bubble without water. I want to use this to create some nice visualization. 

sensitive to sound or light?

I'm interested in the hard devision of nature and 'man made nature'. Is out separation from nature or the distinct devision between the natural world and our urban world building up to a point where it cannot be bigger? Is this tension field going to collapse some day? In other words, is the natural world one day going to merge with our synthetic world?

This broad and big question led me to some smaller questions. In this case the adaptation of nature to resources we expose them to. More specific; do plants change their resource preferences when we take away theirs. For example, if our sky gets so filled with particles of carbon, dust, or other yet to be invented waste, that its not penetrable by light anymore, do plant switch to other available sources we provide them with, such as sounds. This is not meant as an experiment wether plants respond to sound but it is raising the question stated before. 

To pull the question into the future I will use a sensitive plant. This sensitive plants response to touch but I make it respond to sound. As if to say the plant already adapted. 

Collaboration

I though it might be fun to see what happens when two people have to share one keyboard to type massages. I cut two keyboards in such a way that each person has half of the alphabet to work with. I'm interested in how people will collaborate in such a case. The users are not able to speak with each other. So I could start a sentence but my co-writer does not know what that sentence or word is so he or she needs to complete it. or at least try to construct a proper word and sentence. 

It might be nice to enter a chat room and see wether you could have a proper conversation with some one. 

Technical difficulties to reconnect the circuitry made me change to another keyboard and use two circuits. This has the disadvantage that I cannot make a clean jigged edge. In a few days I get my order of some missing components and than I should be able to wrap it up soon and start experimenting. 

The solution

A simple, but effective solution for the California financial problems: