Here’s the presentation I gave in Copenhagen last week regarding my Physical Virus project. The project is an architectural conversation about invasive species; the first step is to create a ballet performance using ants, using a series of modified printers to print pheromones and influence ant behaviour. This presentation shows briefly the main stages involved in the execution of the project, a few influences, and some videos pilfered from various places.

You can also see the first batch of ants on flickr here.

ants2 short.mov (23602 KB)

I’ve been taking time lapse videos of the first of my new ants. These guys are Lasius niger – common UK garden ants – they hatched the other day – and they’re in a cylindrical tube with some sugar in the bottom.

Posted via email from Unit 14

Project Icarus at MIT sent a camera to near space for $150 (more).

Toshiba made this film sending a chair to near-orbit (more).

Steve Truglia is planning to leap from a balloon at a silly height. He has lots more money, though.

He’s been inspired by Kittinger – whose jump can be seen in this video by the Boards of Canada…(you may also want to check out my earlier blog post)

Playing with space might be fun. Anyone agree?

Posted via web from Unit 14

Open_Sailing 1/3 model of skeleton from cesar harada on Vimeo.

We spent two days at Auto Italia South East making a scale skeletal model of the Open_Sailing craft prototype…it took the best part of twenty hours to build, two hours to photograph, and ten minutes to destroy.

We’ve got a finished mini prototype of Open_Sailing_01! It is stable, secure, cheap to make, and self-righting. You’re watching the future…now

This model was tested in Paris. Production will start later this month in London. More photos here. Come to our launch event!

Woohoo! There’s a new video that explains the whole Open_Sailing project online!

Click here to download or watch in other formats

From Cesar Harada on Vimeo.

I just found out that there’s a documentary about the Xixuau-Xiparina Reserve. It’s a fantastic cause, and a brilliant place. The work that Chris Clark and the Amazon Association have done is incredible: empowering a whole community with education and healthcare, internet access (and a football pitch!) plus creating a 500,000 acre protected rainforest reserve in one of the most biodiverse locations on the planet. If you can do anything to help the reserve, please do!

www.b-movies.co.uk/film-projects/amazon-association.htm

Brilliant. Click here for more about the man. Click here for more about the parachute jumps.

The internet. Big. Useful. Intangible. Unintelligible. Gosh, you’re using it right now. But how did it come about?

This video uses beautifully bold, simple graphics to explain the overly technical aspects of networked computing that we all take for granted in a logical and concise way. The voiceover sounds like a proper documentary, like you’d watch at school.

If you like this, check out the Creative Commons-licensed icons the author has been slaving away over.