MOTHERBOARD

Hollywood Films' Cut Structure Mimics Life Pattern

Sam_Gellman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:14:00 +0000

After carefully inspecting dozens of Hollywood films, a team of researchers has determined that the rhythm of shots in movies matches a pattern called the 1/f fluctuation, the same pattern that is found in dozens of natually occurring phenomena, like the flow of tides or the length of the human attention span.

Animal Collective and Danny Perez Turn Guggenheim Into Trippy Spaceship

Alex_Pasternack — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:53:00 +0000

(See a slideshow above)

Give Animal Collective the keys to the hallowed rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, and you are asking for a very special performance. That’s “special,” spoken in a garbled, monster voice, over the mistakable sound of a heartbeat recorded from the liver. Ie, it won’t be what you expected.

Standing amazingly still at the base of the rotunda in freaky masks and costumes that looked ripped from a Donnie Darko sequel directed by David Lynch, the band kept the jazzed-up hipster audience on the edge of their plastic cups and their swerving balconies, with the prospect of the band’s first (and perhaps only) concert of the year, and one done the old-fashioned way, in animal cosumes. But that’s all they did during Transverse Temporal Gyrus: stood there, in the middle of the freaking Guggenheim Museum (in a rare moment of bare walls), like inadvertant monuments to their own importance.

The real artist was Danny Perez, whose psychedelic, sometimes epileptic imagery meets the Collective’s music in a couple of videos and in their new film, the don’t-ask-why-it’s-called-that ODDSAC. He was the one really given the keys. And the space became his playground, a conch shell overflowing with video and sounds rising and falling and swishing about in a computer-programmed matrix of 32 speakers…

The Mystery of Antarctica's Blood Falls

pizza_dogs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:02:00 +0000

That’s a picture of the five story waterfall in Antarctica that spews blood-red water. Despite being discovered 100 years ago, researchers still don’t know exactly how “Blood Falls” as it’s appropriately titled, came to be. Only recently did scientists begin snooping around the waters beneath Taylor’s glacier that feed Blood Falls, and what they’re finding is pretty nuts…

A Little To Do List for the Last Human on Earth

pizza_dogs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:54:00 +0000

Many a crappy movie has depicted humanity’s end and epilogue: the final days of human life as we know it and the succeeding years of crushing desperation shared by mankind’s few survivors. Most of the time, Hollywood botches their depiction of life in the post-everything-world, which is why it’s delightfully scary and dismal to read a take that gets it right. Most portrayals of the post-apocalyptic age skip over the whole “how the hell do you survive in a destroyed world” part and skip straight to the Burning-Mannish Thunderdomery.

Whether civilization’s brought down by a meteor, incurable virus, or nuclear warfare, one day you might be the unlucky sap to arise unscathed by the carnage and too stubborn to just off yourself. Avoid getting caught unprepared in that scenario with this comprehensive guide to living in Hell-on-Earth. It’s like The Road minus the human cannibalism and Viggo Mortensen.

Linkdump: Laws of the Internet

pizza_dogs — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:35:00 +0000

Today we’ve got a list of links that beg hard hitting questions. Like, why do Japanese technology companies insist on realizing scary concepts from dystopian science fiction (like that guy making Skynet robots or that other guy with the Alien exoskeleton)? Why do people keep protesting the Large Hadron Collider? Don’t the realize by now that they’re never going to get that thing to work? And, perhaps most importantly, what laws could we possible need to govern the Internet when we already have established codes and standards like Rule 34?

The world was spared for one more year after the LHC fails to launch, again.
Obama reads his hate mail.
This Japanese company clearly did not pick up on PK Dick’s whole dystopian thing.
Five proposed laws for the Internet.
Israeli supermarket makes positively hysterical TV ad parodying the Israeli secret service and their penchant for secret assassinations.

Forget Avatar: Hubble 3D Is a Religious Experience

FredPasternack — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:45:00 +0000

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must confess at the outset a certain prejudice about Hubble 3-D. I have known an astronaut who flew on shuttle missions STS-9 and STS-45. I have been at the Cape for several Shuttle launches and landings (including both the launch and tragic non-landing of STS-107, Columbia). I have sat in the shuttle simulator. I have heard Story Musgrave talk about his repair of Hubble in 1993. And, in a heartbeat, I would jump at an opportunity to be shot into space myself.

Also in the spirit of full disclosure, I have issues with what at times seems to be a gratuitous use of computer technology in the movies. Having been around for the old days of headache inducing 3-D, the current technological breakthrough is interesting. Avatar was interesting.

But, in IMAX 3-D, Hubble 3-D is a religious experience. It is hard to find fault with the 45-minute documentary that details the history of Hubble, its near abandonment, and its resurrection on more than one occasion. The IMAX format in conjunction with 3-D virtually places the viewer in the shuttle, thanks to the camera work of the astronauts and the guidance, from Earth, of director Toni Myers. Yet it’s not just the photographic technique. It’s the entire experience. It’s about being there.

10 Questions for an American Indian Dancing Ninja Geologist

NOVAscienceNOW_Motherboard — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:11:00 +0000

Just a few seconds into this edition of 10 Questions, and Alexandrea Bowman is discussing the finer aspects of coyotes, hurricanes, and sais. Who knew scientists could be so dangerous!

Alexandrea is probably the world’s first geologist that dabbles in American Indian dancing and Ninjitsu — a combination so intense that Alexandrea should be given the Nobel Prize in Awesomeness. She is on a mission to eradicate pollution and misconceptions about Native Americans, and nothing is going to stop her.

Video: The Blue Brain Project Wants To Reverse-Engineer Thought

Dan_Luxemburg — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:48:00 +0000

A pretty good 17-minute documentary about the Blue Brain Project, “an attempt to create a synthetic brain by reverse-engineering the mammalian brain down to the molecular level” (not synthetic as in an artificial physical object, but as in comprehensively simulated).

They’re only on rodents now, but hope to move on to cats in a few years and progress quickly from there through primates to humans within ten years. My favorite part is a discussion on the first practical experiments they hope to do with a completed rodent model: Hook in up to a little robot with sensory data streaming back into the simulation and motor instructions being executed and then pick apart the simulation to see exactly what happens when the rat golem makes decisions.“ Oh, that’s where his memory of how to get through the maze is stored.” Not really exaggerating.

“Print is dying. Digital is surging. Everyone is confused. Good riddance.”

Alex_Pasternack — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:20:00 +0000

That’s the subtitle to a recent essay by Craig Mod, a computer programmer, book designer and book publisher, on how books are moving from paper to interactive tablets like Apple’s iPad.

He makes a good point (and one I think many of us cool kids already get): the death of the book is greatly exaggerated, it’s not death but evolution, and evolution, in spite of our nostalgia for an era of “having something to hold onto,” can be a very good thing.

Of course, it’s hard to replace the something-to-hold-onto quality of a poetry book, or a coffee-table book, or any graphic-heavy book. But it’s not so hard, and may be very desirable, to replace the not-so-form specific quality of most novels and non-fiction.

I thought about this when I recently stepped into a big chain bookstore to exchange a book. I wanted to swap my books for a very beautiful book – the type you can’t usually find at a used book store, where I typically shop, and the type that wouldn’t translate well to digital. (Or maybe, as the example from Penguin above illustrates, maybe it could?)

Nanotubes Could Be the Petite Powerhouses of the Future

Gabriella_Mangino — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:09:00 +0000

Conventional batteries are so old-school. They’ve been around since the 1800’s, and require toxic non-renewable materials. Plus don’t you just hate how energy leaks away over time?

Well, tiny …

Bitmap (New York Edition)

warmchip — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:45:00 +0000

It’s hard to resist the nostalgic pull of 8-bit aesthetics, especially when it comes to music. But what place does the blocky, pixelated style of 80s videogames have when it comes to, say, visuals that require some detail? Maybe it’s a statement about our modern fixation on total information awareness – and an attempt to re-install a sense of childhood awe into our everyday environments.

Or maybe it just looks cool…

Vampire Outer Space Love Music: Pictureplane

forthebeat — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:06:00 +0000

“Have you guys heard of the movie Twilight? Well this next song is just like that. Only in outer space. Yea, vampiric teenagers in love in outer space.” – Pictureplane, Mercury Lounge, March 8.

Pictureplane, Millionyoung, Small Black and Washed Out played New York’s Mercury Lounge on Monday night, and it was a consistently awesome show from one act to the next…

The Maverick and Goose of Solar Aviation

James_Knutila — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:27:00 +0000

As part of their series on the future of transportation, GOOD profiles Swiss duo Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borshberg, who in 2003 announced their intention to fly a solar powered plane around the world. Their company, Solar Impulse, was founded with the goal of raising awareness about solar and green technology, and hopefully achieving ‘perpetual flight’ — a plane that can fly around the clock, using the sun during the day, and reserve battery power at night.

They must be good talkers, because Solar Impulse raised 100 million dollars from corporations to put their solar-powered fantasy up in the air. Seven years later, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA has been unveiled, and it’s weird lookin’. The HB-SIA has a 64-meter wingspan, carrying 650 square feet of cystalline solar cells that produce 40 kilowatts of power and speeds up to 45 miles per hour, on a sunny day.

Dances With Geologists

NOVAscienceNOW_Motherboard — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Alexandrea Bowman, this week’s scientist with a secret life, is a budding geologist who doubles as a tribal dancer. Years ago, her family was forced to hide their Native American identity to protect themselves from persecution. After a DNA test proved her ancestry, Alexandrea began doing everything she could to embrace and promote her family’s unique culture. She is an active American Indian dancer, traveling with an inter-tribal educational group to schools and events, and bringing along heavy doses of Native American culture. If you don’t embrace who you are, she says, you can never understand who you are.

Probably a good idea to listen. Because here’s another secret: she also knows Ninjutsu. And there is nothing in this world as tough as a Native American dancer/geologist that knows Ninjitsu.

The Aquatic Life of Dennis Chamberland: One Man's Quest to Colonize the Sea

Motherboard — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:22:00 +0000

Watch our documentary “The Aquatic Life of Dennis Chamberland” above. Full screen recommended.

Dennis Chamberland doesn’t just want to live underwater: he wants anyone to join him. And he’s determined to make that a reality.

Chamberland joined NASA as a bioengineer in the early ‘70s, just as the manned space program was starting to thunder forward. But rather than looking up to the stars, he began looking down – deep down. As a developer of the agency’s Advanced Space Life Support Systems, which monitors the safety for all off-planet habitation pursuits, Chamberland soon became a lead proponent of research on an idea being floated by NASA at the time: using the sea as a testbed for space exploration. Before long, this homegrown explorer would become one of the country’s leading proponents of undersea habitation, and an advocate for what he calls the “space-ocean analog.”

An aquanaut and Mission Commander on seven NASA underwater missions, Chamberland has also pursued landmark research in bioengineering and become a prolific writer of science books and sci-fi novels. But it was his work for NASA that resulted in his harvesting of the first agricultural crop in a manned habitat on the sea floor, and led to his designing and construction of the Scott Carpenter Space Analog Station, a two man undersea habitat off Key Largo. The little permanent submarine has been visited by a range of curious futurist explorers, including James Cameron and TV producer Rod Roddenberry, Jr.

Chamberland’s next goal, he explains in this episode of Motherboard: colonizing the sea.

20,000 Floors Under the Sea

James_Knutila — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:25:00 +0000

Malaysian architect Sarly Adre Bin Sarkum’s entry into the 2010 eVolo Skyscraper Competition is an underwater skyscraper. The concept is a smorgasbord of green tech — harnessing the wind, sun, and waves to generate its power. The scraper grows its own food using hydroponics and the miniature forest that sits on top, and is stabilized by tentacles that harness kinetic energy. The architects have an ambitious plan:

bq.“We envision a future where land as a resource will be scarce; it is only natural progression that we create our own. Approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface is ocean, even more if climate change has its way, hence it is only natural progression that we will populate the seas someday. We picture a new metapolis, created from a collection of hO2+ scrapers, as a city that does not consume nature but creates and produces nature. In the end becoming hO2+ Cities.”

Mixing American Indian Roots With Environmental Science

NOVAscienceNOW_Motherboard — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:34:00 +0000

Ever since Alexandrea Bowman watched a video in grammar school of baby seals getting clubbed, she knew she was destined for environmental science. Fast forward to now, and Bowman is pursuing a degree at Queens College in New York, mixing her research on contaminants in Long Island Sound with her roots in Native American culture, and its attitude toward the environment. It might not be such a bad idea to take some ecological cues from the Native Americans — they took much better care of our land and waterways than we do. In the process, she’s finding some scary contaminants in the Sound, which affect the food we eat, causing birth defects and neurological damage. Thanks to the work of scientists like Alexandrea, one day we might eat our tuna melts without worry, and maybe jet ski on the Hudson like Will Smith in Hitch.

Batteries Are For The Weak: Nokia Seeks Phone Juice In Kinetic Energy

Michael_Byrne — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:52:00 +0000

In the great chase for free, clean energy, kinetic energy has been one of the lesser grails. Save for tidal forces and seismic shifts, the amounts are rather small to start thinking about using kinetic energy to power trains and cars and the like but, as far as personal electronics go—from iPods to pacemakers to GPS units—there’s some hope for using that otherwise wasted body shakin’ for something useful—other than, like, looking good. According to eWeek Europe, Nokia has filed a patent in the U.S. for cell phone technology that “harvests ‘piezoelectric kinetic energy’.” So, imagine a tiny gyroscope-like device in the charger that’s able to take forces from many directions, and covert them to energy.

Eweek cites a statement by the International Energy Agency warning about the dramatic rise in the energy usage of portable technologies over the next 20 years, saying that “this will jeopardize efforts to increase energy security and reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.” Cell phone, sure, but I’m thinking Crazy Legs could’ve powered up the Bronx by now….

Richard Feynman: Imagine the Jiggle!

Alex_Pasternack — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:46:00 +0000

Physicist Richard Feynman’s joy over physics is infectious, and that’s with the sound off. But listen to him speak, and you may never hear a more excited scientist, or a inspiring teacher.

In this series of videos from a 1983 BBC documentary, he reveals his trick for appreciating science: not just using your thinking cap but putting on your imagination goggles. The result, in Feynman’s case, is something like a jazz lover riffing on his favorite tunes. Better – it’s physics by way of Charles Mingus, string theory by way of a hot mellifluous bass…

Video: We're Trapped Inside the Tron Legacy Trailer And Can't Esc

Will_Han — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:39:00 +0000

While it’s amazing how long it took for Disney to reopen the Tron franchise, the trailer for the next installment indicates why the wait was worth it.

The original 1982 version of Tron was a pioneer for its hand-coded, head-banging CGI and bold neon stylings (definitely watch that movie’s trailer here). Appropriately, the new flick will clearly be turning on the digital effects jets in a way that wasn’t really possible until now. And that includes – brilliantly, eerily – using a self-referential technology: virtual actors…