Equiped with a video camera (some even infrared), microphones and intelligent autopilot, the current generation of drones are already more than mere new toys for the boys. In the hands of teenagers for fun or in those of authorities for surveillance etc., some people worry about a new wave of privacy and even terroristic threats, while others see a whole range of new opportunities opened up by drones ranging from augmented reality games to lightweight logistics or environmental scanning solutions. One thing is for sure: this is gamechanging beyond the technology itself.

Image of Parrot’s ARDrone via Bright.nl

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“Rolling orchards stretched beyond us as we wandered through the edible gardens of Acres Green. Spots of colour peppered the greenery and branches hung low with the weight of ripening produce. As we looked closer we saw that each tree was actually growing different varieties of fruit. What we originally understood as a tangle of different trunks was actually an intricate technological graft. On parting the leaves we found strange flesh-like prosthesis that seemed to bind limbs from different species together. We realised that to maximise harvests the communities of Acres Green were experimenting with augmented orchards and designing strange new natures.”

Check out the Power of 8 website to feed on more, nifty futurefood incl. pan-city feral cidre businesses, Beamer Signum Apis Melifera aka beamer bees, living hills, flocking clouds, etc. Well done, 8!

Image courtesy of The Power of 8

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A lot of effort seems to go into VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) configurations, as can be seen in for example the video of this Buzz Lightyear-like low-noise electric VTOL PAV. Yet, there is also the Spiral Duct ESTOL Concept. NASA apparently also took inspiration from Transformers and shows how a car can be turned into a personal air vehicle (see video).  For more PAV-videos, check out NASAPav.

Although a few years old,  the article entitled “These legs are made for walking” (Discover Magazine) presents a concise overview of five visionaries and how they see beyond vehicles as we know them, first of all by questioning the assumptions underlying them today. James Kuffner (Head of Planning and Autonomy Lab at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University) for example asks “why wheels?”, his lab colleague Chris Urmson asks “why a driver?”. Brian Seeley (eye surgeon and founder of the CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flying Efficiency) Foundation, check out their blog here) shares thoughts on flying cars, while Robert Thompson (director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University) questions the US’ infatuation with gas-guzzling cars and conjures ecochic pint-size autos with moss roofs. Peter ‘X-Prize‘ Diamandis thinks about truly personalized cars, i.e. shape your own carbon-nanotube impregnated composite bodies.

Image: still from NASAPav’s video

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One such element is language. Although the dynamics of linguistic evolution differ per language as well as geographically, it only takes a brief look back in history to realize that language evolves over time, influenced by accelerating societal change – also spurred by new media and communication technologies. What will language be like in 50 years time? There are many ways in which language can be futurized: neologisms (futurespeak), subtle references to societal changes (e.g. mass migration leading to mixing of words and sounds, new technologies leading to different behaviours), different rythm or length of sentences, new typographical signs, new ways of naming old things, etc.

Director Michael Winterbottom did a great job in turning language into a core ingredient of his subtle way to bring the future to life in Code 46. Now, Dutch National Poet (dichter des vaderlands) Ramsey Nasr wrote ‘Mi have een droom’ (I have a dream), a poem set in Rotterdam in the year 2059, written in a future language, with elements of urban rap and melting pot slang.

Thanks to Emiel for pointing it out. Image courtesy of NRC.tv

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Although lithium is no fuel (it is not consumed through usage) and lithium-ion batteries ‘can be recycled’ (note: they do contain substances harmful to the environment in case they should end up in landfills and pollute water reserves) other worries arise concerning the socio-economic impact of lithium mining activities in the aforementioned countries.

On a more fundamental level – a more philosophical one if you wish – nature and history teach us that monoculture is generally a bad idea (cf. resilience). So whether we like it or not, we need to (re)learn to think in terms of a mix, of diversity once again.

Image courtesy of PeriodicTable.com

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So much emphasis is being place on not having the right new car line up to face the future that one wonders why so little attention goes to ‘mobility‘ as a system that needs fixing instead of merely ‘the car‘. Joel Makover - author of Strategies for the Green Economy - illustrated this beautifully a while ago in his blogpost entitled: Reinventing Mobility: It’s Not Just the Cars, Stupid! One could even assert that radical innovation efforts in this respect are hindered by government subsidies ‘to save the industry’ (cf. the argument: ‘too big to fail’).

We have seen cars running on electricity, on air, on algae, on acid, … yet they are still cars as we know them (no, we are not fishing forflying cars). And cars, no matter how nifty, pose certain problems … e.g. idle time storage (aka parking), they rely on heavy, expensive infrastructure subject to wear and tear (cf. roads), they tend to clog rather than swarm intelligently, they are driven by people – like it or not, we are a mitigating factor in terms of safety, efficiency, etc. etc.

Friedman already reminded us that historically speaking truly radical innovation is most unlikely to come from the regime players, the dinosaurs. So imagine IKEA building cars … is what design student Robert Larsson set out to explore in his concept vehicle. How about looking at the automobile industry as a major smart grid player. Or imagine a carmaker shifting to become a smart grid energy player. MeetSchwarmStrom or an ambitious network of mini gas-fired power plants for the home (goal: producing as much as two nuclear reactors within a year). Lichtblick and Volkswagen team up to … perhaps become a major future energy player on the smart grid market? With cars charging at home and charging or providing peak balancing to homes, offices, etc. (after all they spend the majority of their lifetime parked, +90% according to some).

Most of you will be aware of MIT’s Smart Cities project featuring stackable cars (like shopping carts indeed), roboscooters and mobility on demand services. Also Carlo Ratti’s Senseable City Lab at the same MIT looks into ways in which are cities and its users could become smarter, something of which also mobility could benefit in myriad ways. Check out the beautiful EyeStop (up for testing in Turin, Italy). In this respect, of course there are the major IT players looking into the role ICT could play in untying the knot we have gotten ourselves into, e.g. IBM’s intelligent transport. Yet mobility is not only about cars and their infrastructure, we tend to forget about walking. Take a step back and think about it: how much space in a city goes to car-related mobility – which means standing still most of the time and hindering human traffic – and how much is actually still people-space?

If you do wanna see a far-out car concept that could tackle some of mobility’s challenges, check out designer Ahmad Filiz’s fascinating globule concept design for Peugot.

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• The Race for Genetic Enhancements Will Be What the Space Race Was in the 20th Century
• Water Becomes the New Oil
• WiMAX Networks Will Soon Create Country-Wide Wireless Internet Access
• By 2025, the Worldwide Average Life-Span Will Be Extended by One year Per Year
• Bioviolence Becomes a Greater Threat
• Invention Becomes Automated
• Japan Dominates the Race for Personal Robots
• Holographic 3-D TV
• The Holy Grail of Computers Becomes a Reality
• Electric Cars Become Fully Practical by 2020
• Religion Growing in China while Secularism Grows in the Middle East
• New Oil from Old Wells
• Green Gold: Algae’s Huge Potential as Biofuel
• Nanotechnology May Alter the Value of Diamonds and Other Precious Commodities
• The Millennial Generation Will Have Major Impacts on Society
• Quantum Computers Revolutionalize Information Around 2021
• Breakthrough DOUBLES Solar Energy Output
• Consumers Will Take Active Roles in Inventing New Products and Services
• Virtual Education to Enter the Mainstream by 2015
• Genetic Research May Soon Conquer Most Inherited Diseases

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Radiator company Jaga (yes, the funky Belgians who built the Belgian waffle at Burning Man 2006) developed Oxygen radiators to keep CO2 levels in classrooms, offices, hospital & living rooms under control by pumping in fresh air. Turns out that opening up a window does not really do the same trick as air circulation needs a serious boost in order to pump up oxygen levels in a decent way.

Yet there is more in the air that we breathe than CO2 that we ought to worry about. People suffering from health anxiety might actually want to ‘link out’ before reading the next sentence.  Some indoor environments turn out to be 5 to 10 times more polluted with all kinds of toxic chemical compounds than the heavy traffic outdoors.

Kamal Meattle already gave us a few options in terms of plants to keep around our houses and offices in order to provide us with cleaner air to breathe. Now, meet Andrea. Some of you might have met her at Paola Antonelli’s amazing Design and the elastic mind exhibit last year at MOMA NY. Andrea is a nifty little system designed to maximize the potential of using plants (take your pick: Spathiphyllum (spath or peace lily), Dracaena marginata (red-edged dragon tree), Chlorophytum comosum (spider plant) or Aloe vera) around your living quarters to help purify the air. It has been developed by Mathieu Lehanneur and Dave Edwards (Le Laboratoire) and has now been prepped for commercial release (October 8th, 2009).

How about a car version of Andrea? No, not for inside the car, maybe a plant-based skin with the same properties. Purify while you drive …

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Several years ago Osnabrück cognitive scientist Peter König developed the feelSpace belt, a compass like buzzing belt (since then a hit amongst the DIY crowd), equiping people with a ’sense of direction’ much like birds have one. Users of the belt felt like the prosthetic became a part of their normal sensory apparatus. The trick lies in synesthesia (check out Terri Timely’s masterful video on the phenomenon). By making ‘the new sense’ talk to the old ones, the latter can translate its ‘feelings’ to the brain in a language the brain already understands; in the case of the feelSpace belt: touch.

The latest issue of the wonderful Good features David Pescovitz, BoingBoing editor and fellow futuregazer over at the Institute for the Future, explains the growing amount of research and development in digital synesthesia :

my colleagues and I have spent the last few months exploring the notion that “everything is programmable,” or will be soon. The idea is that emerging technologies—from pervasive computers to synthetic biology—are making it possible to program our bodies and our worlds to desired specifications. Increasingly, we are looking at the entire world through a computational lens.

Pescovitz pays homage to Paul Bach-y-Rita, the Mexico-born professor in neurobiology and rehabilitation who was a pioneer in the field of sensory substitution, who once said “We see with our brains, not with our eyes.” Pescovitz mentions several examples of digital synesthesia projects, such as: Wicab (founded by Bach-y-Rita) did amazing work on BrainPort, an attempt to create a vision prosthetic that translates images from a video camera into tactile responses on the tongue. “Users often report the sensation as pictures that are painted on the tongue with champagne bubbles.” In Tel Aviv is investigating ways in which cells in plants respond to light as a way to design “seeing skin”. Hello biomimicry!

Imagine a world of bodyshops filled with plugins and wearables to extend our sensory apparatus. To some a transhumanist’s wet dream, to others a mere natural evolution in the sense of media as extensions of man (McLuhan), to yet others yet another digital divide.

Via Wired and Good

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Theatre comes in many flavours and the Dutch theater company Theater AdHoc defies categorization in a lovely way. Join us on an inspiring trip through the mind and heart of its founder Jan van den Berg.

NB (Nik Baerten – Pantopicon) : I am sure there have been many attempts to characterize the kind of theater you and your colleagues at AdHoc have brought to the stage for many years now … “Experimental science theatre”, “Research theatre”, being amongst them. How would you describe what you do?

JVDB: I like to regard myself as an exploratory voyager whose expeditions do not necessarily lead to the blank spots on our planet but rather to the outer limits of our seeing and common sense. Driven by the motto ‘Reality is too interesting to leave it to the realists’ I visit scientists and scientific projects that demand the utmost of my imagination. Subsequently I make scenarios for theatre and recently also for film, i.e. dramatized stories about my expeditions and findings. Another way of characterizing what I do, could be: satisfying my curiosity in public, both through meeting experts ‘out there in the wild’ and by sharing my experiences in front of a live audience.

blueprint ©DigiDaan

NB: As you mention the arts-science link or perhaps also divide, it reminds me of the fact that this year we are celebrating the 50th birthday of C.P. Snow’s famous Rede lecture: “The two cultures” in which he describes the drifting apart of sciences and humanities as a major obstacle to solving the world’s problems. Although 50 years later, one could assert that it is still a very contemporary issue. As you are constantly crossing borders between the two, tell us more about how you view the ‘inbetween’ space between arts and sciences and the tension or perceived tension between them.

blueprint ©DigiDaan

I tend to think that, basically, the current tension, or division, in our world is not so much to be found between the worlds of arts and sciences (or between science and humanities) but rather between opposite concepts of space and time as such – and thus a pessimistic or optimistic mentality and attitude – and all the political, social, economical and ethical consequences coming with it – in whatever domain. Yet there is of course this major difference in the way in which arts and sciences consider the importance and necessity of proof and evidence for the assessment and appreciation of work. That is why I cherish the inbetween space as a sanctuary for the best of two worlds.

NB: Yet we also live in times in which the homo universalis attitude of artists practising science or scientists being involved in art  are crossing borders to the point one could say a new middle ground is arising – not unlike what Dave Edwards refers to as “artscience” for example. Being a Harvard professor, he also runs LeLaboratoire in Paris where artscientists meet and work on their experiments. You once embarked on a passionate journey to turn the amazing ‘cathedral’ of radio communication in Kootwijk (NL) into a creative retreat and laboratory for artists and scientists.  Is it still a dream of yours, whether as ‘Instituut Kootwijk’ or someplace else?

Instituut Kootwijk © Joep Lennarts

NB: Theatre science teaches us about the so-called 4th wall principle … the fourth wall being the imaginary separation between the onstage area and the audience seats, its opacity depending on the kind of interaction being established between players and audience. In which way do you vary the fourth wall in your performances? How does it change your story or the way it is perceived?

JVDB: In my performances there is absolutely no such thing as a fourth wall. During most of my performances, both on stage as in the audience the lights stay switched on. I want to be able to look my audience directly in the eyes when I tell them my story and create a truly here & now ad hoc atmosphere. I approach the audience as my guest. I welcome them, literally, and take them with me on our journey through the night (the show). This includes taking in account the particular circumstances (the beat & need & authenticating details) of each and every night. On top of that, live interviews with scientists and technologists are a regular part of my shows; dialogues between facts and fiction, between the reality of the theatrical and the theatricality of reality.

NB: You have travelled the world to visit some of the most amazing scientific experiments, labs and met some absolutely fascinating people. Tell us something about whom you met and how essential this interview deep dive is to your work?

JVDB: Meeting and interviewing scientists, both in their daily practice ánd live on stage, is crucial to my artistic work. This is mainly the case because my scenarios are inspired by their scenarios.

For example, meeting and interviewing J. Craig Venter (in 1998) while he was in the middle of his ratrace for sequencing the human genome first, gave my colleagues and me (1) far better one-liners than we ever could have imagined ourselves, (2) a unique insight (behind the curtains) in a revolutionary context at a historic moment in time, and (3) unique footage. In short: a thrilling, adventurous experience that inspired me to sometimes use all-American big statements and large gestures in order to make a story communicative and inspiring.

Majorana © Joep Lennarts

In this sense, penetrating 1500 metres deep into a mountain in Japan, as I did in order to visit a Nobel Prize winning physics experiment about which I wanted make a theatreshow, is sometimes not even half as exciting as drilling deep into an experimental mind.

NB: When dealing with the future, we are mostly dealing with stuff and situations which do not exist yet or are very abstract issues which are difficult to grasp, especially for people not – or only distantly – involved in their conception. This means we have to construct them, render them tangible somehow. How do you deal with this in theatre?

Zoom © Joep Lennarts

Zoom was – on all levels – one of the most complex and difficult projects I ever realized, because Kuipers’ experiment was almost beyond my comprehension and imagination. However I didn’t want to accept that, because I regard light as something which ‘belongs’ to all of us. And I was told that experiments like the one of Kobus Kuipers are about to mark a new era in communication technology and thus influence our nearby future. So I felt the urge and the responsibility as an artist to relate myself to it. But it was really difficult to get a grip on the material.

To keep the spirit high, my colleagues and I encouraged each other by saying: “of course we’re never sure of what we do, that’s why it’s called research”. But sometimes even that didn’t do it anymore. The breakthrough in our creative process was the  decision to stage a ’sum over all possible histories’ of our understanding of Kuipers’ experiment, a simplified interpretation of the so-called ‘path integral’ as a dramaturgical hold, using all our theatrical means to tell the same story in all (our) possible ways. Parallel to Kuipers’ experiment (bringing light to a standstill) everyone in the ensemble developed a way to bring his/her own artistic means to a standstill; in music, dance, storytelling, stage- and lightdesign. Thus we tried to physically experience (ourselves) and creatively visualize (for our audience) what it means if Kuipers states that he does things (with light) ‘that are not supposed to be possible’.

NB: How do on the one hand scientists and on the other artists view your work? In which way do they respond differently?

JVDB: This last Zoom show, was highly appreciated by scientists and visual artists, though not as much by regular theatre audiences, alas. I think this has partly to do with the fact that what Theater Adhoc basically does, is telling and visualising stories about ideas and scientific experiments, rather than stories about the conflicts between characters and ego’s. This has turned our shows more and more into a kind of installation-like performance art, which is not necessarily a non-dramatic artform but much more a situational, poetic and delayed than the well-made conflict-based, psychological and explanatory theatreplays. We prefer to invite our audience to enter another domain of time and space and visualize what it might look like, beyond the borders of our naked eyes and our common sense.

Zoom © Joep Lennarts

JVDB: Personally, in terms of dreaming, I’m mainly interested in creating the ultimate storytelling situation and not so much in dealing with the latest technological possibilities. Which means that I’m focussing on ‘new ways to tell a story’ and on new forms of interacting with my audience. When I dream about that, however, paradoxically I always end up imagining very classical formats such as a symposion or a common room context. My nightmares are about so-called ‘events’ in which everyone can see for himself what one likes to make out of the flow of images, sounds, and mixed-media happenings that are vented upon the audience. At the same time I realise that it might be that such a borderless-intoxication-event is the ultimate and true consequence of what theatre has been after, from the very beginning of its existence; much more than my Appolinian approach of ‘the invisible’ and ‘the unknown’.

NB: Most of your performances aim for physics, genetics, information science … Indeed, discoveries within these fields have changed and are changing humanity and society in profound ways. Yet also within the humanities and for example economics changes are occuring which are absolutely revolutionary. Also in exploring the future we notice a similar gravitation towards science and technology when we probe them for events, developments, changes the future might bring which could possibly turn our world upside down.  Which are your motivations to place more emphasis on the (hard) sciences and technology and less on the humanities ?

JVDB: In my case it all started out of plain curiosity. Coming from a philosophical (humanities) background, I didn’t know a lot about the (hard) sciences and technology for a very long time. Then, for various reasons, I started to feel ashamed about the fact that I knew so little about the stories and the concepts behind the big discoveries of the last few centuries; that I hardly knew anything about the scientific insights and the technologies that are making our world, and shaping my own life within it, functioning the way they do. On top of that, I read an article by Frank Schirrmacher, one of the chief editors of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, who stated (on the occasion of the sequencing of the human genome) that artists should regain their interest, their influence and their responsibility in the development of today’s major scientific and technological projects. They should do so not only on an aesthetic, a fictional and a moral level but also – and especially – on the level of research & development & decision making.

schoolbord © Joep Lennarts

NB: Theater is an artform which comes in many flavours and is part of just about every culture on the planet. Its form, function and appreciation varies depending on its context. But it makes me wonder: are there theatrical traditions elsewhere in the world that you admire and would like to experiment with? Are there themes – just as groundbreaking as but not part of Western science – you dream to assess some day, themes or developments just as fundamental in changing who we are, what and how we do things?

JVDB: I’m highly fascinated by the philosphy and the skills behind the art of walking in Japanese Noh Theatre. One of my ultimate future projects would be to try to tell a story with nothing more or less than (1) appearing on stage and being present for some time (just like that) … standing still … walking a little bit from here to there … and then telling a short story about a street in a small village, an intersection in the town nearby and the very end of the universe.

NB: What if you could and would really like to change something, to have an impact beyond art & entertainment? Which audience would you pick? What would it be like?

JVDB: Try to picture this: during my last year in highschool I doubted between applying for theatreschool or trying to become a development worker in a third world country like, for instance, Papua New Guinea. Now, I really don’t know if one can call that ‘an audience to pick’, just as much as I’ve got no idea at all, what and how it would be like if I would give it a try, but it would definitely change quite something in my life. Whether or not it will have an impact beyond art & entertainment, however, is to be doubted.

Majorana © Joep Lennarts

JVDB: I reckon my final frontier will be death. As it is for most of us, I guess. My ultimate challenge will be to face and grasp, as much as possible, the very moment of crossing the boundary from here to there – the everlasting nowhere – and see whether I can prolong that very instant a little bit by telling a short story; about a street in a small village, an intersection in the town nearby and the very end of the universe.

NB: Dear Jan, thank you so much for sharing.

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