igargoyle

Skiiers' Spinal Armor

It's probably cheaper than some motorcycle leathers at $160, plus $40 each for the cervical and coccyx add-ons. Just don't weaken it by drilling holes in it to mount your dorsal dino-spikes. Otherwise, get nuts.

Link via Med Gadget

Haptic Feedback 'body armor' Vest for Gaming

"This kit includes the FPS Vest and 3rd Space Incursion game for the PC. The FPS Vest is an impact-generating device designed to enable you to feel the game's action for the ultimate gaming experience. It contains eight active zones that simulate the direction and forces of bullet fire, crushing explosions, and fear-inducing finger taps as they occur in the game...

System includes FPS Gaming Vest, air compressor, USB cable, power supply and 3rd Space Incursion game disc."

The PC game supports networked multi-play, and the vest also comes in black and camo too. Can you say: Tele-presence glove and API?

Link via Wired

Beyond Cyberpunk

"When we began Beyond Cyberpunk! (BCP), there was no such thing as the World Wide Web. Hypermedia programs like Apple's HyperCard were the only way to inexpensively deliver hypertext with linked sounds, images, and animation... The result was a 5.5 megabyte "connect-the-dots" cyber-manifesto. In 1993, we followed up the first BCP stack with a one-disk update."

[Link via Gareth's Vanity Portal]

innovate or die

Google and Specialized are searching for the brightest engineering minds on earth for the first ever Innovate or Die Pedal-Powered Machine Contest. $5,000 and a nice new bike go to the winners, who create the most innovative and revolutionary design. It's simple, you and up to four others build a zero-emission machines that transform human pedal power into a new and useful purpose then upload a video of it in action to YouTube by Sunday, December 15th. See the innovate-or-die.com website for full details.

GeoLogging BurningMan

Marc Merlins 2007 GeoLog Map
Marc Merlins 2006 GeoLog Map

[2007 Playa map links via BoingBoing]

They Call Him "Blade Runner"

Watch South African Oscar Pistorius sprint with prosthetic Carbon Fiber lower legs and feet.

[link via Open The Future]

Los Angeles regional Burning Man Decompression TODAY

In honor of today's street festival, don thee all thy Pornj apparel, and Glam-Tech Warriors; Mount Up!

Bird's Eye View for Cars

I love technology that gives us insight into something we didn't know before, especially if it's presented in such a way that is easy for everyone to understand and use. This bird's eye view from Nissan is just that, it makes parking video-game easy.

[via Jalopnik]

Vanity Search Jewelry

"The VanityRing doesn't have a jewel, instead it shows the number of hits one gets, when he searches Google for the name of the person who wears it, a more adequate value in our time. It is personalized using a custom software, and after the name is typed the ring will change its display to show the personal "attention carats", while every night, when it is inserted into its docking station the ring is reloaded and updated."

To play with this notion in relation to links, blogs, and viral media, I'll let you click here for the designers' name. Why not? It's just a link, which I found via Make: Blog, posted by Jonah Brucker-Cohen, who linked it via information aesthetics. I'm "RoBo", and Google isn't case-sensitive even when you use quotes. robo what? Not exactly.

It's like that movie The Jerk, where Navin proclaims: "Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now." Thanks IMDB. The Web isn't necessarily in print, but you can print out part of it. A blog isn't in print, but we do aspire to leveraging it's advantages by updating iGargoyle more often than we have been. I've Googled people and only found their entry in an online phone book. But even then, knowing their location, be it their city or street, would help you find the right phone number. One of Goggle's many services involves geography now. I'll give you some keywords to search for yourself, using the engine of your choice: "Paul Virilio" and "Big Optics". Why? Sometimes, it's all about context. Remember, according to Navin R. Johnson: "I am not a bum. I'm a jerk."

Avian Geomagnetic Vision?

I am very interested in vision and hacking "The Mind's Eye" in reference to visual perception beyond the sense organs. It has been suggested that some birds migrate using the magnetic force lines of the Earth:
"Currently, theoretical, behavioral and physiological evidences support two magnetic sensing hypotheses: a magnetite-mediated magnetic sense [4]–[6] and/or a vision-mediated magnetic compass [7]." This quote comes from a recently published study of the latter possibility. The full article is really brainy.

[inspired by Street Tech ]

Ontology of an Enemy: Total Surveillance

How systems work, and understanding patterns has become more and more part of my everyday life, but the idea of building systems to create "Total Awareness" is so much like science fiction, yet so close to our everyday lives it's frightening. This small except is a quote from "How the Cyborgs Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Surveillance", which is far more in depth than just this small topic, and a fascinating read.

InferX privacy preserving real-time analytics is a data-mining tool based on previous research carried out by the parent company, Datamat, for the targeting of missile interceptors. It works by inserting an “InferAgent” program into an entire range of computer systems – banks, airports, ticketing agencies, harbor authorities, etc. – and then using encrypted transmissions to perform real-time pattern-recognition analysis on their data. The software is promoted by Michael Brown, the disgraced former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): “What these algorithms do is they look at what’s the normal pattern for any given set of data points, and if those veer off by any fashion, then the protocol says you need to look at that.” InferX is designed to hunt around the world for “unknown unknowns”: those things that “we don’t know we don’t know,” as Donald Rumsfeld put it. Because the data is not physically warehoused, it escapes the restrictions placed by Congress on DARPA’s Total Information Awareness. Indeed, the company has actively marketed its system for the US military’s TANGRAM project, which effectively replaces TIA. And InferX is a dual-use technology, including a marketing application: “InferCluster uses the same distributed architecture as InferAgent to send agents over networks for the clustering of groups of objects with similar features from multiple data sources. InferCluster can be used to group customers with similar purchasing behavior, or to even discover patterns of who is not buying and why.” In that last phrase, one begins to sense the disquieting pervasiveness of what Peter Galison calls “the ontology of the enemy.”

This article is wonderful because it touches on so much more, such as corporate analysis of core demographic groups of the United States, "It profiles the cultural background, lifestyle, hobbies and aspirations of each cluster, and it also tracks them through life-stage changes, allowing for what Acxiom calls “preemptive marketing,” or the chance to begin pitching products and services to households shortly before they enter a new phase.". It also talks about topics such as the Panopticon, and the Neo Conservative "takeover" because it's so directly tied in with the Total Information Awareness program and the idea of strategically determining preemptive policies.

Social interaction is such a core part of how technology grows, and how that technology can either change us, or how we can change others with technology. It's for that reason I have always been a fan of Steve Mann and his concept of "sousveillance", but in many ways, that's just batting at the low hanging fruit. When you think about what is known about each and every one of us in this society, does wearing cameras on our heads really change anything? The problems of surveillance are so much huger. This is really a topic in my mind that just won't go away.

[Link via delicious]

Lithium Iron Phosphate Battery Comparison

"Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) is generally considered to be the most promising new battery chemistry for use in electric vehicles. Although energy density is somewhat lower than Lithium Cobalt type cells (like those used in laptops and mobile phones), LiFePO4s are far more robust and offer much longer cycle life, in the order of 2000-3000 cycles. This makes them a much safer and more economically viable option."

[Link via Hack-A-Day]

Nanosculpture Implant

Lu Cafausu, San Cesario di Lecce, Italy; photo Maurizio Buttazzo
[this article is copied from a email sent to SculptureCenter list subscribers. Please note there will also be performances associated with the project Forgotten Sculptors, both at ScuptureCenter in NYC, as well as a participatory performance from wherever you are. Write forgottensculptors@sculpture-center.org to get involved.]

Excerpt: "Professor C was seated in front of me, in his studio at the Nanotechnology Research Group. I had explained things to him openly: I felt a physical need to contain that place, to incorporate it in me. Lu Cafausu had to be able to travel thanks to my body, I wanted to become its vector, I felt an urgent need to hide it, wrapping it inside me like a fetus. To become its living frame."

October 11th, 2007
Forgotten Sculptors: 1. The Nanocafausu

Dusk. I knew my way around that suburb. Lu Cafausu was in the reflection on a puddle, together with a scrawny pink pepper tree. Surrounded by tract houses and condos that still emitted odors of construction dust and mortar. It looked like a Cyclops with a droopy single eyelid. The totally ungovernable nature of its beauty, and at the same time its complete autonomy with respect to my sentiments, had never been so clear before. It had been raining for days, and a dark dog had taken shelter under the roof: from a distance the dog was just a blotch, like a little tar pit.
Two hours later I was in a room full of Canon printers: Professor C was seated in front of me, in his studio at the Nanotechnology Research Group. I had explained things to him openly: I felt a physical need to contain that place, to incorporate it in me. Lu Cafausu had to be able to travel thanks to my body, I wanted to become its vector, I felt an urgent need to hide it, wrapping it inside me like a fetus. To become its living frame. I also told the professor that the first time I talked about this with Cesare (a mutual friend) he immediately urged me to swallow it. SWALLOW IT. I was fascinated by the word, more than the act in itself. Digestive processes exist to transform or to expel, but the nano-Cafausu would never have to be transformed.

Talinjit was from New Delhi and had been Professor C's assistant for a couple of years. Together, with boundless patience, they tried to explain how I should guide the flywheel with which I could create, "freehand", the nanosculpture of Lu Cafausu. Later, though, we would have to come up with about 10,000 euros: the average cost of a hypothetical material with which to "work". Otherwise, the use of the laboratories and the work of the team were free, because everyone seemed to like the idea. But something seriously bothered me; in that moment I tried out my sculpture using a material that was easy to shape, but toxic:
«It's the most ductile and flexible of all elements, but it is not suitable. This is because we cannot know what will happen inside your body in ten years' time. We can inject it into a muscle, under the skin, or if you prefer we can use a long needle to place it in the parenchyma of an organ. No one can tell you what will become of your little Cafausu if it starts to freely circulate inside your organism...»
The fact is that I continued to complicate matters. I thought about a material that would remain stable, in its shaped form, only inside a living human being. I imagined my death and Lu Cafausu as it came apart within me, with me.
I took some journals home with me that day: "Mechanical and Electrical Behavior of Carbon Nanotubes", "Rivista Italiana di Compositi e Nanotecnologie".
Over the next few days the attempts to construct a form similar to the Cafausu failed repeatedly. The scientists who were helping me thought it was excellent news and tried to convince me to abandon my sculptural compulsion, saying I would not be able to achieve much more, even after a full year of trying. I remember that during the first days they kept urging me to make a computer-aided construction, based on a photograph but the results seemed cold, impersonal, like an architectural model. It wasn't the work I wanted to contain, to carry, to feel, to frame. The sculpture had to be less like a caption, it should have been more symbolic, more emotional. At a certain point Talinjit, without taking his eyes off the monitor, said that I was building myself a non-functional organ.

(Translation: Steve Piccolo)

Forgotten Sculptors is a project by Emilio Fantin, Luigi Negro, Giancarlo Norese and Cesare Pietroiusti, produced by SculptureCenter in the context of PERFORMA07, the second biennial of new visual art performance. Part of the project consists in a series of short email stories like this one. A performance by the four artists with the participation of Joan Jonas and Steve Piccolo will be held at Sculpture Center on November 3rd at 3pm. As a final step to the project, the artists will invite everyone to join them in a collective performance that can take place at home, on Sunday, November 18th. For more info on how to participate, please email forgottensculptors@sculpture-center.org

With the support of the Italian Cultural Institute, New York.

Thanks to the Nanotechnology Research Group, Lecce (www.nnl.it)

SculptureCenter
Founded by artists in 1928, SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit arts institution dedicated to experimental and innovative developments in contemporary sculpture. SculptureCenter commissions new work and presents exhibits by emerging and established, national and international artists.
SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves Sreet
Long Island City, NY 11101
t 718.361.1750
www.sculpture-center.org

PERFORMA07 (November 1-20, 2007) is the second biennial of new visual art performance presented by PERFORMA, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. www.performa-arts.org

Comments comments comments

Hey, Nym here.

I've been going through the long list of unapproved comments, and I thought I'd share a few:

Ashlin writes in on the article about Remote controlled cyborg sharks to tell us to leave sharks alone. Anonymous chimes in on the same article to say that igargoyle is just as bad as "the media", and that we're giving our enemies the upper hand by talking about our advanced shark mind control technologies.

Simon asks in regards to the article on the 1984 Wrist Computer:

"I have a SEIKO UC-3000 model, problem is I damaged the transmission coil in the waych when changing battery therefore watch does not work. Is there a way to replace the coil, or is there a specification for coil ie wire size, turns etc."

Anyone know anything about SEIKO UC-3000 watch coils?

7th grader, Fiona Fievez writes in to say that she thinks "rely think this is great" and is working on a design and tech fashion show.

Aderet writes in to tell us that the article about mice growing back their limbs that

"They neglected to mention in older articles, that the strain of mice which 'regenerate' are "...better known for their inherited susceptibility to autoimmune disorders"

Aderet also points us to a recent paper at: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/95/20/11792.pdf
(June 2007)

Anonymous writes in to correct me regarding "Oxycyte: Better than blood?". Gee, I knew I should have paid more attention in biology:

"I think that you are mistaken about the meaning of oxygen and oxidation. Oxygen is an element and oxidation is the process during which electrons are being added to an element or a compound."

Thanks all for keeping those subscriptions, and checking back! Please don't hesitate to write your own comments or send us tips. We love to hear em!

$20-120 B&W HMD

Hacking the Spy Video Car into a wireless HMD. The replacement eyepiece is $20, which is a CyberDisplay 300M LV, and the whole setup, including RC car with transceiver and B&W camera is a very hackable $120.

[Link via Hack-A-Day]

Arduino LilyPad joins E-textile Construction Kit

We've already covered Leah Buechley's DIY Wearable LED Display and now her e-textile construction kit is expanding to a more modular version of the Arduino microcontroller kit. Sewable LilyPad components are now available from Spark Fun. You access her paper and photos from her projects or by going to her publications page. Check out her DIY links to get started.

[Link via Hack-A-Day]

Transformer Fashion (NSFW)

This isn't actually new news, but it's of dresses that transform into other dresses, which is pretty cool in of itself, and it doesn't hurt that one of them involves a woman's dress disappearing altogether.

Paris, 4 October 2006 -- Hussein Chalayan continues to view the world as a research laboratory but with an added hint of the supernatural. The dresses, fluid and light, sometimes responding to the geometric criteria and at other times presenting Swarovski crystals, are evidence of impeccably mastered and detailed work. And to bring the catwalk to a close, the designer proposes a 'Return to the Future' with dresses that transform themselves, as if by magic, amid the amused and stunned spectators

NSFW Video below: