Washington D.C. geolocated tweets by smartphone (red = iPhone, green = Androids) from the Gnip, MapBox and Eric Fischer map set
“I’ve also thought a lot about the reproduction of these animals. Imagine these Strandbeests making copies of themselves simply by feeding them plastic tubes. I’m sure this is possible, but I need a few more million years to make that a reality.
Today, Strandbeests have an ability to multiply that I wasn’t aware of in 2007. Let me explain. The leg system of the beach animals works because of a combination of certain lengths of tubes. Because of the proportion of lengths, the animals walk smoothly. You could say that this range of numbers is their genetic code. I published this genetic code on my website and since then, hundreds of students, especially in the United States, have been able to produce their own Strandbeests. (Search YouTube for “theo jansen mechanism” and you will find them.)
You may argue that humans do this replication, but I see it differently. The Strandbeest is a self-replicating meme, a brain virus. It infects the student’s brain. In fact, the Strandbeest abuse students for their reproduction. For two years, this reproduction fell into a flow acceleration. Now, 3D printers produce walking mini Strandbeests. They are born, not assembled, and walk on the table, which you can see here.”
Nice Theo Jansen piece in HuffPo.
The Welsh Space Campaign at we make money not art (via iamdanw)
Foursquare Time Machine
via Foursquare Blog
[video]
File Under Awesome: London Tube Map Recreated With Lego Bricks
Sent my way by just about everyone this morning, this Lego map is one of five located at Tube stations across London as another part of the Tube’s 150th birthday celebrations. Each map shows the Tube at a different stage of development from the 1920s right through to the version shown here: a near-future map for 2020.
Painstakingly assembled from thousands of Lego bricks, the map looks great, although Neil Bennett from Digital Arts notes that its actual usefulness is pretty limited:
“… in the few moments we were there, tourists and travellers attempted to use the map to navigate their way across London and soon wandered off in search of a real map looking confused. Others were more impressed, and joined us in snapping photos of the map.”
Seeing as the maps are more art than information design, I don’t really see this as a huge problem, myself. The maps will remain on display at King’s Cross (this map), South Kensington, Piccadilly Circus, Green Park, and Stratford stations over the summer, and then will be transferred to the London Transport Museum.
(Sources: Design Arts, BuzzFeed UK — with more pictures of the map)
Quattroshapes: A Global Polygon Gazetteer from Foursquare -
this was a good talk at foss4g-na, too
[video]
“Is the web the first truly flexible medium? I tried to come up with other fields that need to design things for a flexible canvas, in the hope of finding inspiration there. The only media types I could come up with was the art of balloon printing and the art of tattooing.” — Other flexible media: balloons and tattoos ⚒ Nerd