This crank-turned, rotating cylindrical work of art is more than just a visual masterpiece. Certain key elements of the scenes are elevated to trigger levers, which in turn play an organ. An organ that is playing the Star Wars theme! The four sets on the platform are scenes from Hoth, Tatooine, Naboo, and the surface of the Death Star.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5Lgcen-PGI

Most impressive! Aside from the fact that it is being used to promote a crappy, overworked prequel. Oh well, this thing is still quite possibly the best diorama anywhere, from anytime.

[via Geeks Are Sexy]

The Signature PRO headphones are handcrafted in Germany, with soft-touch leather that’s supposed to be pleasant to keep on your head for hours. They’ve got 40mm titanium-plated sound transducers with a frequency range of 8Hz to 42kHz, an impedance of 32 Ohm, sound pressure levels of 98dB and they come with two connectors.

If you think that $1,299(USD) is a lot to spend on a pair of headphones, check out price on the ultra-fancy Ultrasone Edition 10, which will set you back a cool $2,749.

[via Ubergizmo]

Luzinterruptus is a Spanish collective that is known for creating guerilla LED light installations in Madrid. This installation is called Radioactive Control and consists of 100 decontamination suits that are propped up like scarecrows, each one is illuminated with LEDs giving that ghostly look. This particular installation rattled the crowd of festival attendees. You can walk through this rural field and see them up close and personal.

This installation will stand for 30 days. It’s fitting that Germany announced that they will abolish nuclear power by 2022.

[via Inhabitat]

This project was led by Dr. Michael Beets and Dr. Bernd Radig, part of a team or researchers in the IAS group at Germany’s Technical University in Munich. The robots they created actually go shopping and prepare a traditional Bavarian breakfast. Two robots were created for this project, TUM-James and TUM-Rosie. TUM-James takes care of the shopping while TUM-Rosie does the cooking. TUM-Rosie can boil sausages, skim them out and serve them. TUM-James can cut some baguettes for you. These ‘bots learn from doing, so sure enough, we’ll have Skynet (or a robotic Denny’s) on our hands soon.

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The ‘bots use MS Kinect sensors as their vision, and the robots can make logical decisions when handling materials that they are unfamiliar with. Hopefully, at some point, they’ll be making a fruit salad or some eggs to go with the sausages.

[IEEE Spectrum via Designboom]

Watch the video to see how Jan Herling and Wolfgang Broll’s image synthesizer achieves diminished reality:

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It’s not totally seamless – not yet anyway – and if you noticed, they used mostly uniform backgrounds in their demo, but the effect is still jaw-dropping. The program is currently Windows only, but Herling and Broll are working on an Android version. Engadget surmises that the app will be free for non-commercial use.

[Ilmenau University (DE) via Engadget]

The Myon robot is about 50 inches tall and weighs 33lbs. Myon is an interesting robot because of a few different things. He’s got 48 joints and 192 sensors. His skin is made out of Bayer makrolon and a layer of glass fiber-stabilized polycarbonate to protect him.

What I find most interesting is that this bot is also modular. Any part of him that’s damaged can be easily swapped out – sorta like the robots in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Here’s some footage of an early incarnation of Myon getting test-driven:

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He was designed by the studio Frackenpohl Poulheim from Cologne and developed at Berlin’s Humboldt University as part of the European ALEAR (Artificial Language Evolution on Autonomous Robots) research project.

[Designboom via Plastic Pals]

This twister takes about 7 minutes to form and is powered by 144 jets and 28 tons of air. The system was initially created to funnel away smoke from inside the museum to the ventilation shaft and the outside world.

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The whole thing is more than 100′ tall, making it officially the world’s largest artificial tornado, which is not likely to be a very crowded category in the Guinness Book, is it?

[via Presurfer]

Created by Kolja Clemens of Germany’s MOM, these cool aluminum airplanes are just the right size and shape for hanging up your leather bomber jacket or flak jacket.

While this particular wall of little metal aircraft were created as a tribute to the closing of Berlin’s famous Templehof airport, I really think somebody should mass-produce these for our closets.

Are you listening out there, closet organizer manufacturing boss-people (I bet there’s actually a German word for that, something like klosetorganiserstellungmachenbosspersonlicher.)

[via Designspotter via Bottlepets]

Even though these handmade German wooden robots measure just a little more than 6-inches tall, they should do a great job stinking up your entire room. Can you tell I don’t care for the way most incense smells? But I guess its better than the greasy oilcan aroma that most robots leave behind.

You can get your hands on these odoriferous little robots over at GeneralRobots, where they sell for €39.99 (appx. $54 USD) each.

I’m talking about the xphone. And yes, that’s a VHS tape going inside it. Watch as this German-made spoof pokes fun at consumers’ demands for a do-it-all device and technology’s ever-increasing capacity to pack a ton of features into one gadget.

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The Onion would be proud of whoever made that video.

[via electrobeans]

Here’s iDriver and Spirit of Berlin in action:

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Praise Apple and the iPhone! Well, not really. Upon reading about iDriver at 8bitfix, commenter Solidsnake72 took time off from sneaking about and shared the video below. It starts small, but an insane turn of events comes about 2 minutes into the clip:

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Blackberry FTW! Although RIM’s smartphone loses points for using Bluetooth, which of course has a limited range, I think we can all agree that controlling a real F1 car is infinitely more fun than controlling a station wagon, even if said station wagon has lasers onboard.

Update: as nobbi points out in the comments, the Blackberry video is (almost) certainly a viral marketing stunt. Can anyone confirm this? At least no kids on balloons  were involved. And thanks to gusto for the tip!

The “Speaking Piano” has been programmed to recite The Proclamation of the European Environmental Criminal Court World Venice Forum 2009, for all to hear. Artist/composer Peter Ablinger transcoded the voice of an elementary student into data that could then be interpreted by a computer and mapped to servos that play the piano keys. Why? Something to do with an artistic and political statement.

And while the humans in the video clip below are speaking in German, the piano speaks its truth in plain English. Turn up your volume, watch, and enjoy…

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Weird, wild stuff indeed. Alles klar, herr kommissar?

[via adafruit industries, hack-a-day and matrixsynth]

The setting for Andreas Illiger’s Microsia is inside of a virtual “plant cell” of a leaf. As you move your cursor around, you touch “cellular particles” which will be used as triggers for the ambient sounds.

Microsia may look a bit like Flow, but it’s not about gameplay this time – it’s all about making music. Sounds are created by manipulating the position of  the particles, then turning them on to initiate sequences of sounds. Some of the particles set tone, while others modulate sounds or tempo. It’s really pretty cool once you actually read the instructions.

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If you’re intrigued by what you saw in the video clip, you can download the demo version of Microsia here. The full version normally retails for 19.95 (appx. $29 USD), but is currently on sale for 9.95 (appx. $15).

Hein was inspired the “block” housing he lived in on the streets of Berlin – as well as his childhood block home in Latvia, and decided that the rigid construction style was the perfect subject for a Tetris tribute.

Insert your quarters now, and enjoy…

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Sergej created this amusing short animated film through the magic of Adobe After Effects.

[via PSFK]

The Bike Dispenser first came out in 2005 in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It’s actually a renting machine – users have to return the bike to the nearest dispenser at their destination. The bikes are equipped with RFID tags that allows the company to track the bikes, in case people forget that they left their rented bike at home. We do that sometimes.

Gold-to-go is, as you may have guessed, a vending machine that sells gold. It sells 1g, 5g and 10g gold bullion as well as Krugerrand gold coins. TG-Gold-Super-Markt, makers of the gold vending machine, tells us that the bullion and coins are intended to be given as presents and not forms of investment. Still, I don’t think this type of vending machine will last more than a day here in the Philippines. This thing would pillaged in hours.

And from Pennsylvania comes the Live Bait & Tackle vending machine. Yup, a vending machine that sells organisms. That will soon be fed to bigger organisms. You think PETA approves of this? Check out the other 5 vending machines at Woman’s Day.

[via The Presurfer]

Berlin-based artist Aram Bartholl created these cards by uploading the individual images to MOO Cards, who specializes in making tiny business cards, each with a different image. While the cards ask the question “Are you human?”, I’m not quite sure what would happen if you handed one of these to a robot. Would it self-destruct? That would be cool.

Did you know CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”? I always thought it meant “Cats Acting Cool Taste Chocolate Ham Animals”. Mnemonics, your dear, dear friend.

[via F.A.T., Josh Spear and Micah Spear]

Buss and his team dropped ACE outside of their university and instructed it to go to the Marienplatz, which is 1.5 kilometers (0.93 mi) away from the school. ACE’s problem? It didn’t know how to get there, and it had no digital map or GPS. So ACE had to ask the people it came across for directions.

ACE can detect nearby humans using cameras as well as motion- and posture detecting software. ACE also has a touchscreen for a head, and another screen with an animated mouth. Once it finds a human, ACE calls out using its built-in speaker and asks the person to touch its screen if he’s willing to help. ACE will then ask the good Samaritan to point its body in the right direction. ACE will then be on its way, but not before saying “thank you” to the fleshy construct who helped it.

After 5 hours, ACE reached its destination. In its defense, Buss’ team said that ACE became too popular for his own good, and was slowed down when it crossed a busy pedestrian zone, where 21 passersby stopped to talk to the defenseless robot. As expected, ACE also received wrong directions, but fortunately it only happened once. While ACE still needs to be equipped with a bullshit detector, roboticist Paul Newman of the University of Oxford in the UK was impressed by the German experiment, specially because the robot adapts to how humans process and share information instead of the other way around.

[via NewScientist]

Unlike other documentaries, Mehli Bilgil’s documentary contains no interviews, real world footage or image, not even a single shot of a PC or server. The clean and simple animation was made possible through the use of PICOL icons, which are basically minimalist icons that are now available for download at the PICOL website for free under a Creative Commons license.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Unfortunately, like other documentaries, this one also requires its audience to have more than a basic understanding of computers and networking, which is ironic, considering the minimalist animation. But all in all it’s a great effort, one that I think can be improved simply by breaking the whole discussion into several bite-sized episodes so that there’s more room to define and clear things up.

[via The Clever Sheep]

Strenco’s ST-2 Steambot lumbers along thanks to a tiny copper Wilesco steam engine that’s been implanted in his chest cavity.

Now don’t expect to just flip a switch to get this retro robot going. You’ll need pop his head off, fill him up with water, and light a tiny (stinky) Esbit fire in his belly before his mechanical innards get started.

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And despite the wild gyrations of his internal steam engine, the robot moves at a snail’s pace once up to full speed.

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Only 300 of these $600 (USD) limited-edition Steambots were created, so good luck finding one. A couple of places to start on your robot quest include MiniSteam, ManuFactum and General Robots.

Apparently kids these days also look like grown men. But seriously: look at that thing. I almost wept when I realized that the guy was behind the tank, and not on the tank. Where else will you see an RC vehicle that can literally trample a child?

I’m pretty sure that the tank’s gun isn’t functional, but still. Still. Imagine your kid showing up at their school Christmas party on this. He’ll immediately be everyone’s best friend. Or at least every bully’s best friend.

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Of course something this cool and obscenely large also has a humongous price: the King Tiger is worth £6,600 ($9, 713). If that’s too much for you, Mark-1 is also selling a 1/6 scale King Tiger, base price £2900 ($4,267). If that’s still too much for you then you’re a bad parent. Because giant tanks are the key to stronger parent-child relationships.

[Mark-1 via Tech Digest]