Archive for March 2008

I got a fever, and actually the only prescription is not more cowbell, but more Tetris. Lately I’ve been having a slight obsession with that beloved game of my young adulthood and I don’t know why.

Remember that oh-so-fun soft and squishy NES console? The talented crafter who made that great plush Nintendo is back with more plush gadgets, each sewn with amazing detail. Textile artist Blythe Church has just revealed a sneak preview of her latest creations which she’s preparing to show at her upcoming show “The Pitch of the Stitch”. Her latest collection of handsewn electronic gear includes an AM/FM radio, complete with soft batteries, a boom box, and an old rotary phone among others. If you happen to be anywhere near Halifax, Nova Scotia (current temperature: a balmy 19° F – yow) between April 11th and 27th, you can check them out in person at Argyle Fine Art Gallery.

What happens when the world’s most popular media players meet the art world? You get some awesomely great images mashing up some familiar scenes with iPhones and iPods. Photographer and digital artist Travis Hammond takes iconic photos and seamlessly integrates images of iPods and iPhones to create some really wonderful scenes. Whether its an iPhone holding court at The Last Supper, or Ralphie getting his mouth washed out with the chrome and glass beauty, there are plenty of gems in his collection. From Gumby to Indy, the images cleverly juxtapose the iconic cultural icons with these ubiquitous gadgets. Travis says he makes his Photoshopped images to address our relationship with technology.

A uniquely Japanese cultural phenomenon is Bento box lunches where the meal is dressed up with whimsical imagery so kids will be more inclined to eat their food. Check out this great example featuring the likeness of everyone’s favorite little Italian plumber, crafted entirely from edible items. From what I can tell, Mario’s face appears to be made out of some sort of lunch meat, while his bright red hat looks like it might be from radishes or other colorful root veggies.

If you thought that the 312-key Chromatone synthesizer had a few more keys than your everyday piano, just wait ’til you get a load of the Tonal Plexus and its even more plentiful keyboard design. The Tonal Plexus series of keyboards is a micro-tonal input device featuring rows and rows of buttons which generate tones with far more precision than an 88-key piano can handle.

This interactive art display takes data it collects on passing traffic and displays moving images which react to vehicles as they drive by. Designed by artist Markus Lerner for lighting company OSRAM, the installation samples traffic patterns and maps them onto seven colorful light towers side of the road, each containing over 110,000 individual LEDs.

Attention Nintendo addicts! Don’t forget to submit your entries to Technabob’s Fondest Nintendo Memories contest, which ends at the end of the day on Monday, March 31st. We’re looking for you to share the best, brightest, funniest, and generally most creative Nintendo-inspired memories.

Instead of using a traditional 2-dimensional display surface, Shade Pixel renders information using a deformable skin surface which provides a 3-dimensional texture to its output. Developed by researchers at the Design Media Lab at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the device uses a dot-matrix array of solenoids attached to a flexible Spandex skin.

No matter how cool it is to hang a super-skinny flat panel on your wall, virtually every LCD or Plasma television is looking like the same, nondescript rectangular box. So it’s good to finally see that somebody out there is thinking a little outside of that box. This new design for a Humax LCD television was envisioned by UK industrial designer Tej Chauhan.

Not to be outdone by Mario and his Power Up Energy Drink, it looks like the plumber’s simian adversary just had to have his own peppy beverage. Recently sighted on the shelves over at New York’s Nintendo World Store, the Red Bull-esque energy drink comes in a skinny red can featuring the likeness of the big ape himself, DK necktie and all.

Here’s a gaming oddity from Japan. Falling somewhere between Tetris and Rock Band, Pop ‘N Music Be Mouse is a Windows PC game that comes with a colorful multi-button mouse for controlling the gameplay. To play Konami’s music pattern matching game, pop open the ladybug-like wings on the Be-Mouse controller to access the game’s nine buttons.

Back in the day, Pole Position was one of my all-time favorite arcade games. Not only was it the first full-color POV racing game, it had some of the most groundbreaking graphics in its time. With today’s photorealistic racing games like the Gran Turismo and PGR series, it’s amazing how far we’ve come.

Do you love the iPhone, but struggle with the smooth on-screen keyboard? Personally, I’ve found it pretty easy to use, but the touchscreen definitely doesn’t offer the touch-typing feedback that you get with physical keys. This new, low cost screen overlay for the iPhone claims to provide tactile cues to your fingertips to help them find their way. My Touch Keys is a overlay that sits on your iPhone’s screen and has cutouts which line up with the location of the on-screen keyboard (portrait mode only).

Every day, I come across all sorts of cool homebrew robot projects, but never thought I had the skills or patience to make my own. Now, thanks to a generous member of the ‘bot building community, even the most novice builders can crank out their own little robots with ease. The easy to follow 2 Hour Robot tutorial was put together by robot builder Frits Lyneborg (aka “fritsl”), the same guy who created the awesome yellow drummer ‘bot recently featured on Technabob.

A while back, I showed you guys a pretty cool looking OLED watch from the fashion house of Diesel. That model was especially difficult to come by, and featured a tiny little monochrome blue OLED screen .

Do you like tiny art with vintage robot and video game themes? If you do, please enjoy the pop arty, old-timey stylings of Singapore artist JoE, aka Etsy seller monstergallery. These fun prints measure a wee 3 1/4″ x 3 1/4″ and are available in limited editions of 100 pieces. I love the fadey-scratchy finish on these pieces and the limited color palette.