Maddie

Loving “Maddie The Coonhound” – a super serious project about dogs and physics by photographer Theron Humphrey.

What a tolerant hound.

Flight Assembled Architecture

Amazed by the Flight Assembled Architecture project by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea. The project uses multiple flying robots to assemble a 6m tower, 3.5m in diameter out of 1500 polystyrene bricks. An incredible proof of concept, really excited to see where this technology leads.

The Page Turner

Kiwi born, Brooklyn resident Joseph Hersher specialises in making Rube Goldberg machines – a complex combination of everday items assembled to perform simple tasks.

His latest machine ‘The Page Turner’ was recently featured on the New York Times, which has a breakdown of the device. More machines are featured on Josephs website, including the great ‘Falling Water’ cocktail machine.

“Goldfish Salvation” by Riusuke Fukahori

If you’re in London over the next few days, head down to Riusuke Fukahori’s exhibition “Goldfish Salvation” at the ICN Gallery. Fukahori’s amazing 3D paintings are made by painting acrylic sections onto layers of clear resin. The result is a remarkably beautiful 3D representation of goldfish. Video below shows the artist in action.

Quantum Wipeout

To demonstrate recent work on Quantum Levitation, researchers at the Japan Institute of Science and Technology have created an impressively detailed working racetrack based on the anti-gravity racing game Wipeout

Primer V2 Cycling Robot

Love this cycling robot created by Masahiko Yamaguchi in Japan. The tiny self balancing robot rides a fixed gear bicycle remote controlled by an operator.

Marina & Andy by Baley & Moore

Recently our good friends Andy & Marina were wed in a beautiful, immaculately styled wedding down in Melbourne. The day was captured perfectly by Auckland based photographers Baley & Moore who accompany their fantastic images with a little stop-motion video of the day in its entirety. I feel they may have started a trend!

Neverwet

Ross Nanotechnology have developed an incredible spray coating that completely repels water and heavy oils. Dubbed NeverWet™ the coating is Super Hydrophobic – liquid cannot grip onto the surface, it simply rolls off. Can’t wait to get my hands on some of this stuff when its released next year!

Glass Bridge

Originally conceived back in 1997, and having won a Bombay Sapphire award in 2002, Heatherwick Studio’s ‘Glass Bridge’ seems to be making modest progress into reality as part of Argent Groups Kings Cross redevelopment. If built this structure will, like all of Heatherwicks works around London, be both visually, and technically beautiful. It would contain no metal fasteners, instead use weight-driven levers at each end to apply 800 tonnes of pressure, compressing 1334 sheets of 12mm glass into a beam strong enough to be used as a pedestrian bridge. Really hope this one gets built.

Lytro Light Field

Lytro have just released the worlds first consumer Light Field Camera, a revolutionary device which enables users to adjust the focal point of an image AFTER the photograph has been taken.

Once uploaded, these captured images, dubbed ‘Living Pictures’, become interactive photographs the user can explore, clicking on the image to select the focal plane. Try it by clicking the butterfly below.

Currently there are three cameras to choose from, a Red 16gb unit, or a Grey or Blue 8gb which will ship to the US in early 2012. Each camera has an 8X optical zoom with a constant f/2 aperture, but most importantly, no delay for auto-focus so the image can be instantly captured with the press of a button.

Lytro have made an interesting product here. The resolution of their Light Field sensor is actually quite low in a world of 10 megapixel cameras, however, by making the images interactive, the pictures are tied to screen resolution – Megapixels become a moot point. Personally, I’m really looking forward to a high resolution model. The ability to refocus an image to perfect that almost perfect (static) shot would be a photographers dream come true.