Tumbleweed Tango: a balloon dog makes an impossible escape
"A balloon dog is lost in a world of danger. One wrong step and his dancing days are done. Only love, and tango, can possibly save him".
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Interactive billboards that drop angels on your head
"There you are in the middle of the city, traffic all around, planes buzzing above and you notice a little boy on a giant screen pointing up. 'Look,' says the boy. And you look, and the on–screen boy is pointing at an actual plane flying in the sky. He knows its flight number, its destination. This is no joke. That is flight BA475 from Barcelona! He tracks its path with his little hand, and then, when the plane is gone, he dashes off. This is a British Airways display ad in London's Piccadilly Circus, and it's using to identify actual planes in the actual sky.
Digital billboards are stepping up their game. They are becoming . There's another stunning example at Euston Station (also in London) that shows a man furiously screaming at a woman who is clearly frightened. But you can help. If you have a cellphone, you can yank the man clear across the station, dragging him from screen to screen to screen until he's way on the other side of the terminal.
I've got one more. This time it's a fantasy experience available to anyone who steps into a marked spot in the middle of Victoria Station. (London's a happening place for billboard experimentation.) Once you're there, a holographic angel drops down from heaven and lands beside you. You can't see her in real space, but you and she are plainly visible on a screen that everybody in the station can see, and you are free to interact anyway you please."
(Robert Krulwich, 04 January 2014, NPR)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Four-winged robot flies like a jellyfish
"Tiny flying robots usually mimic nature's flyers, like birds and insects–but perhaps that's due to a lack of imagination. A four–winged design created by Leif Ristroph and colleagues at New York University, which boasts a body plan reminiscent of a jellyfish, is more stable in the air than insect–like machines.
The prototype consists of a carbon–fibre frame surrounded by two pairs of thin plastic wings that open and close when driven by a motor. Its shape allows it to fly upright with little effort, without requiring sensors or intelligence to adjust its wings like those used by insects. 'Making a dumb machine is a nice strategy for very small robots,' says Ristroph. 'Without circuits and sensors, it's also lighter.'"
(Sandrine Ceurstemont, 25 November 2013, New Scientist)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
"Inspired in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, 'Morris Lessmore' is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation), award–winning author/illustrator William Joyce and Co–director Brandon Oldenburg present a hybrid style of animation that harkens back to silent films and M–G–M Technicolor musicals. 'Morris Lessmore' is old–fashioned and cutting edge at the same time."
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Journey (Video Game)
"The studio describes it as an interactive parable, the story of a lone traveller and their path through life told in the form of a voyage that starts in the vast expanses of a desert and ends ... well, to tell you how it ends would spoil it. You think you know what Journey is going to be about after the first five minutes, but you don't. I came to it expecting something charming, visually stunning and perhaps even mildly edifying. I left thinking that it may well be, in many ways, the best video game I have ever played.
You play a traveller swaddled in red robes, beginning atop a desert sand dune with a view of a shining mountain on the horizon. You're given no direction; instead you're guided by the natural impulse to move towards that looming, distant beacon. Control is intentionally simple and unobtrusive; you can only walk, jump and sing, but Journey still crafts some astounding scenarios from those bare gameplay ingredients. It has you surfing down sand dunes in the fading light, scaling towers, flying on the wind and cowering in underground ruins as you slowly uncover what could have happened to the civilisation that must have once lived there."
(Keza MacDonald, 13 March 2012, The Guardian)
CONTRIBUTOR
Guannan (cassie) DuSHARE
