sundance

Erwin Wurm’s “Narrow House”

DesignBoom visited Austrian Erwin Wurm’s “Narrow House” on display through September 15 at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. This interactive installation is a fully furnished residence similar to the house the artist was raised in, with one notable difference: as the exhibit’s name suggests the house and all the furnishings and [...]

Watch this: lightning strike at 9,000 frames per second

Check out this astounding YouTube video of a lightning storm in Rapid City, South Dakota on June 16, 2010 which was recorded at 9,000 frames per second. This was shot by Tom Warner who records and uploads similar videos. Semi-relatedly: Earlier this month, a 13-year-old boy was struck by lightning at 1:13 pm (or 13:13) [...]

Green tech finds (9/2/10)

Lots of energy news and ideas this week, as well as another big green crowdsourcing project, and reviving wetlands with sewage… your green tech finds.

• Another cell phone sustainability study: Market research firm IDC came up with quite different results on cell phone sustainability from O2… but focused on companies vs. phones themselves. Apple comes out on top in this one, followed by LG and Nokia. (via The Boston Globe)
  
  
• Harnessing gravity power: Gravitational Energy Corporation claims its Feltenberger Pendulum works through hand-power and gravity. The company’s first product, a water pump, could prove indispensable for areas of the developing world, as well as post-disaster relief. See how it’s working in Haiti in the video above…

The Read-Nest

Photos by Torben Eskerod and Thomas Mandrup-Poulsen

Direct from Danish design group Dorte Mandrup Architecture, comes the Read-Nest (or, on their untranslatable website, the praefabrikeret studiebox). For the serious bookworm only, the Read-Nest is a prefabricated, private reading room that can be delivered and set up anywhere, from the backyard to the backwoods. Weighing in at just over 30-square-feet, the ready-made reading room comes equipped with a fold-down bed, desk and a wall of shelving space. Constructed of rich brown slats on the outside, the inside comes in birch that can be modified to include outlets to light up those late night reading sessions when you just can’t seem tear yourself away from your book.

Latest meme: a doe, a deer, a prancing Cera

This kinda hilarious photo of a-leaping and a-prancing Michael Cera has emerged above the heap to become the latest Internet meme among bored Photoshoppers around the world. View their collective efforts at this single serve Tumblr site, fuckyeahprancingcera. And a best of here.

Researchers argue over whether cougar dating exists

When we read that a researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff had released a study claiming that the cougar dating trend is a myth and a media construct, we were ready to buy his argument. After all, we’ve witnessed first-hand — and have occasionally, shame on us, been responsible for — how a so-called trend can get blown out of all proportion for the sake of a sexy headline. So we tend to be more than ready to believe that a much-hyped, now-sitcom-ed trend is actually just hype.

Women who hit very hard

With the tennis 2010 US Open underway, the New York Times has a gorgeously shot video series, “The Beauty of the Power Game,” directed by Dewey Nicks and featuring top female players smacking the bejesus out of the ball in extreme slow-motion.

The women are all right, in fact they look human!

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT really stayed with me. As in, I kept thinking about the situations, hearing those characters’ voices, and seeing globs of hair in my own shower drain. (That’s not a spoiler, and hopefully inspiring the curiosity of the disgusting and weird in those who’ve not yet seen the film – only movie I know in which drain hair plays a key role.) And seeing those women, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. What do I see? Hair on the legs on Julianne, no make up on Annette, wrinkles on both. And you know what? It’s awesome.

Fewer E.D. ads! New teen-focused recommendations for this sex-soaked culture

Teens now spend a whopping seven hours per day on various forms of media. So the American Academy of Pediatrics just issued a revised policy statement, “Sexuality, Contraception, and the Media,” in the September 2010 print issue of Pediatrics (published online Aug. 30). In addition to calling for the creation of a national task force on children, adolescents and the media to be convened by child advocacy groups in conjunction with the CDC or National Institutes of Health, it includes updated recommendations for pediatricians and parents on how to deal with this sex-soaked culture. Among the new recommendations since 2001:

Connecticut teen promotes green driving to peers

While teenagers are less likely than ever to get a drivers license, there are still millions of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds that want to get behind the wheel. When they do, issues like fuel efficiency generally aren’t always at the top of their priority list…

The fate of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection

When Georgia O’Keefe gave her late husband’s collection, the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, to Fisk University over 60 years, the Nashville university took on a 101 pieces valued at $74 million. O’Keefe’s donation came with a few caveats of her own, however, namely that the pieces could not be sold off and had to be displayed together. It was also to serve the more general purpose of providing “Nashvillians and Southerners access to the collection to promote the study of art.”

Watch this: Abbey Road webcam

Abbey Road Studios, the historic recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road in London, put up a webcam on their website facing the zebra stripe pedestrian crossing that was immortalized on the cover of The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album. The monotony of watching traffic in the webcam is offset by the payoff of actually seeing [...]