we make money not art: Gen-pets, by Canadian sculptor Adam Brandejs, consists of 19 plastic packages hung by hooks within a mock store set-up displaying streamlined, mass produced bio-engineered life. Each package consists of 3 layers of vacuum formed plastic surrounding a foam latex animatron: strange animals, grown and altered, by bioengineering, but obviously mammalian. They are twitching, shaking, clawing, […]

The New York Times: A pear is just a pear, except when it is also a laser-coded information delivery system with advanced security clearance. And that is what pears–not to mention organic apples, waxy cucumbers and delicate peaches–are becoming in some supermarkets around the country. A new technology being used by produce distributors employs lasers to tattoo fruits and vegetables […]

We Make Money Not Art: Digital Wardrobe, by Chantal Mora, tries to demonstrate how users might regain control of imposed technology systems (namely RFID) by harnessing it as a tool to track the transitory narratives in our daily fashion choices. This system is made of an RFID tracking system, a database, and an interface. First, users take a picture of […]

Continuity Central: A Gartner report has highlighted five issues which are leading a paradigm shift in the way that organisations use and manage IT. Gartner believes that voice/data convergence; service-oriented architecture; IT utility; global sourcing; and the growth of open-source software are all combining to create a new approach to information technology. “These five trends represent inevitable and irrevocable shifts […]

Yenra: Babble provides voice confidentiality and security of information in open-plan work environments. “Babble is the first, true voice privacy device with powerful application in open spaces,” said Sonare president Bill DeKruif. “It is a profound and proprietary technology that can be used either as a stand-alone solution or as part of a layered approach to sound management. Sound masking, […]

New Scientist: Are you a real grump in the mornings? Do you wake up every day feeling tired, embittered, aggrieved, and all too ready to hit the snooze button? If so, then a new alarm clock could be just for you. The clock, called SleepSmart, measures your sleep cycle, and waits for you to be in your lightest phase of […]

Reuters: JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Thursday introduced a credit card that allows a consumer to merely wave it past a sensor to make payments, a function already common at many U.S. gas stations. A top issuer of credit cards in the United States, JPMorgan Chase said its new credit card, called “blink,” will be marketed this summer and can […]

We Make Money Not Art: Aura is a prototype background communication device that aims to create a sense of emotional presence between two people who are separated by space or time. An augmented sleeping mask records sleeping rhythms and infers an emotional state of the wearer. This information is transmitted to a remote location and mapped to musical selections in […]

TechnologyReview: Cable television often boasts that it can deliver esoteric fare suiting nearly any taste. But it could be rendered obsolete by the likes of Bill Eason’s hog cooking class. The North Carolina cook’s program — self-described as an “all-day, whole hog class edited down to 45 minutes on how to find, select, prepare and serve whole hog from the […]

Technology Review: This month, NTT Labs, the research and development wing of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, plans to start conducting field trials for a radical new “human area networking” technology called RedTactont that uses the naturally-occurring electrical fields of human skin to transmit data. The slim, PCMCIA-based RedTacton transceiver combines a an optical receiver circuit equipped with a super-sensitive […]