Rain Room

Came across a really cool installation that was featured at the MoMA  this year (May 12-July 28th, 2013) and it’s called the “Rain Room”. It’s a humid, dark 1,000 square foot room, where water pours from the ceiling and the intention is for people to walk through the pouring rain. The catch? you will never get wet. There are 8 motion sensors installed above the room and sense when there is an object to avoid. This technology took 3 years to develop and the creators are keeping pretty hush-hush about the technology – still people get to interact and experience a simulated rain storm, all the while staying bone-dry.

Pretty neat – check out a video/full article here: Rain Room

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Stare Challenge – Samsung Galaxy S4

One of the features of the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone is that it knows when you’re looking at it. So to win a free Samsung S4, Swisscom came up with the seemingly easy challenge of staring at the phone in a train station for 60 minutes. This may sound easy enough, but the crazy distractions that accompany this execution make this a very challenging feat.

Watch the whole stunt here: The Stare Challenge

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“I am Canadian” The Beer Fridge

Something cool that was visiting some European cities earlier this year is the Molson Canadian beer fridge. The fully stocked fridge is free to all, but only opens when scanning a Canadian passport. None of the person’s personal information is used to open the fridge – the scanner simply uses the unique Canadian passport emblem on the front to open it

Watch a video here: The Beer Fridge

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Hal Lasko, the Pixel Painter

A common aphorism in design and art is that the last 10% of a work takes 90% of the project time, and is the most important to the product.

Despite a form of blindness which blurs the centre of his vision, Hal Lasko has been tending to a high level of detail for the last 15 years in his Pointillism-style art.

The level of realism achieved in ‘Looking Up’ is certainly impressive, comparable to Group of Seven works in my opinion. Even more interesting to me was the fact that all his works are created using MS Paint.

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Fracture IO is a 3D photo booth

What do you get when you combine 4 kinects, OpenFrameworks and Unity? A 3D photo booth of course! Unity allows you to package the very surreal outcome to a device of your choice.

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Window as a speaker using our cochlea

Cochlea (not to be confused with Coachella) is our inner ear and people with hearing disabilities use cochlear implants to help them hear. Sky Go’s (broadcaster) campaign is relying on our cochleas to their advantage in an uncommon fashion. A small device attached to glass can send waves through it. Once you lean your head on the glass, the waves are interpreted as sound using our cochlea. No more sleeping with your head on windows!

P.S. I am assuming that it’s the cochlea that is transferring the vibration into sound but might be wrong. Corrections are welcome!

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