The Wince-Inducing Wonder of Mallakhamb, India’s Extreme Gymnastics: “Called the ‘mother sport of ancient India,’ mallakhamb is where competitors traditionally jump on a pole and perform an impressive 90-second routine of jumps, flips and other wince-inducing moments.“

Vintage Circuit Boards Create Stunning Sculptures: “Artist Theo Kamecke has taken vintage circuit boards and transformed them to adorn furniture and sculpture that can be used in homes and galleries.”

Redesigning Sukkot in New York City: “

As part of the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot, many Jews build sukkot, huts that are reminders of the ancient Israelites’ nomadic dwellings. My friend Josh Foer of Atlas Obscura co-organized a design competition in New York City to radically re-imagine these temporary structures while still following the traditional design and ritual constraints. Twelve finalists will build their high-concept sukkot in Union Square on September and 19 and 20. The ‘People’s Choice’ winner will then be on view until October 2. All of the amazingly creative, avant-garde designs can now be viewed on the Sukkah City site. Seen here at top left is ‘Gathering,’ by Dale Suttle, So Sugita, and Ginna Nguyen, New York. Top right is ‘Fractured Bubble‘ by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan. Below those two finalists is one of the 600 entries, titled ‘Hashkiveinu,’ from my architecture student nephew Ari Pescovitz, Kyle Campbell. and Chad Gleason. I’m admittedly biased, but I dig their idea to use CNC machining and prefabrication to make their sukkot a kit. Congratulations all who entered! I’d be thrilled to enjoy a harvest meal in any of these marvelous shelters.

Sukkah City

‘Sukkah vs. Sukkah‘ (New York Magazine)

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Babbage-esque mechanical computer chip: “Over at Submitterator, markarayner informs us that engineers at Case Western Reserve University developed a mechanical version of a key component of digital circuits for computers. Their mechanical inverter, the basis for many logic gates, is built from nanoscale levers instead of the transistors patterned onto traditional chips. The research was funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) who are after electronics that aren’t prone to failure under high heat, like that inside a jet or rocket engine control system. Te-Hao Lee and colleagues published their work in the current issue of the journal Science. From New Scientist:

Like a telegraph operator’s Morse key, these levers physically make and break contact to pass or block currents.

Application of a voltage makes the levers move under electrostatic attraction. At 550 °C Lee’s team managed to get the inverter to switch on and off 500,000 times a second – performing a computation with each cycle. The faster the switching speed, the zippier the computing. Lee predicts that switching speeds of a billion times a second (1 gigahertz) are possible. That might not sound fast by the standards of desktop PCs, which often run at speeds in excess of 2.5 gigahertz, but for control system applications it’s more than adequate.

‘Steampunk chip takes the heat’

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#656; The Gullible Salesman: “

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Music video incorporates your childhood home: “

Chris Milk made a neat interactive music video that uses HTML5 and Google maps to make a custom music video about the place you grew up in.

The Wilderness Downtown (Submitterated by 7ape)

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Morpheus meets the Dude: “

(Video link) Well-made mashup of The Matrix and The Big Lebowski. (Via Blame it on the Voices)

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Globe Genie: random teleporter for Google Street View: “

MIT grad student Joe McMichael’s Globe Genie reminds me the Hyperspace button in the Asteroids arcade game. Just hit ‘Shuffle’ and it takes you somewhere random on Earth, via Google’s Street View. Simple but effective! Globe Genie (via Submitterator, thanks jacobn9820!)

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Biomechanical bug animation: “

Above are stills from a lovely biomechanical bug animation by Autofuss. It’s titled ‘The Experiment’ and you can watch it here. (Thanks, Stacey Ransom!)

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The Wilderness Downtown: Chrome experiment by Chris Milk and Arcade Fire: “

The Wilderness Downtown is perhaps the best browser-dominating Net art piece I’ve experienced since Jodi.org’s best work more than a decade ago. An experimental, interactive film by Chris Milk, it’s a tour-de-force for the Chrome browser and a lovely visual poem to accompany Arcade Fire’s excellent ‘We Used To Wait’ from their album The Suburbs. I won’t give the ‘story’ away, but I found it to be a deeply personal and moving experience.

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song ‘We Used To Wait’ and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

The Wildreness Downtown (Thanks, Jean Hagan!)

‘Behind the Work: Arcade Fire ‘The Wilderness Downtown’‘ (Creativity Online)

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