Created by artist Kohei Nawa (previously here and here) for the 2013 Aichi Triennale, Foam is an immersive cloud-like installation made from huge plumes of amorphous bubbles, meant to mimic a bleak primordial landscape. Nawa is known for his explorations of cellular forms as seen in his extensive series of PixCell sculptures where animal forms are covered in glass beads, and Foam seems to be a natural extension of this.

via Immersive Foam Clouds Tower Over Visitors to the 2013 Aichi Triennale | Colossal.

[Oooh, induced neuroplasticity? Hell yeah! -egg]

Research had previously shown that adult mice given histone-deacetylase inhibiting drugs (HDAC inhibitors) could “establish perceptual preferences that are otherwise impossible to acquire after youth.” To test whether this connection also existed in humans, Valproate, another HDAC inhibitor, was given to a group of healthy young men with no musical training. The men were then asked to perform a set of exercises for two weeks with the aim of improving their pitch while another control group was asked to perform the same exercises, but given a placebo.

According to the study, those subjects given valproate learned to identify pitch “significantly better than those taking the placebo.” Hensch calls the results remarkable, telling NPR that until now there had been “no known reports of adults acquiring absolute pitch.” The implications of the study aren’t limited to learning how to sing beautifully: by altering brain plasticity, users of valproate could conceivably learn other skills normally picked up during the early critical period. Hensch picks out language learning as an obvious area of application for the drug.

via The pill that might give you perfect pitch by altering your brain | The Verge.

[This looks like a great typography resource. -egg]

Butterick has web-published a new book on typography for a general audience, Butterick’s Practical Typography. It covers the same subject, but without directives specific to the legal profession.

This time it’s not a print book. It’s not an e-book, either. It was created and coded by Butterick himself specifically for the Web. You can read it through like a book, but it’s set up as an easy reference guide, with links to font basics, font recommendations, text formatting, sample documents, etc. For those in a hurry, there’s a “Typography in Ten Minutes” section.

The book is freeware, but you can kick the author some compensation for his work through the website.

I love type. I’ve read many bookis on the subject. Butterick’s are by far the clearest and most useful of them all.

via Cool Tools – Butterick’s Practical Typography.

I’ve been completely lusting after something like a Sonos system that lets me play whatever music I want in any room in the house, so I can send audio from my computer to (for example) the living room speakers. Sonos (which seems like the only really decent system out there) costs hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands depending on your needs, so there wasn’t much chance I’d actually buy one.

Turns out I can do everything I need with a $25 application: http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

This is totally cool as hell. I took a half-broken old iphone and made it the receiver for the living room speakers. I can also send from my computer to every other computer on the network, no problem. So for a party, it’s easy to make any computer be controlling music that plays in every room in the house (using some cheap thrift store speakers etc as needed). It’s also equally easy for Celene and I to dynamically split the house into a couple of zones, one where she’s hearing the music she’s playing, and one where I hear what I want.

Note that that $25 covers installation on all your computers. One-time fee 🙂

As desktop towers have given way to today’s sleek laptops and even sleeker mobile devices, all glued shut to preclude even the possibility of tinkering, we’ve lost something valuable: the art of the case mod. Thankfully, over in Japan, Hiroto Ikeuchi is keeping the craft alive in spectacular fashion.

Ikeuchi spent the better part of the last year building this incredible machine, a creation that isn’t so much a case mod as full-blown diorama. It’s a deliriously detailed little world that just happens to take place in and around a functioning computer. It also redefines the idea of what it means to have a cluttered desk.

Ikeuchi, a designer by trade, likes to call it his “secret base.” Inspired by mecha anime like Gundam and Macross, every surface is packed with something to discover. Soldiers tend to intricate, forbidding machinery. Mechs await repair. The work seamlessly blends plastic toys, gizmo components, and scraps of other materials with the computer itself. Atop the tower, the shell of a DSLR is repurposed as a laser cannon.

via This Insane Case Mod Looks Like a World War III Fever Dream | Wired Design | Wired.com.

http://wrd.cm/1cuKEWL

http://hotfops.tumblr.com/post/72064865374/high-tech-low-fashion-black-model-famous

[Thoughtful meditation on the shift from film to digital, although it seems like it may have been overzealously edited. -egg]

In late 2004, after graduating college, I scrounged together enough cash to buy my first real digital camera: the Nikon D70, which was almost identical to the 8008 except that, when the shutter opened, light hit an array of sensors rather than film. Even though that difference seemed small, the purchase made me nervous. I had developed hundreds, if not thousands, of rolls of black-and-white film in my badly ventilated, chemical-filled university apartment. Would I miss watching ghostly images appear from the silver halide salts, the sting of acetic acid on my hands and in my nostrils?

via Goodbye, Cameras : The New Yorker.

[Absolutely gorgeous. Follow the link for lots more pics. egg]

Completed in 2012, Serpent d’océan is a giant aluminum sea serpent skeleton by artist Huang Yong Ping previously situated off the shore of the Loire River where it empties into the Bay of Biscay just outside of Nantes, France. Measuring nearly 425 feet 130 meters in length the curving skeleton mirrors the curves of the nearby Saint-Nazaire bridge and was created as a permanent work for the final Estuaire contemporary art exhibition in 2012.

via A Giant Twisting Serpent Skeleton Emerges from the Loire River in France | Colossal.

[This is a whole world of awesome. -egg]

Lol My Thesis invites PhD candidates to submit snarky, one-sentence summaries of their theses.

“The patriarchy sucks and lesbians are awesome.”

“When a space rock goes in front of a star, you can’t see the star again until the rock moves.”

“Really, really thin semiconductors look different and act differently than really thin semiconductors because quantum mechanics. Also, 10 nanometers sounds really big now.”

“Self-image relates to ADHD by…well, this would’ve worked except people are actually wrong half the time about having ADHD.”

“My invasive fruit flies won’t have sex for me.”

via Lol My Thesis.