Tag Archives: werid

This Weird (Mewsical?) Instrument Has Fur and Meows and Growls Like a Cat

Posted on by

Up until now, I thought the weirdest musical instrument was either the theramin or the otamatone. But I was wrong. This. This is the weirdest musical instrument ever. This curious looking pile of grey fur isn’t a cat that’s been flattened by a steamroller. Nope, it’s a interactive piece of audio art.

What you’re looking at is “Mew.” Basically, when you get near it, it emits a soft and comforting purr. Then if you get closer and start petting it, a series of meow sounds come out. But these aren’t just cute and cuddly cat noises, no. This thing sounds like a clowder of cats in heat in the alley behind my house. And by that I mean, it’s not a pleasant sound. Push it around too much, and it might even hiss at you.

Mew was designed a few years back by a group of product design, information experience design, and visual communication students at the Royal College of Art in London. Their rectangular kitty has a brain powered by an Arduino, and a voice box powered by MaxMSP. The best thing about this weird noisemaker is that it doesn’t need a litter box.

[via Boing Boing via Born in Space]

Floating Fish Dome Lets Fish Break the Surface

Posted on by

I don’t like fish. I think they look really gross. I certainly don’t like to eat them. Their little flapping mouths look like they want to eat me and the lack of teeth is the only thing holding them back. Some people like fish and find watching them swim around to be relaxing.

fish-dome-2zoom in

If you are one of those fish loving types and you have your own pond with fish in it, Velda’s Floating Fish Dome will give the fish a view of the outside world. The dome floats on the surface of a pond and fills with water.

The fish can swim into the dome and see what is going on in the outside world. Now that the fish can see us coming, if they start to grow teeth and figure out how to create a mobile fish dome, we are doomed.

floating_fish_domezoom in

[via Nerd Approved]

Odor Camera Concept: Scentography

Posted on by

These days, even a cheap phone has the ability to record sights and sounds using its camera. But that’s just two of our many senses. With her concept for an “odor camera”, designer Amy Radcliffe hopes that she can encourage electronics makers to make devices that can record scent.

madeleine odor camera by Amy Radcliffe

Amy named her scent recorder Madeleine, after the French pastry popularized in Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Time. In the novel, the pastry – combined with the taste of tea – causes a character to remember something from the past (I wonder if Amy realizes that that scene involves the sense of taste, not the sense of smell). To record a scent with Madeleine, you place its funnel over the object whose scent you want to record. Madeleine’s pump will suck the air surrounding the object and mix it with a resin. Then you send that mixture to a fragrance lab. The lab will replicate the scent and send the replica back to you.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Amy said she deliberately imagined a slow development process for the Madeleine because she wants to bring back the curation that consumers had to enforce back in the days of film photography. Nowadays we can take dozens of pictures in an hour then forget we even have them – or what’s in them – before the day ends. But with film, you had to choose which pictures to develop. In other words, you had to choose which memories to keep. Now imagine if you could keep a thousand scents in your phone. You’d be tweeting recordings of stranger’s farts every 10 seconds. #IRegretNothing.

[via Amy Radcliffe & The Atlantic via The Verge]