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Ideas, Trends & Inspiration

The Stanford Laptop OrchestraOctober 10

Live Science points us to a very unusual modern music group. The Stanford Laptop Orchestra is made up of 20 performers each playing a Macbook instead of instruments, creating a symphony of otherworldly ambient sounds. Each key of the computer represents a different note, and tilting the laptop changes the sound. Manipulating the trackpad also alters the music, acting like a violin bow. The orchestra uses special 6 channel speakers made out of salad bowls which all together provide 120 channels of sound. As audience members walk amongst the performance they can experience different combinations of sound every 10 feet.

Watch the video here.

Clarks Shoes Installation Inspired by DustOctober 10

Lance Clark of the UK Clarks Shoe brand thought the courtyard of the company’s Somerset England headquarters was looking a bit dull. Mr. Clark gave ROSO a call and commissioned an installation. Clark worked previously on a smaller installation with ROSO who specialize in projects that merge art, architecture, and design.

The installation itself was developed from a single observation - Light is only seen when reflected. A light beam coming through a window is only visible because light is reflected in the millions of dust particles floating in the air.

Two imaginary beams of light enter the courtyard from one end and travel through the space, penetrating the centre bridge building, one hitting the end wall up high, above the terrace and the other the side wall opposite this. Each beam is made up by 7.500 shiny discs suspended from 36 vertical wires, which mounted on a structure on the central bridge building and onto the end walls. The entire courtyard was painted white and the bottom was covered in black asphalt to turn the court yard into a canvas for the reflections and shadows from the installation.

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Bicycle Theft As Safety IndexOctober 10

Mariano Pasik, a publicist based out of Buenos Aires, has untertaken an interesting project. Using hidden cameras and cheap bicycles as bait, he has set out to gauge crime in different neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. The longer it takes for the bike to be stolen the safer the area, is his hypothesis. He is encouraging other videographers to join his project to create a worldwide safety index.

To test this hypothesis, Pasik leaves the bike in a public space and then sets a hidden video camera to record the impending theft. The videos are housed online here, and are sped up and accompanied by music. The faces of the thieves are blurred in the video - a good thing, as people have apparently left messages on the website calling for the death penalty for those captured on film.

Pasik has a different opinion about the thieves:

What you see on the videos is that they aren’t professional thieves, they aren’t people who went out to rob. They are people who ran into temptation and decided to commit a crime, they become thieves at the moment they take the bike… You see the person thinking and thinking and thinking, coming and going. Sometimes they talk

“What’s Your Inspiration?” PSFK Talks to Sahadeva Hammari of CollabFinderOctober 10

We’re excited about CollabFinder.com, a recently launched site that offers creatives, web designers, and developers a simple, straightforward way to to find one another and collaborate on projects. The site makes finding and working together on creative endeavors - from launching a website to designing a new logo - easier for both those in search of collaborators and those looking to participate.

We asked co-founder Sahadeva Hammari, also one of the thinkers behind Rumplo.com and founders of Boy Girl Talk, to tell us a bit about where he finds his inspiration in creating tools like CollabFinder and what he hopes it will bring to the creative community.

What’s your inspiration?

If I were to measure how inspirational something was by how much it made me want to get off the couch and do something great — which seems like a pretty

High Five Machine Generates Electricity, FunOctober 10

PSFK’s friends over at Cunning sent us this awesome concept sketch by Spencer Holtaway. It’s a wacky, but secretly practical “high five” machine. The way it works: slap the hand “five” and the movement of the arm activates some sort of energy generating device - which produces free, fun energy. What an great idea - part interactive art, part power plant.