R2!
February 26th, 2010
Archive
Archive for the ‘Sci-fi’ Category
The Known Universe by AMNH.
December 21st, 2009
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The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.
For more information visit http://www.amnh.org
Thanks, Adam. This confuses, enthralls, saddens, excites, depresses and fills me with joy all at the same time.
What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn
November 23rd, 2009
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They’re made out of meat
November 13th, 2009
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by Terry Bisson
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.” Read more…
Large Hadron Collider sabotaging itself from the future
October 19th, 2009
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Danish physicist Dr Holger Bech Nielsen and Dr Masao Ninomiya from Japan claim the LHC startup has been delayed due to nature trying to prevent it from finding the elusive Higgs boson, or “God particle”.
In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor
September 8th, 2009
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Corridors make science-fiction believable, because they’re so utilitarian by nature – really they’re just a conduit to get from one (often overblown) set to another. So if any thought or love is put into one, if the production designer is smart enough to realise that corridors are the foundation on which larger sets are ’sold’ to viewers, movie magic is close at hand.
The designs that Roger Christian synthesised from Ron Cobb’s prolific and extraordinary conceptual sketches for Alien (1979) are lingered over lovingly at the start of the movie. Ridley Scott knows that corridors matter in a horror (or ‘haunted house’) movie, but these marvellous sets are also being showcased to sell the gritty and grimy, commercial and industrial reality of the Nostromo as well. The upper sections related to the command deck were dirtied down with gold and black paint after a reshuffle of sections in order to convey the grittier world inhabited and Parker and Brett on the engineering level.
Repeat sections are what corridors are all about, and they’re part of the iconography of pre-CGI sci-fi movie-making. For Alien, Roger Christian would have the production department mock up different sections of corridor for Ridley Scott’s perusement, and whatever got the green light was fabricated multiple times to create the final corridor, often with the classic trick of placing an angled mirror at the end of the long set to suggest further recession and depth.
Flynn Lives – TRON Legacy
July 25th, 2009
Download HD versions here – http://www.flynnlives.com/media/video/0xendgame.aspx
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According an insider: “This is the same tech demo from last year. It’s not the effects from the actual movie, it basically got the movie greenlit. so whatever they’ve been up to since then, still a secret.”
FLYNN’S ARCADE WILL BE OPEN AGAIN ON FRIDAY THE 24th @ 9PM UNTIL ??? 335 6th Ave., 92101. At the event they had a life size lightcycle (click for high res):
District 9 Trailer
May 1st, 2009
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District 9
An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their biotechnology.
Alive in Joberg
Yellow by Neill Blomkamp
May 1st, 2009
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Neill Blomkamp is a South African born, Vancouver, BC-based director of short films and advertisements. Blomkamp employs a documentary-style, hand-held, cinéma vérité technique, blending seamlessly with naturalistic and photo-realistic computer-generated imagery effects. He directed a series of three short films set in the Halo universe (known collectively as Landfall) and was hired to direct the movie adaptation of the series before financial problems forced the project to be indefinitely postponed.
A new Syd Mead?
February 21st, 2009
http://www.danielsimon.net/
Blog: http://cosmic-motors.blogspot.com/
Daniel Simon is working on Tron2.
Commercial Biometric Airport Screening Speedpass :
December 24th, 2008
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Clear : Verified Identity Pass
Clear uses biometric (fingerprint and iris image) verification to confirm each member’s identity. This includes advanced finger-scan technology, as well as non-invasive iris imaging.
Clear is working on a second generation kiosk featuring state-of-the-art technology developed by Clear and General Electric that is being tested by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
Clear expects to unveil shoe-scanning technology as soon as it is approved by TSA, which will enable Clear members to leave their shoes on during security screening.
http://www.flyclear.com/how/how_technology.html
Currently available at 20 aiports and a handful of venues. Not government issued, and you do have to pay for it… draw your own conclusion.
Futurists’ Urbanism :
December 15th, 2008
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Skyscraper canyons were obligatory part of urban visions from the 20s and 30s:
Architecture, Art, Design, Sci-fi, Tech
Giant Pile of Star Wars
November 11th, 2008
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Brains – selective memory erasure
October 24th, 2008
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Scientists Erase Specific Memories in Mice
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 22 (HealthDay News) — It sounds like science fiction, by scientists say it might one day be possible to erase undesirable memories from the brain, selectively and safely.
Using a complex genetic approach, U.S. and Chinese researchers believe they have done just that in mice, but the feat is far from being tested on humans.
Study co-author Joe Z. Tsien, co-director of the Brain & Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, says the “work reveals a molecular mechanism of how [memory deletion] can be done quickly and without doing damage to brain cells.”
