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The Light Dancer
Well, a light dancer isn't an object, but a really cool guy or girl that dances in the middle of a net of laser beams. When the dancer interrupts one of the beams, there's a sound. So, it's dancing and making music and beautiful light desings... all together and at the same time. |
| The Bubble Forever
It's a very simple toy, and like all simple toys, it's terribly amusing. It's a transparent plastic bubble filled with nitrogen, and carefully calibrated so the weight of nitrogen+plastic=weight of air. So, it floats in the air. You put it anywhere, and it stays there, but be careful: the slightest current of air can move it. |
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The Cloud Collection
If you like collecting, why don't you collect clouds? They're beautiful, they're free, and there are plenty of them. They can be photographed, bottled, drawn, classified and remembered in a diary. Besides, just looking up to the sky has an overall positive effect on your frame of mind. Come on, baby... start the first cloud collection! |
| The Electronic Music Box
As everybody knows, traditional music boxes always play the same tune. But this one has an algorithm to generate aleatory music that sounds like disco, classical, New Age, or whatever you like, depending on the brand you buy. It's fine for background music (i. e. something that nobody will listen very attentively), but, like all computer-generated stuff, it becomes a bit boring after a while. The future Bachs, Beethovens and Beatles don't need to worry! |
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Surprise! These guys do exist! They don't look as cyberpunk as I had imagined them, but who knows what hides behind a Net page? Click on the image to see their site. |
The Searcher's Lare
Yes, everything is on the Web, but it's not always easy to find. Search engines are good, but not perfect. In the Searcher's Lare you can find a group of individuals that apparently enjoy the gift of omniscience. Their exact methods aren't known, and it is said that they include zen, photographic memory, encyclopaedic knowledge of all the tricks of the Net, and selling their soul to drugs, weird electronic devices and even stranger devils. The undeniable fact is, they can find just anything. |
Round Around
Another toy. It's a set of circles of different sizes and colors, one inside the other, each one tangent to the next. You can put them in an infinity of different positions to make lots of pictures. Ideal for creative publicists, stressed executives & other lovers of uncomplicated games.
| The Computer-Friendly Book
In these days that computers can read, most books are still very computer-unfriendly. The problem is in the binding. In a computer-friendly book, individual sheets can be separated easily and then rejoined, making life much easier for scanners. |
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The Museum of People's Art
I don't know what you feel when you visit a Museum of Modern Art, but for me, it's like being in a giant playground full of toys that, for some unfathomable reason, can't be touched. What would happen if I kicked this? Would anybody notice if it breaks? And if I come one day with a black spray and...? Well, why not? I'm sure people could improve substantially the contents of any Museum of Modern Art, if they just let them. It would only take a change of name. |
| The Beginner's Chessboard
If you study a chessboard very carefully, you'll notice that squares never change color. If you study it even more carefully, you'll realize it would be much nicer if they did. Let's say, for example, squares menaced by black pieces are black, squares menaced by white pieces are white, squares menaced by both black and white pieces are grey, and the rest are... purple? |
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The Mock Turtle
(aka the Turing Test Cheat)
It's simply a small turtle-shaped teledirected robot. To cheat the victim, you tell him/her that it's directed by a brand new Artificial Intelligence, and you want to perform the Turing Test with it. (Note for the newbies: the Turing Test says that if a computer can mock perfectly the behaviour of a human being, then it is really intelligent. Nowadays, computers are acceptably imitating the intelligence of ants) The victim must test if the turtle is really intelligent. What the victim doesn't know, is that the turtle is being directed by a human being. Depending on the personal beliefs of the victim, all sorts of funny things may happen. You might discover that terribly bright and serious proffessors can't recognize a human intelligence when they meet one!
As far as I know, none of these things ever existed, and I'm still wondering why. If you turn any of them into a reality, and become rich with it, it would be rather nice of you if you sent me a sample, or a dozen samples ;-)
If you can contribute to fill any of the empty frames, it will be greatly appreciated.
In any of these two cases, e-mail me: lusina@redestb.es
