Created by artist Martin Backes, this installation of a lone “robot” singing 90s power ballads is almost hypnotizing in a quietly terrifying way.
Fittingly created with SuperCollider, a freeware audio program that synthesizes audio using algorithms, “What do machines sing of?” is an art project where the machine attempts to mimic human sentiment in an extremely haunting way:
“What do machines sing of?“ is a fully automated machine, which endlessly sings number-one ballads from the 1990s. As the computer program performs these emotionally loaded songs, it attempts to apply the appropriate human sentiments. This behavior of the device seems to reflect a desire, on the part of the machine, to become sophisticated enough to have its very own personality.”
Let’s hope the behavior of this device doesn’t reflect a desire, on the part of the machine, to become sophisticated enough begin giving motivational speeches to robots within earshot on how to overthrow the human race.
Two researchers at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design recently decided to make a record utilizing conductive paint.
Conductive paint is awesome…just think of it as paintable wiring.
Sounds great, right?
It is…unless you decided to make a record utilizing conductive paint.
“Conductive paint and resistive graphite were used to draw functioning circuits on paper disks. When the synthesizer completes the circuit its pitch is changed by the varying resistance of the graphite strips.”
The “varying resistance” ends up sounding like a very angry, very drunk R2D2 with an ear-piercingly bad motivator.
Thomas Edison once took a break from electrocuting animals to turn his attention to making dolls for little girls.
Because he was the go-to guy at the time for recording voices, he thought it might be cool to make those dolls speak.
And just like his animal displays that weren’t really the thing anyone who loves animals should watch…
His dolls weren’t really the thing that anyone who loves children enough to get them a talking doll should ever consider giving…
Inside the dolls rests a fragile wax cylinder with grooves on it like a vinyl record. Using a microscope and computers to study the cylinders and create an accurate image that can be virtually played and heard, an engineer and a physicist have, unfortunately for those of us who sleep, brought the sounds of the dolls back to life…
Oh…goody.
You can hear the complete recordings in the video below.
Using nanotubes, British scientists have created a material called VantaBlack that acts like a bunch of very, very tiny blackhole when it comes to light.
The material is so black that our eyes can’t discern any type of edges or features an object covered in the material might have.
We’ll leave the explanation to the scientists in the above video.
To get a quick grasp of just how light-sucking and black this material is? Take a look at the piece of aluminum in the photo below. The black portion of the foil is just as crinkled as the silver portion. Think about that.
And then think about what you might cover in VantaBlack…
Or what a top-secret government agency might cover in VantaBlack…
You’re walking with your buddy in the woods and one of you steps in what you thought was a dog mine only it cracks instead of squishes.
During the Vietnam War, what looked like dog dookie could possibly be an Air Force homing beacon in disguise…like a sad Transformer toy no one’s going to ever want to play with…ever. Officially called the T1151 Dog Doo Transmitter, this T1000 version of your standard dog dropping would relay movement of supply vehicles during the night and even transmit and receive morse code messages.
According to someone who actually worked on the project, these nuggets of espionage were customized to resemble the fecal matter of local animals so…you know…they wouldn’t stand out in an area full of non-local dog spam.
We’re betting there could be enough material for a book from all the prank-pulling that took place with these things.
It’s tree-trimming…with a 12-bladed chainsaw…being flown from a helicopter. Not really a whole lot else to talk about…except how we all want to have a helicopter and a 12-bladed chainsaw to tidy up the yard.
Because some people just can’t get the job done while locked in a room by themselves with some fun magazines or just some mental photography, some genius in China has developed something to help those people out…
The lonely Chinese scientist who created this was probably suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and couldn’t even hold a tablet that was playing his favorite movies any longer without discomfort.
(Insert your sad-face pervy scientist emoticon here)
Now this once-sad scienstist has solved ALL of his problems! This thing even has adjustable controls and a built-in dvd player so you can watch your favorite ‘films’.
Like the krill in Finding Nemo, there’s nowhere for your little swimming future-yous to go but in the perpetually slurping maw of a robot that looks like the original Pong arcade game’s second-cousin from the hills.
Clicking play on that video above will either bring laughter, what some like to call ‘cringy-I-smelled-poop’ face or a look of awe and wonder and possibilities to your precious little faces.
The director of the urology department at Zhengzhou Central Hospital said the machine was being used by infertility patients who are finding it difficult to retrieve sperm the old fashioned way.
A website which is selling the machine for $2,800 promoting it stating ‘it can give patients very comfortable feeling.’
Is this the end of prostitution? As newer versions of this machine hit the market, will the older ones find their way into dark alleys and those fun-smelling booths in the back of porn shops or will they start showing up in brothels to replace human workers as the recession keeps taking a chunk from EVERYONE’S budget?
Only time and enough oddly satisfied customers will tell.
The bikini debuted in 1946. It’s gone through a lot of variations. There’s been a monokini, microkini, tankini, trikini, pubikini (yes…it’s a real thing) and the mankini. But only occasionally has the phrase ‘nightmare fuel’ ever been associated with the bikini…until now.
Because Chinese culture prefers white, porcelein-like skin to the tan-loving people of the west, women on beaches in China are now sporting what’s been dubbed the ‘facekini’.
It’s basically a fancy name for ski mask worn by anyone up to no good who’d rather have their face NOT show up on YouTube or the local news while getting their hooligan on or doing some burglaring.
Seeing people sporting these on the beach is a lot like David Lynch is shooting an episode of American Horror Story…with the exception that this is real.
Nothing quite like checking out a woman from behind on the beach only to have her turn around sporting one of these things on her face.
Cue the ‘stabby shower music’ from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho!
Because death and urns with your loved one’s ashes aren’t surrounded by enough creepy stories, a fun company called Cremation Solutions has decided to knock the creep factor over the wall. How?
By using a 3D printer to create an amazingly creepy look-alike head of your loved one that contains said loved ones ashes.
No…really…This isn’t a fun, faux site put up as a joke. This is legit, kids. You can now sit home and stare lovingly at the lifeless eyes of a remains-stuffed replica head of your loved one. These things make great conversation pieces too!
Guest: “That’s interesting. Are you into cosmetology?”
You: “No. That’s my ex-wife.”
Fun, right?
Before you get excited and click that Paypal button, there are some things to consider. The head doesn’t come with hair. It can either be added digitally (we’re not really sure what that means…but we’re guessing it’ll end up a lot like putting hair on those little Lego figures) or you can purchase a wig. We’re also not sure about the following line:
The full sized personal urn can hold all the ashes of an adult. For holding just a portion of the ashes, we recommend the keepsake sized personal urns.
Does that mean mini versions of your loved ones are available? We’re not sure.
Unveiled in the UK at the annual Designing Interactive Systems conference, the egg-like device has been dubbed Kissenger. Hidden inside Kissenger’s eyeless, Humpty-Dumpty-like body is a pair of pressure-sensitive soft plastic lips that peek through a smooth plastic casing about the size of an Easter egg.
The lips contain pressure sensors and actuators. When you kiss them, the shape changes you create are transmitted in real time over the net to a receiving Kissenger. There, the actuators reproduce the mirror image of the pressure patterns you created– magically transmitting your smacker to your partner.
“People have found it a very positive way to improve intimacy in communications with their partners when they are apart,” claims Hooman Samani of Singapore-based Lovotics, which developed the device.
The device is a prototype and Samani says it will not be commercialised until “all the ethical and technical considerations are covered”. He adds: “I am not interested in sexual uses for it.”
Remember that part where he stated, “I am not interested in sexual uses for it”? He’s obviously been locked away in his lab for far too long and has forgotten what people are like.
Best part of the story from the New Scientist article? THIS little excerpt:
“I think that approach is too much and I find it kind of creepy,” says Samani. “You don’t need to transmit all the parameters of a kiss. The main aim is to improve long-distance relationships. We’ve taken several steps to minimise the creepiness.”
Two things: We’d hate to see this dude’s idea of what he considers creepy and what did this thing look like BEFORE he minimized the creepiness?
We all just collectively shuddered together.
Here’s Lovotic’s actual company video for an earlier version of the device (in case you were wondering about that ‘before’ design mentioned above)…which makes us wonder how going from a cute rabbit-like design to the disembodied mouth of a Cenobite is ‘minimizing the creepiness’. Again…can someone get a search warrant for this dude’s basement? Or are we just not ready for that?
That thing pictured over there to the right? That thing that looks like hair from your shower drain or a Giger-inspired coffee mug? It’s a living organism that just might be the future of how we harvest material for all of our tech needs.
Wait…wha?
That weird-looking thing is actually a genetically engineered living thing that, depending on the materials used to create it, produces various types of material including fiberglass and even magnetic nanoparticles.
Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara are continually tweaking the original DNA combinations used in these things to produce not only materials which we are currently using but to produce new types of materials that hadn’t even existed before.
Remember when your grandma would crochet a sweater for you that you’d never wear? In about ten years time you’ll be crocheting a Kevlar-like sweater for your grandchildren except that instead of rolls of yarn? You’ll have a bunch of THESE things producing all your Kevlar in different colors sitting in an adorable little basket covered in holograms of geese wearing bonnets.
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.
I think we established that you can always count on Japanese folk and the military to come up with some off the wall inventions but let it be known here and now and for the rest of time that there is only one place to go for a truly weird invention. The apex of oddball, the zenith of zany, the pinnacle of peculiar…the culmination of crazy, the…nadir of normal (I’m running out of steam here gang. I hope that was enough for you. OH, WAIT! One more…), the summit of strange; I’m speaking, of course, of Scientology.
It’s now more commonly know as the E-meter but the Hubbard Electrometer was originally used by L. Ron Hubbard in 1968 for a (*ahem*) scientific experiment with the intention of discerning whether or not tomatoes experience pain.
Crazy? Probably.
Ahead of his time? Definitely.
Maybe if we had listened to L. Ron when he told us he had proven that tomatoes effectively scream in pain when they’re sliced then we wouldn’t have run into that huge Killer Tomato problem we had just ten years later when they finally rose against their transgressors.
Woe is man’s hubris when confronted with the threat of mutant tomatoes with a taste for human blood.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Hubbard Electrometer is basically just a device that measures electrical resistance but with the not-to-be-trifled-with addition of an unproven assertion.
I could be wrong, but it feels like the Hubbard Electrometer is just one step off from me gluing macaroni to the side of a toaster oven and declaring that it can sort ghosts by height. (Hmm…I might be on to something there. Yeah…the Rounsaville Ghosterganizer, coming to a Target near you.)
That’s the last of them gang. What do you think? Who’s going to top the heap in this week’s Weird Off? Will it be:
What order would you put these weirdest of weird inventions in?
In other news: Our pushy and megalomaniacal editor here at weirdthings.com, Mr. Justin Robert Young, has insisted that next week’s Weirdest Topic needs to be both topical and summer related…so he’s suggest Weirdest Murders of All Time. Get pumped, people.
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.
Sometimes an invention, although weird, is so inspirational, so brilliant, so ingenious that it can no longer be held within the borders of Weirdville and thus is compelled to immigrate into the welcoming arms of neighboring Awesometown. Today, I bring you, the Scan Toaster.
Not only does this fancy little contraption give your bread that golden and crispy crunch that we’ve all come to associate with a well-balanced breakfast but you can actually connect it to your computer via USB and burn in the image of your choice. Or lightly toast in, assuming it has the customary toaster settings that vary from not-even-warmed-up to burnt-beyond-recognition.
Okay, I’ll concede that in everyday life this peculiar product is nearly completely useless but join me, if you will, on a journey outside the box. This may very well be the most powerful creation ever unleashed in the known world. It’s like the goose that laid the golden egg and the atomic bomb all rolled into one little bread-burning package.
Need to keep the kids interested in breakfast? Easy. Burn yourself some Mickey ears on their Wonderbread. Need some extra spending dough? The Virgin Mary’s visage on a piece of toast is ALWAYS good for a few bucks on eBay. Looking to start World War III? Nothing like proclaiming to the New York Times that Mohammad mysteriously showed up on your toast one morning.
Let’s see the iPhone 4 do that.
What am I missing? How would you put this phenomenal piece of technology to the best use? Also, what other Weird Inventions are out there that can top this one? Also, Tomorrow is already Friday! Better start thinking about how the Scan Toaster measures up against, Baby’s First Ball Gag, Military Vuvuzelas and Solar Powered Bras…
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.
Are you one of those people who, when confronted with a crying baby during a long flight, all you can think about is how incredibly satisfying it would be to strap a ball gag to it’s face and shove it into the nearest overhead compartment? (Me neither. And for the record, if you are…please don’t have children…) Then today is your lucky day.
It seems, every once in a while that rare individual comes along who not only has never had children, but only appears to know of their existence at all through second hand stories AND prides themselves in their self-titled position of “inventor.” Only that man (let’s call him Crazy Jim) could create, The Strap-On Pacifier.
I can only assume Crazy Jim created this particular product with hordes of armless screaming babies belonging to negligent parents in mind. (Wow, now that I type that out it kind of sounds like it would make an incredible B movie, right? Coming to a theater near you, Summer 2011: The Armless Screamers! “This summer, just because they’re armless does not mean they are harmless. WAHHHHHHHHHHH!” Cue blood shooting out of ears and bursting crystal glasses.)
Seriously, I respect that babies spitting out their pacifiers is an actual issue but is their any chance that strapping said pacifiers to tiny little still-developing ears is a good idea? I hope Crazy Jim plans to sell them in conjunction with “safety tape.” (I’m picturing duct tape but with cute little piggies and sheep printed on it to use for swaddling your kid-let so they don’t rip their own ears off while trying to take the pacifier out to say their first words.)
Am I wrong here? Should you treat your baby like Tarantino’s Gimp? What are your thoughts? Most importantly, are there even WEIRDER baby/child related inventions out there? Share in the fun right down there in the comments!
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.
A topic like this, sometimes you owe it to the world to pay lip service to the big clichés. Case in point, I think we can all agree that if there’s one group of people we know we can count on to come up with one of the weirdest inventions we’ve ever seen…oh yeah…okay…I forgot already…it’s the Japanese. BUT, if there are TWO groups of people then the second one is DEFINITELY the military!
Have you seen this contraption? I thought I had. Knowing that it came from the breeding ground of weird that is the military-industrial complex, I was pretty sure it was the lecherous King of the Isle of Jazz’s artillery, until I remembered my Dad had assured me at some point that cartoons aren’t real. (Heartbreaking.)
Back to square one. Turns out this thing isn’t designed to go to battle with the Land of Symphony, it’s supposed to be a little like a giant tinhorn. You know, those metal horns old people stick in their ears to hear better in cartoons. (Hmm…somehow it already came back to cartoons.) Except this particular phalanx of inverse instruments is meant to alert the old man on the other end to incoming enemy aircraft. (At which point SOP states he must shake his cane, mumble unintelligibly for 10-20 seconds, then suddenly shout, “…OR I’LL SHOVE THIS WALKIN’ STICK UP YOUR @$$!!!)
Unfortunately, I’m not sure how well this fancy little listening device worked. Can anyone tell me what country those soldiers in the foreground are from? If it’s Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, or the Ottoman Empire my guess would be, “not as well as they had hoped.”
Regardless, eventually the old men were replaced with radar operators…
Military history is rife with weird inventions. See if you can’t find me a few more that out weird this one. I dare you.
Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Inventions ever conceived.
A topic like this, sometimes you owe it to the world to pay lip service to the big clichés. Case in point, I think we can all agree that if there’s one group of people we know we can count on to come up with one of the weirdest inventions we’ve ever seen…it’s the Japanese.
So now, the problem becomes, where do we start? Which Japanese invention will hold today’s place of honor firmly in position while adding the necessary support to present it in the best possible light? Which Japanese invention will simultaneously lift the bar and separate itself from the pack? Which Japanese invention will allow for the most gratuitous use of thinly veiled innuendo?
I bring you…The Solar Powered Bra! (I can’t help but feel this is the perfect time for Thus Spake Zarathustra to reach its crescendo.)
I’m not even sure what I love most about this. Is it the beverage holding pouch attached to either… er… chest… piece…? Is it the extra-literal use of the term “green?” The scrolling LED billboard?
Ultimately, I think I’m just happy that women are finally being released from the shackles of having to plug their cell phones into a wall to charge while they sleep. Every. Single. Night. How daunting.
Finally, they have the freedom to charge their electronics as they go about their business in the work-a-day world! Provided it’s sunny out. And they aren’t wearing any clothes…
Also, please don’t wear this current coursing corset out and about on a rainy day. Or wash it. Or…I better stop now.
What do you think? Weird enough for you? If you’re a girl, can you imagine wearing one of these? If you’re a dude, can you imagine wearing one of these? Can you do weirder? Impress me, Team. Let me hear your thoughts.
