The Olympic flame has been distinguished, but the flame of awesomeness continues to smolder. This week’s countdown adds fuel to the fire with Water-based graffiti, Architectural printing, Nike Camp Victory, social media curing memory loss and Beck’s up and coming album release.
Number 5) Digilarti Artlab: Waterlight Graffiti
Water is probably Mother Nature’s most awesome of innovations. The original thirst-quencher takes a break from wet t-shirt competitions this week and pays homage to street art through the countdown’s number 5, Waterlight Graffiti. A wall-surface consisting of thousands of LED lights, illuminated by contact from water, invites pedestrians to create and deface an urban canvas using just water and their apparatus of choice, from sponges to water pistols.
View the video here
Via @thisiscolossal
Number 4) 3D house printing
“Can you stop by Officeworks on your way home and pick up a print cartridge of reinforced steel” said the not-so-distant future you. Professor Khoshnevis has visions of printing architectural dwellings via large, structural printers, aiming to solve the world’s housing shortage problem, whereas NASA hopes to use this technology to colonise the Moon.
Via @jasminelee, @gizmodo
Number 3) Nike Camp Victory – Olympic Pavilion
The flame has been distinguished and The Spice Girls have donned their platform shoes for the last time, but don’t despair, the awesomeness from London’s games continues to please. This week’s third place is a sporting pavilion like no other. A hybrid of track and field and Tron, the pavilion houses interactive stations where the public can attempt to conquer the fastest men and women in history, and then go and buy some Nike running shoes of course.
Via @digitalbuzzblog
View the video here
Number 2) Rebuilding memory with Facebook’s ‘People you may know’
Many of us struggle day to day with memory loss, ranging from forgetting what level you parked your car on at the shops or recalling not-so-new work colleagues names (guilty). But, imagine waking up and forgetting everything about yourself- your own name, your friends, your favourite colour, your preferred cologne. Mayank Sharma forgot himself quite literally, being diagnosed with a rare case of meningitis, causing him to lose all memory. This week’s countdown runner-up shows how one man, through Facebook’s ‘People you may know’ feature, was able to piece back together his identity through reconnecting with his wider social network.
View the video here
Via @huffingtonpost
Number 1) Beck Hansen’s Song Reader
Beck’s new album release, due in December this year, is not quite what one would expect. Instead of releasing a recorded album, the artist is publishing twenty unrecorded songs as individual pieces of sheet music for fans and musicians alike to interpret and publish online. Gotye YouTube fan’s ode to Somebody that I used to know has shown us that collaboration is alive and screaming in 2012 and in this spirit, Beck hands over creative license to the artistic masses to produce his new album. Better dust off the ol’ ukulele for this one.
Via @Beck
In James' absence, this week's blog was written by UM's junior strategist Christian Tough.