Start dreaming
Reviewed: Tuesday, June 7 2007
VIRVIE is an ambition - to realize la vie virtuelle - and to break the
boundaries while doing it. It is inspired by ambitious projects all over
the (real) world:
The Race for the Sky of the Chrysler Building
In the summer of 1929, a "race for the sky" broke out
on the island of Manhattan. Automobile tycoon Walter Chrysler battled
Wall Street powerhouse Bank of Manhattan Trust Company for the title of
world's tallest building in what many historians consider to be the most
intense race in skyscraper history. In the spring of 1930, just when it
appeared that the bank might capture the coveted title, a small crew jacked
a needle-thin spire hidden in Chrysler's building through the top of the
crown to claim the title of world's tallest at 1,046 feet.
Not only was the Chrysler Building the world's tallest structure, it was
also one of the most decorated office buildings in the world. Chrysler
wanted "a bold structure, declaring the glories of the modern age"
-- and he got it. He decorated his skyscraper with hubcaps, mudguards,
and hood ornaments, just like his cars, hoping that such a distinctive
building would make his car company a household name. Today, the Chrysler
Building is recognized as New York City's greatest display of Art Deco,
a decorative style characterized by sharp angular or zigzag surface forms
and ornaments.
(from Building Big)
The Flight of Nike's Air Jordans
The Air Jordan I was released in
1985. In the 1984 NBA Draft, Michael Jordan was selected by the Chicago
Bulls with the No. 3 overall pick. This was after seeing Jordan perform
a wonderful three years in North Carolina and co-captain and star of the
Olympic basketball team in 1984 which as you all know picked up the gold
medal. Nike understood that this player would turn out to be something
else and signed him up to create a line of shoes and apparel.
The Air Jordan I was designed by Peter Moore and marked a new era in basketball
shoewear design. There has been multiple fakes of this shoe and also other
shoe brands made models where you could see lots of similarities with
Air Jordan I. The black/red model was banned by the NBA back in 1985 due
to NBA color rules and this actually helped to create more publicity and
interest for the shoes. Who knows, it might have been a marketing trick
from Nike.
A great thing with the original Air Jordan I's were that they came with
a double set of laces to match the two different colors the shoe was made
up in. For instance the black/red's came with one set of black laces and
one set of red laces. When talking about colors it should also be said
that the Air Jordan I's were the Air Jordan's that were released in the
most colorways of all AJ's. 23 colorways (samples included) even beats
the number of Air Jordan XI retros.
The white/black-red and black/red were released as retros in 1994 and
sold very poorly. No one seemed to want them. They went on sale for $20
at some stores in the US.In 2001 they re-retroed them and this time around
the demand was a lot greater. At some stores they sold out in just a few
minutes. I bet a few of the people buying them was wishing they were around
back in '94...
(from Air-jordans.com)
The Power of the Button on BMW's M5
"Whenever I see someone in an M5 I’m overcome with
a wave of respect, because here is someone who has paid a fortune to hide
his light under a bushel. I like that, and as a result I was desperately
looking forward to my first go in the new model.
It has a 5 litre V10 engine that churns out 400bhp. It’ll do 0-60
in 4sec and could, if it didn’t have an electronic Bill Oddie under
the bonnet, hit 204mph. And yet, apart from a few fancy air ducts on the
front it looks pretty much identical to your doctor’s normal 5-series.
Sounds like quite a recipe.
Unfortunately, however, the recipe has been spoilt somewhat by someone
who thinks pure engineering can be improved with a blizzard of technobabble.
So before setting off for a 50-mile journey home on a lovely summer’s
evening, I had to choose from 11 different settings on the seven-speed
flappy paddle gearbox. Then I had to decide how ferocious I wanted the
gearshifts to be, very fierce, quite fierce, moderately fierce, boring
or very boring. And then I had to choose from three settings on the electronic
differential.
And then, since I didn’t know where I was, I had to set the sat
nav, which meant hitting a knob, twiddling it, moving it to the side and
then twiddling it again. It’s a good job this car has so much power
because by the time you’ve set it up for the journey that lies ahead
you’re already very late.
Anyway, off I toddled, cursing the BMW gearbox’s inability to cope
with town traffic no matter what setting you choose. Pretty soon, however,
the road opened up, Bob Seger came on the radio, and with a determined
shove I put my foot down. And pushed a knob on the steering wheel that
I assumed controlled the volume. It didn’t. It changed the station,
so now instead of Hollywood Nights I had some fat opera bint warbling
on Radio 3. Damn. So I had to get the screen out of sat nav mode into
entertainment mode and then tell it I wanted an FM station, whereupon
it presented me with a million local alternatives that nobody who has
£61,000 to spend on a car would ever listen to. I just want one
button for Radio 2 and one for Radio 4. And that’s it.
Eventually I relocated Bob Seger but unfortunately I was approaching a
roundabout and the sat nav woman had decided I was an idiot. So she told
me to go straight over and then repeated herself and then repeated it
again. And by the time she’d shut up Bob had been replaced with
a miserable sounding girl called Dildo.
Happily, by this stage I knew where I was so I thought, “Okay, I’ll
turn the sat nav off.” Well you can’t. It doesn’t matter
what button you press, she continues to give her instructions over and
over again until you want to bludgeon her and her family to death with
an axe. Even if you pull over and turn off the engine, she lies in a state
of suspended animation, waiting to spew electronic diarrhoea all over
the cockpit when you set off again.
To make matters worse, in the desperate search for the right button I’d
hit something called “power”, which had ruined the ride. And
then I’d made the mistake of reaching for the indicator. You can’t
turn that off either. It doesn’t matter what you do with the stalk,
it just goes on blinking until it’s decided you’ve made the
turn.
By this stage I was properly angry and now the sat nav cow was not only
giving me audible instructions but flashing them onto a head-up display
on the windscreen. And the indicator was still on and I couldn’t
find Radio 4. And then I hit another button on the
steering wheel called “M”.
This brought up a rev counter in the head-up display and caused the seat
to start attacking my back. I’m not joking. Every time I went round
a corner some electronic chip decided I needed more support and firmed
up the appropriate bolster. They say a Dutch bargee can swear for two
minutes without repetition or hesitation. But in the new M5 I beat that
easily. Why, I wailed to myself, can there not just be one big red button
in the middle of the steering wheel which turns all this crap off? Why
do I have to live in some German geek’s wet dream? And then to improve
my mood still further, I came up behind a Rover that was being driven
by someone who was a hundred and seventy twelve. In a temper I put my
foot down to get past and couldn’t believe what happened.
It seems that the M button, in addition to electrifying the seat, had
told a computer deep in the bowels of the engine that I was in the mood
for some fun and games. So now the V10 was no longer developing 400bhp.
It was handing over a massive 507. That’s right, 507. And as a result
the M5 just flew. In the last five miles of my journey I discovered that
deep beneath the layers of utter and complete electronic nonsense, and
the rather ugly body, there’s one truly amazing car.
Just when I was thinking that BMW had made yet another car for yet another
software consultant, it did something I really wasn’t expecting.
It became a full-on M5. And praise doesn’t come higher than that."
(from Jeremy
Clarkson Driving)
The Wonder of Dubai's Palm Islands
The Palm Islands in Dubai are three
large artificial islands, currently being constructed by Nakheel. Each
settlement will be in the shape of a palm tree topped with a crescent
and will have residential communitites and resorts.
Such examples of reclaimed land are made feasible in the area by the wide
continental shelf off the Dubai coast, with the Persian Gulf at a shallow
depth.
The Palm, Jumeirah had construction started in June 2001 and expected
completion time is late 2005 to early 2006. There are plans for three
five star hotels with international themes to be built on The Palm, Jumeirah:
Okinawa, Brazil, and Venice, recreating the ambiance of these places to
be built on the crescent of this settlement.
The Palm, Jebel Ali was begun in October 2002 and expected completion
time is late 2007. It includes boardwalks which circle the 'fronds' of
the 'palm', spelling out a verse of poetry in Arabic, which reads: "Take
wisdom from the wise - It takes a man of vision to write on water - Not
everyone who rides a horse is a jockey - Great men rise to greater challenges."
The Palm, Deira began construction in November 2004. The Deira Palm is
set to be the largest of the three Palms.
The islands will be built by a Dutch company from 80 000 000 m3 landmass
from the approach channel.
Al Nakheel Properties is one of the leading real estate developers in
Dubai and creators of land reclamation projects: Palm Jumeira, Palm Jebel
Ali, Palm Deira, Dubai Waterfront, and The World.
(From Wikipedia
and Nakheel
The 'care-free reentry' to Earth! of the SpaceShipOne
On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne rocketed into history, becoming
the first private manned spacecraft to exceed an altitude of 328,000 feet
twice within the span of a 14 day period, thus claiming the ten million
dollar Ansari X-Prize. Part of the success was due to the, elegantly simple,
'folding' wings on the spaceship. In space, the wings are folded up to
provide a shuttle-cock or "feather" effect to give the ship
extremely high drag for reentry. This allows the reentry deceleration
to occur at a higher altitude and greatly reduces the forces and heating
on the structure. Also, the ship, in the feathered configuration, will
align itself automatically such that the pilot has a less-critical flight
control task. We refer to this as "care-free reentry". The atmosphere
orients the vehicle to a belly-first attitude without pilot input. Another
benefit is that, since the altitude is higher, the pilot can glide further
after the entry deceleration. A SpaceShipOne pilot can glide more than
60 miles after he converts back to the non-feathered glider shape.
(adapted from Scaled Composites)
(Adapted from TED Talks)
Also special mention should go to twistori, a Twitter based variety which I describe as 'realtime popular poetry-flow' (and also looks great on an iPhone).
The amazing possibilities of representing life online
This is best exemplified by the works of Jonathan Harris. He wants to make sense of the infinite world on the Web -- so he builds dazzling graphic interfaces that help us visualize the data floating around out there. Here he presents "We Feel Fine," a project that scours blogs to collect the planet's emoti(c)ons, and the "Yahoo! Time Capsule," which preserves images, quotes and thoughts snapped up in 2006. And he premieres "Universe," which presents current events as constellations of words -- a tag cloud of our collective consciousness. See a demonstration in the video below: