Robotic Environmental Risk Assessment Rover by EcoArtTech
16 May 2008 Author: zenon In: Design & Products
Imagine if R2D2 didn’t project images of Princess Leia, but rather an assessment of local superfund sites. Objectively, it’s nothing like the very adorable R2D2, but the Environmental Risk Assessment Rover (ERAR) by EcoArtTech is proving to be a very useful and devoted robot friend. Solar powered and GPS-oriented, the ERAR analyzes data from its surroundings, including air quality, local traffic accidents, and current terrorist warning levels. The rover breaks its findings down into fourteen unique (and pretty funny) categories, everything from “Plastic Bags” to “Regis and Kelly”, and projects them onto nearby natural surfaces. Just like the Princess Leia projection, right? Okay, not really, nor with the cute little meeps and whistles, but this thought-provoking rover sends a more urgent and critical message.
Gehry Designed Altantic Yards project grinds forward
In the long and hard fought battle over the development of a 22-acre former rail yards site in Brooklyn, real estate developer Forest City Ratner has won the latest round. In February, a US Federal appeals court ruled in favor of the $4 billion Gehry-designed mixed-use mega project edging it forward, albeit slowly. Since it was announced in 2003, the Atlantic Yards project has moved ahead at a snails pace, mostly due to the highly organized efforts of the community opposition group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB) that claims the neighbourhood of mostly brownstones and abandoned low-rise industrial buildings will be detrimentally transformed by the project, which, in addition to housing an National Basketball Association sports arena, a boutique hotel, retail space, offices and 6400 units of housing, will include 16 high rise towers. DDDB has waged several legal battles against the project but has lost every single one.
While the recent news is good for Ratner, the project faces other hurdles, namely the current downturn in the economy and the recent recent change of Governors for New York. Former Governor Spitzer, who resigned last week amid a sex scandal, was a huge supporter of the project. It is not know where incoming Governor David Paterson stands on the project, but many city projects are seeing their funding cut.
Swissmiss turned me on to Delaney Jane Larson, who creates gorgeous illustrations under the pseudonym of Plane Jane. I very much like how she has usurped the iconography of traditional playing card designs to create her own cast of characters. The subject of her work is very much the stuff of dreams - little monsters, the wool of shorn sheep creating clouds, pimped out Kings and Queens. Her color palette is kept fairly limited in order to “counterbalance the situational idiosyncrasies” of her illustrations. Her strongest work is in the illustrations and paintings themselves, although she has translated some of the illustrations into t-shirts, cards, ceramics, and tote bags, available here.
