middleman

Possibly inspired by the SURROGATE willing to be an understudy for a wealthy man facing jail time as imagined a decade ago for in the television series Arrested Development, Super Punch introduces us to the ChameleonMask—billed as the Human Uber—from an emerging technologies showcase in Japan. A body-double takes a stint as an avatar for a tele-presence, scrapping a screen to their face. According to developers, their pilot studies confirm that that users are willing to suspend their disbelief and not see beyond the mask and accept the stand-in as the person that they are engaging with and not at all a dissociative nightmare. As the costume is refined, I wonder what repercussions that this might have for the gig economy with humans themselves as peripheral devices and what our standards become for communication and interaction.

meta-gallery

We are certain that the curators over at Coudal Partners are very excited any time that the get to open up a new wing on the Museum of Online Museums (MoOM) and there are quite a few enticing and novel collections to explore—foremost of which was the Sheaff catalogue of ephemera with exhibits on postcards, cabinet cards, marbled paper, stamps, tokens and an assemblage on Anamorphic Writing. To decipher the hidden message, one was meant to tilt the puzzle cards at an angle as to almost look flat across the surface. Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

toy building brick

A couple days ago, the world marked International LEGO Day, inscribed on the calendar on the date when Godtfred Kirk Christiansen filed the American patent application for his product sixty years ago. GK Christiansen was the third son of the inventor and founder Ole Kirk Christiansen who began making wooden toys in his workshop in Billund, Denmark in 1932—before moving to plastic as a medium—and was the managing director of the company from 1950 to 1995. The company’s name and line of construction toys is from the Danish words leg godt—“play well.”

dromomania

Strange Company features a rather moving and motivational review of a 2006 book on the life and times of a former Royal Navy lieutenant named James Holman who refused to let his handicap define him. Son of a chemist in Exeter who specialised in exotic imports of any substance (medical or otherwise) that could be dried, powdered or prepared for transport from afar, Holman was enchanted from childhood and hoped that a career in the navy would have shown him these remote places.
Though stricken with total blindness at the age of twenty-five after an exhibition in the Arctic in 1810, Holman refused charity and first pursued a course of study in medicine and literature in Edinburgh before departing solo on a classic Grand Tour of Europe, quite confident in his ability to navigate through echolocation. While abroad for three years, he acquired a rather mysterious travelling companion—who was hearing-impaired but also quite the rambler—who made periodic reappearances throughout his life and made some instrumental arrangements that allowed him to continue his journeys. Once back home, his Wanderlust could not be contained for long and penning a travelogue to help finance his adventures, he set off to circumnavigate the Earth, taking whatever means of conveyance that availed itself, and visited every continent except for Antarctica over the next five decades. His description of the flora of India are even cited by contemporary explorer Charles Darwin. Holman’s determination and bravery are pretty outstanding and inspirational, especially at a time when the fully able-bodied would be challenged to face such daunting adventures unscathed and at a time when the blind or the otherwise impaired were dismissed and marginalised by society and his story is one worth retelling.