I caught this wonderful documentary at this year's IDFA, 'Mechanical Love'. It is a beautifully put together piece (characters, art direction, film score). And successfully brings home the notion that indeed there can exist feelings & deep affection, (however complicated and battery dependent!), for the non-biological love of our lives... whether they are of the robotic nature, or one's own MacBook.

View some video clips >>>

It's on the festival circuit this year, please try and catch it if you can.


Film Synopsis :
Can you love a robot? “Mechanical Love” is a documentary on the interrelationship between robots and humans.

The film portrays people who in different ways enjoy a close relationship with a robot. We meet an old German woman who desperately seeks to keep her memories alive through talking with a baby seal robot called Paro. We also meet Professor Ishiguro who is developing androids, and who, in his current work on his own geminoid, wonders what it takes to be human.

The film takes us from the high temple of robot technology, Tokyo, Japan, to Braunschweig in Germany, to Italy and back to Copenhagen in Denmark. By this world tour director Phie Ambo seeks to highlight the human need for love and our craving to be loved by others – perhaps the two most important aspects of life. Through the main characters, she also examines the cultural differences in how we accept emotional robots in the East and the West.

The robot is no longer just a mechanical gadget that sits inside your coffee machine or performs monotonous, mechanical work, but made to provide meaningful presence. Welcome to the brave new world.

Euclidean pure light emitted by tiny electronic LED components, become the perfect medium to transfer the mental space of abstraction into sensual architectural installations. From artist Erwin Redl.


The delineation of a 'real' space by virtual means, breaking down the space by way of it's mathematical points, lines and tangents.


Juicy electric colors bathe the rooms & space, and imbue them with the hot urgency of Las Vegas.



Matrix of multi-dimensionality, movement & trajectories made visible and known.












View more of Erwin's light fantastic work at Ace Gallery

Freedom of Creation is a design + research company based in Amsterdam. Their designers are deeply inspired by nature... and her growth patterns.



Their designs for lighting fixtures are infused with the mathematical elegance and beauty of the fibonacci.



Some of their designs are inspired by planetary movements.



And some of their textile designs take a playful + pop approach to mobius strips.

Antony Gromley, English sculptor.

Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live."






Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside."



a trace of a real event of a real body in time





View more of Antony's brilliant work >

Moscow’s rapidly growing skyline will soon feature an eye-popping new addition: Crystal Island, which will be the world’s biggest building when completed. Sir Norman Foster’s mountainous 27 million square feet spiraling “city within a building” will cost $4 billion and it is scheduled to be built within next 5 years.



And as we’d expect from Foster + Partners, this soon-to-be world’s biggest building will also incorporate a number of sustainable design features into the overall scheme. The exterior facade will be solar responsive and will include solar panels which, along with wind turbines, will generate electricity for the huge tower. Natural ventilation will be provided thanks to numerous strategically placed large atriums. The internal environment will also have dynamic enclosure panels slotted into the structural framing that will allow daylight to penetrate deep into the heart of the structure; the panels will also be controlled to modify temperature inside the building – closed in winter for extra warmth and opened in summer to allow natural ventilation. Energy management is at the heart of this structure, several on-site renewable and low-carbon energy generation projects are planned. - via Inhabit

My dear fellow Space Collective citizens.... The World Psychedelic Forum has just posted it's full detailed program for this year, which will be held in Basel, Switzerland in March 2008. We just got our tickets, and would love to know if anyone here is planning on attending. If so, please message me, we would love to hook up while in Basel.

This year, more than 50 experts in the field will be presenting. Including : Albert Hoffmann, Alex Grey, Stanislav Grof, Kathleen Harrison, Dennis McKenna, Rick Doblin, Ralph Metzner, Jeremy Narby, Daniel Pinchbeck, Kajuyali Tsamani, Carolyn Garcia, Peter Gasser and many more.

Download the PDF program here

A brief description from their website :

The "World Psychedelic Forum" will be presenting a unique opportunity for experts, researchers, and interested persons from all around the globe, to exchange views and hear presentations of the latest research on the value of these remarkable psychedelic substances in medicine, psychology, science, religion, culture and the arts.

More than fifty experts from all over the world will bear witness to, and shine light upon the multi-dimensional psychedelic experience with its tremendous potential for expanding consciousness and for self-awareness. We will hear of the renewal of research that foretells a promising future when psychedelic plants and their synthetic derivatives will reclaim their destined position as incomparably valuable tools for individual and collective evolution and thus supporting the needed consciousness change for humanity.

cyberdelic space
The mental realm in deep cyberspace that coincides with deep psychedelic space and which provides a portal for entry into entheospace.

'Jelly', the delicious new iTunes visualizer

Klaus Haapaniemi
www.klaush.com

Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was the German scientist who coined the phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and the terms "Darwinism" and "ecology." He was first to postulate a "missing link" between ape and man and was proven correct when Java man was found in 1891. A staunch evolutionary biologist, Haeckel put Darwin on the world map. His books and monographs, placing Darwin in a broad social and philosophical context, were circulated internationally; they outsold On the Origin of Species by a large margin. Haeckel was commonly referred to as "the Darwin of Germany."


Haeckel was also an accomplished artist. His idol was Goethe, who maintained that art as well as science could unearth the underlying truths of nature. For both Goethe and Haeckel, morphology had aesthetic roots. Haeckel traveled far and wide, from Sicily to Ceylon, to the North Sea, and beyond. Sketchpads and watercolors accompanied his microscope wherever he went. His on-the-spot drawings of deep-sea vegetation, aquatic creatures, frogs, birds, and higher animals were turned into more than 1000 engravings.



Online gallery from the Marine Biological Laboratory

: LSD Positive Drug Story




: Drugs & Evolution