Reconstructing shredded documents
Advanced scanning technology makes it possible to reconstruct documents previously thought safe from prying eyes, sometimes even pages that have been ripped into confetti-size pieces.
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Dutch move the modernized windmill into town
The environmentally-conscious Dutch are experimenting with urban turbines in city centers. Light, quiet and efficient, they can be placed unobtrusively on rooftops and generate up to 7,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, more than enough to power an average Dutch home.
Continue ReadingFlash drives: always on the go, without moving parts
From humble origins as geeky novelties, thumb-size U.S.B. flash drives have grown into a billion-dollar market.
Continue ReadingRotterdam round-up: hybrids and affinities
Though Rotterdam plays host to weighty institutions, many local artists indicate that they nonetheless go abut their work much as artists do in cities that don’t boast such a rich cultural infrastructure.
Continue ReadingMoving the garbage underground
Collecting the garbage becomes a one-man operation: the truck pulls up, attaches a cable to the container, lifts it up, turns it over, and puts it back into the ground, an eight-minute process that also does away with mistossed bags splattering in the street.
Continue ReadingRoving the globe, laptops alight on wireless hot spots
With Internet access becoming a necessity for many travelers, typing e-mail on a stained keyboard in a local cybercafe has lost its charm.
Continue ReadingDutchtub, a "new way of outdoor bathing"
It requires no electricity, plumbing or hot water. Just fill it with water, put firewood in the bin, light it up, wait a while and enjoy a 100-degree soak.
Continue ReadingMental block: brain-computer interfaces
Controlling objects with just your thoughts has been a dream of sci-fi from “Star Trek” to Star Wars, but in the past few years that dream has inched closer to reality.
Continue ReadingConnecting paper and online worlds by cellphone camera
Focusing your camera phone on a code and then clicking any button launches a wireless service -- for example, the ability to buy a train ticket, check an airplane's departure time, or download a ring tone from a store display.
Continue ReadingReview of Jan De Cock, S.M.A.K., Ghent
Museums, libraries, and old banks are all freighted with tainted history, hosting cultural heirlooms of sometimes questionable provenance.
Continue ReadingVisa procedures blocking European musicians from the U.S. since 9-11
Tales of musicians from nations like Syria and Cuba being kept at bay by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS) have become commonplace since 9-11. But European and Canadian musicians, too, are finding the consular walls unmanageably high.
Continue ReadingReview of Pawel Althamer, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht
Althamer describes his drug-related experiences in great detail, striving for the accuracy of a scientist charting the borders of perception, noting the most minute facets of the wondrous stimuli around him.
Continue ReadingReview of Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani, SMBA Amsterdam
The history of grandiloquent architecture is a long and rich one, and Berlin-based artists Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani explored this history in Amsterdam’s ‘South Axis’ development project, a playground of gleaming office towers with interchangeable names like Eurocenter, Forum and Atrium...
Continue ReadingThe doctors were real, the patients undercover
It had all the markings of a television detective show. Posing as patients, three undercover observers got themselves admitted as patients to a locked psychiatric ward to investigate conditions on the inside. And a remote team monitored the project via hidden cameras and microphones from a command center in a nearby hotel.
Continue ReadingA computer that has an eye for Van Gogh
Now a team of researchers in the Netherlands have developed a computer system that quickly examines hundreds of paintings for telltale patterns. The results, they say, can lend credence to existing attributions or help dismiss them.
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Review of 'I’m Not Here – An Exhibition Without Francis Alÿs', De Appel, Amsterdam
This exhibition is meant to recall that atmosphere of Francis Alÿs, while at the same time critiquing the very format of the solo exhibition – in this case, a group show standing for a solo exhibition whose protagonist is only conceptually alluded to.
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Review of Pieter Hugo, Gallery Cokkie Snoei, Amsterdam
South African photographer Pieter Hugo, who rose to prominence in 2005 with ‘The Hyena and Other Men’, his controversial series of images of itinerant hyena tamers, has again made a series of large-scale colour portraits, this time of Nollywood actors.
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Better vision for the world, on a budget
Self-adjustable spectacles, which let untrained wearers set the right focus themselves in less than a minute, greatly reduce the need for trained optometrists, who are rarely available in Africa and many parts of Asia. But the competition is sometimes palpable amongst the companies that want to be the first to distribute adjustable glasses in the millions...
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Collapsible shipping container, packed flat
A Dutch engineer has invented a collapsible plastic shipping container which, he hopes, will replace the steel ones. Because it is made of a fibreglass composite, it weighs only three-quarters as much as a standard container but—more importantly— when it is empty, it can be folded down to a quarter of its size.
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