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Interesting Stuff on the Internet

Interesting stuff on the internet is an article sharing my favourite recent online inspiration and distractions.

Frank Herbert’s novel Dune is next up on my reading list and so it was with great interest I watched a short documentary on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unorthodox adaptation attempt; a film that never got made, but influenced everything else that did.

What was the crystal palace, and why are we trying to rebuild it? One of the most famous structures in London’s history was destroyed by fire in 1936, yet today we are trying to resurrect it. First of all can we? and is it still relevant?

From underwater structures to ‘straw’ buildings: 4 insane urban designs that might shape the skylines of the future. Each proposition responds to flooding, over population, pollution and other very likely future global environmental concerns.

Dutch designer Merel Bekking describes how she likes to “crawl inside the skin of a different specialist” for every project she does. The work of Bekking is embedded within neuroscience, whereby she measures how the human brain is affected by basic design. The results are both surprising and interesting. Check out an interesting article about her research here.

A creative and collective project entitled Autonomous Machines features windup toys and other analog devices recreated and modified to make art. So incredibly cool and such an interesting way to reinterpret the loved objects of childhood fascination.

We constantly map our lives through our interactions and the internet, yet most of us don’t consider what our personal maps look like. Where You Are is a book of 16 personal maps created by writers, artists and thinkers as an experimental means of mapping.

Why Conflict Makes For Better Design: highlights from the exhibition of ‘conflict and design’ featuring 60 socially responsible designs and indicating how conflict is a the driving force of innovation. Victor Papanek, designer and educator describes “the most important ability that a designer can bring to his work is the ability to recognise, isolate, define, and solve problems.”

40 Days of Dating explores love as a central theme in humanity across time and culture. Love is one of the main topics in music, film, novels, poetry, and art but what exactly is it, and why do we approach it differently? To understand and answer some old age questions relating to love, two friends with opposite relationship problems dated for 40 days as an experiment and the results are truly interesting.

From regimes and rituals, to socialising and production here are the 5 most common and surprising habits of creative people. When you survey the habits they seem to be surprisingly mundane but perhaps that’s the most powerful notion; that reliable and effective creativity is built on orderly foundations. To be truly creative, you have to be brave enough to be boring?

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” Thomas Watson Jr. Its hard to identify anyone who has achieved success without first encountering failure. Harvey Deutschendorf is an emotional intelligence expert and reframes the perception of failure as a catalyst for success, here are his top 5 pointers.

A wonderful and dizzying documentary about climbing the worlds tallest towers, illegally of course and all for the thrill of jumping off after.

€35 million was recently crowd funded for the SeaOrbiter, a 200-foot tall floating platform for aquatic exploration. The SeaOrbiter is the brainchild and passion project of French ocean explorer Jacques Rougerie, a “sea architect” who has spent over a decade designing and securing funding for the concept.

Interview with Paulo Coelho: ‘I had an enormous amount of fun being a hippy’ The Brazilian-born writer, 66 opens up about his wealth, travel and having coffee with strangers.

Wood: The worlds most advanced building material and the bid to remake our city skylines from towers of timber. Check out the full article here. 

Compared to almost 90% of metals, less than 10% of plastic trash is recycled, this is due to complicated problem of finding and sorting plastic trash. Frustrated by plastic waste, Mike Biddle has developed a cheap and incredibly energy efficient plant that can, and does, recycle any kind of plastic. The Garbage Man is Mike Biddle’s bid to free the world from ever having to make new plastic. You can also check out his great TED talk here.