Step aside Rosie the Riveter! There’s a new techno-chic on the bloc. Barbie has a new life as a computer engineer. Women and technology are often at odds in the cultural imagination, so we’re glad to see everybody’s favorite glamor girl geeking out. But will it get more young girls interested in tech careers? The new doll has glasses, a Bluetooth equipped cellphone, and a geektastic t-shirt covered in binary code. We like the concept but the shirt design has a bit of a retro 80s feel. We’ve always thought that Binary Love needs a more classic style: 1’s and <3's forever! Get a shirt for yourself, and a bib for the baby!
Less than a month after it opened, the tallest tower in the world closed itself to visitors. We went up the Burj Khalifa (even though the signs still bore its original name, Burj Dubai) the day before it shut down indefinitely due to concerns of the elevator failing. Although there has been no official reason for the closing, newspapers all over the world picked up on the image of the 124 story elevator plunging down the “tower of terror.” We didn’t notice anything strange in the Burj’s elevator ride but once at the top of the Observation Deck, it was dusty and extremely windy. We felt the building sway and got motion sickness. We also noticed broken glass on the outside deck, which was already closed for maintenance. Were broken windows part of the problem for the Burj? The problem with the windows was raised by observers as early as 2007 and again in 2009. For whatever reason that it shut down, let’s hope the Burj Khalifa opens soon (with the utmost safety!) as a proud symbol of Dubai.
Remember when audio tours were the future of museum displays? But why just hear about the works when you can feel your way through an exhibit? Apple recently donated 100 iPod Touch devices to the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum for their new exhibit. These greatest hits of design are brought to life by an ocean of interviews, audios, and animations in the palm of your hand. The exhibit is labeled Design USA: Contemporary Innovation and looks back at the winners of the first ten National Design Awards. If you ever wanted to wander through the museum with an award-winning designer as tour guide, here’s your chance. Lose yourself in the world of your iPod, then zoom back out to have a better understanding of the physical object sitting on display. We still can’t touch the objects themselves, but we can poke and caress their digital histories to our heart’s content.
The Washington DC Textile Museum is showing a Contemporary Japanese Fashion exhibit. To kick it off, they teamed up with T-MODE, the organizers of anime and gamer convetions. The result was haute couture combined with cosplay, which results in a harajuku fashion show. It’s interesting to see the influences of design greats such as Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto get filtered down to the likes of Angelic Pretty and MA/MAM. But the inspiration goes both ways, and its undeniable that runways have long been borrowing from street style. Check out the pretty kitty cat walk, but watch out like all goth lolita fash, its got claws!
My lust for music far exceeds my musicality. That’s why I’m eagerly awaiting the plastic orange TNR-O tenori-on, the electro-instrument created by Yamaha and artist Toshio Iwai. The tenori-on looks like a hybrid of Battleship, Connect Four, Tetris and Simon and “lets you enjoy playing without any knowledge of music or musical performance techniques.” Sounds in tune with my sensibilities! Little Boots rocks the tenori-on in this video for Remedy:
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