january-2012

FRONTLINES
Strange but true
Research ■ Ig Nobel Awards
Horticultural notes
Music by cucumber
12 Holland Herald
Computer shoot
Introducing the world’s only
fi rst-person shooter computer
game without guns. Instead,
you explore dangerous
situations armed only with a
camera. It’s called Warco, short
for ‘war correspondent’. The
idea is to ‘shoot’ the story and
edit your footage into a news
story. For budding combat
journalists or pacifi st gamers?
See defi antdev.com.
Science
The Ig Nobel Awards celebrate
the sillier side of science. The
2011 winners include: Japanese
chemists who invented a smoke
alarm for the deaf that releases
wasabi in case of fi re; biologists
who discovered a species
of beetle that mates with a
specifi c beer bottle; and some
doctors who found that “people
make better decisions about
some kinds of things — but
worse decisions about other
kinds of things‚ when they have
a strong urge to urinate”. See
improbable.com.
Hear your garden grow with the help of Dutch
artist Ronald van der Meijs. He has designed a
musical instrument that can be rigged up to a
living cucumber plant. A mechanical ‘fi nger’ set
against a string changes position as the plant
grows, altering the sound. Listen to an excerpt
on ronaldvandermeijs.nl.
NEW
Photo: Anny CK Photography
My beautiful launderette
Concept ■ Arcade washer
Dairy dressing
Forget silk, thanks to a German
fashion designer, milk could
become the next luxury fabric.
Former microbiology student
Anke Domaske developed her
milk-based fabric, QMilch, from
the milk protein casein. It takes
about six litres of milk to make
a dress. And although her styles
may go out of fashion, the
fabric has no sell-by date. See
qmilk.eu.
Fail a level in an arcade game and there are no real-life
repercussions; it’s simply ‘Game Over’. With design student
Lee Wei Chen’s new creation, there could be serious
consequences for your laundry. He combined an arcade game
with a washing machine to try and make mundane household
chores more entertaining. If you’re no good at the game, the
washing machine won’t progress to the next cycle. This design
has the potential to make doing laundry highly addictive. See
kingston.ac.uk.