And how does Honda’s reaction to this fall make you feel? One youtube commenter said the reaction made him feel like Asimo had “been murdered.”

Asimo continues to be a great example of the uncanny valley, how does watching this video make you feel?

At the Humanoid Robotics Group at M.I.T., a robot’s “humanoid” qualities can include fallibility and whininess as much as physical traits like head, arms and torso. This is where our cultural images of robots as superhumans run headlong into the reality of motors, actuators and cold computer code.

the article…

How much storage do you have on you right now?

This is something I’ve always noticed with the change from a generation who couldn’t imagine how they would sound recorded or look on film to the current generation who live as though they are on television - the hyper-mediated state of mind.

“The “Finger Plan” from 1947 was a pioneering attempt to locate the urban development of Copenhagen along five radials or “fingers” which connected the centre of the city with five older market towns in the region. The vision was that green wedges or corridors should dominate the space between the fingers which was characterised by transport and urban structures. The green corridors had a double function; they were partly to function as the lungs of Copenhagen and partly to function as green recreational spaces for the people living in the compact city districts of Copenhagen (Ferdinansen, 2002, p. 80-83).”

From Urban Green Spaces and Social Well Being

Cutest name ever for a project of this kind: BUGS, “Benefits of Urban Green Space”

Summary from their web site:

The inter-related issues of urban sprawl, traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution are major socio-economic problems faced by most European cities. The main objective of BUGS is to develop an integrated methodology to assess the role of green space in alleviating the adverse effects of urbanisation. Addressing the impact of green areas on such diverse areas as traffic flows and emissions, air quality, microclimate, noise, accessibility, economic efficiency, and social well-being, this methodology will allow to deduce a set of guidelines regarding the use of green space as a design tool for urban planning, at scales ranging from a street canyon or a park to an entire urban region. Potential end-users are actively involved to help focus and steer the work. Supported by a marketing strategy, the ultimate goal is to turn the methodology into a self-sustaining activity, to be offered as a service to urban and regional authorities in Europe.

Arcology Systems by Rowin Andruscavage of the University of Maryland.

The windowsills in our loft provide the perfect shelf for plants. Without this small architectural detail, we couldn’t have such happy sun-screening air-filtering companions.

Zumthor’s spa in Vals Therme opens visitors to the surrounding natural environment. Although the building is stone, it’s made of stone from the mountains nearby, although the architecture can be cavernous at points, there is always an experience of moving from the earth-core, the stone-nest out into the open nature. Even in the dead of the Swiss winter, exposure to falling snowflakes while standing in the thermal waters outside felt like a ‘greenspace’.

Patrick Blanc extends the green roof idea to the external walls of buildings.

Why introduce green space into the Subway or any other public space? To encourage contact with so called ‘natural’ environments. Contact with non-toxic biological entities (plant or animal) offers potential to reduce suffering and encourage mental states of well being. For an introduction to the literature on the healing effect of ‘natural’ spaces see Hartig’s bibliography on the Uppsala University web site.

Johannes Hjorth added cotton and seeds to a keyboard - sprayed with water every day and…

pingmag reports on Namaiki’s new plant based installations.

Simon Haiduk created this “interactive permaculture learning module” reflecting the work of GaiaCraft. I posted this on re: religion and technology and then realized that this first cross post should be the impetus for re-launching this site. The subterrarium project has always been about introducing green space into the New York subways. Coming to realizations about the restorative power of green spaces in the city (and in the home in the city), I’ve decided to expand this blog to cover those places where plants, animals and technology meet with a focus on the environments that emerge.

Simon Haiduk created this “interactive permaculture learning module” reflecting the work of GaiaCraft.

In 2005, Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori issued a brief article, On Uncanny Valley, which proposes an amendment to his original graph of familiarity vs. appearance (human likeness). He adds “something more attractive and amiable than human beings in the further right-hand side of the valley.” I’ve created this figure as a sketch of this expanded notion of Mori’s valley.