Latest news with #AntFarm
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
More than Human review – a utopia of self-weaving grass and psychedelic dolphins
'Even when humans get serious about wanting to talk to dolphins, will dolphins have anything to say to us?' So pondered an issue of Esquire magazine in 1975. 'The only reliable way to find out,' it concluded, 'will be to build a Dolphin Embassy and look for the response.' The pages that followed were devoted to a fantastical vision, created by the avant-garde architecture collective, Ant Farm. They proposed a floating multi-species utopia where humans and dolphins could mingle in a watery fantasy, communicating through telepathy. The triangular vessel featured a land-water living room, with chutes enabling dolphins to swim between floors, as well as a shared navigation pod, where one day an 'electronic-fluidic interface' would allow both humans and dolphins to steer the ship. The hope was that technological advances would make the project buildable by the 1990s. 'Thus far,' the article noted, 'no backers have come forward.' Fifty years on, there is still no delphinid mission, but Ant Farm's acid-induced drawings are on display in the Design Museum, as part of an exhibition about current designers' attempts to work with and for the 'more than human' world. Today's young architects might no longer be communing with their animal clients through psychedelics (alas!), but a whole new generation is engaging with the natural world once again, in the realisation that it's not enough to mitigate the human impact on the planet: we must actively design for other species to flourish. The resulting show is an intriguing, if sometimes opaque, foray into numerous experiments and 'collaborations' with nature, from fungal facades to fabrics grown from grass roots. Some are realistic proposals that have been put into action, while (too many) others occupy the realms of fantasy or conceptual art. But a good deal of exhibits will make you think again, and contemplate your relationship with everything from spiders and seaweed, to wasps and worms. Architect Andrés Jaque, who recently sprayed a school in Spain with a globular coating of insect and fungi-friendly cork, is back with an even more wildlife-welcoming facade. His 'transspecies rosette', a sample of a new cladding system made of pulverised cork and natural resin, features deep clefts and niches to encourage life to take hold, while providing waterproof insulation for the building. Modernism might have led to a wipe-clean world of sleek, seamless surfaces (all that high-rise glass resulting in accidental bird massacres), but Jaque's work suggests that more-than-human-centric design could lead to much more interesting, knobbly kinds of architecture. Does a bio-gothic future await? Nearby, Kate Orff of landscape architecture firm Scape, presents her more pragmatic Bird-Safe Building Guidelines, showing how the differences between human and avian vision could be turned to advantage. By applying films, glass can be made to look opaque to birds, while remaining transparent to humans. This simple measure could save a billion bird deaths a year, in the US alone. There are a handful of practical solutions like this scattered throughout the exhibition, but at several points in the show you feel like reminding the curators their remit is design, not art. There are a few too many space-filling installations, like Julia Lohmann's Kelp Council, which looks like a series of couture dresses fashioned from seaweed, dangling in a circle, set to a bubbling backdrop of oceanic sounds. 'If we consider that all living things have their own needs and agency,' offers a caption, 'we might ask: what does seaweed think of us?' Quoth the kelp: 'Do better.' Other projects seem promising, until you realise they have yet to be tested in the real world. There is a reason so many designers gravitate towards the ethereal realms of installation art and 'research', of the kind that now fills biennales: it's a lot easier to comment on a problem than solve it. The seaweed might be envious of a project around the corner, made in collaboration with its more primitive relative, red algae. Australian designer Jessie French has developed an organic algae-based vinyl as an alternative to synthetic window decals, contrasting the few weeks it takes for algae to grow with the many hundreds of years it takes for man-made plastics to decompose. The museum considered using it for the exhibition signage, but the carbon footprint of shipping it from Australia sadly put paid to that idea. Elsewhere there are some ingenious examples of 'nature-based infrastructure', from 3D-printed coral reefs and sea walls, full of little ridges and holes to encourage marine life, to floating breakwaters that mitigate storm surges, which are also designed as habitats for oysters. Indigenous wisdom gets a look-in too, with baskets woven by the Ye'kuana people of the Venezuelan Amazon, who ask the permission of the forest before using its products, and a film that highlights the Inga people of the Colombian Amazon and their hallucinogenic use of ayahuasca. Just like the Ant Farm collective, it sometimes takes a little something extra before we can fully communicate with our more-than-human cousins. An altered state might help the exhibition-goers, too. In the end, it is (perhaps appropriately) nature itself that steals the show. Each section begins with a group of historic artefacts in vitrines, including a beautiful collection of animal nests. Marvel at the grotto-like wood pulp habitat of the European wasp, or the dainty nest of a hummingbird, fashioned from antibacterial lichen and cobwebs for elasticity, or the tiny clay capsule of the solitary potter wasp, hanging from a branch. The female wasp sculpts these little pots from mud and saliva, before laying an egg inside and stocking it with provisions of paralysed caterpillars. Now there's some more-than-human maternal cunning. More than Human is at the Design Museum, London, from 11 July–5 October.
The Guardian
09-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
More than Human review – a utopia of self-weaving grass and psychedelic dolphins
'Even when humans get serious about wanting to talk to dolphins, will dolphins have anything to say to us?' So pondered an issue of Esquire magazine in 1975. 'The only reliable way to find out,' it concluded, 'will be to build a Dolphin Embassy and look for the response.' The pages that followed were devoted to a fantastical vision, created by the avant-garde architecture collective, Ant Farm. They proposed a floating multi-species utopia where humans and dolphins could mingle in a watery fantasy, communicating through telepathy. The triangular vessel featured a land-water living room, with chutes enabling dolphins to swim between floors, as well as a shared navigation pod, where one day an 'electronic-fluidic interface' would allow both humans and dolphins to steer the ship. The hope was that technological advances would make the project buildable by the 1990s. 'Thus far,' the article noted, 'no backers have come forward.' Fifty years on, there is still no delphinid mission, but Ant Farm's acid-induced drawings are on display in the Design Museum, as part of an exhibition about current designers' attempts to work with and for the 'more than human' world. Today's young architects might no longer be communing with their animal clients through psychedelics (alas!), but a whole new generation is engaging with the natural world once again, in the realisation that it's not enough to mitigate the human impact on the planet: we must actively design for other species to flourish. The resulting show is an intriguing, if sometimes opaque, foray into numerous experiments and 'collaborations' with nature, from fungal facades to fabrics grown from grass roots. Some are realistic proposals that have been put into action, while (too many) others occupy the realms of fantasy or conceptual art. But a good deal of exhibits will make you think again, and contemplate your relationship with everything from spiders and seaweed, to wasps and worms. Architect Andrés Jaque, who recently sprayed a school in Spain with a globular coating of insect and fungi-friendly cork, is back with an even more wildlife-welcoming facade. His 'transspecies rosette', a sample of a new cladding system made of pulverised cork and natural resin, features deep clefts and niches to encourage life to take hold, while providing waterproof insulation for the building. Modernism might have led to a wipe-clean world of sleek, seamless surfaces (all that high-rise glass resulting in accidental bird massacres), but Jaque's work suggests that more-than-human-centric design could lead to much more interesting, knobbly kinds of architecture. Does a bio-gothic future await? Nearby, Kate Orff of landscape architecture firm Scape, presents her more pragmatic Bird-Safe Building Guidelines, showing how the differences between human and avian vision could be turned to advantage. By applying films, glass can be made to look opaque to birds, while remaining transparent to humans. This simple measure could save a billion bird deaths a year, in the US alone. There are a handful of practical solutions like this scattered throughout the exhibition, but at several points in the show you feel like reminding the curators their remit is design, not art. There are a few too many space-filling installations, like Julia Lohmann's Kelp Council, which looks like a series of couture dresses fashioned from seaweed, dangling in a circle, set to a bubbling backdrop of oceanic sounds. 'If we consider that all living things have their own needs and agency,' offers a caption, 'we might ask: what does seaweed think of us?' Quoth the kelp: 'Do better.' Other projects seem promising, until you realise they have yet to be tested in the real world. There is a reason so many designers gravitate towards the ethereal realms of installation art and 'research', of the kind that now fills biennales: it's a lot easier to comment on a problem than solve it. The seaweed might be envious of a project around the corner, made in collaboration with its more primitive relative, red algae. Australian designer Jessie French has developed an organic algae-based vinyl as an alternative to synthetic window decals, contrasting the few weeks it takes for algae to grow with the many hundreds of years it takes for man-made plastics to decompose. The museum considered using it for the exhibition signage, but the carbon footprint of shipping it from Australia sadly put paid to that idea. Elsewhere there are some ingenious examples of 'nature-based infrastructure', from 3D-printed coral reefs and sea walls, full of little ridges and holes to encourage marine life, to floating breakwaters that mitigate storm surges, which are also designed as habitats for oysters. Indigenous wisdom gets a look-in too, with baskets woven by the Ye'kuana people of the Venezuelan Amazon, who ask the permission of the forest before using its products, and a film that highlights the Inga people of the Colombian Amazon and their hallucinogenic use of ayahuasca. Just like the Ant Farm collective, it sometimes takes a little something extra before we can fully communicate with our more-than-human cousins. An altered state might help the exhibition-goers, too. In the end, it is (perhaps appropriately) nature itself that steals the show. Each section begins with a group of historic artefacts in vitrines, including a beautiful collection of animal nests. Marvel at the grotto-like wood pulp habitat of the European wasp, or the dainty nest of a hummingbird, fashioned from antibacterial lichen and cobwebs for elasticity, or the tiny clay capsule of the solitary potter wasp, hanging from a branch. The female wasp sculpts these little pots from mud and saliva, before laying an egg inside and stocking it with provisions of paralysed caterpillars. Now there's some more-than-human maternal cunning. More than Human is at the Design Museum, London, from 11 July–5 October.
Hindustan Times
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Celebrity birthdays for the week of June 15-21
Celebrity birthdays for the week of June 15-21: June 15: Singer Ruby Nash Garnett of Ruby and the Romantics is 91. Guitarist Leo Nocentelli of The Meters is 79. Actor Simon Callow is 76. Singer Russell Hitchcock of Air Supply is 76. Singer Steve Walsh is 74. Actor Jim Belushi is 71. Country singer Terri Gibbs is 71. Actor Julie Hagerty is 70. Actor Polly Draper is 70. Guitarist Brad Gillis of Night Ranger is 68. Actor Eileen Davidson is 66. Actor Helen Hunt is 62. Drummer Scott Rockenfield of Queensryche is 62. Guitarist Tony Ardoin of River Road is 61. Actor Courteney Cox is 61. Guitarist Michael Britt of Lonestar is 59. Drummer Rob Mitchell of Sixpence None the Richer is 59. Rapper-actor Ice Cube is 56. Actor Leah Remini is 55. Actor Jake Busey is 54. Trombone player T-Bone Willy of Save Ferris is 53. Actor Neil Patrick Harris is 52. Actor Greg Vaughan is 52. Actor Elizabeth Reaser is 50. Singer Dryden Mitchell of Alien Ant Farm is 49. Former child actor Christopher Castile is 45. Guitarist Billy Martin of Good Charlotte is 44. Actor Jordi Vilasuso is 44. Guitarist Wayne Sermon of Imagine Dragons is 41. Actor Denzel Whitaker is 35. Actor Sterling Jerins is 21. June 16: Actor Eileen Atkins is 91. Country singer Billy 'Crash' Craddock is 87. Singer Eddie Levert of The O'Jays is 83. Actor Joan Van Ark is 82. Actor Geoff Pierson is 76. Singer James Smith is 75. Singer Gino Vannelli is 73. Actor Laurie Metcalf is 70. Actor Arnold Vosloo is 63. Actor Danny Burstein is 61. Model-actor Jenny Shimizu is 58. Actor James Patrick Stuart is 57. Rapper MC Ren of N.W.A is 56. Actor Clifton Collins Jr. is 55. Actor John Cho is 53. Actor Eddie Cibrian is 52. Actor Fred Koehler is 50. Actor China Shavers is 48. Actor Daniel Bruhl is 47. Actor Sibel Kekilli is 45. Actor Missy Peregrym is 43. Actor Olivia Hack is 42. Singer-actor Diana DeGarmo is 38. Bassist Ian Keaggy of Hot Chelle Rae is 38. Broadway actor Ali Stroker is 38. June 17: Actor Peter Lupus is 93. Singer Barry Manilow is 82. Comedian Joe Piscopo is 74. Actor Mark Linn-Baker is 71. Actor Jon Gries is 68. Singer Jello Biafra is 67. Director Bobby Farrelly is 67. Actor Thomas Haden Church is 65. Actor Greg Kinnear is 62. Actor Kami Cotler is 60. Actor Jason Patric is 59. Singer Kevin Thornton of Color Me Badd is 56. Actor-comedian Will Forte is 55. Latin pop singer Paulina Rubio is 54. Actor Arthur Darvill is 43. Actor Jodie Whittaker is 43. Actor Manish Dayal is 42. Country singer Mickey Guyton is 42. Actor-rapper Jamal Mixon is 42. Rapper Kendrick Lamar is 38. Actor KJ Apa is 28. June 18: Musician Paul McCartney is 83. Actor Constance McCashin is 78. Actor Linda Thorson is 78. Actor Carol Kane is 73. Actor Isabella Rossellini is 73. Actor Brian Benben is 69. Singer Alison Moyet is 64. Keyboardist Dizzy Reed is 62. Country singer-guitarist Tim Hunt is 58. Singer Nathan Morris of Boyz II Men is 54. Singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne is 52. Rapper Silkk The Shocker is 50. Actor Alana de la Garza is 49. Country singer Blake Shelton is 49. Guitarist Steven Chen of Airborne Toxic Event is 47. Actor David Giuntoli is 45. Drummer Josh Dun of Twenty One Pilots is 37. Actor-singer Renee Olstead is 36. Actor Jacob Anderson is 35. Actor Willa Holland is 34. June 19: Singer Spanky McFarlane of Spanky and Our Gang is 83. Actor Phylicia Rashad is 77. Singer Ann Wilson of Heart is 75. Keyboardist Larry Dunn is 72. Actor Kathleen Turner is 71. Country singer Doug Stone is 69. Singer Mark 'Marty' DeBarge of DeBarge is 66. Singer-dancer Paula Abdul is 63. Actor-filmmaker Andy Lauer is 62. Singer-guitarist Brian Vander Ark of The Verve Pipe is 61. Actor Mia Sara is 58. 'Good Morning America' host Lara Spencer is 56. Guitarist Brian 'Head' Welch of Korn is 55. Actor Jean Dujardin is 53. Actor Robin Tunney is 53. Actor Bumper Robinson is 51. Actor Poppy Montgomery is 50. Singer-banjoist Scott Avett of The Avett Brothers is 49. Actor Ryan Hurst is 49. Actor Zoe Saldana is 47. Actor Neil Brown Jr. is 45. Actor Lauren Lee Smith is 45. Singer Macklemore of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis is 43. Actor Paul Dano is 41. Actor Giacomo Gianniotti is 36. Actor Chuku Modu is 35. Actor Atticus Shaffer is 27. June 20: Actor Bonnie Bartlett is 96. Actor James Tolkan is 94. Director Stephen Frears is 84. Musician Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys is 83. Actor John McCook is 81. Singer Anne Murray is 80. Home repair show host Bob Vila is 79. Actor Candy Clark is 78. Singer Lionel Richie is 76. Actor John Goodman is 73. Bassist Michael Anthony is 71. Bassist John Taylor of Duran Duran is 65. Keyboardist Mark degli Antoni is 63. Guitarist Jerome Fontamillas of Switchfoot is 58. Bassist Murphy Karges of Sugar Ray is 58. Actor Nicole Kidman is 58. Singer Dan Tyminski of Alison Krauss and Union Station is 58. Director Robert Rodriguez is 57. Actor Peter Paige is 56. Actor Josh Lucas is 54. Bassist Twiggy Ramirez is 54. Singer Chino Moreno of Deftones is 52. Singer Amos Lee is 48. Actor Tika Sumpter is 45. Drummer Chris Thompson of The Eli Young Band is 45. Singer-actor Alisan Porter is 44. Keyboardist Chris Dudley of Underoath is 42. Singer Grace Potter of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals is 42. Actor Mark Saul is 40. Actor Dreama Walker is 39. Actor Chris Mintz-Plasse is 36. Actor Maria Lark is 28. June 21: Actor Bernie Kopell is 92. Actor Monte Markham is 90. Actor Mariette Hartley is 85. Musician Ray Davies of The Kinks is 81. Actor Meredith Baxter is 78. Actor Michael Gross is 78. Drummer Joey Kramer of Aerosmith is 75. Guitarist Nils Lofgren is 74. Actor Robyn Douglass is 73. Actor Leigh McCloskey is 70. Cartoonist Berke Breathed is 68. Actor Josh Pais is 67. Country singer Kathy Mattea is 66. Actor Marc Copage is 63. Actor Doug Savant is 61. Guitarist Porter Howell of Little Texas is 61. Actor Michael Dolan is 60. Filmmaker Lana Wachowski is 60. Actor Carrie Preston is 58. Actor Paula Irvine is 57. Country singer Allison Moorer is 53. Actor Juliette Lewis is 52. Actor Maggie Siff is 51. Bassist Justin Cary is 50. Guitarist Mike Einziger of Incubus is 49. Actor Chris Pratt is 46. Singer Brandon Flowers of The Killers is 44. Actor Jussie Smollett is 43. Actor Michael Malarkey is 42. Singer Kris Allen is 40. Singer Lana Del Rey is 40. Actor Jascha Washington is 36. Bassist Chandler Baldwin of LANCO is 33. Singer Rebecca Black is 28.
