02017Q4 Reykjavik: It was a very busy last quarter. We managed to spend a lot of time chasing some crazy ideas and projects. I’ve been a bit like a dog chasing a car and not knowing what we’d actually do if we caught it!

In the meantime we wanted to share a few of the more interesting and crazy things that have passed over our screens these last few months. As always, they are loosely connected, but always interesting!

Bibendum Costume

Let’s start with Bibendum, or more commonly known as the Michelin Man. He’s over 120 years old and was creepier in those days than he is now. No wonder Cayce Pollard had an irrational fear of Bibendum in William Gibson’s 02003 novel Pattern Recognition. The BBC did an audio version http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cftq8 which is no longer available, but might be online somewhere if you look hard enough.

From Binendum to Bematist we move from one mode of transport to another. From the wheel to the foot we go.

Bematists were people in Ancient Greece who were experts at counting their footsteps and keeping an even pace to calculate distances. The irony is that they were so good, they probably used some ancient version of an odometer, probably a wheel, to keep track of their distances with such accuracy!

From What the Romans did for us, we can see a recreation of an ancient odometer.

Ornitographies Revisited

In a previous newsletter (02016Q3) we mentioned the visualisation of bird flights. We were pleased to see others writing about these interesting graphics too. Xavi Bou, the originator of Ornitographies managed to get a longer write-up in National Geographic Magazine with more amazing photos.

From photographing birds to street photography. These are a few photos from a tiny spy camera used by a 19 year old Norwegian over 100 years ago. In an era when everyone posed for a photo, these are a brilliant look into the everyday lives of people in Oslo.

Material Conference 2018!

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