Humans have a nasty habit of producing and accumulating garbage, but Gabriel Dishaw, a junk-metal genius from Carmel, Ind., turns trash into artwork. His most recent pieces were inspired by his love of Nike shoes, as he fashioned five different kicks, including dunks and high tops.
Dishaw's shoes are collages of otherwise potentially useless hardware salvaged from computers, typewriters, and metal scraps. His work is meticulous, as it takes him up to several weeks to complete one pair of shoes and an accompanying carrying case for storage.
Though the sculptures are aesthetic replicas of real Nike shoes, they are far from wearable. His latest pair, Blazer Pentium 1.0 (named for Intel chips), weighs 15 pounds--and we're guessing the shoes don't have arch support.
See our photo gallery of Gabriel Dishaw's Nike-inspired junk art.
(Credit:
Angelis Labor)
The Angelis Labor Gabriel turntable is a sight to behold with its impeccable blend of bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel finish. But its most striking feature are its tonearms flanking the vinyl table; you can attach up to four! These are supposedly decoupled from the rest of the kit via elaborate magnetic levitation suspension systems and are manufactured in Italy from the same factory that produces precision components for Ferrari.
According to Coolest Gadgets, the Gabriel comes with a whopping sticker price ranging from $27,000 to $64,000, depending on the number of tonearms attached. If you are not satisfied with your purchase, the Italian company will happily refund you. Information on the product's worldwide distributorship was not available, but you can contact Angelis Labor directly via e-mail for more details.
(Via Crave Asia)
The Filter is an entertainment recommendation service that asks questions about your taste, then tries to refer you to CDs and DVDs you might be interested in buying. (The site will eventually add other forms of entertainment, such as TV shows.) It's been in a closed beta since earlier this year, and has gotten some press thanks to the involvement of art-rocker Peter Gabriel. On Tuesday, it opened to the masses.
The idea's not new--Amazon.com has had a recommendation engine for years, and many online music services like Pandora, iLike, and Jango employ variations on that theme.
I filled out the survey asking what genres of music I like, and was somewhat surprised that it only offered about a dozen genres. After noting that I liked jazz, "rock/pop" (a genre so huge as to be basically useless), and electronic, it kept recommending mainstream modern hip-hop, like 50 Cent and Ludacris. Not my bag, although I do own music by Outkast, plus more obscure artists like Mos Def and DJ Spooky. (How can an algorithm ever reconcile those types of contradictions? I have no idea.)
I cleared that up by going back and giving hip-hop my lowest rating. Then the engine kept throwing up pop-rock acts that I'm already familiar with and know I don't like, such as Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy. After a few more low ratings, it seems to have realized that I'm in my late 30s, and on the front page it recommended three CDs that I heard about a million times back in the early 90s--Pearl Jam's Ten, the Counting Crows' first record, and "Mother's Milk" by the Chili Peppers. All OK records for their time, but not exactly new discoveries. It also recommended a Bruce Springsteen collection--not his last album, Magic, which is actually his best in years and which I might theoretically not have heard since it got very little radio play.
The recommendations interface could also use some improvement: when I click "Improve My Recommendations" it takes me back to the genres page, which I've already filled out once. It doesn't offer me any artists to rate (like iLike does). There's a slider that lets you tell the engine to make recommendations "more surprising" or "more expected" but it's only available when you click through to an album page, and it didn't seem to make much difference when I moved it all the way to the "surprising" side. (Question: if you want recommendations that are "more expected," why would you need a recommendation engine at all?)
Maybe the interface and recommendation engine will improve over time. But based on my early testing, I'm guessing The Filter's meant for busy Internet users who view "entertainment" as an occasional product to be consumed, but don't know where to start. It doesn't seem to be for music (or movie) geeks or collectors. Fair enough. Just not for me.
(Credit:
Da Vinci Audio Labs)
Just when we were about to begin a self-imposed moratorium on highest-end turntables, along comes another one that we simply can't resist.
The luxury edition of the "AAS-Gabriel" from Switzerland's Da Vinci Audio Labs looks more like fine porcelain than a piece of entertainment equipment, accented with 24-karat gold plate. As for its technical performance, Technabob offers this explanation: "The turntable is designed to produce absolutely zero noise or vibration, and goes so far as to completely isolate the pick-up arm from the rest of the player."
Makes sense to us, though that's not really saying much. What we do understand with crystal clarity is its list price of $41,250--which, compared with others we've seen lately, is a drop in the bucket.
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