Weather Controller

So I decided that the weather controller should be a 3d model of the world in a space and people interact with it be touching it an zooming in to certain countries. That atmosphere shows real time displays with the ability to go two weeks into the future. These are initial renders of the world.

I will make a video of this interaction in use and how it'll work.

What's cooking, good looking

This lovely article from the BBC is full of wonderful ideas about a future kitchen, and since I'm writing the lifestyle section, I thought the housewives of 2040 would appreciate an article about how everyone's coping in the kitchen. MIT's 'Counter Intelligence' has come up with prototype containers that tell you when your food is off, spoons that gauge temperature, oven mitts that tell you when to check your food, a silicon sink and countdown kettle, and most amazingly a 'dish maker'.

Imagine putting super thin plastic discs into a machine that then makes you your breakfast bowl or dinner plate, and when you're done you can put it back in and make it flat for easy storage.

If they've started making this now then I need to come up with some super radical ideas to make baking a digitalphysical dream.

Long past the realm of prototyping is Electrolux's Inspiro Oven, which with one press of a button will cook your food to perfection and tell you when it's done. It calculates the temperature of the food and sets all the dials to the desired outcome. It has a database of cooking methods to pull from and seems to me like an invention that could go horribly horribly wrong.

Sharp has come up with a Superheated Steam Oven that cooks food and cleans itself. It has 126 built in recipes and reduces fat and salt content while retaining the natural vitamins.

MetControl

MetService converted itself into MetControl and became a worldwide company that controls the weather. They have a treaty with the leaders of the countries which is renewed every 4 years. MetControl must not personally gain from weather patterns and must do their best to keep everyone happy. Any disputes must go through world court where a judge from every continent must be present in order to determine a fair result. The treaty includes clauses about how weather is to be manipulated to primarily save lives and property - personal gain by one individual is not prohibited. Weather reports have become so exact that MetControl can see two weeks into the future and weather patterns can be determined down to the minute that they are changed. Weather can allow have it's course changed or be delayed - it can't fully be altered as the atmosphere is more a chaotic pattern than a blank slate.

Controlling The Weather

This scholary article explores the idea of controlling the weather. They project in the next 30-50years we will have the abilities, but should we? Would this lead to weather wars? This will be a globally feat - as they will need to control the weather within the atmosphere as a whole. Scientists hypothesize the atmosphere as chaotic; it's chaotic nature implies there is a finite time where it becomes predictable. It has been theorized to have a particular architecture that if we could determine it, we could manipulate it.

They assume if we had control of the weather, we would not make everyday the same - continuously sunny or nice weather - but we would change it protect lives and property. Not stopping all weather but manipulating it to avoid disasters for populations. Doing so, legal and ethical issues come into it. Who controls the weather and who has the right to be completely selfless for mankind to do what is best for everyone? Below is the few factors that make the whole idea complicated.

"THE GLOBAL WEATHER CONTROL SYSTEM. The global weather control (GWC) system we envision is a feedback control system, made complicated by a number of factors. These include the following:

* The number of degrees of freedom required to represent the atmosphere adequately.

* The nonlinear nature of the governing equations. The atmosphere is nonlinear and sometimes discontinuous. For example, clouds have sharp edges.

* The paucity and inaccuracy of observations of the atmosphere. Satellites provide a huge volume of information. However this information is not always in the right place, accurate enough, or of the right type.

* The control must be effected at significant time lags to minimize the size of the perturbations, yet the system is inherently unpredictable at long lead times.

* The difficulty of effecting control. The control mechanisms do not yet exist. The ideal perturbations, while small in amplitude, may be large in scale.

* The ambiguous nature of the figure of merit. For inhabitants of New Orleans, eliminating a hurricane threat to that city may take precedence over all else. But in general attempting to satisfy multiple objectives may result in conflicts."

I am going to design a global weather controller.

Newspaper sections

Fashion: Jono, Quita
Technology: Nathan
Weather: Ashley
Film & Arts: Robbie (loves Sarah), Eleanor
Local: Tenzin
Advertisements: One per person, GROUP
World: Tenzin
Travel: Ashley
Sport: Robbie, Quita
Lifestyle: Eleanor
Food: Tenzin, Quita

Editors: Eleanor, Tenzin

Aesthetic experiments.

A few experiments I did to find an aesthetic style for the prototypes for my headpieces.

Hello Sun

I've been looking further into skin colouration and for my next experiment am thinking of using the technology discussed in this article and this website to form a design that lets people embrace the sun. The article covers the possibility of a tattoo that helps diabetics by changing colour in response to their glucose level, making it easier for them to monitor their intake.

The website covers the different forms of colour changing technology already available, such as thread that changes colour due to uv exposure, and heat sensitive gels.

I aim to combine these two ideas to produce a design that uses sunlight to affect appearances. You can't beat Wellington on a good day.