This is a giant walking giraffe, similar to the tiny yellow walking giraffe displayed on the table in the foreground. You gotta love it, because it's ears are two lava lamps. It would be awesome if someone created this huge giraffe just based on the fact that lava lamps look like the stubby antlers of a giant electrified giraffe. But in actuality the creator claims that this began as an art car project for Burning Man that somewhere along the way took a different turn.
Maker Faire really is a cross between the Renaissance Faire (but here it's Steampunk dressup) , the Consumer Electronics Show, and Burning Man (lots of things on fire, but no naked girls). And, it has really good food, because the Bay Area doesn't tolerate cr*p food. That Paella place had 6 (six) 6-foot pans cooking paella. One entire pan was devoted to holding something like 200 peeled cloves of garlic.
The big theme this year was 3d printing. Combined with open source OS and single board computers (Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Beagle), now anyone with an idea can create and sell something that previously required huge sums of capital to get access to: tooled plastics/metals, motherboards, etc. The industrial age assumed big corporations would efficiently and cheaply provide solutions to people. But this traded off nimbleness for efficiency. Into the breach steps these new rapid manufacturing tools.
No comments:
Post a Comment