• Lego's Exclusive Mario Kart Set Races Onto One Major Retailer's Shelves Next Week

    Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart| Releases July 1 at Walmart | Available now at Lego Store Preorder at Walmart See at Lego Store The latest Lego Mario display model for adults and experienced builders will no longer be exclusive to the Lego Store starting July 1. Walmart has opened preorders for Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart, a charming and superbly designed building set comprised of 1,972 pieces. The kit lets fans build a large Super Mario figure and his signature red kart. As of June 27, Walmart is offering release-day delivery for the set.Mario & Standard Kart debuted as a Lego Store exclusive on May 15. Lego exclusives typically don't arrive at major retailers for three to six months after launch, so Walmart stocking it on July 1 is a bit surprising. Since Walmart is the only retailer taking preorders, it's possible that the retail release will only be available there.Continue Reading at GameSpot
    #lego039s #exclusive #mario #kart #set
    Lego's Exclusive Mario Kart Set Races Onto One Major Retailer's Shelves Next Week
    Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart| Releases July 1 at Walmart | Available now at Lego Store Preorder at Walmart See at Lego Store The latest Lego Mario display model for adults and experienced builders will no longer be exclusive to the Lego Store starting July 1. Walmart has opened preorders for Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart, a charming and superbly designed building set comprised of 1,972 pieces. The kit lets fans build a large Super Mario figure and his signature red kart. As of June 27, Walmart is offering release-day delivery for the set.Mario & Standard Kart debuted as a Lego Store exclusive on May 15. Lego exclusives typically don't arrive at major retailers for three to six months after launch, so Walmart stocking it on July 1 is a bit surprising. Since Walmart is the only retailer taking preorders, it's possible that the retail release will only be available there.Continue Reading at GameSpot #lego039s #exclusive #mario #kart #set
    WWW.GAMESPOT.COM
    Lego's Exclusive Mario Kart Set Races Onto One Major Retailer's Shelves Next Week
    Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart (1,972 Pieces) $170 | Releases July 1 at Walmart | Available now at Lego Store Preorder at Walmart See at Lego Store The latest Lego Mario display model for adults and experienced builders will no longer be exclusive to the Lego Store starting July 1. Walmart has opened preorders for Lego Mario Kart: Mario & Standard Kart, a charming and superbly designed building set comprised of 1,972 pieces. The kit lets fans build a large Super Mario figure and his signature red kart. As of June 27, Walmart is offering release-day delivery for the $170 set.Mario & Standard Kart debuted as a Lego Store exclusive on May 15. Lego exclusives typically don't arrive at major retailers for three to six months after launch, so Walmart stocking it on July 1 is a bit surprising. Since Walmart is the only retailer taking preorders, it's possible that the retail release will only be available there.Continue Reading at GameSpot
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  • NVIDIA, AI assistant, hackathon, developers, G-Assist, technology, innovation, competition, prizes, creativity

    ---

    ## Introduction

    In a world driven by technology, where every click and every innovation shapes our future, the call for creativity resonates deeply within the hearts of developers. The NVIDIA G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon has opened its doors, inviting passionate minds to submit their tools to customize the AI assistant. Yet, amidst the excitement of potential triumphs and technolog...
    NVIDIA, AI assistant, hackathon, developers, G-Assist, technology, innovation, competition, prizes, creativity --- ## Introduction In a world driven by technology, where every click and every innovation shapes our future, the call for creativity resonates deeply within the hearts of developers. The NVIDIA G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon has opened its doors, inviting passionate minds to submit their tools to customize the AI assistant. Yet, amidst the excitement of potential triumphs and technolog...
    Developers Could Win a Laptop or GPU in NVIDIA’s G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon: An Emotional Journey into Innovation
    NVIDIA, AI assistant, hackathon, developers, G-Assist, technology, innovation, competition, prizes, creativity --- ## Introduction In a world driven by technology, where every click and every innovation shapes our future, the call for creativity resonates deeply within the hearts of developers. The NVIDIA G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon has opened its doors, inviting passionate minds to submit...
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  • Four science-based rules that will make your conversations flow

    One of the four pillars of good conversation is levity. You needn’t be a comedian, you can but have some funTetra Images, LLC/Alamy
    Conversation lies at the heart of our relationships – yet many of us find it surprisingly hard to talk to others. We may feel anxious at the thought of making small talk with strangers and struggle to connect with the people who are closest to us. If that sounds familiar, Alison Wood Brooks hopes to help. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches an oversubscribed course called “TALK: How to talk gooder in business and life”, and the author of a new book, Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. Both offer four key principles for more meaningful exchanges. Conversations are inherently unpredictable, says Wood Brooks, but they follow certain rules – and knowing their architecture makes us more comfortable with what is outside of our control. New Scientist asked her about the best ways to apply this research to our own chats.
    David Robson: Talking about talking feels quite meta. Do you ever find yourself critiquing your own performance?
    Alison Wood Brooks: There are so many levels of “meta-ness”. I have often felt like I’m floating over the room, watching conversations unfold, even as I’m involved in them myself. I teach a course at Harvard, andall get to experience this feeling as well. There can be an uncomfortable period of hypervigilance, but I hope that dissipates over time as they develop better habits. There is a famous quote from Charlie Parker, who was a jazz saxophonist. He said something like, “Practise, practise, practise, and then when you get on stage, let it all go and just wail.” I think that’s my approach to conversation. Even when you’re hyper-aware of conversation dynamics, you have to remember the true delight of being with another human mind, and never lose the magic of being together. Think ahead, but once you’re talking, let it all go and just wail.

    Reading your book, I learned that a good way to enliven a conversation is to ask someone why they are passionate about what they do. So, where does your passion for conversation come from?
    I have two answers to this question. One is professional. Early in my professorship at Harvard, I had been studying emotions by exploring how people talk about their feelings and the balance between what we feel inside and how we express that to others. And I realised I just had this deep, profound interest in figuring out how people talk to each other about everything, not just their feelings. We now have scientific tools that allow us to capture conversations and analyse them at large scale. Natural language processing, machine learning, the advent of AI – all this allows us to take huge swathes of transcript data and process it much more efficiently.

    Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox.

    Sign up to newsletter

    The personal answer is that I’m an identical twin, and I spent my whole life, from the moment I opened my newborn eyes, existing next to a person who’s an exact copy of myself. It was like observing myself at very close range, interacting with the world, interacting with other people. I could see when she said and did things well, and I could try to do that myself. And I saw when her jokes failed, or she stumbled over her words – I tried to avoid those mistakes. It was a very fortunate form of feedback that not a lot of people get. And then, as a twin, you’ve got this person sharing a bedroom, sharing all your clothes, going to all the same parties and playing on the same sports teams, so we were just constantly in conversation with each other. You reached this level of shared reality that is so incredible, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to help other people get there in their relationships, too.
    “TALK” cleverly captures your framework for better conversations: topics, asking, levity and kindness. Let’s start at the beginning. How should we decide what to talk about?
    My first piece of advice is to prepare. Some people do this naturally. They already think about the things that they should talk about with somebody before they see them. They should lean into this habit. Some of my students, however, think it’s crazy. They think preparation will make the conversation seem rigid and forced and overly scripted. But just because you’ve thought ahead about what you might talk about doesn’t mean you have to talk about those things once the conversation is underway. It does mean, however, that you always have an idea waiting for you when you’re not sure what to talk about next. Having just one topic in your back pocket can help you in those anxiety-ridden moments. It makes things more fluent, which is important for establishing a connection. Choosing a topic is not only important at the start of a conversation. We’re constantly making decisions about whether we should stay on one subject, drift to something else or totally shift gears and go somewhere wildly different.
    Sometimes the topic of conversation is obvious. Even then, knowing when to switch to a new one can be trickyMartin Parr/Magnum Photos
    What’s your advice when making these decisions?
    There are three very clear signs that suggest that it’s time to switch topics. The first is longer mutual pauses. The second is more uncomfortable laughter, which we use to fill the space that we would usually fill excitedly with good content. And the third sign is redundancy. Once you start repeating things that have already been said on the topic, it’s a sign that you should move to something else.
    After an average conversation, most people feel like they’ve covered the right number of topics. But if you ask people after conversations that didn’t go well, they’ll more often say that they didn’t talk about enough things, rather than that they talked about too many things. This suggests that a common mistake is lingering too long on a topic after you’ve squeezed all the juice out of it.
    The second element of TALK is asking questions. I think a lot of us have heard the advice to ask more questions, yet many people don’t apply it. Why do you think that is?
    Many years of research have shown that the human mind is remarkably egocentric. Often, we are so focused on our own perspective that we forget to even ask someone else to share what’s in their mind. Another reason is fear. You’re interested in the other person, and you know you should ask them questions, but you’re afraid of being too intrusive, or that you will reveal your own incompetence, because you feel you should know the answer already.

    What kinds of questions should we be asking – and avoiding?
    In the book, I talk about the power of follow-up questions that build on anything that your partner has just said. It shows that you heard them, that you care and that you want to know more. Even one follow-up question can springboard us away from shallow talk into something deeper and more meaningful.
    There are, however, some bad patterns of question asking, such as “boomerasking”. Michael Yeomansand I have a recent paper about this, and oh my gosh, it’s been such fun to study. It’s a play on the word boomerang: it comes back to the person who threw it. If I ask you what you had for breakfast, and you tell me you had Special K and banana, and then I say, “Well, let me tell you about my breakfast, because, boy, was it delicious” – that’s boomerasking. Sometimes it’s a thinly veiled way of bragging or complaining, but sometimes I think people are genuinely interested to hear from their partner, but then the partner’s answer reminds them so much of their own life that they can’t help but start sharing their perspective. In our research, we have found that this makes your partner feel like you weren’t interested in their perspective, so it seems very insincere. Sharing your own perspective is important. It’s okay at some point to bring the conversation back to yourself. But don’t do it so soon that it makes your partner feel like you didn’t hear their answer or care about it.
    Research by Alison Wood Brooks includes a recent study on “boomerasking”, a pitfall you should avoid to make conversations flowJanelle Bruno
    What are the benefits of levity?
    When we think of conversations that haven’t gone well, we often think of moments of hostility, anger or disagreement, but a quiet killer of conversation is boredom. Levity is the antidote. These small moments of sparkle or fizz can pull us back in and make us feel engaged with each other again.
    Our research has shown that we give status and respect to people who make us feel good, so much so that in a group of people, a person who can land even one appropriate joke is more likely to be voted as the leader. And the joke doesn’t even need to be very funny! It’s the fact that they were confident enough to try it and competent enough to read the room.
    Do you have any practical steps that people can apply to generate levity, even if they’re not a natural comedian?
    Levity is not just about being funny. In fact, aiming to be a comedian is not the right goal. When we watch stand-up on Netflix, comedians have rehearsed those jokes and honed them and practised them for a long time, and they’re delivering them in a monologue to an audience. It’s a completely different task from a live conversation. In real dialogue, what everybody is looking for is to feel engaged, and that doesn’t require particularly funny jokes or elaborate stories. When you see opportunities to make it fun or lighten the mood, that’s what you need to grab. It can come through a change to a new, fresh topic, or calling back to things that you talked about earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship. These callbacks – which sometimes do refer to something funny – are such a nice way of showing that you’ve listened and remembered. A levity move could also involve giving sincere compliments to other people. When you think nice things, when you admire someone, make sure you say it out loud.

    This brings us to the last element of TALK: kindness. Why do we so often fail to be as kind as we would like?
    Wobbles in kindness often come back to our egocentrism. Research shows that we underestimate how much other people’s perspectives differ from our own, and we forget that we have the tools to ask other people directly in conversation for their perspective. Being a kinder conversationalist is about trying to focus on your partner’s perspective and then figuring what they need and helping them to get it.
    Finally, what is your number one tip for readers to have a better conversation the next time they speak to someone?
    Every conversation is surprisingly tricky and complex. When things don’t go perfectly, give yourself and others more grace. There will be trips and stumbles and then a little grace can go very, very far.
    Topics:
    #four #sciencebased #rules #that #will
    Four science-based rules that will make your conversations flow
    One of the four pillars of good conversation is levity. You needn’t be a comedian, you can but have some funTetra Images, LLC/Alamy Conversation lies at the heart of our relationships – yet many of us find it surprisingly hard to talk to others. We may feel anxious at the thought of making small talk with strangers and struggle to connect with the people who are closest to us. If that sounds familiar, Alison Wood Brooks hopes to help. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches an oversubscribed course called “TALK: How to talk gooder in business and life”, and the author of a new book, Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. Both offer four key principles for more meaningful exchanges. Conversations are inherently unpredictable, says Wood Brooks, but they follow certain rules – and knowing their architecture makes us more comfortable with what is outside of our control. New Scientist asked her about the best ways to apply this research to our own chats. David Robson: Talking about talking feels quite meta. Do you ever find yourself critiquing your own performance? Alison Wood Brooks: There are so many levels of “meta-ness”. I have often felt like I’m floating over the room, watching conversations unfold, even as I’m involved in them myself. I teach a course at Harvard, andall get to experience this feeling as well. There can be an uncomfortable period of hypervigilance, but I hope that dissipates over time as they develop better habits. There is a famous quote from Charlie Parker, who was a jazz saxophonist. He said something like, “Practise, practise, practise, and then when you get on stage, let it all go and just wail.” I think that’s my approach to conversation. Even when you’re hyper-aware of conversation dynamics, you have to remember the true delight of being with another human mind, and never lose the magic of being together. Think ahead, but once you’re talking, let it all go and just wail. Reading your book, I learned that a good way to enliven a conversation is to ask someone why they are passionate about what they do. So, where does your passion for conversation come from? I have two answers to this question. One is professional. Early in my professorship at Harvard, I had been studying emotions by exploring how people talk about their feelings and the balance between what we feel inside and how we express that to others. And I realised I just had this deep, profound interest in figuring out how people talk to each other about everything, not just their feelings. We now have scientific tools that allow us to capture conversations and analyse them at large scale. Natural language processing, machine learning, the advent of AI – all this allows us to take huge swathes of transcript data and process it much more efficiently. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. Sign up to newsletter The personal answer is that I’m an identical twin, and I spent my whole life, from the moment I opened my newborn eyes, existing next to a person who’s an exact copy of myself. It was like observing myself at very close range, interacting with the world, interacting with other people. I could see when she said and did things well, and I could try to do that myself. And I saw when her jokes failed, or she stumbled over her words – I tried to avoid those mistakes. It was a very fortunate form of feedback that not a lot of people get. And then, as a twin, you’ve got this person sharing a bedroom, sharing all your clothes, going to all the same parties and playing on the same sports teams, so we were just constantly in conversation with each other. You reached this level of shared reality that is so incredible, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to help other people get there in their relationships, too. “TALK” cleverly captures your framework for better conversations: topics, asking, levity and kindness. Let’s start at the beginning. How should we decide what to talk about? My first piece of advice is to prepare. Some people do this naturally. They already think about the things that they should talk about with somebody before they see them. They should lean into this habit. Some of my students, however, think it’s crazy. They think preparation will make the conversation seem rigid and forced and overly scripted. But just because you’ve thought ahead about what you might talk about doesn’t mean you have to talk about those things once the conversation is underway. It does mean, however, that you always have an idea waiting for you when you’re not sure what to talk about next. Having just one topic in your back pocket can help you in those anxiety-ridden moments. It makes things more fluent, which is important for establishing a connection. Choosing a topic is not only important at the start of a conversation. We’re constantly making decisions about whether we should stay on one subject, drift to something else or totally shift gears and go somewhere wildly different. Sometimes the topic of conversation is obvious. Even then, knowing when to switch to a new one can be trickyMartin Parr/Magnum Photos What’s your advice when making these decisions? There are three very clear signs that suggest that it’s time to switch topics. The first is longer mutual pauses. The second is more uncomfortable laughter, which we use to fill the space that we would usually fill excitedly with good content. And the third sign is redundancy. Once you start repeating things that have already been said on the topic, it’s a sign that you should move to something else. After an average conversation, most people feel like they’ve covered the right number of topics. But if you ask people after conversations that didn’t go well, they’ll more often say that they didn’t talk about enough things, rather than that they talked about too many things. This suggests that a common mistake is lingering too long on a topic after you’ve squeezed all the juice out of it. The second element of TALK is asking questions. I think a lot of us have heard the advice to ask more questions, yet many people don’t apply it. Why do you think that is? Many years of research have shown that the human mind is remarkably egocentric. Often, we are so focused on our own perspective that we forget to even ask someone else to share what’s in their mind. Another reason is fear. You’re interested in the other person, and you know you should ask them questions, but you’re afraid of being too intrusive, or that you will reveal your own incompetence, because you feel you should know the answer already. What kinds of questions should we be asking – and avoiding? In the book, I talk about the power of follow-up questions that build on anything that your partner has just said. It shows that you heard them, that you care and that you want to know more. Even one follow-up question can springboard us away from shallow talk into something deeper and more meaningful. There are, however, some bad patterns of question asking, such as “boomerasking”. Michael Yeomansand I have a recent paper about this, and oh my gosh, it’s been such fun to study. It’s a play on the word boomerang: it comes back to the person who threw it. If I ask you what you had for breakfast, and you tell me you had Special K and banana, and then I say, “Well, let me tell you about my breakfast, because, boy, was it delicious” – that’s boomerasking. Sometimes it’s a thinly veiled way of bragging or complaining, but sometimes I think people are genuinely interested to hear from their partner, but then the partner’s answer reminds them so much of their own life that they can’t help but start sharing their perspective. In our research, we have found that this makes your partner feel like you weren’t interested in their perspective, so it seems very insincere. Sharing your own perspective is important. It’s okay at some point to bring the conversation back to yourself. But don’t do it so soon that it makes your partner feel like you didn’t hear their answer or care about it. Research by Alison Wood Brooks includes a recent study on “boomerasking”, a pitfall you should avoid to make conversations flowJanelle Bruno What are the benefits of levity? When we think of conversations that haven’t gone well, we often think of moments of hostility, anger or disagreement, but a quiet killer of conversation is boredom. Levity is the antidote. These small moments of sparkle or fizz can pull us back in and make us feel engaged with each other again. Our research has shown that we give status and respect to people who make us feel good, so much so that in a group of people, a person who can land even one appropriate joke is more likely to be voted as the leader. And the joke doesn’t even need to be very funny! It’s the fact that they were confident enough to try it and competent enough to read the room. Do you have any practical steps that people can apply to generate levity, even if they’re not a natural comedian? Levity is not just about being funny. In fact, aiming to be a comedian is not the right goal. When we watch stand-up on Netflix, comedians have rehearsed those jokes and honed them and practised them for a long time, and they’re delivering them in a monologue to an audience. It’s a completely different task from a live conversation. In real dialogue, what everybody is looking for is to feel engaged, and that doesn’t require particularly funny jokes or elaborate stories. When you see opportunities to make it fun or lighten the mood, that’s what you need to grab. It can come through a change to a new, fresh topic, or calling back to things that you talked about earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship. These callbacks – which sometimes do refer to something funny – are such a nice way of showing that you’ve listened and remembered. A levity move could also involve giving sincere compliments to other people. When you think nice things, when you admire someone, make sure you say it out loud. This brings us to the last element of TALK: kindness. Why do we so often fail to be as kind as we would like? Wobbles in kindness often come back to our egocentrism. Research shows that we underestimate how much other people’s perspectives differ from our own, and we forget that we have the tools to ask other people directly in conversation for their perspective. Being a kinder conversationalist is about trying to focus on your partner’s perspective and then figuring what they need and helping them to get it. Finally, what is your number one tip for readers to have a better conversation the next time they speak to someone? Every conversation is surprisingly tricky and complex. When things don’t go perfectly, give yourself and others more grace. There will be trips and stumbles and then a little grace can go very, very far. Topics: #four #sciencebased #rules #that #will
    WWW.NEWSCIENTIST.COM
    Four science-based rules that will make your conversations flow
    One of the four pillars of good conversation is levity. You needn’t be a comedian, you can but have some funTetra Images, LLC/Alamy Conversation lies at the heart of our relationships – yet many of us find it surprisingly hard to talk to others. We may feel anxious at the thought of making small talk with strangers and struggle to connect with the people who are closest to us. If that sounds familiar, Alison Wood Brooks hopes to help. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches an oversubscribed course called “TALK: How to talk gooder in business and life”, and the author of a new book, Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. Both offer four key principles for more meaningful exchanges. Conversations are inherently unpredictable, says Wood Brooks, but they follow certain rules – and knowing their architecture makes us more comfortable with what is outside of our control. New Scientist asked her about the best ways to apply this research to our own chats. David Robson: Talking about talking feels quite meta. Do you ever find yourself critiquing your own performance? Alison Wood Brooks: There are so many levels of “meta-ness”. I have often felt like I’m floating over the room, watching conversations unfold, even as I’m involved in them myself. I teach a course at Harvard, and [my students] all get to experience this feeling as well. There can be an uncomfortable period of hypervigilance, but I hope that dissipates over time as they develop better habits. There is a famous quote from Charlie Parker, who was a jazz saxophonist. He said something like, “Practise, practise, practise, and then when you get on stage, let it all go and just wail.” I think that’s my approach to conversation. Even when you’re hyper-aware of conversation dynamics, you have to remember the true delight of being with another human mind, and never lose the magic of being together. Think ahead, but once you’re talking, let it all go and just wail. Reading your book, I learned that a good way to enliven a conversation is to ask someone why they are passionate about what they do. So, where does your passion for conversation come from? I have two answers to this question. One is professional. Early in my professorship at Harvard, I had been studying emotions by exploring how people talk about their feelings and the balance between what we feel inside and how we express that to others. And I realised I just had this deep, profound interest in figuring out how people talk to each other about everything, not just their feelings. We now have scientific tools that allow us to capture conversations and analyse them at large scale. Natural language processing, machine learning, the advent of AI – all this allows us to take huge swathes of transcript data and process it much more efficiently. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. Sign up to newsletter The personal answer is that I’m an identical twin, and I spent my whole life, from the moment I opened my newborn eyes, existing next to a person who’s an exact copy of myself. It was like observing myself at very close range, interacting with the world, interacting with other people. I could see when she said and did things well, and I could try to do that myself. And I saw when her jokes failed, or she stumbled over her words – I tried to avoid those mistakes. It was a very fortunate form of feedback that not a lot of people get. And then, as a twin, you’ve got this person sharing a bedroom, sharing all your clothes, going to all the same parties and playing on the same sports teams, so we were just constantly in conversation with each other. You reached this level of shared reality that is so incredible, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to help other people get there in their relationships, too. “TALK” cleverly captures your framework for better conversations: topics, asking, levity and kindness. Let’s start at the beginning. How should we decide what to talk about? My first piece of advice is to prepare. Some people do this naturally. They already think about the things that they should talk about with somebody before they see them. They should lean into this habit. Some of my students, however, think it’s crazy. They think preparation will make the conversation seem rigid and forced and overly scripted. But just because you’ve thought ahead about what you might talk about doesn’t mean you have to talk about those things once the conversation is underway. It does mean, however, that you always have an idea waiting for you when you’re not sure what to talk about next. Having just one topic in your back pocket can help you in those anxiety-ridden moments. It makes things more fluent, which is important for establishing a connection. Choosing a topic is not only important at the start of a conversation. We’re constantly making decisions about whether we should stay on one subject, drift to something else or totally shift gears and go somewhere wildly different. Sometimes the topic of conversation is obvious. Even then, knowing when to switch to a new one can be trickyMartin Parr/Magnum Photos What’s your advice when making these decisions? There are three very clear signs that suggest that it’s time to switch topics. The first is longer mutual pauses. The second is more uncomfortable laughter, which we use to fill the space that we would usually fill excitedly with good content. And the third sign is redundancy. Once you start repeating things that have already been said on the topic, it’s a sign that you should move to something else. After an average conversation, most people feel like they’ve covered the right number of topics. But if you ask people after conversations that didn’t go well, they’ll more often say that they didn’t talk about enough things, rather than that they talked about too many things. This suggests that a common mistake is lingering too long on a topic after you’ve squeezed all the juice out of it. The second element of TALK is asking questions. I think a lot of us have heard the advice to ask more questions, yet many people don’t apply it. Why do you think that is? Many years of research have shown that the human mind is remarkably egocentric. Often, we are so focused on our own perspective that we forget to even ask someone else to share what’s in their mind. Another reason is fear. You’re interested in the other person, and you know you should ask them questions, but you’re afraid of being too intrusive, or that you will reveal your own incompetence, because you feel you should know the answer already. What kinds of questions should we be asking – and avoiding? In the book, I talk about the power of follow-up questions that build on anything that your partner has just said. It shows that you heard them, that you care and that you want to know more. Even one follow-up question can springboard us away from shallow talk into something deeper and more meaningful. There are, however, some bad patterns of question asking, such as “boomerasking”. Michael Yeomans [at Imperial College London] and I have a recent paper about this, and oh my gosh, it’s been such fun to study. It’s a play on the word boomerang: it comes back to the person who threw it. If I ask you what you had for breakfast, and you tell me you had Special K and banana, and then I say, “Well, let me tell you about my breakfast, because, boy, was it delicious” – that’s boomerasking. Sometimes it’s a thinly veiled way of bragging or complaining, but sometimes I think people are genuinely interested to hear from their partner, but then the partner’s answer reminds them so much of their own life that they can’t help but start sharing their perspective. In our research, we have found that this makes your partner feel like you weren’t interested in their perspective, so it seems very insincere. Sharing your own perspective is important. It’s okay at some point to bring the conversation back to yourself. But don’t do it so soon that it makes your partner feel like you didn’t hear their answer or care about it. Research by Alison Wood Brooks includes a recent study on “boomerasking”, a pitfall you should avoid to make conversations flowJanelle Bruno What are the benefits of levity? When we think of conversations that haven’t gone well, we often think of moments of hostility, anger or disagreement, but a quiet killer of conversation is boredom. Levity is the antidote. These small moments of sparkle or fizz can pull us back in and make us feel engaged with each other again. Our research has shown that we give status and respect to people who make us feel good, so much so that in a group of people, a person who can land even one appropriate joke is more likely to be voted as the leader. And the joke doesn’t even need to be very funny! It’s the fact that they were confident enough to try it and competent enough to read the room. Do you have any practical steps that people can apply to generate levity, even if they’re not a natural comedian? Levity is not just about being funny. In fact, aiming to be a comedian is not the right goal. When we watch stand-up on Netflix, comedians have rehearsed those jokes and honed them and practised them for a long time, and they’re delivering them in a monologue to an audience. It’s a completely different task from a live conversation. In real dialogue, what everybody is looking for is to feel engaged, and that doesn’t require particularly funny jokes or elaborate stories. When you see opportunities to make it fun or lighten the mood, that’s what you need to grab. It can come through a change to a new, fresh topic, or calling back to things that you talked about earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship. These callbacks – which sometimes do refer to something funny – are such a nice way of showing that you’ve listened and remembered. A levity move could also involve giving sincere compliments to other people. When you think nice things, when you admire someone, make sure you say it out loud. This brings us to the last element of TALK: kindness. Why do we so often fail to be as kind as we would like? Wobbles in kindness often come back to our egocentrism. Research shows that we underestimate how much other people’s perspectives differ from our own, and we forget that we have the tools to ask other people directly in conversation for their perspective. Being a kinder conversationalist is about trying to focus on your partner’s perspective and then figuring what they need and helping them to get it. Finally, what is your number one tip for readers to have a better conversation the next time they speak to someone? Every conversation is surprisingly tricky and complex. When things don’t go perfectly, give yourself and others more grace. There will be trips and stumbles and then a little grace can go very, very far. Topics:
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  • Can Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Outrun Mario Kart World?

    Mario Kart World is one of the year's hottest games, but its pivot to an open world setting, while peeling back kart customization options, opened a massive rift for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds to drift into. And Sega is determined to do everything possible to make its kart racer the one to beat by including numerous guest characters and cross-platform, multiplayer contests. I took Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for a test drive at the Summer Game Fest, and it's a strong contender racing game of the year.Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Deep Kart CustomizationThe biggest difference between Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Mario Kart World is that Sega's title focuses on kart customization. I'm not just talking about colors and tires; CrossWorlds introduces Gadgets, add-ons that augment your car, giving your whip helpful abilities to bring into the race. Each ride has a license plate with six slots where you can slot your chosen Gadgets. A Gadget can take up one, two, or three slots, so the idea is to find a mix that pairs well with character traits. There's a surprising amount of depth for people who want to min/max their favorite anthropomorphic animal.I chose Sonic, a speed character, and added a Gadget that started him with two boosts, a Gadget that improved his speed while trailing an opponent, and a Gadget that improved acceleration. There were so many Gadgets that I could have easily spent my entire demo session building a car to match my playstyle. I envision people happily getting lost in the weeds before participating in their first race.Gameplay: This Ain't Mario Kart WorldAlthough it's not an open world like Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds injects a unique spin on traditional kart racing. The familiar trappings are all here, such as rings to boost your top speed. Each Grand Prix consists of three maps, but the gimmick at play is stage transitions. Recommended by Our EditorsAbout a third of the way down a course, a giant ring-portal opens, presenting a new world and track. The shift in tone and terrain keeps the races fast-paced and unpredictable. I particularly liked how whoever is in first place can sometimes choose which CrossWorlds track to go down, controlling the tempo. With every race completion, you earn credits based on your performance that you can cash in for new car parts.In a stark contrast to Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is far more aggressive, even on lower difficulties. At the start of each grand prix, the game assigns you a rival—this is the character to beat, and the one who taunts you all match. Beat them all, and you can race high-powered Super variants.Just about everything caused you to lose rings: bumping into other players, the walls, and, of course, getting hit by items. The series' trademark rubberband AI is still in place, too. Even in the press demo, I wasn't safe from taking four items back to back and being knocked off the stage mere feet away from the finish line.The demo didn't include the new characters that debuted at the Summer Game Fest, but I studied the character screen to see who else could be coming to the game. Including the 12 Sonic characters available in the demo, I counted a whopping 64 character slots. They include Hatsune Miku, Joker, Ichiban Kasuga, and Steve. However, I hope to see other classic Sega IPs like in previous Sonic Racing titles.Platforms and Release DateWill Sega do what Nintendon't? I had an exhilarating time playing Sonic Racing: CrossWorld, and I can't wait to see more wild track compositions. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will be available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on Sept. 25, 2025. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is planned for later in the year.
    #can #sonic #racing #crossworlds #outrun
    Can Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Outrun Mario Kart World?
    Mario Kart World is one of the year's hottest games, but its pivot to an open world setting, while peeling back kart customization options, opened a massive rift for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds to drift into. And Sega is determined to do everything possible to make its kart racer the one to beat by including numerous guest characters and cross-platform, multiplayer contests. I took Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for a test drive at the Summer Game Fest, and it's a strong contender racing game of the year.Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Deep Kart CustomizationThe biggest difference between Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Mario Kart World is that Sega's title focuses on kart customization. I'm not just talking about colors and tires; CrossWorlds introduces Gadgets, add-ons that augment your car, giving your whip helpful abilities to bring into the race. Each ride has a license plate with six slots where you can slot your chosen Gadgets. A Gadget can take up one, two, or three slots, so the idea is to find a mix that pairs well with character traits. There's a surprising amount of depth for people who want to min/max their favorite anthropomorphic animal.I chose Sonic, a speed character, and added a Gadget that started him with two boosts, a Gadget that improved his speed while trailing an opponent, and a Gadget that improved acceleration. There were so many Gadgets that I could have easily spent my entire demo session building a car to match my playstyle. I envision people happily getting lost in the weeds before participating in their first race.Gameplay: This Ain't Mario Kart WorldAlthough it's not an open world like Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds injects a unique spin on traditional kart racing. The familiar trappings are all here, such as rings to boost your top speed. Each Grand Prix consists of three maps, but the gimmick at play is stage transitions. Recommended by Our EditorsAbout a third of the way down a course, a giant ring-portal opens, presenting a new world and track. The shift in tone and terrain keeps the races fast-paced and unpredictable. I particularly liked how whoever is in first place can sometimes choose which CrossWorlds track to go down, controlling the tempo. With every race completion, you earn credits based on your performance that you can cash in for new car parts.In a stark contrast to Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is far more aggressive, even on lower difficulties. At the start of each grand prix, the game assigns you a rival—this is the character to beat, and the one who taunts you all match. Beat them all, and you can race high-powered Super variants.Just about everything caused you to lose rings: bumping into other players, the walls, and, of course, getting hit by items. The series' trademark rubberband AI is still in place, too. Even in the press demo, I wasn't safe from taking four items back to back and being knocked off the stage mere feet away from the finish line.The demo didn't include the new characters that debuted at the Summer Game Fest, but I studied the character screen to see who else could be coming to the game. Including the 12 Sonic characters available in the demo, I counted a whopping 64 character slots. They include Hatsune Miku, Joker, Ichiban Kasuga, and Steve. However, I hope to see other classic Sega IPs like in previous Sonic Racing titles.Platforms and Release DateWill Sega do what Nintendon't? I had an exhilarating time playing Sonic Racing: CrossWorld, and I can't wait to see more wild track compositions. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will be available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on Sept. 25, 2025. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is planned for later in the year. #can #sonic #racing #crossworlds #outrun
    ME.PCMAG.COM
    Can Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Outrun Mario Kart World?
    Mario Kart World is one of the year's hottest games, but its pivot to an open world setting, while peeling back kart customization options, opened a massive rift for Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds to drift into. And Sega is determined to do everything possible to make its kart racer the one to beat by including numerous guest characters and cross-platform, multiplayer contests. I took Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds for a test drive at the Summer Game Fest, and it's a strong contender racing game of the year.Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds' Deep Kart CustomizationThe biggest difference between Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and Mario Kart World is that Sega's title focuses on kart customization. I'm not just talking about colors and tires; CrossWorlds introduces Gadgets, add-ons that augment your car, giving your whip helpful abilities to bring into the race. (Credit: Sega)Each ride has a license plate with six slots where you can slot your chosen Gadgets. A Gadget can take up one, two, or three slots, so the idea is to find a mix that pairs well with character traits. There's a surprising amount of depth for people who want to min/max their favorite anthropomorphic animal.I chose Sonic, a speed character, and added a Gadget that started him with two boosts (one slot), a Gadget that improved his speed while trailing an opponent (two slots), and a Gadget that improved acceleration (three slots). There were so many Gadgets that I could have easily spent my entire demo session building a car to match my playstyle. I envision people happily getting lost in the weeds before participating in their first race.(Credit: Sega)Gameplay: This Ain't Mario Kart WorldAlthough it's not an open world like Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds injects a unique spin on traditional kart racing. The familiar trappings are all here, such as rings to boost your top speed. Each Grand Prix consists of three maps, but the gimmick at play is stage transitions. Recommended by Our EditorsAbout a third of the way down a course, a giant ring-portal opens, presenting a new world and track (hence the name "CrossWorlds"). The shift in tone and terrain keeps the races fast-paced and unpredictable. I particularly liked how whoever is in first place can sometimes choose which CrossWorlds track to go down, controlling the tempo. With every race completion, you earn credits based on your performance that you can cash in for new car parts.In a stark contrast to Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is far more aggressive, even on lower difficulties. At the start of each grand prix, the game assigns you a rival—this is the character to beat, and the one who taunts you all match. Beat them all, and you can race high-powered Super variants.Just about everything caused you to lose rings: bumping into other players, the walls, and, of course, getting hit by items. The series' trademark rubberband AI is still in place, too. Even in the press demo, I wasn't safe from taking four items back to back and being knocked off the stage mere feet away from the finish line.(Credit: Sega)The demo didn't include the new characters that debuted at the Summer Game Fest, but I studied the character screen to see who else could be coming to the game. Including the 12 Sonic characters available in the demo, I counted a whopping 64 character slots. They include Hatsune Miku (the ultra-popular Vocaloid), Joker (from Persona 5), Ichiban Kasuga (from Like a Dragon), and Steve (from Minecraft). However, I hope to see other classic Sega IPs like in previous Sonic Racing titles.Platforms and Release DateWill Sega do what Nintendon't? I had an exhilarating time playing Sonic Racing: CrossWorld, and I can't wait to see more wild track compositions. Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds will be available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on Sept. 25, 2025. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is planned for later in the year.
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  • Making a killing: The playful 2D terror of Psycasso®

    A serial killer is stalking the streets, and his murders are a work of art. That’s more or less the premise behind Psycasso®, a tongue-in-cheek 2D pixel art game from Omni Digital Technologies that’s debuting a demo at Steam Next Fest this week, with plans to head into Early Access later this year. Playing as the killer, you get a job and build a life by day, then hunt the streets by night to find and torture victims, paint masterpieces with their blood, then sell them to fund operations.I sat down with lead developer Benjamin Lavender and Omni, designer and producer, to talk about this playfully gory game that gives a classic retro style and a freshtwist.Let’s start with a bit of background about the game.Omni: We wanted to make something that stands out. We know a lot of indie studios are releasing games and the market is ever growing, so we wanted to make something that’s not just fun to play, but catches people’s attention when others tell them about it. We’ve created an open-world pixel art game about an artist who spends his day getting a job, trying to fit into society. Then at nighttime, things take a more sinister turn and he goes around and makes artwork out of his victim's blood.We didn’t want to make it creepy and gory. We kind of wanted it to be cutesy and fun, just to make it ironic. Making it was a big challenge. We basically had to create an entire city with functioning shops and NPCs who have their own lives, their own hobbies. It was a huge challenge.So what does the actual gameplay look like?Omni: There’s a day cycle and a night cycle that breaks up the gameplay. During the day, you can get a job, level up skills, buy properties and furniture upgrades. At nighttime, the lighting completely changes, the vibe completely changes, there’s police on the street and the flow of the game shifts. The idea is that you can kidnap NPCs using a whole bunch of different weapons – guns, throwable grenades, little traps and cool stuff that you can capture people with.Once captured on the street, you can either harvest their blood and body parts there, or buy a specialist room to keep them in a cage and put them in various equipment like hanging chains or torture chairs. The player gets better rewards for harvesting blood and body parts this way.On the flip side, there’s a whole other element to the game where the player is given missions each week from galleries around the city. They come up on your phone menu, and you can accept them and do either portrait or landscape paintings, with all of the painting being done using only shades of red. We've got some nice drip effects and splat sounds to make it feel like you’re painting with blood. Then you can give your creation a name, submit it to a gallery, then it goes into a fake auction, people will bid on the artwork and you get paid and large amount of in-game money so you can then buy upgrades for the home, upgrade painting tools like bigger paint brushes, more selection tools, stuff like that.Ben: There’s definitely nothing like it. And that was the aim, is when you are telling people about it, they’re like, “Oh, okay. Right. We’re not going to forget about this.”

    Let’s dig into the 2D tools you used to create this world.Ben: It’s using the 2D Renderer. The Happy Harvest 2D sample project that you guys made was kind of a big starting point, from a lighting perspective, and doing the normal maps of the 2D and getting the lighting to look nice. Our night system is a very stripped-down, then added-on version of the thing that you guys made. I was particularly interested by its shadows. The building’s shadows aren’t actually shadows – it’s a black light. We tried to recreate that with all of our buildings in the entire open world – so it does look beautiful for a 2D game, if I do say so myself.Can you say a bit about how you’re using AI or procedural generation in NPCs?Ben: I don’t know how many actually made it into the demo to be fair, number-wise. Every single NPC has a unique identity, as in they all have a place of work that they go to on a regular schedule. They have hobbies, they have spots where they prefer to loiter, a park bench or whatever. So you can get to know everyone’s individual lifestyle.So, the old man that lives in the same building as me might love to go to the casino at nighttime or go consistently on a Monday and a Friday, that kind of vibe.It uses the A* Pathfinding Project, because we knew we wanted to have a lot of AIs. We’ve locked off most of the city for the demo, but the actual size of the city is huge. The police mechanics are currently turned off, but there’s 80% police mechanics in there as well. If you punch someone or hurt someone, that’s a crime, and if anyone sees it, they can go and report to the police and then things happen. That’s a feature that’s there but not demo-ready yet.How close would you say you are to a full release?Omni: We should be scheduled for October for early access. By that point we’ll have the stealth mechanics and the policing systems polished and in and get some of the other upcoming features buttoned up. We’re fairly close.Ben: Lots of it’s already done, it’s just turned off for the demo. We don’t want to overwhelm people because there’s just so much for the player to do.Tell me a bit about the paint mechanics – how did you build that?Ben: It is custom. We built it ourselves completely from scratch. But I can't take responsibility for that one – someone else did the whole thing – that was their baby. It is really, really cool though.Omni: It’s got a variety of masking tools, the ability to change opacity and spacing, you can undo, redo. It’s a really fantastic feature that gives people the opportunity to express themselves and make some great art.Ben: And it's gamified, so it doesn’t feel like you’ve just opened up Paint in Windows.Omni: Best of all is when you make a painting, it gets turned into an inventory item so you physically carry it around with you and can sell it or treasure it.What’s the most exciting part of Psycasso for you?Omni: Stunning graphics. I think graphically, it looks really pretty.Ben: Visually, you could look at it and go, “Oh, that’s Psycasso.”Omni: What we’ve done is taken a cozy retro-style game, and we’ve brought modern design, logic, and technology into it. So you're playing what feels like a nostalgic game, but you're getting the experience of a much newer project.Check out the Psycasso demo on Steam, and stay tuned for more NextFest coverage.
    #making #killing #playful #terror #psycasso
    Making a killing: The playful 2D terror of Psycasso®
    A serial killer is stalking the streets, and his murders are a work of art. That’s more or less the premise behind Psycasso®, a tongue-in-cheek 2D pixel art game from Omni Digital Technologies that’s debuting a demo at Steam Next Fest this week, with plans to head into Early Access later this year. Playing as the killer, you get a job and build a life by day, then hunt the streets by night to find and torture victims, paint masterpieces with their blood, then sell them to fund operations.I sat down with lead developer Benjamin Lavender and Omni, designer and producer, to talk about this playfully gory game that gives a classic retro style and a freshtwist.Let’s start with a bit of background about the game.Omni: We wanted to make something that stands out. We know a lot of indie studios are releasing games and the market is ever growing, so we wanted to make something that’s not just fun to play, but catches people’s attention when others tell them about it. We’ve created an open-world pixel art game about an artist who spends his day getting a job, trying to fit into society. Then at nighttime, things take a more sinister turn and he goes around and makes artwork out of his victim's blood.We didn’t want to make it creepy and gory. We kind of wanted it to be cutesy and fun, just to make it ironic. Making it was a big challenge. We basically had to create an entire city with functioning shops and NPCs who have their own lives, their own hobbies. It was a huge challenge.So what does the actual gameplay look like?Omni: There’s a day cycle and a night cycle that breaks up the gameplay. During the day, you can get a job, level up skills, buy properties and furniture upgrades. At nighttime, the lighting completely changes, the vibe completely changes, there’s police on the street and the flow of the game shifts. The idea is that you can kidnap NPCs using a whole bunch of different weapons – guns, throwable grenades, little traps and cool stuff that you can capture people with.Once captured on the street, you can either harvest their blood and body parts there, or buy a specialist room to keep them in a cage and put them in various equipment like hanging chains or torture chairs. The player gets better rewards for harvesting blood and body parts this way.On the flip side, there’s a whole other element to the game where the player is given missions each week from galleries around the city. They come up on your phone menu, and you can accept them and do either portrait or landscape paintings, with all of the painting being done using only shades of red. We've got some nice drip effects and splat sounds to make it feel like you’re painting with blood. Then you can give your creation a name, submit it to a gallery, then it goes into a fake auction, people will bid on the artwork and you get paid and large amount of in-game money so you can then buy upgrades for the home, upgrade painting tools like bigger paint brushes, more selection tools, stuff like that.Ben: There’s definitely nothing like it. And that was the aim, is when you are telling people about it, they’re like, “Oh, okay. Right. We’re not going to forget about this.” Let’s dig into the 2D tools you used to create this world.Ben: It’s using the 2D Renderer. The Happy Harvest 2D sample project that you guys made was kind of a big starting point, from a lighting perspective, and doing the normal maps of the 2D and getting the lighting to look nice. Our night system is a very stripped-down, then added-on version of the thing that you guys made. I was particularly interested by its shadows. The building’s shadows aren’t actually shadows – it’s a black light. We tried to recreate that with all of our buildings in the entire open world – so it does look beautiful for a 2D game, if I do say so myself.Can you say a bit about how you’re using AI or procedural generation in NPCs?Ben: I don’t know how many actually made it into the demo to be fair, number-wise. Every single NPC has a unique identity, as in they all have a place of work that they go to on a regular schedule. They have hobbies, they have spots where they prefer to loiter, a park bench or whatever. So you can get to know everyone’s individual lifestyle.So, the old man that lives in the same building as me might love to go to the casino at nighttime or go consistently on a Monday and a Friday, that kind of vibe.It uses the A* Pathfinding Project, because we knew we wanted to have a lot of AIs. We’ve locked off most of the city for the demo, but the actual size of the city is huge. The police mechanics are currently turned off, but there’s 80% police mechanics in there as well. If you punch someone or hurt someone, that’s a crime, and if anyone sees it, they can go and report to the police and then things happen. That’s a feature that’s there but not demo-ready yet.How close would you say you are to a full release?Omni: We should be scheduled for October for early access. By that point we’ll have the stealth mechanics and the policing systems polished and in and get some of the other upcoming features buttoned up. We’re fairly close.Ben: Lots of it’s already done, it’s just turned off for the demo. We don’t want to overwhelm people because there’s just so much for the player to do.Tell me a bit about the paint mechanics – how did you build that?Ben: It is custom. We built it ourselves completely from scratch. But I can't take responsibility for that one – someone else did the whole thing – that was their baby. It is really, really cool though.Omni: It’s got a variety of masking tools, the ability to change opacity and spacing, you can undo, redo. It’s a really fantastic feature that gives people the opportunity to express themselves and make some great art.Ben: And it's gamified, so it doesn’t feel like you’ve just opened up Paint in Windows.Omni: Best of all is when you make a painting, it gets turned into an inventory item so you physically carry it around with you and can sell it or treasure it.What’s the most exciting part of Psycasso for you?Omni: Stunning graphics. I think graphically, it looks really pretty.Ben: Visually, you could look at it and go, “Oh, that’s Psycasso.”Omni: What we’ve done is taken a cozy retro-style game, and we’ve brought modern design, logic, and technology into it. So you're playing what feels like a nostalgic game, but you're getting the experience of a much newer project.Check out the Psycasso demo on Steam, and stay tuned for more NextFest coverage. #making #killing #playful #terror #psycasso
    UNITY.COM
    Making a killing: The playful 2D terror of Psycasso®
    A serial killer is stalking the streets, and his murders are a work of art. That’s more or less the premise behind Psycasso®, a tongue-in-cheek 2D pixel art game from Omni Digital Technologies that’s debuting a demo at Steam Next Fest this week, with plans to head into Early Access later this year. Playing as the killer, you get a job and build a life by day, then hunt the streets by night to find and torture victims, paint masterpieces with their blood, then sell them to fund operations.I sat down with lead developer Benjamin Lavender and Omni, designer and producer, to talk about this playfully gory game that gives a classic retro style and a fresh (if gruesome) twist.Let’s start with a bit of background about the game.Omni: We wanted to make something that stands out. We know a lot of indie studios are releasing games and the market is ever growing, so we wanted to make something that’s not just fun to play, but catches people’s attention when others tell them about it. We’ve created an open-world pixel art game about an artist who spends his day getting a job, trying to fit into society. Then at nighttime, things take a more sinister turn and he goes around and makes artwork out of his victim's blood.We didn’t want to make it creepy and gory. We kind of wanted it to be cutesy and fun, just to make it ironic. Making it was a big challenge. We basically had to create an entire city with functioning shops and NPCs who have their own lives, their own hobbies. It was a huge challenge.So what does the actual gameplay look like?Omni: There’s a day cycle and a night cycle that breaks up the gameplay. During the day, you can get a job, level up skills, buy properties and furniture upgrades. At nighttime, the lighting completely changes, the vibe completely changes, there’s police on the street and the flow of the game shifts. The idea is that you can kidnap NPCs using a whole bunch of different weapons – guns, throwable grenades, little traps and cool stuff that you can capture people with.Once captured on the street, you can either harvest their blood and body parts there, or buy a specialist room to keep them in a cage and put them in various equipment like hanging chains or torture chairs. The player gets better rewards for harvesting blood and body parts this way.On the flip side, there’s a whole other element to the game where the player is given missions each week from galleries around the city. They come up on your phone menu, and you can accept them and do either portrait or landscape paintings, with all of the painting being done using only shades of red. We've got some nice drip effects and splat sounds to make it feel like you’re painting with blood. Then you can give your creation a name, submit it to a gallery, then it goes into a fake auction, people will bid on the artwork and you get paid and large amount of in-game money so you can then buy upgrades for the home, upgrade painting tools like bigger paint brushes, more selection tools, stuff like that.Ben: There’s definitely nothing like it. And that was the aim, is when you are telling people about it, they’re like, “Oh, okay. Right. We’re not going to forget about this.” Let’s dig into the 2D tools you used to create this world.Ben: It’s using the 2D Renderer. The Happy Harvest 2D sample project that you guys made was kind of a big starting point, from a lighting perspective, and doing the normal maps of the 2D and getting the lighting to look nice. Our night system is a very stripped-down, then added-on version of the thing that you guys made. I was particularly interested by its shadows. The building’s shadows aren’t actually shadows – it’s a black light. We tried to recreate that with all of our buildings in the entire open world – so it does look beautiful for a 2D game, if I do say so myself.Can you say a bit about how you’re using AI or procedural generation in NPCs?Ben: I don’t know how many actually made it into the demo to be fair, number-wise. Every single NPC has a unique identity, as in they all have a place of work that they go to on a regular schedule. They have hobbies, they have spots where they prefer to loiter, a park bench or whatever. So you can get to know everyone’s individual lifestyle.So, the old man that lives in the same building as me might love to go to the casino at nighttime or go consistently on a Monday and a Friday, that kind of vibe.It uses the A* Pathfinding Project, because we knew we wanted to have a lot of AIs. We’ve locked off most of the city for the demo, but the actual size of the city is huge. The police mechanics are currently turned off, but there’s 80% police mechanics in there as well. If you punch someone or hurt someone, that’s a crime, and if anyone sees it, they can go and report to the police and then things happen. That’s a feature that’s there but not demo-ready yet.How close would you say you are to a full release?Omni: We should be scheduled for October for early access. By that point we’ll have the stealth mechanics and the policing systems polished and in and get some of the other upcoming features buttoned up. We’re fairly close.Ben: Lots of it’s already done, it’s just turned off for the demo. We don’t want to overwhelm people because there’s just so much for the player to do.Tell me a bit about the paint mechanics – how did you build that?Ben: It is custom. We built it ourselves completely from scratch. But I can't take responsibility for that one – someone else did the whole thing – that was their baby. It is really, really cool though.Omni: It’s got a variety of masking tools, the ability to change opacity and spacing, you can undo, redo. It’s a really fantastic feature that gives people the opportunity to express themselves and make some great art.Ben: And it's gamified, so it doesn’t feel like you’ve just opened up Paint in Windows.Omni: Best of all is when you make a painting, it gets turned into an inventory item so you physically carry it around with you and can sell it or treasure it.What’s the most exciting part of Psycasso for you?Omni: Stunning graphics. I think graphically, it looks really pretty.Ben: Visually, you could look at it and go, “Oh, that’s Psycasso.”Omni: What we’ve done is taken a cozy retro-style game, and we’ve brought modern design, logic, and technology into it. So you're playing what feels like a nostalgic game, but you're getting the experience of a much newer project.Check out the Psycasso demo on Steam, and stay tuned for more NextFest coverage.
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  • 15 riveting images from the 2025 UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition

    Big and Small Underwater Faces — 3rd Place.
    Trips to the Antarctic Peninsula always yield amazing encounters with leopard seals. Boldly approaching me and baring his teeth, this individual was keen to point out that this part of Antarctica was his territory. This picture was shot at dusk, resulting in the rather moody atmosphere.
     
    Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony/ World Ocean’s Day

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    The striking eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl peers at the camera. Just four days later, she would be dead, hit by a speeding boat and one of the 20,000 whales killed by ship strikes each year. Photographer Rachel Moore’s captivating imageof Sweet Girl earned top honors at the 2025 United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition.
    Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — WinnerThis photo, taken in Mo’orea, French Polynesia in 2024, captures the eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl, just days before her tragic death. Four days after I captured this intimate moment, she was struck and killed by a fast-moving ship. Her death serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the 20,000 whales lost to ship strikes every year. We are using her story to advocate for stronger protections, petitioning for stricter speed laws around Tahiti and Mo’orea during whale season. I hope Sweet Girl’s legacy will spark real change to protect these incredible animals and prevent further senseless loss.Credit: Rachel Moore/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Now in its twelfth year, the competition coordinated in collaboration between the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, DivePhotoGuide, Oceanic Global, and  the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Each year, thousands of underwater photographers submit images that judges award prizes for across four categories: Big and Small Underwater Faces, Underwater Seascapes, Above Water Seascapes, and Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us.
    This year’s winning images include a curious leopard seal, a swarm of jellyfish, and a very grumpy looking Japanese warbonnet. Given our oceans’ perilous state, all competition participants were required to sign a charter of 14 commitments regarding ethics in photography.
    Underwater Seascapes — Honorable MentionWith only orcas as their natural predators, leopard seals are Antarctica’s most versatile hunters, preying on everything from fish and cephalopods to penguins and other seals. Gentoo penguins are a favored menu item, and leopard seals can be observed patrolling the waters around their colonies. For this shot, I used a split image to capture both worlds: the gentoo penguin colony in the background with the leopard seal on the hunt in the foreground.Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Above Water Seascapes – WinnerA serene lake cradled by arid dunes, where a gentle stream breathes life into the heart of Mother Earth’s creation: Captured from an airplane, this image reveals the powerful contrasts and hidden beauty where land and ocean meet, reminding us that the ocean is the source of all life and that everything in nature is deeply connected. The location is a remote stretch of coastline near Shark Bay, Western Australia.Credit: Leander Nardin/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Above Water Seascapes — 3rd PlaceParadise Harbour is one of the most beautiful places on the Antarctic Peninsula. When I visited, the sea was extremely calm, and I was lucky enough to witness a wonderfully clear reflection of the Suárez Glacierin the water. The only problem was the waves created by our speedboat, and the only way to capture the perfect reflection was to lie on the bottom of the boat while it moved towards the glacier.Credit: Andrey Nosik/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Underwater Seascapes — 3rd Place“La Rapadura” is a natural hidden treasure on the northern coast of Tenerife, in the Spanish territory of the Canary Islands. Only discovered in 1996, it is one of the most astonishing underwater landscapes in the world, consistently ranking among the planet’s best dive sites. These towering columns of basalt are the result of volcanic processes that occurred between 500,000 and a million years ago. The formation was created when a basaltic lava flow reached the ocean, where, upon cooling and solidifying, it contracted, creating natural structures often compared to the pipes of church organs. Located in a region where marine life has been impacted by once common illegal fishing practices, this stunning natural monument has both geological and ecological value, and scientists and underwater photographers are advocating for its protection.Credit: Pedro Carrillo/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Underwater Seascapes — WinnerThis year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit a jellyfish lake during a liveaboard trip around southern Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Being surrounded by millions of jellyfish, which have evolved to lose their stinging ability due to the absence of predators, was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve ever had.Credit: Dani Escayola/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Underwater Seascapes — 2nd PlaceThis shot captures a school of rays resting at a cleaning station in Mauritius, where strong currents once attracted them regularly. Some rays grew accustomed to divers, allowing close encounters like this. Sadly, after the severe bleaching that the reefs here suffered last year, such gatherings have become rare, and I fear I may not witness this again at the same spot.Credit: Gerald Rambert/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 3rd PlaceShot in Cuba’s Jardines de la Reina—a protected shark sanctuary—this image captures a Caribbean reef shark weaving through a group of silky sharks near the surface. Using a slow shutter and strobes as the shark pivoted sharply, the motion blurred into a wave-like arc across its head, lit by the golden hues of sunset. The abundance and behavior of sharks here is a living symbol of what protected oceans can look like.Credit: Steven Lopez/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
     Above Water Seascapes — 2nd PlaceNorthern gannetssoar above the dramatic cliffs of Scotland’s Hermaness National Nature Reserve, their sleek white bodies and black-tipped wings slicing through the Shetland winds. These seabirds, the largest in the North Atlantic, are renowned for their striking plunge-dives, reaching speeds up to 100 kphas they hunt for fish beneath the waves. The cliffs of Hermaness provide ideal nesting sites, with updrafts aiding their take-offs and landings. Each spring, thousands return to this rugged coastline, forming one of the UK’s most significant gannet colonies. It was a major challenge to take photos at the edge of these cliffs at almost 200 meterswith the winds up to 30 kph.Credit: Nur Tucker/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Above Water Seascapes — Honorable MentionA South Atlantic swell breaks on the Dungeons Reef off the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, shot while photographing a big-wave surf session in October 2017. It’s the crescendoing sounds of these breaking swells that always amazes me.Credit: Ken Findlay/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — Honorable MentionHumpback whales in their thousands migrate along the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia every year on the way to and from their calving grounds. In four seasons of swimming with them on the reef here, this is the only encounter I’ve had like this one. This pair of huge adult whales repeatedly spy-hopped alongside us, seeking to interact with and investigate us, leaving me completely breathless. The female in the foreground was much more confident than the male behind and would constantly make close approaches, whilst the male hung back a little, still interested but shy. After more than 10 years working with wildlife in the water, this was one of the best experiences of my life.Credit: Ollie Clarke/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Big and Small Underwater Faces — 2nd PlaceOn one of my many blackwater dives in Anilao, in the Philippines, my guide and I spotted something moving erratically at a depth of around 20 meters, about 10 to 15 centimeters in size. We quickly realized that it was a rare blanket octopus. As we approached, it opened up its beautiful blanket, revealing its multicolored mantle. I managed to take a few shots before it went on its way. I felt truly privileged to have captured this fascinating deep-sea cephalopod. Among its many unique characteristics, this species exhibits some of the most extreme sexual size-dimorphism in nature, with females weighing up to 40,000 times more than males.Credit: Giacomo Marchione/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Big and Small Underwater Faces – WinnerThis photo of a Japanese warbonnetwas captured in the Sea of Japan, about 50 milessouthwest of Vladivostok, Russia. I found the ornate fish at a depth of about 30 meters, under the stern of a shipwreck. This species does not appear to be afraid of divers—on the contrary, it seems to enjoy the attention—and it even tried to sit on the dome port of my camera.Credit: Andrey Nosik/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 2nd PlaceA juvenile pinnate batfishcaptured with a slow shutter speed, a snooted light, and deliberate camera panning to create a sense of motion and drama. Juvenile pinnate batfish are known for their striking black bodies outlined in vibrant orange—a coloration they lose within just a few months as they mature. I encountered this restless subject in the tropical waters of Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait. Capturing this image took patience and persistence over two dives, as these active young fish constantly dart for cover in crevices, making the shot particularly challenging.Credit: Luis Arpa/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
    #riveting #images #world #oceans #dayphoto
    15 riveting images from the 2025 UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition
    Big and Small Underwater Faces — 3rd Place. Trips to the Antarctic Peninsula always yield amazing encounters with leopard seals. Boldly approaching me and baring his teeth, this individual was keen to point out that this part of Antarctica was his territory. This picture was shot at dusk, resulting in the rather moody atmosphere.   Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony/ World Ocean’s Day Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The striking eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl peers at the camera. Just four days later, she would be dead, hit by a speeding boat and one of the 20,000 whales killed by ship strikes each year. Photographer Rachel Moore’s captivating imageof Sweet Girl earned top honors at the 2025 United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition. Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — WinnerThis photo, taken in Mo’orea, French Polynesia in 2024, captures the eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl, just days before her tragic death. Four days after I captured this intimate moment, she was struck and killed by a fast-moving ship. Her death serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the 20,000 whales lost to ship strikes every year. We are using her story to advocate for stronger protections, petitioning for stricter speed laws around Tahiti and Mo’orea during whale season. I hope Sweet Girl’s legacy will spark real change to protect these incredible animals and prevent further senseless loss.Credit: Rachel Moore/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Now in its twelfth year, the competition coordinated in collaboration between the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, DivePhotoGuide, Oceanic Global, and  the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Each year, thousands of underwater photographers submit images that judges award prizes for across four categories: Big and Small Underwater Faces, Underwater Seascapes, Above Water Seascapes, and Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us. This year’s winning images include a curious leopard seal, a swarm of jellyfish, and a very grumpy looking Japanese warbonnet. Given our oceans’ perilous state, all competition participants were required to sign a charter of 14 commitments regarding ethics in photography. Underwater Seascapes — Honorable MentionWith only orcas as their natural predators, leopard seals are Antarctica’s most versatile hunters, preying on everything from fish and cephalopods to penguins and other seals. Gentoo penguins are a favored menu item, and leopard seals can be observed patrolling the waters around their colonies. For this shot, I used a split image to capture both worlds: the gentoo penguin colony in the background with the leopard seal on the hunt in the foreground.Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Above Water Seascapes – WinnerA serene lake cradled by arid dunes, where a gentle stream breathes life into the heart of Mother Earth’s creation: Captured from an airplane, this image reveals the powerful contrasts and hidden beauty where land and ocean meet, reminding us that the ocean is the source of all life and that everything in nature is deeply connected. The location is a remote stretch of coastline near Shark Bay, Western Australia.Credit: Leander Nardin/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Above Water Seascapes — 3rd PlaceParadise Harbour is one of the most beautiful places on the Antarctic Peninsula. When I visited, the sea was extremely calm, and I was lucky enough to witness a wonderfully clear reflection of the Suárez Glacierin the water. The only problem was the waves created by our speedboat, and the only way to capture the perfect reflection was to lie on the bottom of the boat while it moved towards the glacier.Credit: Andrey Nosik/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Underwater Seascapes — 3rd Place“La Rapadura” is a natural hidden treasure on the northern coast of Tenerife, in the Spanish territory of the Canary Islands. Only discovered in 1996, it is one of the most astonishing underwater landscapes in the world, consistently ranking among the planet’s best dive sites. These towering columns of basalt are the result of volcanic processes that occurred between 500,000 and a million years ago. The formation was created when a basaltic lava flow reached the ocean, where, upon cooling and solidifying, it contracted, creating natural structures often compared to the pipes of church organs. Located in a region where marine life has been impacted by once common illegal fishing practices, this stunning natural monument has both geological and ecological value, and scientists and underwater photographers are advocating for its protection.Credit: Pedro Carrillo/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Underwater Seascapes — WinnerThis year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit a jellyfish lake during a liveaboard trip around southern Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Being surrounded by millions of jellyfish, which have evolved to lose their stinging ability due to the absence of predators, was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve ever had.Credit: Dani Escayola/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Underwater Seascapes — 2nd PlaceThis shot captures a school of rays resting at a cleaning station in Mauritius, where strong currents once attracted them regularly. Some rays grew accustomed to divers, allowing close encounters like this. Sadly, after the severe bleaching that the reefs here suffered last year, such gatherings have become rare, and I fear I may not witness this again at the same spot.Credit: Gerald Rambert/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 3rd PlaceShot in Cuba’s Jardines de la Reina—a protected shark sanctuary—this image captures a Caribbean reef shark weaving through a group of silky sharks near the surface. Using a slow shutter and strobes as the shark pivoted sharply, the motion blurred into a wave-like arc across its head, lit by the golden hues of sunset. The abundance and behavior of sharks here is a living symbol of what protected oceans can look like.Credit: Steven Lopez/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org  Above Water Seascapes — 2nd PlaceNorthern gannetssoar above the dramatic cliffs of Scotland’s Hermaness National Nature Reserve, their sleek white bodies and black-tipped wings slicing through the Shetland winds. These seabirds, the largest in the North Atlantic, are renowned for their striking plunge-dives, reaching speeds up to 100 kphas they hunt for fish beneath the waves. The cliffs of Hermaness provide ideal nesting sites, with updrafts aiding their take-offs and landings. Each spring, thousands return to this rugged coastline, forming one of the UK’s most significant gannet colonies. It was a major challenge to take photos at the edge of these cliffs at almost 200 meterswith the winds up to 30 kph.Credit: Nur Tucker/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Above Water Seascapes — Honorable MentionA South Atlantic swell breaks on the Dungeons Reef off the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, shot while photographing a big-wave surf session in October 2017. It’s the crescendoing sounds of these breaking swells that always amazes me.Credit: Ken Findlay/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — Honorable MentionHumpback whales in their thousands migrate along the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia every year on the way to and from their calving grounds. In four seasons of swimming with them on the reef here, this is the only encounter I’ve had like this one. This pair of huge adult whales repeatedly spy-hopped alongside us, seeking to interact with and investigate us, leaving me completely breathless. The female in the foreground was much more confident than the male behind and would constantly make close approaches, whilst the male hung back a little, still interested but shy. After more than 10 years working with wildlife in the water, this was one of the best experiences of my life.Credit: Ollie Clarke/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Big and Small Underwater Faces — 2nd PlaceOn one of my many blackwater dives in Anilao, in the Philippines, my guide and I spotted something moving erratically at a depth of around 20 meters, about 10 to 15 centimeters in size. We quickly realized that it was a rare blanket octopus. As we approached, it opened up its beautiful blanket, revealing its multicolored mantle. I managed to take a few shots before it went on its way. I felt truly privileged to have captured this fascinating deep-sea cephalopod. Among its many unique characteristics, this species exhibits some of the most extreme sexual size-dimorphism in nature, with females weighing up to 40,000 times more than males.Credit: Giacomo Marchione/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Big and Small Underwater Faces – WinnerThis photo of a Japanese warbonnetwas captured in the Sea of Japan, about 50 milessouthwest of Vladivostok, Russia. I found the ornate fish at a depth of about 30 meters, under the stern of a shipwreck. This species does not appear to be afraid of divers—on the contrary, it seems to enjoy the attention—and it even tried to sit on the dome port of my camera.Credit: Andrey Nosik/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 2nd PlaceA juvenile pinnate batfishcaptured with a slow shutter speed, a snooted light, and deliberate camera panning to create a sense of motion and drama. Juvenile pinnate batfish are known for their striking black bodies outlined in vibrant orange—a coloration they lose within just a few months as they mature. I encountered this restless subject in the tropical waters of Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait. Capturing this image took patience and persistence over two dives, as these active young fish constantly dart for cover in crevices, making the shot particularly challenging.Credit: Luis Arpa/ United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org #riveting #images #world #oceans #dayphoto
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    15 riveting images from the 2025 UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition
    Big and Small Underwater Faces — 3rd Place. Trips to the Antarctic Peninsula always yield amazing encounters with leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx). Boldly approaching me and baring his teeth, this individual was keen to point out that this part of Antarctica was his territory. This picture was shot at dusk, resulting in the rather moody atmosphere.   Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony (Germany) / World Ocean’s Day Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The striking eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl peers at the camera. Just four days later, she would be dead, hit by a speeding boat and one of the 20,000 whales killed by ship strikes each year. Photographer Rachel Moore’s captivating image (seen below) of Sweet Girl earned top honors at the 2025 United Nations World Oceans Day Photo Competition. Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — WinnerThis photo, taken in Mo’orea, French Polynesia in 2024, captures the eye of a humpback whale named Sweet Girl, just days before her tragic death. Four days after I captured this intimate moment, she was struck and killed by a fast-moving ship. Her death serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the 20,000 whales lost to ship strikes every year. We are using her story to advocate for stronger protections, petitioning for stricter speed laws around Tahiti and Mo’orea during whale season. I hope Sweet Girl’s legacy will spark real change to protect these incredible animals and prevent further senseless loss.Credit: Rachel Moore (USA) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Now in its twelfth year, the competition coordinated in collaboration between the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, DivePhotoGuide (DPG), Oceanic Global, and  the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO. Each year, thousands of underwater photographers submit images that judges award prizes for across four categories: Big and Small Underwater Faces, Underwater Seascapes, Above Water Seascapes, and Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us. This year’s winning images include a curious leopard seal, a swarm of jellyfish, and a very grumpy looking Japanese warbonnet. Given our oceans’ perilous state, all competition participants were required to sign a charter of 14 commitments regarding ethics in photography. Underwater Seascapes — Honorable MentionWith only orcas as their natural predators, leopard seals are Antarctica’s most versatile hunters, preying on everything from fish and cephalopods to penguins and other seals. Gentoo penguins are a favored menu item, and leopard seals can be observed patrolling the waters around their colonies. For this shot, I used a split image to capture both worlds: the gentoo penguin colony in the background with the leopard seal on the hunt in the foreground.Credit: Lars von Ritter Zahony (Germany) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Above Water Seascapes – WinnerA serene lake cradled by arid dunes, where a gentle stream breathes life into the heart of Mother Earth’s creation: Captured from an airplane, this image reveals the powerful contrasts and hidden beauty where land and ocean meet, reminding us that the ocean is the source of all life and that everything in nature is deeply connected. The location is a remote stretch of coastline near Shark Bay, Western Australia.Credit: Leander Nardin (Austria) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Above Water Seascapes — 3rd PlaceParadise Harbour is one of the most beautiful places on the Antarctic Peninsula. When I visited, the sea was extremely calm, and I was lucky enough to witness a wonderfully clear reflection of the Suárez Glacier (aka Petzval Glacier) in the water. The only problem was the waves created by our speedboat, and the only way to capture the perfect reflection was to lie on the bottom of the boat while it moved towards the glacier.Credit: Andrey Nosik (Russia) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Underwater Seascapes — 3rd Place“La Rapadura” is a natural hidden treasure on the northern coast of Tenerife, in the Spanish territory of the Canary Islands. Only discovered in 1996, it is one of the most astonishing underwater landscapes in the world, consistently ranking among the planet’s best dive sites. These towering columns of basalt are the result of volcanic processes that occurred between 500,000 and a million years ago. The formation was created when a basaltic lava flow reached the ocean, where, upon cooling and solidifying, it contracted, creating natural structures often compared to the pipes of church organs. Located in a region where marine life has been impacted by once common illegal fishing practices, this stunning natural monument has both geological and ecological value, and scientists and underwater photographers are advocating for its protection. (Model: Yolanda Garcia)Credit: Pedro Carrillo (Spain) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Underwater Seascapes — WinnerThis year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit a jellyfish lake during a liveaboard trip around southern Raja Ampat, Indonesia. Being surrounded by millions of jellyfish, which have evolved to lose their stinging ability due to the absence of predators, was one of the most breathtaking experiences I’ve ever had.Credit: Dani Escayola (Spain) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Underwater Seascapes — 2nd PlaceThis shot captures a school of rays resting at a cleaning station in Mauritius, where strong currents once attracted them regularly. Some rays grew accustomed to divers, allowing close encounters like this. Sadly, after the severe bleaching that the reefs here suffered last year, such gatherings have become rare, and I fear I may not witness this again at the same spot.Credit: Gerald Rambert (Mauritius) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 3rd PlaceShot in Cuba’s Jardines de la Reina—a protected shark sanctuary—this image captures a Caribbean reef shark weaving through a group of silky sharks near the surface. Using a slow shutter and strobes as the shark pivoted sharply, the motion blurred into a wave-like arc across its head, lit by the golden hues of sunset. The abundance and behavior of sharks here is a living symbol of what protected oceans can look like.Credit: Steven Lopez (USA) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org  Above Water Seascapes — 2nd PlaceNorthern gannets (Morus bassanus) soar above the dramatic cliffs of Scotland’s Hermaness National Nature Reserve, their sleek white bodies and black-tipped wings slicing through the Shetland winds. These seabirds, the largest in the North Atlantic, are renowned for their striking plunge-dives, reaching speeds up to 100 kph (60 mph) as they hunt for fish beneath the waves. The cliffs of Hermaness provide ideal nesting sites, with updrafts aiding their take-offs and landings. Each spring, thousands return to this rugged coastline, forming one of the UK’s most significant gannet colonies. It was a major challenge to take photos at the edge of these cliffs at almost 200 meters (650 feet) with the winds up to 30 kph (20 mph).Credit: Nur Tucker (UK/Turkey) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Above Water Seascapes — Honorable MentionA South Atlantic swell breaks on the Dungeons Reef off the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, shot while photographing a big-wave surf session in October 2017. It’s the crescendoing sounds of these breaking swells that always amazes me.Credit: Ken Findlay (South Africa) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — Honorable MentionHumpback whales in their thousands migrate along the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia every year on the way to and from their calving grounds. In four seasons of swimming with them on the reef here, this is the only encounter I’ve had like this one. This pair of huge adult whales repeatedly spy-hopped alongside us, seeking to interact with and investigate us, leaving me completely breathless. The female in the foreground was much more confident than the male behind and would constantly make close approaches, whilst the male hung back a little, still interested but shy. After more than 10 years working with wildlife in the water, this was one of the best experiences of my life.Credit: Ollie Clarke (UK) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Big and Small Underwater Faces — 2nd PlaceOn one of my many blackwater dives in Anilao, in the Philippines, my guide and I spotted something moving erratically at a depth of around 20 meters (65 feet), about 10 to 15 centimeters in size. We quickly realized that it was a rare blanket octopus (Tremoctopus sp.). As we approached, it opened up its beautiful blanket, revealing its multicolored mantle. I managed to take a few shots before it went on its way. I felt truly privileged to have captured this fascinating deep-sea cephalopod. Among its many unique characteristics, this species exhibits some of the most extreme sexual size-dimorphism in nature, with females weighing up to 40,000 times more than males.Credit: Giacomo Marchione (Italy) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Big and Small Underwater Faces – WinnerThis photo of a Japanese warbonnet (Chirolophis japonicus) was captured in the Sea of Japan, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Vladivostok, Russia. I found the ornate fish at a depth of about 30 meters (100 feet), under the stern of a shipwreck. This species does not appear to be afraid of divers—on the contrary, it seems to enjoy the attention—and it even tried to sit on the dome port of my camera.Credit: Andrey Nosik (Russia) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org Wonder: Sustaining What Sustains Us — 2nd PlaceA juvenile pinnate batfish (Platax pinnatus) captured with a slow shutter speed, a snooted light, and deliberate camera panning to create a sense of motion and drama. Juvenile pinnate batfish are known for their striking black bodies outlined in vibrant orange—a coloration they lose within just a few months as they mature. I encountered this restless subject in the tropical waters of Indonesia’s Lembeh Strait. Capturing this image took patience and persistence over two dives, as these active young fish constantly dart for cover in crevices, making the shot particularly challenging.Credit: Luis Arpa (Spain) / United Nations World Oceans Day www.unworldoceansday.org
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  • The Best Deals Today: Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Cards, Apple AirPods Pro 2, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and More

    Father's Day is almost here, and now is the time to score some last-minute gifts, as well as catch some popular item restocks. We've rounded up the best deals for Saturday, June 14, below, so don't miss out on these limited-time offers.New ReleaseWizard of Legend 2Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Cards Available at AmazonMagic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Starter Kitat AmazonMagic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Play Booster Boxat AmazonMagic: The Gathering finally released its Final Fantasy collaboration this week, and this has been a hugely popular set amongst longtime and new fans. If you've never played Magic: The Gathering before, the Final Fantasy collaboration is the perfect time to jump in. The Starter Kit includes everything a beginner needs, and the Play Booster Box is perfect if you're aiming to pull some rare cards.Dan Da Dan Season 1 Blu-ray for DAN DA DAN: Season OneDan Da Dan was one of my favorite anime series of 2024, and the fact that you can take home all of Season 1 for just is an absolute steal. Following Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura, Dan Da Dan is a comedic adventure that throws together aliens, spirits, and so much more. Donkey Kong Bananza Now Available to Pre-Order at AmazonDonkey Kong Bananza - Nintendo Switch 2at AmazonFor quite a while, Nintendo's first-party games have not been available for purchase . That changed yesterday, though, as upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games like Donkey Kong Bananza finally went live for pre-order. If you've been holding out on pre-ordering one of the biggest Switch 2 games revealed so far, now you have yet another option for retailer. Apple AirPods Pro for Apple AirPods Pro 2 with USB-CApple's newest AirPods are all on sale and would make a great gift idea for Father's Day, which lands on June 15. Starting with the highest end model, the second generation Apple AirPods Pro wireless noise-canceling earbuds is shipped. The next step down, the Apple AirPods 4 with ANCis down to. Finally, the value-packed AirPods 4 without ANC drops to.Pre-Order Trails in the Sky 1st ChapterTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter - Nintendo Switchat AmazonTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter - PlayStation 5at AmazonTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter has officially opened pre-orders , with both PS5 and Nintendo Switch copies available for If you're unfamiliar with the Trails series, this is a remake of the very first Trails game, making 2025 the perfect time to jump into the series for the very first time. NIS America is set to bring the latest game in the series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, to North America and Europe later this year, which is the first time ever the series will be caught up worldwide.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for PS5 Is In-StockClair Obscur Expedition 33 - PS5at AmazonAs one of the most popular games of the year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been very hard to find at retailers, especially for PS5 copies. Today, Amazon has put the PS5 copy of the game in-stock, and you can still score a copy at this time. This is the perfect opportunity to pick up a physical copy if you loved the game, and it's also a great time to enter the world of Clair Obscur if you haven't already.Darkest Dungeon II for Darkest Dungeon II - PS5Darkest Dungeon II for PlayStation 5 is just right now. One of the biggest features and upgrades of this game from its predocessor is the token system, which opens up your gameplay in entirely new ways. This game generally retails for so this weekend is a great time to pick it up.
    #best #deals #today #magic #gathering
    The Best Deals Today: Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Cards, Apple AirPods Pro 2, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and More
    Father's Day is almost here, and now is the time to score some last-minute gifts, as well as catch some popular item restocks. We've rounded up the best deals for Saturday, June 14, below, so don't miss out on these limited-time offers.New ReleaseWizard of Legend 2Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Cards Available at AmazonMagic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Starter Kitat AmazonMagic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Play Booster Boxat AmazonMagic: The Gathering finally released its Final Fantasy collaboration this week, and this has been a hugely popular set amongst longtime and new fans. If you've never played Magic: The Gathering before, the Final Fantasy collaboration is the perfect time to jump in. The Starter Kit includes everything a beginner needs, and the Play Booster Box is perfect if you're aiming to pull some rare cards.Dan Da Dan Season 1 Blu-ray for DAN DA DAN: Season OneDan Da Dan was one of my favorite anime series of 2024, and the fact that you can take home all of Season 1 for just is an absolute steal. Following Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura, Dan Da Dan is a comedic adventure that throws together aliens, spirits, and so much more. Donkey Kong Bananza Now Available to Pre-Order at AmazonDonkey Kong Bananza - Nintendo Switch 2at AmazonFor quite a while, Nintendo's first-party games have not been available for purchase . That changed yesterday, though, as upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games like Donkey Kong Bananza finally went live for pre-order. If you've been holding out on pre-ordering one of the biggest Switch 2 games revealed so far, now you have yet another option for retailer. Apple AirPods Pro for Apple AirPods Pro 2 with USB-CApple's newest AirPods are all on sale and would make a great gift idea for Father's Day, which lands on June 15. Starting with the highest end model, the second generation Apple AirPods Pro wireless noise-canceling earbuds is shipped. The next step down, the Apple AirPods 4 with ANCis down to. Finally, the value-packed AirPods 4 without ANC drops to.Pre-Order Trails in the Sky 1st ChapterTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter - Nintendo Switchat AmazonTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter - PlayStation 5at AmazonTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter has officially opened pre-orders , with both PS5 and Nintendo Switch copies available for If you're unfamiliar with the Trails series, this is a remake of the very first Trails game, making 2025 the perfect time to jump into the series for the very first time. NIS America is set to bring the latest game in the series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, to North America and Europe later this year, which is the first time ever the series will be caught up worldwide.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for PS5 Is In-StockClair Obscur Expedition 33 - PS5at AmazonAs one of the most popular games of the year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been very hard to find at retailers, especially for PS5 copies. Today, Amazon has put the PS5 copy of the game in-stock, and you can still score a copy at this time. This is the perfect opportunity to pick up a physical copy if you loved the game, and it's also a great time to enter the world of Clair Obscur if you haven't already.Darkest Dungeon II for Darkest Dungeon II - PS5Darkest Dungeon II for PlayStation 5 is just right now. One of the biggest features and upgrades of this game from its predocessor is the token system, which opens up your gameplay in entirely new ways. This game generally retails for so this weekend is a great time to pick it up. #best #deals #today #magic #gathering
    WWW.IGN.COM
    The Best Deals Today: Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Cards, Apple AirPods Pro 2, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and More
    Father's Day is almost here, and now is the time to score some last-minute gifts, as well as catch some popular item restocks. We've rounded up the best deals for Saturday, June 14, below, so don't miss out on these limited-time offers.New ReleaseWizard of Legend 2Magic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Cards Available at AmazonMagic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Starter Kit$19.99 at AmazonMagic: The Gathering - Final Fantasy Play Booster Box$204.92 at AmazonMagic: The Gathering finally released its Final Fantasy collaboration this week, and this has been a hugely popular set amongst longtime and new fans. If you've never played Magic: The Gathering before, the Final Fantasy collaboration is the perfect time to jump in. The Starter Kit includes everything a beginner needs, and the Play Booster Box is perfect if you're aiming to pull some rare cards.Dan Da Dan Season 1 Blu-ray for $24.49DAN DA DAN: Season OneDan Da Dan was one of my favorite anime series of 2024, and the fact that you can take home all of Season 1 for just $24.49 is an absolute steal. Following Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura, Dan Da Dan is a comedic adventure that throws together aliens, spirits, and so much more. Donkey Kong Bananza Now Available to Pre-Order at AmazonDonkey Kong Bananza - Nintendo Switch 2$69.99 at AmazonFor quite a while, Nintendo's first-party games have not been available for purchase at Amazon. That changed yesterday, though, as upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 games like Donkey Kong Bananza finally went live for pre-order. If you've been holding out on pre-ordering one of the biggest Switch 2 games revealed so far, now you have yet another option for retailer. Apple AirPods Pro for $169Apple AirPods Pro 2 with USB-CApple's newest AirPods are all on sale and would make a great gift idea for Father's Day, which lands on June 15. Starting with the highest end model, the second generation Apple AirPods Pro wireless noise-canceling earbuds is $169 shipped (normally $240). The next step down, the Apple AirPods 4 with ANC (active noise cancelation) is down to $148 (normally $179). Finally, the value-packed AirPods 4 without ANC drops to $99.99 (normally $129).Pre-Order Trails in the Sky 1st ChapterTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter - Nintendo Switch$59.99 at AmazonTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter - PlayStation 5$59.99 at AmazonTrails in the Sky 1st Chapter has officially opened pre-orders at Amazon, with both PS5 and Nintendo Switch copies available for $59.99. If you're unfamiliar with the Trails series, this is a remake of the very first Trails game, making 2025 the perfect time to jump into the series for the very first time. NIS America is set to bring the latest game in the series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon, to North America and Europe later this year, which is the first time ever the series will be caught up worldwide.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for PS5 Is In-StockClair Obscur Expedition 33 - PS5$49.99 at AmazonAs one of the most popular games of the year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been very hard to find at retailers, especially for PS5 copies. Today, Amazon has put the PS5 copy of the game in-stock, and you can still score a copy at this time. This is the perfect opportunity to pick up a physical copy if you loved the game, and it's also a great time to enter the world of Clair Obscur if you haven't already.Darkest Dungeon II for $20.75Darkest Dungeon II - PS5Darkest Dungeon II for PlayStation 5 is just $20.75 at Amazon right now. One of the biggest features and upgrades of this game from its predocessor is the token system, which opens up your gameplay in entirely new ways. This game generally retails for $29.99, so this weekend is a great time to pick it up.
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  • Paper Architecture: From Soviet Subversion to Zaha’s Suprematism

    Architizer’s Vision Awards are back! The global awards program honors the world’s best architectural concepts, ideas and imagery. Submit your work ahead of the Final Entry Deadline on July 11th!
    Behind the term “paper architecture” hides a strange paradox: the radical act of building without, well, building. Paper architecture is usually associated with speculative design projects, presented in the form of drawings, which can also be considered art pieces. However, even though it is often dismissed as a mere utopian or academic exercise, paper architecture has historically served as a powerful form of protest, advocating against political regimes, architectural orthodoxy or cultural stagnation.
    Unbound by real-world limitations such as materials, regulations and budgets, paper architects are free to focus on the messages behind their designs rather than constantly striving for their implementation. In parallel, due to its subtleness, paper architecture has become a platform that enables radical commentary via a rather “safe” medium. Instead of relying on more traditional forms of protestthis powerful visual language, combined with scrupulous aesthetics and imagination can start a more formidable “behind-the-scenes rebellion”.
    Unearthing Nostalgia by Bruno Xavier & Michelle Ashley Ovanessians, A+ Vision Awards, 2023
    Perhaps the most well-known paper architects, Archigram was a radical British collective that was formed in the 1960s in London. Their work Walking City or Plug-In City showcased visions of a playful, technologically driven architecture that deeply contrasted and, by extent, protested against the rigid regime of post-war modernism and its extensive bureaucracy. This pop-art-style architecture served as a powerful critique towards the saturated idea of functional monotony.
    Additionally, the Russian architect, artist, and curator, Yuri Avvakumuv introduced the term “paper architecture” within the restrictive cultural and political climate of late Soviet Russia. Having to deal with heavy censorship, Avvakumuv turned to competitions and speculative drawings in an attempt resist that dominance of totalitarian architecture. Poetic, deeply allegorical and oftentimes ironic architectural renderings, critiqued the bureaucratic sterility of Soviet planning and the state-mandated architectural principles architects had to follow. Consequently, this profound demonstration of un-built architecture within the specific setting, turned into a collective cultural wave that advocated artistic autonomy and expression for the built environment.
    Klothos’ Loom of Memories by Ioana Alexandra Enache, A+ Vision Awards, 2023
    The Amerian architect Lebbeus Woods was also one of the most intellectually intense practitioners of paper architecture, whose work touches upon global issues on war zones and urban trauma. His imaginative, post-apocalyptic cities opened up discussions for rebuilding after destruction. Works such as War and Architecture and Underground Berlin, albeit “dystopic”, acted as moral propositions, exploring potential reconstructions that would “heal” these cities. Through his drawings, he rigorously investigated and examined scenarios of ethical rebuilding, refusing to comply to the principles of popular commerce, and instead creating a new architectural practice of political resistance.
    Finally, operating within a very male-dominated world, Zaha Hadid’s earlier work — particularly on Malevich — served as a protesting tool on multiple levels. Influenced by Suprematist aesthetics, her bold, dynamic compositions stood against the formal conservatism of architectural ideas, where the design must always yield to gravity and function. In parallel, her considerable influence and dominance on the field challenged long-standing norms and served as a powerful counter-narrative against the gender biases that sidelined women in design. Ultimately, her images – part blueprints, part paintings – not only proved that architecture could be unapologetically visionary and abstract but also that materializing it is not as impossible as one would think.My Bedroom by Daniel Wing-Hou Ho, A+ Vision Awards, 2023
    Even though paper architecture began as a medium of rebellion against architectural convention in the mid-20th century, it remains, until today, a vital tool for activism and social justice. Operating in the digital age, social media and digital platforms have amplified its reach, also having given it different visual forms such as digital collages, speculative renders, gifs, reels and interactive visual narratives. What was once a flyer, a journal or a newspaper extract, can now be found in open-source repositories, standing against authoritarianism, climate inaction, political violence and systemic inequality.
    Groups such as Forensic Architecture carry out multidisciplinary research, investigating cases of state violence and violations of human rights through rigorous mapping and speculative visualization. Additionally, competitions such as the eVolo Skyscraper or platforms like ArchOutLoud and Design Earth offer opportunities and space for architects to tackle environmental concerns and dramatize the urgency of inaction. Imaginative floating habitats, food cities, biodegradable megastructures etc. instigate debates and conversations through the form of environmental storytelling.
    The Stamper Battery by By William du Toit, A+ Vision Awards, 2023
    Despite being often condemned as “unbuildable”, “impractical” or even “escapist,” paper architecture acts as a counterweight to the discipline’s increasing instrumentalization as merely a functional or commercial enterprise. In architecture schools it is used as a prompt for “thinking differently” and a tool for “critiquing without compromise”. Above all however, paper architecture matters because it keeps architecture ethically alive. It reminds architects to ask the uncomfortable questions: how should we design for environmental sustainability, migrancy or social equality, instead of focusing on profit, convenience and spectacle? Similar to a moral compass or speculative mirror, unbuilt visions can trigger political, social and environmental turns that reshape not just how we build, but why we build at all.
    Architizer’s Vision Awards are back! The global awards program honors the world’s best architectural concepts, ideas and imagery. Submit your work ahead of the Final Entry Deadline on July 11th!
    Featured Image: Into the Void: Fragmented Time, Space, Memory, and Decay in Hiroshima by Victoria Wong, A+ Vision Awards 2023
    The post Paper Architecture: From Soviet Subversion to Zaha’s Suprematism appeared first on Journal.
    #paper #architecture #soviet #subversion #zahas
    Paper Architecture: From Soviet Subversion to Zaha’s Suprematism
    Architizer’s Vision Awards are back! The global awards program honors the world’s best architectural concepts, ideas and imagery. Submit your work ahead of the Final Entry Deadline on July 11th! Behind the term “paper architecture” hides a strange paradox: the radical act of building without, well, building. Paper architecture is usually associated with speculative design projects, presented in the form of drawings, which can also be considered art pieces. However, even though it is often dismissed as a mere utopian or academic exercise, paper architecture has historically served as a powerful form of protest, advocating against political regimes, architectural orthodoxy or cultural stagnation. Unbound by real-world limitations such as materials, regulations and budgets, paper architects are free to focus on the messages behind their designs rather than constantly striving for their implementation. In parallel, due to its subtleness, paper architecture has become a platform that enables radical commentary via a rather “safe” medium. Instead of relying on more traditional forms of protestthis powerful visual language, combined with scrupulous aesthetics and imagination can start a more formidable “behind-the-scenes rebellion”. Unearthing Nostalgia by Bruno Xavier & Michelle Ashley Ovanessians, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 Perhaps the most well-known paper architects, Archigram was a radical British collective that was formed in the 1960s in London. Their work Walking City or Plug-In City showcased visions of a playful, technologically driven architecture that deeply contrasted and, by extent, protested against the rigid regime of post-war modernism and its extensive bureaucracy. This pop-art-style architecture served as a powerful critique towards the saturated idea of functional monotony. Additionally, the Russian architect, artist, and curator, Yuri Avvakumuv introduced the term “paper architecture” within the restrictive cultural and political climate of late Soviet Russia. Having to deal with heavy censorship, Avvakumuv turned to competitions and speculative drawings in an attempt resist that dominance of totalitarian architecture. Poetic, deeply allegorical and oftentimes ironic architectural renderings, critiqued the bureaucratic sterility of Soviet planning and the state-mandated architectural principles architects had to follow. Consequently, this profound demonstration of un-built architecture within the specific setting, turned into a collective cultural wave that advocated artistic autonomy and expression for the built environment. Klothos’ Loom of Memories by Ioana Alexandra Enache, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 The Amerian architect Lebbeus Woods was also one of the most intellectually intense practitioners of paper architecture, whose work touches upon global issues on war zones and urban trauma. His imaginative, post-apocalyptic cities opened up discussions for rebuilding after destruction. Works such as War and Architecture and Underground Berlin, albeit “dystopic”, acted as moral propositions, exploring potential reconstructions that would “heal” these cities. Through his drawings, he rigorously investigated and examined scenarios of ethical rebuilding, refusing to comply to the principles of popular commerce, and instead creating a new architectural practice of political resistance. Finally, operating within a very male-dominated world, Zaha Hadid’s earlier work — particularly on Malevich — served as a protesting tool on multiple levels. Influenced by Suprematist aesthetics, her bold, dynamic compositions stood against the formal conservatism of architectural ideas, where the design must always yield to gravity and function. In parallel, her considerable influence and dominance on the field challenged long-standing norms and served as a powerful counter-narrative against the gender biases that sidelined women in design. Ultimately, her images – part blueprints, part paintings – not only proved that architecture could be unapologetically visionary and abstract but also that materializing it is not as impossible as one would think.My Bedroom by Daniel Wing-Hou Ho, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 Even though paper architecture began as a medium of rebellion against architectural convention in the mid-20th century, it remains, until today, a vital tool for activism and social justice. Operating in the digital age, social media and digital platforms have amplified its reach, also having given it different visual forms such as digital collages, speculative renders, gifs, reels and interactive visual narratives. What was once a flyer, a journal or a newspaper extract, can now be found in open-source repositories, standing against authoritarianism, climate inaction, political violence and systemic inequality. Groups such as Forensic Architecture carry out multidisciplinary research, investigating cases of state violence and violations of human rights through rigorous mapping and speculative visualization. Additionally, competitions such as the eVolo Skyscraper or platforms like ArchOutLoud and Design Earth offer opportunities and space for architects to tackle environmental concerns and dramatize the urgency of inaction. Imaginative floating habitats, food cities, biodegradable megastructures etc. instigate debates and conversations through the form of environmental storytelling. The Stamper Battery by By William du Toit, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 Despite being often condemned as “unbuildable”, “impractical” or even “escapist,” paper architecture acts as a counterweight to the discipline’s increasing instrumentalization as merely a functional or commercial enterprise. In architecture schools it is used as a prompt for “thinking differently” and a tool for “critiquing without compromise”. Above all however, paper architecture matters because it keeps architecture ethically alive. It reminds architects to ask the uncomfortable questions: how should we design for environmental sustainability, migrancy or social equality, instead of focusing on profit, convenience and spectacle? Similar to a moral compass or speculative mirror, unbuilt visions can trigger political, social and environmental turns that reshape not just how we build, but why we build at all. Architizer’s Vision Awards are back! The global awards program honors the world’s best architectural concepts, ideas and imagery. Submit your work ahead of the Final Entry Deadline on July 11th! Featured Image: Into the Void: Fragmented Time, Space, Memory, and Decay in Hiroshima by Victoria Wong, A+ Vision Awards 2023 The post Paper Architecture: From Soviet Subversion to Zaha’s Suprematism appeared first on Journal. #paper #architecture #soviet #subversion #zahas
    ARCHITIZER.COM
    Paper Architecture: From Soviet Subversion to Zaha’s Suprematism
    Architizer’s Vision Awards are back! The global awards program honors the world’s best architectural concepts, ideas and imagery. Submit your work ahead of the Final Entry Deadline on July 11th! Behind the term “paper architecture” hides a strange paradox: the radical act of building without, well, building. Paper architecture is usually associated with speculative design projects, presented in the form of drawings, which can also be considered art pieces. However, even though it is often dismissed as a mere utopian or academic exercise, paper architecture has historically served as a powerful form of protest, advocating against political regimes, architectural orthodoxy or cultural stagnation. Unbound by real-world limitations such as materials, regulations and budgets, paper architects are free to focus on the messages behind their designs rather than constantly striving for their implementation. In parallel, due to its subtleness, paper architecture has become a platform that enables radical commentary via a rather “safe” medium. Instead of relying on more traditional forms of protest (such as strikes or marches) this powerful visual language, combined with scrupulous aesthetics and imagination can start a more formidable “behind-the-scenes rebellion”. Unearthing Nostalgia by Bruno Xavier & Michelle Ashley Ovanessians, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 Perhaps the most well-known paper architects, Archigram was a radical British collective that was formed in the 1960s in London. Their work Walking City or Plug-In City showcased visions of a playful, technologically driven architecture that deeply contrasted and, by extent, protested against the rigid regime of post-war modernism and its extensive bureaucracy. This pop-art-style architecture served as a powerful critique towards the saturated idea of functional monotony. Additionally, the Russian architect, artist, and curator, Yuri Avvakumuv introduced the term “paper architecture” within the restrictive cultural and political climate of late Soviet Russia (1984). Having to deal with heavy censorship, Avvakumuv turned to competitions and speculative drawings in an attempt resist that dominance of totalitarian architecture. Poetic, deeply allegorical and oftentimes ironic architectural renderings, critiqued the bureaucratic sterility of Soviet planning and the state-mandated architectural principles architects had to follow. Consequently, this profound demonstration of un-built architecture within the specific setting, turned into a collective cultural wave that advocated artistic autonomy and expression for the built environment. Klothos’ Loom of Memories by Ioana Alexandra Enache, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 The Amerian architect Lebbeus Woods was also one of the most intellectually intense practitioners of paper architecture, whose work touches upon global issues on war zones and urban trauma. His imaginative, post-apocalyptic cities opened up discussions for rebuilding after destruction. Works such as War and Architecture and Underground Berlin, albeit “dystopic”, acted as moral propositions, exploring potential reconstructions that would “heal” these cities. Through his drawings, he rigorously investigated and examined scenarios of ethical rebuilding, refusing to comply to the principles of popular commerce, and instead creating a new architectural practice of political resistance. Finally, operating within a very male-dominated world, Zaha Hadid’s earlier work — particularly on Malevich — served as a protesting tool on multiple levels. Influenced by Suprematist aesthetics, her bold, dynamic compositions stood against the formal conservatism of architectural ideas, where the design must always yield to gravity and function. In parallel, her considerable influence and dominance on the field challenged long-standing norms and served as a powerful counter-narrative against the gender biases that sidelined women in design. Ultimately, her images – part blueprints, part paintings – not only proved that architecture could be unapologetically visionary and abstract but also that materializing it is not as impossible as one would think. (Your) My Bedroom by Daniel Wing-Hou Ho, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 Even though paper architecture began as a medium of rebellion against architectural convention in the mid-20th century, it remains, until today, a vital tool for activism and social justice. Operating in the digital age, social media and digital platforms have amplified its reach, also having given it different visual forms such as digital collages, speculative renders, gifs, reels and interactive visual narratives. What was once a flyer, a journal or a newspaper extract, can now be found in open-source repositories, standing against authoritarianism, climate inaction, political violence and systemic inequality. Groups such as Forensic Architecture (Goldsmiths, University of London)  carry out multidisciplinary research, investigating cases of state violence and violations of human rights through rigorous mapping and speculative visualization. Additionally, competitions such as the eVolo Skyscraper or platforms like ArchOutLoud and Design Earth offer opportunities and space for architects to tackle environmental concerns and dramatize the urgency of inaction. Imaginative floating habitats, food cities, biodegradable megastructures etc. instigate debates and conversations through the form of environmental storytelling. The Stamper Battery by By William du Toit, A+ Vision Awards, 2023 Despite being often condemned as “unbuildable”, “impractical” or even “escapist,” paper architecture acts as a counterweight to the discipline’s increasing instrumentalization as merely a functional or commercial enterprise. In architecture schools it is used as a prompt for “thinking differently” and a tool for “critiquing without compromise”. Above all however, paper architecture matters because it keeps architecture ethically alive. It reminds architects to ask the uncomfortable questions: how should we design for environmental sustainability, migrancy or social equality, instead of focusing on profit, convenience and spectacle? Similar to a moral compass or speculative mirror, unbuilt visions can trigger political, social and environmental turns that reshape not just how we build, but why we build at all. Architizer’s Vision Awards are back! The global awards program honors the world’s best architectural concepts, ideas and imagery. Submit your work ahead of the Final Entry Deadline on July 11th! Featured Image: Into the Void: Fragmented Time, Space, Memory, and Decay in Hiroshima by Victoria Wong, A+ Vision Awards 2023 The post Paper Architecture: From Soviet Subversion to Zaha’s Suprematism appeared first on Journal.
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  • How a planetarium show discovered a spiral at the edge of our solar system

    If you’ve ever flown through outer space, at least while watching a documentary or a science fiction film, you’ve seen how artists turn astronomical findings into stunning visuals. But in the process of visualizing data for their latest planetarium show, a production team at New York’s American Museum of Natural History made a surprising discovery of their own: a trillion-and-a-half mile long spiral of material drifting along the edge of our solar system.

    “So this is a really fun thing that happened,” says Jackie Faherty, the museum’s senior scientist.

    Last winter, Faherty and her colleagues were beneath the dome of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, fine-tuning a scene that featured the Oort cloud, the big, thick bubble surrounding our Sun and planets that’s filled with ice and rock and other remnants from the solar system’s infancy. The Oort cloud begins far beyond Neptune, around one and a half light years from the Sun. It has never been directly observed; its existence is inferred from the behavior of long-period comets entering the inner solar system. The cloud is so expansive that the Voyager spacecraft, our most distant probes, would need another 250 years just to reach its inner boundary; to reach the other side, they would need about 30,000 years. 

    The 30-minute show, Encounters in the Milky Way, narrated by Pedro Pascal, guides audiences on a trip through the galaxy across billions of years. For a section about our nascent solar system, the writing team decided “there’s going to be a fly-by” of the Oort cloud, Faherty says. “But what does our Oort cloud look like?” 

    To find out, the museum consulted astronomers and turned to David Nesvorný, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He provided his model of the millions of particles believed to make up the Oort cloud, based on extensive observational data.

    “Everybody said, go talk to Nesvorný. He’s got the best model,” says Faherty. And “everybody told us, ‘There’s structure in the model,’ so we were kind of set up to look for stuff,” she says. 

    The museum’s technical team began using Nesvorný’s model to simulate how the cloud evolved over time. Later, as the team projected versions of the fly-by scene into the dome, with the camera looking back at the Oort cloud, they saw a familiar shape, one that appears in galaxies, Saturn’s rings, and disks around young stars.

    “We’re flying away from the Oort cloud and out pops this spiral, a spiral shape to the outside of our solar system,” Faherty marveled. “A huge structure, millions and millions of particles.”

    She emailed Nesvorný to ask for “more particles,” with a render of the scene attached. “We noticed the spiral of course,” she wrote. “And then he writes me back: ‘what are you talking about, a spiral?’” 

    While fine-tuning a simulation of the Oort cloud, a vast expanse of ice material leftover from the birth of our Sun, the ‘Encounters in the Milky Way’ production team noticed a very clear shape: a structure made of billions of comets and shaped like a spiral-armed galaxy, seen here in a scene from the final Space ShowMore simulations ensued, this time on Pleiades, a powerful NASA supercomputer. In high-performance computer simulations spanning 4.6 billion years, starting from the Solar System’s earliest days, the researchers visualized how the initial icy and rocky ingredients of the Oort cloud began circling the Sun, in the elliptical orbits that are thought to give the cloud its rough disc shape. The simulations also incorporated the physics of the Sun’s gravitational pull, the influences from our Milky Way galaxy, and the movements of the comets themselves. 

    In each simulation, the spiral persisted.

    “No one has ever seen the Oort structure like that before,” says Faherty. Nesvorný “has a great quote about this: ‘The math was all there. We just needed the visuals.’” 

    An illustration of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud in relation to our solar system.As the Oort cloud grew with the early solar system, Nesvorný and his colleagues hypothesize that the galactic tide, or the gravitational force from the Milky Way, disrupted the orbits of some comets. Although the Sun pulls these objects inward, the galaxy’s gravity appears to have twisted part of the Oort cloud outward, forming a spiral tilted roughly 30 degrees from the plane of the solar system.

    “As the galactic tide acts to decouple bodies from the scattered disk it creates a spiral structure in physical space that is roughly 15,000 astronomical units in length,” or around 1.4 trillion miles from one end to the other, the researchers write in a paper that was published in March in the Astrophysical Journal. “The spiral is long-lived and persists in the inner Oort Cloud to the present time.”

    “The physics makes sense,” says Faherty. “Scientists, we’re amazing at what we do, but it doesn’t mean we can see everything right away.”

    It helped that the team behind the space show was primed to look for something, says Carter Emmart, the museum’s director of astrovisualization and director of Encounters. Astronomers had described Nesvorný’s model as having “a structure,” which intrigued the team’s artists. “We were also looking for structure so that it wouldn’t just be sort of like a big blob,” he says. “Other models were also revealing this—but they just hadn’t been visualized.”

    The museum’s attempts to simulate nature date back to its first habitat dioramas in the early 1900s, which brought visitors to places that hadn’t yet been captured by color photos, TV, or the web. The planetarium, a night sky simulator for generations of would-be scientists and astronauts, got its start after financier Charles Hayden bought the museum its first Zeiss projector. The planetarium now boasts one of the world’s few Zeiss Mark IX systems.

    Still, these days the star projector is rarely used, Emmart says, now that fulldome laser projectors can turn the old static starfield into 3D video running at 60 frames per second. The Hayden boasts six custom-built Christie projectors, part of what the museum’s former president called “the most advanced planetarium ever attempted.”

     In about 1.3 million years, the star system Gliese 710 is set to pass directly through our Oort Cloud, an event visualized in a dramatic scene in ‘Encounters in the Milky Way.’ During its flyby, our systems will swap icy comets, flinging some out on new paths.Emmart recalls how in 1998, when he and other museum leaders were imagining the future of space shows at the Hayden—now with the help of digital projectors and computer graphics—there were questions over how much space they could try to show.

    “We’re talking about these astronomical data sets we could plot to make the galaxy and the stars,” he says. “Of course, we knew that we would have this star projector, but we really wanted to emphasize astrophysics with this dome video system. I was drawing pictures of this just to get our heads around it and noting the tip of the solar system to the Milky Way is about 60 degrees. And I said, what are we gonna do when we get outside the Milky Way?’

    “ThenNeil Degrasse Tyson “goes, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, Carter, we have enough to do. And just plotting the Milky Way, that’s hard enough.’ And I said, ‘well, when we exit the Milky Way and we don’t see any other galaxies, that’s sort of like astronomy in 1920—we thought maybe the entire universe is just a Milky Way.'”

    “And that kind of led to a chaotic discussion about, well, what other data sets are there for this?” Emmart adds.

    The museum worked with astronomer Brent Tully, who had mapped 3500 galaxies beyond the Milky Way, in collaboration with the National Center for Super Computing Applications. “That was it,” he says, “and that seemed fantastical.”

    By the time the first planetarium show opened at the museum’s new Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000, Tully had broadened his survey “to an amazing” 30,000 galaxies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey followed—it’s now at data release 18—with six million galaxies.

    To build the map of the universe that underlies Encounters, the team also relied on data from the European Space Agency’s space observatory, Gaia. Launched in 2013 and powered down in March of this year, Gaia brought an unprecedented precision to our astronomical map, plotting the distance between 1.7 billion stars. To visualize and render the simulated data, Jon Parker, the museum’s lead technical director, relied on Houdini, a 3D animation tool by Toronto-based SideFX.

    The goal is immersion, “whether it’s in front of the buffalo downstairs, and seeing what those herds were like before we decimated them, to coming in this room and being teleported to space, with an accurate foundation in the science,” Emmart says. “But the art is important, because the art is the way to the soul.” 

    The museum, he adds, is “a testament to wonder. And I think wonder is a gateway to inspiration, and inspiration is a gateway to motivation.”

    Three-D visuals aren’t just powerful tools for communicating science, but increasingly crucial for science itself. Software like OpenSpace, an open source simulation tool developed by the museum, along with the growing availability of high-performance computing, are making it easier to build highly detailed visuals of ever larger and more complex collections of data.

    “Anytime we look, literally, from a different angle at catalogs of astronomical positions, simulations, or exploring the phase space of a complex data set, there is great potential to discover something new,” says Brian R. Kent, an astronomer and director of science communications at National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “There is also a wealth of astronomics tatical data in archives that can be reanalyzed in new ways, leading to new discoveries.”

    As the instruments grow in size and sophistication, so does the data, and the challenge of understanding it. Like all scientists, astronomers are facing a deluge of data, ranging from gamma rays and X-rays to ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio bands.

    Our Oort cloud, a shell of icy bodies that surrounds the solar system and extends one-and-a-half light years in every direction, is shown in this scene from ‘Encounters in the Milky Way’ along with the Oort clouds of neighboring stars. The more massive the star, the larger its Oort cloud“New facilities like the Next Generation Very Large Array here at NRAO or the Vera Rubin Observatory and LSST survey project will generate large volumes of data, so astronomers have to get creative with how to analyze it,” says Kent. 

    More data—and new instruments—will also be needed to prove the spiral itself is actually there: there’s still no known way to even observe the Oort cloud. 

    Instead, the paper notes, the structure will have to be measured from “detection of a large number of objects” in the radius of the inner Oort cloud or from “thermal emission from small particles in the Oort spiral.” 

    The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a powerful, U.S.-funded telescope that recently began operation in Chile, could possibly observe individual icy bodies within the cloud. But researchers expect the telescope will likely discover only dozens of these objects, maybe hundreds, not enough to meaningfully visualize any shapes in the Oort cloud. 

    For us, here and now, the 1.4 trillion mile-long spiral will remain confined to the inside of a dark dome across the street from Central Park.
    #how #planetarium #show #discovered #spiral
    How a planetarium show discovered a spiral at the edge of our solar system
    If you’ve ever flown through outer space, at least while watching a documentary or a science fiction film, you’ve seen how artists turn astronomical findings into stunning visuals. But in the process of visualizing data for their latest planetarium show, a production team at New York’s American Museum of Natural History made a surprising discovery of their own: a trillion-and-a-half mile long spiral of material drifting along the edge of our solar system. “So this is a really fun thing that happened,” says Jackie Faherty, the museum’s senior scientist. Last winter, Faherty and her colleagues were beneath the dome of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, fine-tuning a scene that featured the Oort cloud, the big, thick bubble surrounding our Sun and planets that’s filled with ice and rock and other remnants from the solar system’s infancy. The Oort cloud begins far beyond Neptune, around one and a half light years from the Sun. It has never been directly observed; its existence is inferred from the behavior of long-period comets entering the inner solar system. The cloud is so expansive that the Voyager spacecraft, our most distant probes, would need another 250 years just to reach its inner boundary; to reach the other side, they would need about 30,000 years.  The 30-minute show, Encounters in the Milky Way, narrated by Pedro Pascal, guides audiences on a trip through the galaxy across billions of years. For a section about our nascent solar system, the writing team decided “there’s going to be a fly-by” of the Oort cloud, Faherty says. “But what does our Oort cloud look like?”  To find out, the museum consulted astronomers and turned to David Nesvorný, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He provided his model of the millions of particles believed to make up the Oort cloud, based on extensive observational data. “Everybody said, go talk to Nesvorný. He’s got the best model,” says Faherty. And “everybody told us, ‘There’s structure in the model,’ so we were kind of set up to look for stuff,” she says.  The museum’s technical team began using Nesvorný’s model to simulate how the cloud evolved over time. Later, as the team projected versions of the fly-by scene into the dome, with the camera looking back at the Oort cloud, they saw a familiar shape, one that appears in galaxies, Saturn’s rings, and disks around young stars. “We’re flying away from the Oort cloud and out pops this spiral, a spiral shape to the outside of our solar system,” Faherty marveled. “A huge structure, millions and millions of particles.” She emailed Nesvorný to ask for “more particles,” with a render of the scene attached. “We noticed the spiral of course,” she wrote. “And then he writes me back: ‘what are you talking about, a spiral?’”  While fine-tuning a simulation of the Oort cloud, a vast expanse of ice material leftover from the birth of our Sun, the ‘Encounters in the Milky Way’ production team noticed a very clear shape: a structure made of billions of comets and shaped like a spiral-armed galaxy, seen here in a scene from the final Space ShowMore simulations ensued, this time on Pleiades, a powerful NASA supercomputer. In high-performance computer simulations spanning 4.6 billion years, starting from the Solar System’s earliest days, the researchers visualized how the initial icy and rocky ingredients of the Oort cloud began circling the Sun, in the elliptical orbits that are thought to give the cloud its rough disc shape. The simulations also incorporated the physics of the Sun’s gravitational pull, the influences from our Milky Way galaxy, and the movements of the comets themselves.  In each simulation, the spiral persisted. “No one has ever seen the Oort structure like that before,” says Faherty. Nesvorný “has a great quote about this: ‘The math was all there. We just needed the visuals.’”  An illustration of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud in relation to our solar system.As the Oort cloud grew with the early solar system, Nesvorný and his colleagues hypothesize that the galactic tide, or the gravitational force from the Milky Way, disrupted the orbits of some comets. Although the Sun pulls these objects inward, the galaxy’s gravity appears to have twisted part of the Oort cloud outward, forming a spiral tilted roughly 30 degrees from the plane of the solar system. “As the galactic tide acts to decouple bodies from the scattered disk it creates a spiral structure in physical space that is roughly 15,000 astronomical units in length,” or around 1.4 trillion miles from one end to the other, the researchers write in a paper that was published in March in the Astrophysical Journal. “The spiral is long-lived and persists in the inner Oort Cloud to the present time.” “The physics makes sense,” says Faherty. “Scientists, we’re amazing at what we do, but it doesn’t mean we can see everything right away.” It helped that the team behind the space show was primed to look for something, says Carter Emmart, the museum’s director of astrovisualization and director of Encounters. Astronomers had described Nesvorný’s model as having “a structure,” which intrigued the team’s artists. “We were also looking for structure so that it wouldn’t just be sort of like a big blob,” he says. “Other models were also revealing this—but they just hadn’t been visualized.” The museum’s attempts to simulate nature date back to its first habitat dioramas in the early 1900s, which brought visitors to places that hadn’t yet been captured by color photos, TV, or the web. The planetarium, a night sky simulator for generations of would-be scientists and astronauts, got its start after financier Charles Hayden bought the museum its first Zeiss projector. The planetarium now boasts one of the world’s few Zeiss Mark IX systems. Still, these days the star projector is rarely used, Emmart says, now that fulldome laser projectors can turn the old static starfield into 3D video running at 60 frames per second. The Hayden boasts six custom-built Christie projectors, part of what the museum’s former president called “the most advanced planetarium ever attempted.”  In about 1.3 million years, the star system Gliese 710 is set to pass directly through our Oort Cloud, an event visualized in a dramatic scene in ‘Encounters in the Milky Way.’ During its flyby, our systems will swap icy comets, flinging some out on new paths.Emmart recalls how in 1998, when he and other museum leaders were imagining the future of space shows at the Hayden—now with the help of digital projectors and computer graphics—there were questions over how much space they could try to show. “We’re talking about these astronomical data sets we could plot to make the galaxy and the stars,” he says. “Of course, we knew that we would have this star projector, but we really wanted to emphasize astrophysics with this dome video system. I was drawing pictures of this just to get our heads around it and noting the tip of the solar system to the Milky Way is about 60 degrees. And I said, what are we gonna do when we get outside the Milky Way?’ “ThenNeil Degrasse Tyson “goes, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, Carter, we have enough to do. And just plotting the Milky Way, that’s hard enough.’ And I said, ‘well, when we exit the Milky Way and we don’t see any other galaxies, that’s sort of like astronomy in 1920—we thought maybe the entire universe is just a Milky Way.'” “And that kind of led to a chaotic discussion about, well, what other data sets are there for this?” Emmart adds. The museum worked with astronomer Brent Tully, who had mapped 3500 galaxies beyond the Milky Way, in collaboration with the National Center for Super Computing Applications. “That was it,” he says, “and that seemed fantastical.” By the time the first planetarium show opened at the museum’s new Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000, Tully had broadened his survey “to an amazing” 30,000 galaxies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey followed—it’s now at data release 18—with six million galaxies. To build the map of the universe that underlies Encounters, the team also relied on data from the European Space Agency’s space observatory, Gaia. Launched in 2013 and powered down in March of this year, Gaia brought an unprecedented precision to our astronomical map, plotting the distance between 1.7 billion stars. To visualize and render the simulated data, Jon Parker, the museum’s lead technical director, relied on Houdini, a 3D animation tool by Toronto-based SideFX. The goal is immersion, “whether it’s in front of the buffalo downstairs, and seeing what those herds were like before we decimated them, to coming in this room and being teleported to space, with an accurate foundation in the science,” Emmart says. “But the art is important, because the art is the way to the soul.”  The museum, he adds, is “a testament to wonder. And I think wonder is a gateway to inspiration, and inspiration is a gateway to motivation.” Three-D visuals aren’t just powerful tools for communicating science, but increasingly crucial for science itself. Software like OpenSpace, an open source simulation tool developed by the museum, along with the growing availability of high-performance computing, are making it easier to build highly detailed visuals of ever larger and more complex collections of data. “Anytime we look, literally, from a different angle at catalogs of astronomical positions, simulations, or exploring the phase space of a complex data set, there is great potential to discover something new,” says Brian R. Kent, an astronomer and director of science communications at National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “There is also a wealth of astronomics tatical data in archives that can be reanalyzed in new ways, leading to new discoveries.” As the instruments grow in size and sophistication, so does the data, and the challenge of understanding it. Like all scientists, astronomers are facing a deluge of data, ranging from gamma rays and X-rays to ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio bands. Our Oort cloud, a shell of icy bodies that surrounds the solar system and extends one-and-a-half light years in every direction, is shown in this scene from ‘Encounters in the Milky Way’ along with the Oort clouds of neighboring stars. The more massive the star, the larger its Oort cloud“New facilities like the Next Generation Very Large Array here at NRAO or the Vera Rubin Observatory and LSST survey project will generate large volumes of data, so astronomers have to get creative with how to analyze it,” says Kent.  More data—and new instruments—will also be needed to prove the spiral itself is actually there: there’s still no known way to even observe the Oort cloud.  Instead, the paper notes, the structure will have to be measured from “detection of a large number of objects” in the radius of the inner Oort cloud or from “thermal emission from small particles in the Oort spiral.”  The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a powerful, U.S.-funded telescope that recently began operation in Chile, could possibly observe individual icy bodies within the cloud. But researchers expect the telescope will likely discover only dozens of these objects, maybe hundreds, not enough to meaningfully visualize any shapes in the Oort cloud.  For us, here and now, the 1.4 trillion mile-long spiral will remain confined to the inside of a dark dome across the street from Central Park. #how #planetarium #show #discovered #spiral
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    How a planetarium show discovered a spiral at the edge of our solar system
    If you’ve ever flown through outer space, at least while watching a documentary or a science fiction film, you’ve seen how artists turn astronomical findings into stunning visuals. But in the process of visualizing data for their latest planetarium show, a production team at New York’s American Museum of Natural History made a surprising discovery of their own: a trillion-and-a-half mile long spiral of material drifting along the edge of our solar system. “So this is a really fun thing that happened,” says Jackie Faherty, the museum’s senior scientist. Last winter, Faherty and her colleagues were beneath the dome of the museum’s Hayden Planetarium, fine-tuning a scene that featured the Oort cloud, the big, thick bubble surrounding our Sun and planets that’s filled with ice and rock and other remnants from the solar system’s infancy. The Oort cloud begins far beyond Neptune, around one and a half light years from the Sun. It has never been directly observed; its existence is inferred from the behavior of long-period comets entering the inner solar system. The cloud is so expansive that the Voyager spacecraft, our most distant probes, would need another 250 years just to reach its inner boundary; to reach the other side, they would need about 30,000 years.  The 30-minute show, Encounters in the Milky Way, narrated by Pedro Pascal, guides audiences on a trip through the galaxy across billions of years. For a section about our nascent solar system, the writing team decided “there’s going to be a fly-by” of the Oort cloud, Faherty says. “But what does our Oort cloud look like?”  To find out, the museum consulted astronomers and turned to David Nesvorný, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. He provided his model of the millions of particles believed to make up the Oort cloud, based on extensive observational data. “Everybody said, go talk to Nesvorný. He’s got the best model,” says Faherty. And “everybody told us, ‘There’s structure in the model,’ so we were kind of set up to look for stuff,” she says.  The museum’s technical team began using Nesvorný’s model to simulate how the cloud evolved over time. Later, as the team projected versions of the fly-by scene into the dome, with the camera looking back at the Oort cloud, they saw a familiar shape, one that appears in galaxies, Saturn’s rings, and disks around young stars. “We’re flying away from the Oort cloud and out pops this spiral, a spiral shape to the outside of our solar system,” Faherty marveled. “A huge structure, millions and millions of particles.” She emailed Nesvorný to ask for “more particles,” with a render of the scene attached. “We noticed the spiral of course,” she wrote. “And then he writes me back: ‘what are you talking about, a spiral?’”  While fine-tuning a simulation of the Oort cloud, a vast expanse of ice material leftover from the birth of our Sun, the ‘Encounters in the Milky Way’ production team noticed a very clear shape: a structure made of billions of comets and shaped like a spiral-armed galaxy, seen here in a scene from the final Space Show (curving, dusty S-shape behind the Sun) [Image: © AMNH] More simulations ensued, this time on Pleiades, a powerful NASA supercomputer. In high-performance computer simulations spanning 4.6 billion years, starting from the Solar System’s earliest days, the researchers visualized how the initial icy and rocky ingredients of the Oort cloud began circling the Sun, in the elliptical orbits that are thought to give the cloud its rough disc shape. The simulations also incorporated the physics of the Sun’s gravitational pull, the influences from our Milky Way galaxy, and the movements of the comets themselves.  In each simulation, the spiral persisted. “No one has ever seen the Oort structure like that before,” says Faherty. Nesvorný “has a great quote about this: ‘The math was all there. We just needed the visuals.’”  An illustration of the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud in relation to our solar system. [Image: NASA] As the Oort cloud grew with the early solar system, Nesvorný and his colleagues hypothesize that the galactic tide, or the gravitational force from the Milky Way, disrupted the orbits of some comets. Although the Sun pulls these objects inward, the galaxy’s gravity appears to have twisted part of the Oort cloud outward, forming a spiral tilted roughly 30 degrees from the plane of the solar system. “As the galactic tide acts to decouple bodies from the scattered disk it creates a spiral structure in physical space that is roughly 15,000 astronomical units in length,” or around 1.4 trillion miles from one end to the other, the researchers write in a paper that was published in March in the Astrophysical Journal. “The spiral is long-lived and persists in the inner Oort Cloud to the present time.” “The physics makes sense,” says Faherty. “Scientists, we’re amazing at what we do, but it doesn’t mean we can see everything right away.” It helped that the team behind the space show was primed to look for something, says Carter Emmart, the museum’s director of astrovisualization and director of Encounters. Astronomers had described Nesvorný’s model as having “a structure,” which intrigued the team’s artists. “We were also looking for structure so that it wouldn’t just be sort of like a big blob,” he says. “Other models were also revealing this—but they just hadn’t been visualized.” The museum’s attempts to simulate nature date back to its first habitat dioramas in the early 1900s, which brought visitors to places that hadn’t yet been captured by color photos, TV, or the web. The planetarium, a night sky simulator for generations of would-be scientists and astronauts, got its start after financier Charles Hayden bought the museum its first Zeiss projector. The planetarium now boasts one of the world’s few Zeiss Mark IX systems. Still, these days the star projector is rarely used, Emmart says, now that fulldome laser projectors can turn the old static starfield into 3D video running at 60 frames per second. The Hayden boasts six custom-built Christie projectors, part of what the museum’s former president called “the most advanced planetarium ever attempted.”  In about 1.3 million years, the star system Gliese 710 is set to pass directly through our Oort Cloud, an event visualized in a dramatic scene in ‘Encounters in the Milky Way.’ During its flyby, our systems will swap icy comets, flinging some out on new paths. [Image: © AMNH] Emmart recalls how in 1998, when he and other museum leaders were imagining the future of space shows at the Hayden—now with the help of digital projectors and computer graphics—there were questions over how much space they could try to show. “We’re talking about these astronomical data sets we could plot to make the galaxy and the stars,” he says. “Of course, we knew that we would have this star projector, but we really wanted to emphasize astrophysics with this dome video system. I was drawing pictures of this just to get our heads around it and noting the tip of the solar system to the Milky Way is about 60 degrees. And I said, what are we gonna do when we get outside the Milky Way?’ “Then [planetarium’s director] Neil Degrasse Tyson “goes, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, Carter, we have enough to do. And just plotting the Milky Way, that’s hard enough.’ And I said, ‘well, when we exit the Milky Way and we don’t see any other galaxies, that’s sort of like astronomy in 1920—we thought maybe the entire universe is just a Milky Way.'” “And that kind of led to a chaotic discussion about, well, what other data sets are there for this?” Emmart adds. The museum worked with astronomer Brent Tully, who had mapped 3500 galaxies beyond the Milky Way, in collaboration with the National Center for Super Computing Applications. “That was it,” he says, “and that seemed fantastical.” By the time the first planetarium show opened at the museum’s new Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000, Tully had broadened his survey “to an amazing” 30,000 galaxies. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey followed—it’s now at data release 18—with six million galaxies. To build the map of the universe that underlies Encounters, the team also relied on data from the European Space Agency’s space observatory, Gaia. Launched in 2013 and powered down in March of this year, Gaia brought an unprecedented precision to our astronomical map, plotting the distance between 1.7 billion stars. To visualize and render the simulated data, Jon Parker, the museum’s lead technical director, relied on Houdini, a 3D animation tool by Toronto-based SideFX. The goal is immersion, “whether it’s in front of the buffalo downstairs, and seeing what those herds were like before we decimated them, to coming in this room and being teleported to space, with an accurate foundation in the science,” Emmart says. “But the art is important, because the art is the way to the soul.”  The museum, he adds, is “a testament to wonder. And I think wonder is a gateway to inspiration, and inspiration is a gateway to motivation.” Three-D visuals aren’t just powerful tools for communicating science, but increasingly crucial for science itself. Software like OpenSpace, an open source simulation tool developed by the museum, along with the growing availability of high-performance computing, are making it easier to build highly detailed visuals of ever larger and more complex collections of data. “Anytime we look, literally, from a different angle at catalogs of astronomical positions, simulations, or exploring the phase space of a complex data set, there is great potential to discover something new,” says Brian R. Kent, an astronomer and director of science communications at National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “There is also a wealth of astronomics tatical data in archives that can be reanalyzed in new ways, leading to new discoveries.” As the instruments grow in size and sophistication, so does the data, and the challenge of understanding it. Like all scientists, astronomers are facing a deluge of data, ranging from gamma rays and X-rays to ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio bands. Our Oort cloud (center), a shell of icy bodies that surrounds the solar system and extends one-and-a-half light years in every direction, is shown in this scene from ‘Encounters in the Milky Way’ along with the Oort clouds of neighboring stars. The more massive the star, the larger its Oort cloud [Image: © AMNH ] “New facilities like the Next Generation Very Large Array here at NRAO or the Vera Rubin Observatory and LSST survey project will generate large volumes of data, so astronomers have to get creative with how to analyze it,” says Kent.  More data—and new instruments—will also be needed to prove the spiral itself is actually there: there’s still no known way to even observe the Oort cloud.  Instead, the paper notes, the structure will have to be measured from “detection of a large number of objects” in the radius of the inner Oort cloud or from “thermal emission from small particles in the Oort spiral.”  The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a powerful, U.S.-funded telescope that recently began operation in Chile, could possibly observe individual icy bodies within the cloud. But researchers expect the telescope will likely discover only dozens of these objects, maybe hundreds, not enough to meaningfully visualize any shapes in the Oort cloud.  For us, here and now, the 1.4 trillion mile-long spiral will remain confined to the inside of a dark dome across the street from Central Park.
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