Check out this set of five predatory cyborg furniture by James Auger, Jimmy Loizeau and Alex Zivanovic.
There's the mousetrap coffee table. By placing crumbs on top, perhaps left there during a canape-laden soiree, mice are attracted to climb up the hole in its over size leg. When sensors detect that a mouse is standing on the trapdoor in the center, this door opens. The unfortunate critter then falls into a microbial fuel cell housed underneath, where it gets digested and converted into energy to power the table's electronic parts.
Two kinds of infestation battling it out here: conspicuous consumption and vermins. And since there might be hundreds of rats hiding behind the walls, we really shouldn't feel sorry for the rats decomposing in the table's innards.
Meanwhile, there's also the fly-paper clock, which is powered by insects captured on its flypaper roller and digested by its own microbial fuel cell.
Another one is the fly stealing objet d'art, which you could hang on that central space on your wall reserved for an LCD jumbotron or a flea market-bought watercolor. Like the rest, this, too, is powered by a microbial fuel cell, which churns up dead flies picked up from a web spun by its resident spiders.
One wonders if, rather than bringing spiders to it, you could just bring it to the spiders, at whichever corner of the house they may be. In other words, you'll have an excuse to rearrange or even refurnish your entire living room to match the relocated mobile. Domestic boredom feeding on itself.
One also wonders about trapping larger preys that intrude on the domestic sphere, like wildcats and alligators that regularly stumble into the backyard of houses abutting their home range. In such cases, one could turn swimming pools into carnivorous pitcher plants. When a coyote climbs down to drink from its shallow water, it closes its tarp cover and drains the water along with the animal down to its microbial fuel cell. While this pool provide a similar form of dark entertainment as its interior counterparts, it ensures a more basic domestic need: a bubble of habitability amid the wilderness. It'd be perfect for a jungle homestead.
As protection against the feral, augmented trees snatch avian flu-infected birds using their cyborg branches.
Etc.
“This is Botanydome. Death is listening, and will take the first plant that screams.”
Outdoor Furniture
#faunaphilia
Have you though about making a fly on the wall documentary about the production process?
I refuse to apologise for the quality of this pun.
"how long before we start using humans instead of mice or flies?"
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Not soon enough.
I already have decomposing mice in my furniture.
Quote:
""how long before we start using humans instead of mice or flies?"
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Not soon enough."
About time the homeless do something productive.
It would also do wonders for discouraging jaywalkers.
Sure to be a big hit with the serial killer crowd....
What purpose do humans have?
A clock which requires feeding is completely unreliable and therefor pointless. If such devices are to retain true self-sufficiency, the environment requires a constant infestation. Using a guaranteed power source, such as solar or radiant heat, is a far more practical method for self-sustaining devices such as this to be useful. I understand this is just an exercise, but it seems efforts could be spent on promising tech in a more useful way. In other words, this is a marketing stunt.
I do find the technology behind using organic material to generate electricity very interesting. The first thing that I thought of was Doc Brown's DeLorean in Back to the Future Part 2. At the beginning of the movie he's using garbage to fuel the car's reactor. Showing how this tech might be used in practical applications in the future would make their morbid prototypes far more interesting. For now, this leans too far to the sensational side of absurdity.
These devices are impractical. Between the disgusting odors they're likely to produce, the bio-hazard risks, stains, etc., they will probably be too much trouble even for someone fucked up enough to want mice being sliced up in their table.
This is simply an example of sick minded behavior mixing with practical intelligence. Yet the design still isn't practical.
Something that legitimately runs on compost.
Or how about this? Hair. Then I'd have a more practical reminder to shave.
But then again I guess the technology is new and all, so we may see practical applications in the future, but for now we have rodent eating tables.
But yeah, still not very practical.
Their concept name as "entertainment" in it. Guilty pleasures -- Desperate Housewives and Carnivore Robots.
Have a fly swatter? Like to smash living things and then throw them into the garbage where they'll likely serve no purpose? It seems like that's a little more sick and disturbing than letting your wall clock consume the fly instead.
As far as the technology goes, could it be adapted such that one could pump human fat into it? American obesity is rampant - heck, let's end our dependance on fossil fuels and start plugging folks from fat camps into these bad boys. I wouldn't mind plugging these things into my waist line to power my cell phone.
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