Food Design Probes is a research project by Philips. They developed ideas how we will eat and source our food in the future, like in 15 to 20 years. There are 3 products we might have in our homes by then:

The Nutrition Monitor. It basically has 3 parts, a sensor which you have to swallow, a scanner which can measure the nutritional value of food and a display device. So you’ll exactly know what your body needs and what kind of effect your food will have on it.

The Food Printer. Remember the 3D sugar printer? Well, this is the next generation. The machine brings molecular gastronomy to your kitchen. “Feed” is with some ingredients, pick a shape, let it print … and voilà your amazing 3D dish is ready. I can’t wait to see all the opensource 3D recipes that will be available!

Biosphere Home Farm. It’s a 21st century aquarium crossed with stylish shelving unit, it contains fish, plants and other mini ecosystems.

And this is how your plates could look like.

Baked Alaska

An assortment platter from left, papaya sorbet with yogurt crust, grapes of foie, chicken and sweetcorn chowder, mojito mis en bouche.

Papaya sorbet with a yoghurt crust.

Bird’s nest soup.

Death by chocolate.

Grapes of foie.

found at wallpaper magazine

The Amateur Music Production project by Yuri Suzuki was an one afternoon event during the exhibtion “Coalition of Amateurs” at the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg. Yuri recorded music with 3 punk bands from Luxembourg (Tvesla, Takemeunderground (myspace.com/takemeundergroundband) and Yegussa) and pressed vinyls all during that one afternoon. I really like this DIY style. Unfortunately there is no audio sample available of a record playing.

found at designboom weblog

Growth Modeling Device is a kinetic installation by David Bowen. The machine uses lasers to scan a plant, in this case an onion, from 3 different angles. That data is then used in real-time by a fuse deposition modeler, to create a plastic model of the current state of the plant. This process takes place every 24 hours, but each time the plant is scanned from a different angle. In the end you have several models illustrating the growth of the plant. You can see a video of this installation here.
This is actually a little similar to an older project of David: Growth Rendering Device.

“Prototyping Processes for Industrial Designers” is a short movie by Karl Frankowski. It shows you 4 different techniques: Foam Models, Fused Deposition Modeling, Stereolithography Apparatus and Rapid Prototyping/Bridge Tooling. Don’t expect any narration, just 4 charts explaining the use of each. This is a pure industrial designers pr0n movie.

found at Core77

“The MacGuffin Library” is project by Noam Toran, Onkar Kular and Keith Jones.
A MacGuffin is a term attributed to Hitchcock, it is a cinematic plot device, usually an object, that serves to set and keep the story in motion despite lacking intrinsic importance.
“The MacGuffin Library” consists of 16 objects based on 16 original film stories written by Noam, Onkar & Keith. The objects and the film excerpts should stimulate the viewer to imagine the film.
The objects are made out of a black polymer resin using a rapid prototype machine.

Social Housing is a sculpture by Hans Op de Beeck, it is a non-existent building with a clear reference to the Le Corbusier-style. He transferred a classic design to the modern times, the building is covered with satellite dishes. There is also a stadium and an observatory from the same series.

Second Nature is the title of an exhibition curated by Tokujin Yoshioka, at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo. The theme is: “Thinking about the future of design: Second Nature, from the depths of a sea of memories”. One of the objects on display is Venus, a natural crystal chair by Tokujin himself, which I just showed you a few days ago. For those of you who don’t know what this chair is about: this chair is build with natural crystals who grew on a synthetic substrate in a tank filled with a fluid. So here are the first images of the finished version.
The exhibition opens today, go!

You can find some more pictures of the exhibition here.

I am quite a fan of rapid prototyping projects, but I’m not sure if this one qualifies. Venus is the latest project by Tokujin Yoshioka, a Japanese designer. It is a ‘Natural Crystal Chair’, the production process is so different than any other chair out there. A substrate made of polyester elastomer forms the skeleton and is submerged in a tank, here grow the crystals on that substrate.
Amazing stuff!

*relativity is an art project by Drzach & Suchy, they produced panels with the Shadow Casting Panels technique. They can ‘encode’ up to 3 images into 1 panel, by shifting the position of a light you can see the single images because the tabs on the panel cast a different shadow. As always, there is no better way to show this with some videos:

Powered by nothing but sunlight and some threads, Thomas Traxlers‘ “The idea of a tree project” shows us how objects can grow during the course of a day. The installation is powered by a couple of solar cells which power the entire device, causing the process to move faster or slower depending on the amount of available light. The speed of the process determines the amount of saturation of the thread, giving a visual recording in the resulting object. Thomas Traxler just graduated from the IM Masters department of the Design Academy Eindhoven, 2008.

found via designboom weblog