I highly urge you to experience the totally trippy futuristic Web interface at MOMA’s online exhibition of Design and the Elastic Mind. The show "includes objects, projects, and concepts offered by teams of designers, scientists, and engineers from all over the world, ranging from the nanoscale to the cosmological scale. The objects range from nanodevices to vehicles, from appliances to interfaces, and from pragmatic solutions for everyday use to provocative ideas meant to influence our future choices."
I, of course, was interested in dogs, and look what I found: a LED dog tail communicator. The designers, James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, envision this device to help dogs overcome the evolutionary shortfalls they experience when being forced to live in a human world. Kind of a reverse Dr. Doolittle gadget. Very cool.
(photo reads: "I really love you" 90 wpm, "Alright?" 80 wpm, "Walkies" 55 wpm, "I’d Like My Dinner." 40 wpm)
Update 3.7.08: I received a lovely note from James Auger one of the LED Dog Tail Communicator designers. He shared one of his other ingenious dog devices, The Augmented Dog Hackle (above).
Auger writes, "The natural ability to raise the hair along the length of his back when
confronted with dangerous situations has been lost in many domestic breeds.
This proposal suggests automated hackles. Either heart rate variation
monitoring registers change in the dogs autonomous nervous system activity
automatically activating the mechanism or the dogs owner sensing
confrontation in the park activates the mechanism by remote control."
He also says that he’s tested it in the park and it does scare off other dogs. I’d love to see that experiment!
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