In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond refers to the Like Minds conference, and the observation that social media isn’t free: it costs your, or your employees, labour (via PSFK)

Meanwhile, Nora gives a quick mention of a quote she found at Caterina Fake’s blog.  How about you, creative types? Does your artistic process seem mysterious to you, or is it more planned out than that?

Oh, and Nora’s colleague, the delightful Dan Misener, thinks thesniffer is getting too self-referential.

 

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In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond talks about Le Wif, the chocolate bar that you don’t eat….you smell.  It’s being marketed through Le Laboratoire.

Nora Young mentions research into microrobots that use mag lev to manoeuvre.  It’s a project of the University of Waterloo; read the press release here.

And, need some incentive to save water? How about a killer shower!! (via MocoLoco)

 

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In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond talks about Affluence.org, a new web service/social networking project for the stinkin’ rich.

Nora Young talks about I Got an Envelope, an art project where you leave a self-addressed, stamped envelope out in public, someone fills it with something and mails it back to you, and the results end up online (via Coolhunting.com) Nora and Cathi talk about the appeal of randomness and ’secret’ public art.

 

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In this trendwatching podcast, Nora Young mentions the Northern Voice conference, where she heard Darren Barefoot give a talk about art and the profound online.  It’s certainly not common, but examples of art online include PostSecret and WeFeelFine, which have the feature of repetition, and the collective experience of large numbers of individual perspectives.  Cathi Bond mentions Snarg and Photosynth as examples of a similar sensibility, involving interactivity. Nora Young wonders whether video games like Jenova Chen’s might offer potential for interactive art.

Cathi Bond talks about Siemens’ new Magnetom Espree-Pink MRI for breast scans. (via Medgadget).

 

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In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond and Nora Young discuss, not exactly trends, but novelties.  Nora refers to research at Oxford University suggesting that if you see aching body parts as smaller, the pain diminishes. (via Scientific American)

Meanwhile, Cathi refers to a couple of takes on hallucinations in this Boston Globe article.  In addition to being a fun party trick, it points out the role the brain plays in inventing the world around it.  Nora refers to Gregory Berns’ book, Iconoclast, and her favourite artist, James Turrell, who she saw at The Mattress Factory.

 

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Happy New Year!  In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond talks about a new study that tries to recreate a famous study of social networks for the online world.  Turns out people with ‘happy’ online social network profiles have more happy friends and are more centrally connected than those who don’t. (via Edge.org)

Meanwhile, Nora Young talks about her recent trip to New York, where she saw this great installation by Pipilotti Rist.  Nora thinks it’s an example of relational art; for Cathi, the emphasis on art and relating to nature reminds her of the movie All About Lily Chou Chou.

 

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From time to time on thesniffer, Nora Young and Cathi Bond have talked about what might happen to trends like enviro-chic and localism if there’s a downturn in the economy. Well, now that it looks as though the chickens may be coming home to roost, Cathi and Nora talk trends in an economy of lowered expectations. Nora refers to this PSFK article on SEDE magazine, a mag about slow living, which started in Argentina after the economic collapse there.  They also discuss this article from GigaOm, up at Business Week, speculating on the problems startups may face if their business model rests exclusively on ads.

And what of the art market during a downturn?  Damien Hirst snubbed gallerists by offering his work directly at auction at Sotheby’s, and made buckets of dosh doing so. Is this a model others could follow?

 

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