3d illusion arts: Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Woman Plans To Eat and Drink Only Starbucks for a Year
Creepy Spider Dress Protects Wearer’s Personal Space
The Amazing Tree Houses of the Korowai Tribe

Woman Plans To Eat and Drink Only Starbucks for a Year

Posted: 11 Jan 2013 02:02 AM PST

A Seattle-based woman by the name of Beautiful Existence (her legal name) has set a very strange challenge for herself this year – she plans to eat food and drink beverages only from Starbucks for all of 2013.

No, she’s not addicted to Starbucks products. Beautiful Existence just likes to set year-long challenges for herself. For example, in 2011, she only bought stuff from Goodwill stores. But there’s more to it than that. Beautiful wants to document the experience on her blog and show the world how communities benefit from Starbucks. “The company pays good benefits for part-time workers. That’s where my money is going,” she says. ”We’re really lucky and I would say actually spoiled as Americans because we have all these different eating options,” Existence adds. ”You go to all these other countries and they don’t have these luxuries. Really? Is it really going to be that hard for one year of my life to limit my menu? We’ll find out.”

While Beautiful Existence is very confident about her unique project, not all her friends are as enthusiastic. “That’s going to cost a lot of money” and ”You’re going to gain weight” are just two of the reactions she’s gotten so far. In the first few days of the experiment, she’s spent an average of $18.79 a day on food and drink. If she keeps her expenditures at this level for the whole year, she can expect to spend around $7,000 on her daily diet. According to the USDA, the average woman spends around $3,000 a year on groceries.

Photo: Tumblr

You can follow her progress on her blog, 1 Year of My Life.

via My North West

Woman Plans To Eat and Drink Only Starbucks for a Year was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Creepy Spider Dress Protects Wearer’s Personal Space

Posted: 11 Jan 2013 01:15 AM PST

Don’t you hate it when total strangers invade your personal space by getting a little too close for comfort? By wearing the high-tech Spider Dress you can now send them a message in the shape of a creepy artificial spider leg pressing against their body.

Netherlands-based designer Anouk Wipprecht has designed one of the scariest garments I have ever seen. Aptly-called the Spider Dress, this piece of wearable design features animatronic arachnid limbs that react to external stimuli, in this case – nearby movement. When someone gets to close the wearer, the creepy spider legs start dancing on the shoulder pads, pushing the person away. You might just give them a heart-attack, but you’ll finally be able to enjoy your personal space in however crowded a space. Created in collaboration software engineer and hacker Daniel Schatzmayr, the Spider Dress’ robotic components use sensors to detect when someone gets too close. The scary tech-fashion design was showcased last November, at the VIVE LE ROBOTS / Cafe Neue Romance in Prague, during the EU Robotics week

Photo: Anna Červinková

“Technology combined with fashion creates new ways of communication between people, a new relationship between interface and the body, and a new connection of the body with technology,” Anouk Wipprecht said. “For me it is a playful exploration, where the body is the platform of interaction and expression. The position that technology has in our society (i.e. to ‘please’ us) will get more and more intimate, and as technology crawls closer to the skin we will need to start to rethink and recreate the relation that we have towards technology.”

Photo: Anna Červinková

via Mashable

Creepy Spider Dress Protects Wearer’s Personal Space was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

The Amazing Tree Houses of the Korowai Tribe

Posted: 10 Jan 2013 11:57 PM PST

In our part of the world, grown-ups are known to build tree houses for their kids, but there exists a parallel culture on this very planet, where the grown-ups themselves live in tree houses. I'm talking about the Korowai tribe of Papua, Indonesia, that has engineered and survived in towering tree homes as high as 114 feet above the ground. The tribe inhabits an inaccessible jungle located 150 km inland from the Arafura Sea, and was completely isolated from the world, until 1974, when they were discovered by a Dutch missionary. The Korowai tribe consists of a small society of traditional family ties, hunter gatherers who have been quite popular with the press for their cannibalistic tendencies.

However, what's most fascinating about the Korowai people is the way they have designed their homes. There are a few reasons why they live up in the trees – to protect themselves from swarming mosquitoes, evil spirits, and of course, troublesome neighbors. What better way to escape the pesky next-door-neighbor than to hide up in a tree? Ideally, a Korowai tree house is constructed in a clearing, with a large Banyan or Wambom tree serving as the main pole. Once a suitable tree has been located, its top is removed. The floor frame is laid down first, made from branches and covered with sago palm. Walls and a roof are added, bound together with raffia. Additional poles are added to the corners for extra support. The average tree home ranges between 8 to 12 meters above ground level, but some go as high as 35 meters. Each house is sturdy enough to accommodate up to a dozen people.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Korowai people even have house warming traditions for their tree homes. Every new home is blessed by smearing animal fat at the threshold. A typical Korowai home is inhabited by a whole family group, pets included. Larger homes have separate fire pits and living spaces for men and women. Quite understandably, fire is one of the major dangers to these tree-dwelling tribals. That's why they have specially designed fire pits – with cut-away floor sections in case of accidents. Even with their superior construction techniques, the lifespan of each tree home is only 5 years.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Ever since their discovery, the Korowai tribe has been an object of fascination for the outside world. Several articles have been written and documentaries made about their way of life. Their practice of cannibalism has been a cause of some sensation, but the truth is that the practice is only used by the tribe for criminal justice. The family of the victim is permitted to kill and eat those accused of the crime. The Korowai tribe is not just adept at constructing tree houses, but they are also excellent hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists, practicing shifting cultivation. One of their prime means of income since the early 1990s has been from selling tours into the Korowai region. And to think that just over three decades ago, they did not even know that a world existed outside of their own!