Although the blending of art with technology is the fairly common these days (think Apple); to integrate two art forms – sketch and storytelling and two fields of technology – machines using algorithmic programs and filed patents – to create a thing of beauty.

The Perpetual Storytelling Machine is a project by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus, Berlin-based artists. The machine takes text from a recent book, uses these words to search the US patent office database and creates a path connecting the patents based on the key text words, with some of the patents seemingly arbitrary in relation to one another. The machine then draws the patents in graphic form.

Watching the video of the machine in action is pretty amazing. I wonder if some of Michael’s patents have been printed?

We are all wondering why we haven’t seen the flying cars and robot maid that the TV cartoon The Jetsons promised our future would hold (in all fairness, The Jetsons were supposed to take place in the year 2062). But leave it to the Japanese, makers of some really innovative robot technology (Sony’s AIBO robot dog and Murata Boy) to make the new generation of robots.

Kawada Industries and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology have created the HRP-4 robot. The robot mimics human form with the ability to turn its head, twist at the waist, and even stand on one foot.

HRP-4 won’t be vacuuming your floors anytime soon, though. The price tag for this robot is currently $305,000. Pretty pricey for a robot that can’t give dating advice to your teenage daughter like Rosie used to.

I have recently come across an interesting blog post on one of my favorite design blogs, Colour Lovers. These serious color aficionados set out to systematically study the main brand colors of the top 100 websites to find the most dominant brand color for internet based companies. What better way to quantify their findings than a colorful info-graphic.

I have been aware for a while that the most commonly used colors for business branding is red or blue. There are a variety of reasons rooted in color semiology and color psychology that lean top businesses to these two power colors and it seems that web based companies are no different in this trend. Social networking companies like Facebook, Twitter and Myspace all use blue as their dominant brand color. Red follows a close second with companies like About.com, Youtube and Netflix. Google and Ebay are just blowing everyone out of the water and using nearly the entire spectrum, just to make sure they have the bases covered.

It is interesting to try to understand a business’ branding strategy; whether they follow the pack with a blue or red logo, or try to corner the color market by claiming a little used color like magenta of violet. It certainly makes brands like Yahoo stand out from the pack.

I highly recommend reading their full article for details on their study and more insight on color branding for web based companies.

www.colourlovers.com/business/blog/2010/09/15/the-most-powerful-colors-in-the-world

I came across a posting this morning that incorporates a lot of rD’s favorite things: sculpture, dynamic modeling and robots! MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts will be installing Geometric Death Frequency-141 by sculptor Frederico Diaz in their courtyard next month.

The 50-feet long by 20-feet high installation will consist of 420,000 black spheres precisely milled and assembled by robotic machines. The balls represent pixels from a 2-dimensional photograph of the courtyard that have been deconstructed; than reconstructed as a 3-dimensional fluid dynamic representation.

This sculpture combines elements of photographic manipulation, data analysis, and computer programming. By using robots to construct and assemble the piece it will be created without being touched by human hands. The exhibit will also include one of the sphere-creating robots. We hope to get to MASS MoCA while Geometric Death Frequency-141 fills the courtyard and its visitors with wonder.