Hasta La Ideas

Martin Daniel est un artiste qui vit et travaille à Leiden, aux Pays-Bas. Ses oeuvres ont été publiées et exposées à l’échelle nationale et internationale. Dans son travail, il cherche les propriétés de métamorphose de la matière. Intelligemment, Daniel crée ses tableaux en laissant la place au hasard et à l’erreur, tout en les maîtrisant. Pour lui, ses collages dépeignent «un univers d’artefacts humains et de structure en mutation non découvertes». Dans ses portraits et sculptures, aucune forme n’est vraiment définie et différentes réalités sont visibles, c’est au public de les interpréter. Des œuvres poétiques qui montrent à quel point la relation entre l’inspiration de l’artiste et l’interprétation du public est un harmonieux équilibre.

Celebrating food and wine with one of our favorite Australian chefs and farmers

In the world’s southernmost wine region, chef Palisa Anderson welcomed us to a pairing dinner inside Larry Cherubino Wine‘s private barrel room. Not only a highlight of our larger visit to Margaret River, the dinner was also one of a series of evenings—Anderson’s at Cherubino, chef Nelly Robinson‘s at Fraser Gallop Estate, and chef Brendan Pratt‘s at Vasse Felix—presented by Lexus for VIP customers and press in celebration of the Western Australia Gourmet Escape. This food and wine festival takes place in the Margaret River valley but embraces global food movements and their local impact.

Chef Anderson has several restaurants, eateries and a market around Sydney and Byron Bay. Frustrated at sourcing ingredients that met her standards or where unavailable elsewhere, she started Boon Luck Farm to grow them. Her work in Hong Kong, London and NYC provides background and insight into her cooking, but her focus is on Australian-grown and -sourced food.

Celebrating food and chefs and creating amazing experiences is one of Lexus’ brand pillars, and from our experience it’s one their customers really enjoy beyond the driving experience. With such a stunning backdrop, we sat with chef Anderson to learn more about her process, mission and vision.

I chase the beauty

I’m curious to know why you do what you do?

Well, I think that’s part of the ongoing question about “who are we?” You know, and “what part do we play in the Cosmos, of the universe?” I spend a lot of my time thinking about why. I do what I do because nothing else makes sense. And sometimes everything doesn’t make sense in this [profession] at the time. If you let your life be guided by finances, then you’ll never do anything worthy. I hate the word ‘worthy” because it implies righteousness. What I often think about, though, is stewardship.

We have to be optimistic. And we’ve got to keep loving the beauty. I think that’s what I chase. I chase the beauty.

The beauty of how something looks or how something tastes?

No, the beauty of the earth. Nature is so fleeting and I think that’s what food is. I keep hearing the same verbalization now and it’s exactly what I’ve been thinking: Don’t let the “excellent” or the “perfect” get in the way of the good. That really resonates with me. If you keep chasing perfection, what is that aspiration? For me, it is all about becoming one with my environment, with nature, with the earth and the moon, everything around me—I can go anywhere and feel at home.

And I think maybe that’s into the deeper question as to why, you know, I love building communities and whether that’s a community of species, of people, of culture of art. I’m just chasing the beauty. And beauty is like the kindness of people. Food is a really good connector because we all eat.

You also have a farm, but it wasn’t your dream to have one, right?

Dreams change. As maturity happens, you start to see and understand the world differently and what your place in it is. For me, simply, I wanted to have a farm because I ran out of growing space in my quarter acre block in the city. Everybody kept saying to me, you know, I think you should go and look at a farm. I never thought of it because, at first, I thought I can supply myself with what I need from my quarter acre. But, I started to get greedy because I wanted to put trees in and I wanted to expand my collection. You recognize you’re limited. Something has to come out, you know, for something else to go in.

I’m sick of things looking good. I’m just sick of things looking perfect over being perfect. I want substance

However, I had the perfect excuse: we had the restaurants, right? Yeah. And just to be able to feed myself and my family, that’s a really big thing and for my customers to know that I really care about them. I don’t want to serve the kind of greens that look good. I’m sick of things looking good. I’m just sick of things looking perfect over being perfect. I want substance. You know, getting my hands dirty, I really feel that gave me, my heart, substance.

Every blemish is the present. 

I buy things now, I look for all the lemons with the marks or anything that has a skin, I look for the ones with the marks. The insects know, they know better than us. You know? It’s so true. But, the consumer has to be double the solution. I really believe that because if we shop with our eyes, rather than our instincts and our taste buds, it’s getting that first click to happen. Like, it doesn’t look beautiful, what’s going to draw you in to sell it? And that’s why, I think that’s part of why, you know, the marketing is really important. And I’m sick of that. But it’s so like, if you want to play into human nature, you got to use it.

You prepared a Thai meal for us and, with that, we were expecting rice. Can you explain why there wasn’t any?

Though rice is a significant part of the diet for most Asians, I stopped eating rice that I didn’t know where it came from and wasn’t genetically modified. Sadly nearly all rice is GMO. There are a few farmers in Australia who grow natural rice, but it’s very expensive. The other thing is that it’s just not healthy to have a lot of grain in your gut when you go to sleep. I want you to eat more vegetables!

Can you talk about where your joy comes from?

I get so much more pleasure and joy seeing almost extinct bird species on my land, and seeing my children connect with nature and them using that information to pass it on.  that’s my best gift that they could ever give me, that they’re doing it for themselves and they know how to look after. That’s such a lesson within us, and you can’t teach people that.

Image courtesy of Lexus

Illustratrice franco-néo-zélandaise établie à Montréal, Cielle Graham est passionnée par les mouvements et les animaux. À l’encre, elle a créé un alphabet dont les lettres sont entièrement composées de toutes sortes de chiens : poils longs ou courts, museau allongé ou non, oreilles tombantes ou relevées… Joyeuse et réconfortante, cette accumulation délicate de canins n’a pas été laissée au hasard dans la composition de cet alphabet, puisque chaque lettre est illustrée avec des chiens dont la race commence par ladite lettre.

Images : © Cielle Graham

In today’s day and age, we don’t have a lot of free time on our hands. We, especially, need products that help us complete our tasks in the most effective and productive manner possible! So, we’ve curated a collection of time-and-space-saving products that promise to boost your productivity, and save up on those couple of extra minutes!

The Encompass toothbrush’s unique J-shaped design is what sets it apart. Designed by RYCA International, its J-shape allows it to self-adjust to the shape of your jaw, covering both your upper and lower teeth with bristles that vibrate at a precise 100 strokes per second, while the bristles themselves are positioned to give you the right pressure, intensity and angle for efficient brushing in just 10 seconds on each (left and right) side. So you can complete brushing every corner of your mouth within minutes!

Designed by The God Things Team, the PrinCube is meant to be grabbed with one hand and run across any surface and it performs a neat, seamless, colored inkjet-print on it. The PrinCube isn’t just small, it’s hand-held, wireless, and incredibly versatile. It can print on materials your desktop printer doesn’t even dream of. Paper, cardboard, wood, metal, cloth, working on flat, textured, and even curved surfaces. No more dealing with cumbersome printers that take ages to print your material!

COFFEEJACK by Ashley Hribar-Green & Matthew Aston Cain is the smallest espresso machine on the market (only 100mm high) while producing coffee shop quality coffee. It has a patent-pending micro-hydraulic press inside it that can pump out coffee at a magical excess of 9 bars of pressure, rivaling any professional-grade espresso maker. So you don’t have to head to a coffee shop, every time you crave some premium quality espresso!

Designed by Eugene Dubovoy & Vladimir Levitin, evaCHILL is a portable air conditioner that is compact enough to be mobile, intuitive enough to be easily controlled and stylish enough to look right at home within your workspace! Careful attention has been paid to the ergonomics of the device, to create a fluid and simple form of interaction that elevates the user experience. It’s refined aesthetics lead to an attractive device that doesn’t demand attention or dominate the desk! Whether it’s at home, or on a camping trip or on a trek, evaCHILL can cool you anywhere within moments!

The GPCA Carabiner can handle it all! The multifunctional EDC serves as a Philips head and a flathead screwdriver, as well as a box-cutter. The frame itself is optimized for function too, with a bottle opener and a prybar built right into its bottom. The carabiner’s clip comes with a spring-loaded gate and a knurled ring that locks the clip in its place. Screw the ring upwards and the gate also has a secret hidden compartment for a flintstone too. The GPCA Carabiner is the one EDC that can virtually solve all your issues!

Designed by Jorg Neugebauer & Kai Wiehagen, the FLECTR LUBRI DISC helps you lube your bike chain in seconds. It keeps the process clean and is eco-friendly. The best part is that you will not have to dirty your fingers. It delivers the lube reliably and evenly to your chain in just seconds! It is an incredible tool for the basic care of your bike chain.

Designed by Lksoo Jun of Dadam Micro, the puripot is an air purifier that can virtually run forever without needing to be maintained or cleaned. The puripot uses something known as Titanium Dioxide Photocatalysis to purify the air around you. At its base sits a water bath that you replenish every couple of days. The water traps fine dust while also humidifying the air, while the puripot itself uses TiO2, a photocatalytic ceramic material that’s capable of instantly killing bacteria and VOCs that carry odor. And compared to other air purifiers it’s a much more effective and convenient alternative!

Designed by Kevin Zhu, the U-Bolt Pro calls itself the ultimate 6 in 1 Smart DeadBolt. And it lives up to its name. For example, use the Smartphone App, or your fingerprint. Passcode, mechanical key, and even a proximity lock! However, the ‘Magic Shake’, is the most amusing way to unlock the door! Simply shake your phone in front of the lock, and the door opens! No more dealing with locks and keys, you can now access your home within minutes!

Designed to add value in more ways than one, the ZENLET Coil can be used indoors as a wireless charger that also works as an air freshener, or on the go, as a portable wireless power-bank that extends its use as an aromatherapy device.

Designed as a two-part stool by JUUCE (Ralph Christian Bremenkamp & Daniel Thomas Kövary), the Stuul occupies a fraction of its intended space when not in use, and transforms into two foot-stools when you’re on the John. Using Stuul helps elevate your legs in a way that resembles the squatting posture that’s clinically proven to make the job easier. Stuul’s design helps position the legs at the desired angle to help promote a healthy bathroom routine and prevent diseases like IBS. You can have the most productive bathroom routine with the Stuul!

For more such super handy productivity-boosting products, click here!

Apple, Google, Amazon and the Zigbee Alliance have joined forces to develop a smart-home standard that will mean new devices are likely to be compatible with any of their hubs and voice assistants.

Overseen by the Zigbee Alliance, whose board members include representatives of IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy and Wulian,  the Project Connected Home Over IP initiative aims to create a unified connectivity protocol that is open-source and royalty-free.

The goal is to make it easier both for consumers to build their ideal smart-home environment and also for manufacturers to develop new products.

Aim is to create a standardised system

As it stands, developers need to build integration for Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and any smart-home service separately, resulting in a situation where few products are universally compatible.

With a standardised system, the barriers to building and buying such devices should be lowered, and consumers will be able to choose Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and others according to their preference.

“Technology in everyday homes has evolved since the start of the decade,” wrote Google vice-president of engineering Nik Sathe and Google Nest principal engineer Grant Erickson in a blog post announcing the initiative. “Almost every part of the home can be connected to the internet, allowing local or remote control of thermostats, cameras, locks, lights, switches, sensors and even doggy doors,”

“While smart home devices are abundant, the lack of an industry-wide connectivity standard leaves people confused and frustrated when trying to understand what devices work with each smart home ecosystem. It also places a heavy burden on manufacturers to make sure all devices are compatible with each other,” the post continued.

Draft standard to be published in 2020

The companies have formed an independent working group and aim to deliver a draft standard by late 2020.

The standard will be based on technologies that already on the market, including Amazon’s Alexa Smart Home, Google’s Weave and Thread, Apple’s HomeKit and Zigbee Alliance’s Dotdot data models, so the companies envision a fast development process.

They will use internet protocol (IP) as the foundation of the standard and will focus on connecting products over wifi to begin with. Support for Bluetooth Low Energy, Ethernet, Cellular and Broadband connections is likely to follow in the future.

The standardised protocol is likely to benefit the smaller players in the market. For smart home products that includes Apple, which only released its HomePod speaker in 2017 and whose HomeKit compatibility only extends to a few hundred third-party devices.

Amazon’s Alexa, by comparison, works with more than 100,000 current smart home gadgets.

Architects and designer have been creating a wide variety of connected, smart products. Danish architecture studio BIG recently designed a smart lock, while technology start up Bryte created a smart bed that adjusts throughout the night to help people sleep.

Main image is Panasonic’s smart GA10 speaker.

The post Apple, Google and Amazon unite to make all smart home products talk to each other appeared first on Dezeen.