Interactive Motion Logic: Groovy Lines for Groovy Minds

Yugop.com is a site unlike any you've ever made your way to before. This experimental online art house, brought to you by avante garde Japanese digital artist and branding expert Yugo Nakamuro, is making pixelated waves online — both literally and figuratively — thanks to its synchronized, mouse-sensitive motion animation experiences.

This Mr. Roboto-infused digital destination includes an RSS feed ready to stuff your reader with tons of eye-catching, precision-crafted digital goodies, as well as a comprehensive archive of interactive artworks created for edgy, high-profile clients like UNIQLO and XBOX 360; it also boasts fluid and futuristic functionality that serves up a myriad of techno-inspired surprises, all with a distinct and modern Japanese edge. Check it out. Domo arigato!

Music as Brushstroke — When Sounds Splash on a Digital Canvas

Here’s a standout site that a friend of mine sent my way last week. It’s really somethin’ else — and in an effort to keep you dialed in on the latest innovations popping up around the Web, I’ve decided to blog this one out.

Check it: The Life House Method is an imaginative proposition that uses specialized software to create musical portraits. Here's how it works: The software, created by a team manned by a composer/mathematician and comprised of Web developers and musicians, reads jpegs of your likeness as if following a grand staff, and then patches together musical notes and auditory references with sonorous, skillful sensuality to paint a unique musical masterpiece that captures your precise mood and personality.

It’s an all-out celebration of synesthesia — by merging the senses into one hallucinatory adventure, The Life House Method manages to blur the line between vision and sound by weaving pitch-perfect online sensory experiences that are bound to surprise. And with the latest news of Leonardo da Vinci encoding music into The Last Supper, the idea of creating harmony from images rings right on target.

With sweet pings, sultry arrangements, colorful notes, melodic clangs, pulsating beats, and at-attention rhythms, most of the portraits showcased have the power to both intrigue and provoke. So check it out. I know it has left me wondering: What would my very own musical portrait look— I mean, sound — like? What about yours?

Online Inventions for the Postmodern Imagination

Go ahead and admit it, you love reading about quirky inventions and wacky machinations. And I’ve got great news: The Internet is chock-full of these. Across online, there are improbable creations and crazy inventions for all tastes, stripes and minds. Some of these are slightly jarring, some are cute; others seem to start off with right idea but resort to ridiculous execution, and still others don’t make any sense whatsoever. Like, at all.

Anyway, despite (or perhaps due to) the fact that I have been swamped with work of late, I decided to explore the inner nooks of digital this morning in search for something that could afford me a much-needed sweet escape.

Luckily, I didn’t have to look too far. A friend and colleague of mine hit me with a link to Weird Inventions by Saddletrout Studios, a wacky site featuring a collection of totally-out-there devices that have absolutely no functional use you could think of—image renditions and all! The descriptions read like how-to copy pulled straight out of a product features catalog (awesome!), infusing the page with an decided dash of deadpan humor.

From an indoor sundial to hypno-glasses, these inventions-that-never-were are guaranteed to provide the stressed-out office rat a welcome dose of comic relief. The disclaimer at the top of the page says it all:

“Many of the items on this page could very well be dangerous if actually built and used. I can not be responsible for accidents, and do not encourage anyone to actually build or use these contraptions. All that aside, please enjoy your visit.”

My heightened interest in nonsensical and otherwise batty creations then led me to the following site, the Patently Absurd Archive, a comprehensive collection of offbeat-yet-real, USA-patented inventions that, for what you would think should be obvious reasons even to the creator, have not yielded runaway commercial success. The archive chalks up one sears impressive list. Do yourself a favor and check it out!

The question remains tho: Is there anything you believe this world is in need of? Put on your inventor’s hat and get to it! And send the idea my way!