Yamaha Silent Sessions with HJ Lim

I love this new video from Yamaha showing South Korean pianist HJ Lim floating along, what looks like the canals near mile end Park and Victoria Park, East London, atop a narrow boat in full swing on her piano (video at the bottom of this post).

Silent Piano Technology

This stunning film shows HJ Lim playing Yamaha’s Silent Piano Technology which amazingly enables the piano to be played silently using headphones! When the silent function is activated, the hammers will no longer hit the strings and instead, a highly sophisticated sensor-technology captures all movements of the keys and sends them to the digital tone module.

A headphone-enabled piano means she can play Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2 in complete silence while drifting casually down a canal without upsetting the neighbours - or disturbing the ducks!

99 Designs Launches design competition to find an illustration based around Silicon Roundabout

99 Designs are celebrating their recent UK London office in East London. What better way than to involve their loyal following of budding designers and creatives than to hold a new competition!

99 Designs are holding a contest to design an illustration based around the Silicon Roundabout in Old Street. There's already been an amazing response with over 200 entries so far!

Read more and enter here >

Art & Design Movements Explained By The Open Univesity

The open University has created six animated videos to explain different art and design movements as a fun way of marketing their design courses.

From Gothic Revival to Modernism, they've animated the great artists and designers who lead they way in their own respective movements. I've posted a few of my favourites below. To view all six visit the Open University YouTube channel.

THE BAUHAUS


MODERNISM


AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

329 cotton balls & an abandoned tank in Switzerland...

What to do with an abandoned tank in deep dark switzerland?

This amazing installation by Zimoun is comprised of 329 cotton balls that are attached to small motors that bounce back and fourth drumming against the inside of the tank. There's a video at the bottom which shows the little balls at work. Lovely stuff!

Dumb Ways To Die

Ok so I might be a bit late to this but it's still pretty amazing!

Dumb Ways to Die is a public service announcement campaign by Metro Trains in Melbourne, Australia to promote rail safety. The campaign was devised by advertising agency McCann Melbourne. Watch the video at the bottom, and visit the website here

There's also a great app to download for iphone here where you can try your darndest not to die (in a dumb way), and most importantly - learn to be safe around trains.