If you need to call Batman, you use one of these. If you need to call Aquaman, I guess you’ll have to travel to Lyon, France, and find some way to get into this phone booth, which is full of fish. It was designed by Benedetto Bufalino as part of the Lyon Light Festival, and is located right about here. The designers describe it thusly:
“With the advent of the mobile telephone, telephone booths lie unused. We rediscover this glass cage transformed into an aquarium, full of exotically coloured fish; an invitation to escape and travel.”
Oh, and FYI, if you do need to contact Aquaman, apparently the way to do it is by putting a message in a bottle and chucking it into the ocean in the hopes that some sort of crab-thing will pick it up and deliver it to his secret lair inside an ancient Atlantean temple.
If you’re as big of a Star Trek: TNG fan as I am, you’ll immediately recognize this dome aquarium from Captain Picard’s ready room aboard the Enterprise-D. The aquarium was home to Livingston the fish, one of only four recurring pets in the Star Trek franchise. In every episode except one, or perhaps technically two, Livingston was played by a red lionfish, which are a lovely, albeit venomous, sort of tropical fish that you can find living on coral reefs all over the world.
The tank itself is made of acrylic, with a 20″ dome and a 40 gallon capacity. It’ll set you back nearly $1k including the stand and self-contained casing.
Bonus geek points to anyone who knows about the other Star Trek recurring pets and the episodes in which Livingston the fish was not himself.
When commuting fish need to get from home to work, their options are generally somewhat limited in a captive environment. This fish pipeline connects two fish tanks over a respectable distance (looks to be several tens of feet), allowing fish to travel from one tank, up and over the floor of a coffee shop, into the other tank. According to some of the comments in the article, the coffee shop in question is the now defunct Liquid Potion Lounge in Evanston, IL. One observer says: “They would often go up the tubes, but they’d rarely make it all the way to the other fish tank. I remember it being days before I finally saw a fish make it all the way across. Looked really cool though.” So, how does it work? From what I can tell, air gets pumped out of the top of the pipeline, drawing water up out of the tanks until the pipeline is full. Vacuum pressure then keeps the water from draining out. More pics of fish in the pipeline, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
As far as I know, this is the first fishtank in which plankton are given a computer interface. You might be wondering just what the heck plankton could possibly want with a computer, but besides surfing the web, it turns out that these little daphnia are accomplished artists, dancers, and musicians. With the proper digital tools, anyway.
The actual fishtank is underneath a microscope. An array of LEDs responds to the movement of the daphnia (effectively, the daphnia controls the LEDs), turning off when the animal gets close to one of the sides of the tank. The position of the daphnia is projected live into a full size fishtank, and then surrounded by a cloud of digital plankton. And although it doesn’t seem to be included in the video, there’s also sound which the daphnia controls depending on the direction in which it swims.
Just imagine what it must be like for this lucky little daphnia… One minute, it’s living in pond scum, and the next, it’s controlling a computer. If it had a brain, it would probably be pretty excited. Oh well.
The Radisson SAS Hotel in Berlin is (for some reason) home to the largest cylindrical fishtank in the world. The AquaDom is 25 meters high (that’s over 80 feet), contains 1 million liters (260,000 gallons) of salt water, and is home to 2,500 fish (56 species in all). There’s also a glass elevator that goes up the middle if you want to swim with the fishies without getting wet. Two full time divers are tasked with keeping the residents healthy and happy, which might sound like a fun job, but I bet they have to keep the glass clean as well. In addition to being the largest cylindrical fishtank, the AquaDom is also the largest acrylic glass cylinder in the world, with a diameter of 11 meters. The whole thing cost nearly 13 million euros back in 2003, but you can book a fishtank-view room in the hotel for considerably less than that (about 260 euros on a weekend). More pics after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Sorry, I just can’t resist a terrible pun. This $270,000 bathroom inside a giant fishtank can be found in a restaurant in (where else) Japan. The facilities are female-only, I guess because the tank is home to a male turtle who is, according to the owner, a total perv.
A few years back, Jeff Lew was the lead animator on The Matrix Reloaded (he also worked on Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, the best scene of which involves a CGI ninja cow). What’s he been doing since then? His very own, feature length animated film. And when I say “his very own,” I mean that Jeff has done everything from the script to the final renders all by himself. It’s taken him 4 years working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, and here’s the trailer. It’s called Killer Bean Forever, and it’s about killer beans:
No specific release date yet, but it’s reportedly almost done. I can’t wait.
If we keep fish as pets, why can’t fish keep birds as pets? While you’re pondering that, try and figure out who looks more confused in the picture: the fish, or the birds.
If you haven’t seen this yet, well… It’s damn funny (for everyone except the poor chick in the seal outfit, anyway). Next time I go to the zoo, I know what I’m wearing.
Related Tags: Fish Tanks, Unrelated
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