Flat screens eh? seems like they're everywhere these days. Well here's and idea to put some of them to use. Put a CPU face up on a table. surround on all sides with flatscreens pointing outwards. Make the housing of the screens as thin as possible. Program a 3D fish tank that will be displayed on the screens as though they are the sides of the tank. To get that extra margin of reality put a web cam on top of each side of your tank (pointing out too), have the images it captures fed back to the opposite screen. Make the 3D fishtank program use this realtime video as the (slightly blurred) back drop.

You could also add a slot between one of the screen and the CPU that leads to a shredder. When papers are fed into this the fish will be fed.

This would have several advanages over a real fish tank. No (real) feeding or cleaning, although you could build in a tamogotchi element. Any fish you want, none too expensive. Dancing fish. Fish that come to a side of the tank when called. (with use of microphones carefully placed)
-- Zircon, Sep 03 2002

The recent Biennial at the Whitney featured a cube that displayed on its sides video of a naked mother and child playing in the cube (the video gradually speeded up, until it disappeared with a plop). So the technology is out there. I have to question why *anyone* would want fake fish, when the real things are so much more pleasing to the eye.

If you have a webcam, why not simply enclose it in lucite and drop it on the nearest reef, and feed live video of real fishes to your screens?
-- DrCurry, Sep 03 2002


I know all that stuff about fish having short memory spans, but I look at the tank, and the size of the fish, and I start getting all claustrophobic. If I ever own any animal that needs to be caged, hutched or tanked I will wait untill I'm wealthy enough to give them the kind of size ratio that I'd be happy with in a cell.
-- Zircon, Sep 03 2002


[DrCurry] I like your webcam idea! Infact, I'm feeling a new posting coming on....
-- Zircon, Sep 03 2002


"...I have to question why *anyone* would want fake fish, when the real things are so much more pleasing to the eye."

Because fake fish can talk to you.
-- bristolz, Sep 03 2002


Viewers' faces could be superimposed on the fish's heads looking back.
-- FarmerJohn, Sep 03 2002


You could program the fish (with the human faces, ta [FJ]) to continuously greet each other, as in the goldfish sketch in 'the meaning of life'

I would pay a lot of money for one of these.
-- Zircon, Sep 04 2002


How much you got?
-- thumbwax, Sep 04 2002


//I have to question why *anyone* would want fake fish, when the real things are so much more pleasing to the eye. [DrCurry]//

This is a dangerous road to go down, for people who spend so much time on the web...
-- General Washington, Sep 04 2002


[thumbwax] Alas, I said 'would' not 'could'.
-- Zircon, Sep 04 2002


<under breath>Damn</under breath>
-- thumbwax, Sep 04 2002


heh,not all of us want to or have the time to clean up 60 gallons of REAL water when our REAL tank explodes all over the floor~yeah,fake dont break~;)
-- jjbetta, Sep 07 2002


"yeah,fake dont break"

but it can crash.
-- bristolz, Sep 07 2002


Why does it have to be a blue-screen of death?, why cant it be a blue-screen with blocky-retro-bitmap fishies of death?
-- Zircon, Sep 10 2002



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