Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Though they look like fabric, the threadlike drawings are printed onto paper.

This drawing, by Eno Henze, is based on the signatures left by subatomic particles in detectors such as the ones used at CERN. According to the authors: “The topic accelerator uses these signatures and strips them of their function as scientific evidence. The impenetrable thicket of signs becomes a symbol of the attempt to explain the world using scientific reason.” Henze approximated the real signatures using his own frame-based algorithm and a drawing machine of his own making.

In Growing Data, Cedric Kiefer explores how real phenomena can be used to communicate data, as opposed to statistical charts and tables. Here, he depicts the air quality of major cities through the growth of virtual plants.

This infographic analyzes the holy scriptures of the world’s five main religions–Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism–shedding light on their differences and similarities. The x-axis includes the 41 figures who appear most often in the texts, with the size of each name and arc corresponding to its number of occurrences in all five scriptures. The bar graphs contain the verbs that most often follow their names. “In addition to the abstract informational level,” the authors write, “the work is intended to make people reflect on their own prejudices and current religious conflicts at an emotional level.”

Various tools were used for the text analysis. The evaluation was performed with vvvv software; the data visualized in Processing.

This wall fixture mirrors the geometrical pattern of its namesake flower.

Made from laser-sintered polyamide, 610 is based on the Fibonacci sequence. (The first two numbers in the numerical series are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.) The form is inspired by coneflowers.

The Delaunay Raster allows users to customize a scanned image by setting the grid points. The tool is based on the Delaunay triangulation, a system invented in 1934 by the Russian mathematician Boris Delaunay that creates a set of optimal triangles out of a group of points. The Raster converts the triangles into paths in Illustrator.

Commissioned by Print magazine in 2008, this sculpture was generatively grown based on a biochemical reaction. “The contours of a custom font served as the basis for this sculpture and generated its initial crystals,” the authors write. “Over time the simulation decomposed the original structure in an increasingly delicate pattern. Using a process frequently used in MRI scans in medicine, the two-dimensional frames of the different process phases were combined into a detailed 3D model consisting of several million polygons.”

For the Max Plank Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Michael Schmitz devised a trademark that changes according to the principles of evolution. According to the authors: “The quality of the resulting logos is judged by a so-called fitness function, which determined the attributes of individual logos and compares them with the company’s current situation. The best logos mate, and the offspring from this recombination of genetic material replace older individuals.” The system was programmed in Java.

The book is available here for $55.

Russia and Japan want to explore the Moon, and in a big way.

At the Global Space Exploration Conference, which started on May 22 — the same day SpaceX successfully launched its Dragon capsule towards the ISS, which is why NASA administrator Charles Bolden was absent from the conference — Russia and Japan laid out their plans for space exploration, both focusing on Earth’s natural satellite.

“We’re not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago. We’re talking about establishing permanent bases,” said Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

Japan’s space exploration goals for the near future are similar to those of Russia. “We are looking at the moon as our next target for human exploraiton,” said Yuichi Yamaura, an associate executive director at JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency.

Interestingly enough, though it was the first country to successfully send human astronauts to the Moon, the US is currently not as interested in Moon exploration as Russia and Japan.

NASA’s Global Exploration Roadmap, which details its plans for the next 25 years of space exploration, offers two main courses — establishing a Moon base by 2020 or sending astronauts to an asteroid. President Barack Obama favors the latter option, but that may change after the November elections.

Which option do you prefer? Would you rather see astronauts sent to an asteroid, or a permanent Moon base? Share your opinions in the comments.

NASA astronauts and SpaceX engineers check out the seating inside the Dragon spacecraft. Photo: SpaceX

With the cargo version of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft waiting patiently at Cape Canaveral for its scheduled launch on May 19, its astronaut-carrying sibling received a thumbs up from NASA.

“This milestone demonstrated the layout of the crew cabin supports critical tasks,” said SpaceX Commercial Crew Development Manager – and former astronaut – Garrett Reisman. “It also demonstrated the Dragon interior has been designed to maximize the ability of the seven-member crew to do their job as effectively as possible.”

The latest step for the manned Dragon spacecraft from SpaceX centered around the size and layout inside the capsule. The seven seat vehicle was deemed acceptable after NASA astronauts and engineers evaluated the Dragon, including entering and exiting under normal and emergency scenarios, as well as reach and visibility tests.

SpaceX’s achievement was reached as concerns at NASA grow regarding lawmakers efforts to stop the NASA sponsored competition to develop a replacement for the space shuttle program.

The evaluation is part of the second round of NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev). The prototype of the Dragon had a functioning interior including seats, lights and life support systems as well as cargo racks and controls.

SpaceX is working closely with NASA on the development of the Dragon, something reflected in comments from the agency’s commercial crew program manager Ed Mango, “as an anchor customer for commercial transportation services, we are happy to provide SpaceX with knowledge and lessons learned from our 50 years of human spaceflight.”

Mango was one of the NASA managers who spoke out last week regarding the future of the CCDev program and its cargo equivalent, the Commercial Orbital Transportation System (COTS). Both programs include multiple private companies receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in development funding from NASA to design, build and test spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts and cargo to low earth orbit.

The goal of the competition has been to reduce the cost of delivering supplies and people to the International Space Station. With the retirement of the space shuttle orbiters, NASA currently pays more than $60 million a seat to hitch a ride on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

The current plan calls for NASA to continue the competition between several different private companies, each receiving between $300 million and $500 million during the next phase. SpaceX, along with Orbital Sciences are the two remaining companies working on the COTS cargo program, and SpaceX, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Blue Origin and Boeing are currently funded through the CCDev program.

A budget bill currently working its way through the House of Representatives would direct NASA to instead immediately choose a single commercial provider for the CCDev program while reducing the overall funding level according to Spaceflightnow.com.

Mango said going with a single company now dramatically increase the cost of the program in the long run.

“We need competition as long as possible. The price to go with one starting today, and then all the way through certification and into services, is at least twice what it would be if you had competition at least as long as possible,” Mango told a NASA committee last week.

Other NASA officials emphasized the need for continued competition saying it has already fostered innovative new approaches for space travel.

SpaceX’s next CCDev milestones for the Dragon include the further development of its pusher launch abort system. Compared with the traditional “tractor” type launch abort system that uses a small rocket to pull the crew to safety in the event of a launch or ascent emergency, SpaceX’s unique approach is to use the small rockets built into the Dragon for orbital maneuvering to push the vehicle clear of the rocket in an emergency. Assuming no emergency occurs, these rocket engines can also be used for a controlled, pinpoint landing in the future.

After a hard day’s driving, a sauna is the ideal place to relax and take away the strain on the muscles – which is why one Russian decided to create a rolling hot box he can take with him wherever he goes.

Embedded in Russian tradition, saunas sit alongside vodka as the staple means of keeping warm in the sub-zero winters most typically experienced by the inhabitants of this giant nation.

The majority are permanent structures with giant fires feeding individual wooden cabins, but on a snowy lay-by next to the main road into Moscow we came across a rather more mobile one, built neatly into the back of a 1976 Zil army truck.

This is a very different type of truck stop.

Parked in a forested outcrop, the solid green metal machine sat atop the snow on large tundra tires, hiding its dark military history under a fresh new look with a giant side sticker depicting the wooden slats of a traditional sauna and a telltale rough steel opening that emitted a flickering glow.

Since the truck chugged its way out of Moscow, this onboard fire has been slowly building up the heat inside, puffing smoke from the twee little chimney in its roof.

Beckoned over by a man wearing a heavyweight winter jacket topped with a bizarre beige Tyrolean-style hat, we were ushered to a door where another gentleman with significantly fewer clothes and an altogether steamier look welcomed us in.

But while it may have seemed like we were in a bizarre slapstick comedy sketch, this was a very serious piece of physical conditioning, Russian style.

Inside, there was very strict protocol. First came the initial sweating to get the body acclimatized to the heat. Once boiled to within an inch of our lives, we then cooled down in the sauna-truck’s ‘chill out room’ before braving the heat once more.

Then came the oak branches. Bunched and brandished by Nikolai, the sauna’s owner, creator and operator, we were beaten with these to boost circulation. With the sauna’s coals repeatedly watered and bunched leaves wafting the fast-soaring heat through the tiny space by the fire, we were soon cooked to perfection.

We thought we were done, but Nikolai had other plans. With a yell of “Russia extreme!” he urged us to the sauna door and out into the frozen snow beyond, where he proceeded to cover us in snow.

And as we finally slipped back into our vehicles’ soft leather seats to continue our journey, the whip-lashed sores began to soften. They don’t do things by halves, these Russians.

Jeremy was travelling on Land Rover’s Journey of Discovery.

Ari Wallach, 37, heads a consulting firm that draws power from an eclectic mix of unconventional experts. Resolving conflict through discourse is the theme of a career spanning politics, commerce, and religion.

As the founder of Synthesis, a strategic consulting firm based in D.C. and New York, Ari Wallach helps government, NGO, and corporate clients–including CNN, the Ford Foundation, the U.S. State Department, and United Nations Refugee Agency–find innovative solutions to complex problems. For the student of political philosophy who once considered going to rabbinical school, synthesis–resolving seemingly incompatible views and experiences–has been the theme running through his eclectic career that’s ranged from conflict resolution at UC Berkeley, to finance work with the Democratic National Committee, new-media projects, consulting with the nonprofit Coro Foundation, and the “Great Schlep” campaign to get out the Jewish vote for Obama in 2008.

FAST COMPANY: How is Synthesis different from other, bigger consulting firms?

ARI WALLACH: All Synthesis is, is myself and my partner running the back end. It’s like cloud innovation; we’re really trying to build a next-generation consultancy, drawing on a different kind of expert network. All the rock stars I know now are freelancers and perma-lancers, but there’s no mechanism for them to work together as teams–for a few days or a year or two. We’re working to figure out the infrastructure for this kind of organization.

We’ll hire a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t want to return to a position at McKinsey, but will give us 15 brilliant hours a week in between everything else she’s doing in her life. We can bring in an urban-graffiti practitioner or someone who builds amazing shelters at Burning Man and used to build DARPA-contract structures and get them to reframe what they do so it’s relevant to a client’s issues. We don’t have a one-size-fits-all process like other consulting firms have. It’s like going to a Freudian or Jungian therapist–I’m more comfortable with the gestalt school. We bring a lot of curation–knowing what fits but also what doesn’t fit. We also have a heavy reliance on academics–especially in anthropology and social psychology.

How does your experience in conflict resolution inform your consulting work?

There is a false premise that innovation is about ideas. But ideas are actually relatively simple to come up with. True innovation is about culture and execution. The heart of innovation is conflict–you are challenging the status quo. Another thing I learned from working on conflict resolution throughout high school and college is that the problem you’re talking about is usually not really the problem. We often end up solving something that wasn’t part of the original brief. That’s why it’s important to bring diverse skills and beliefs and not write anything off.

Where does your interest in conflict come from?

I grew up in a home steeped in conflict, watching black-and-white World War II movies on TV. My father was a Holocaust survivor whose father was shot in front of him and whose sisters and mothers were sent to Auschwitz. He escaped under gunfire and fought with the Jewish underground in Poland. He’d been in Cuba for 11 years during the revolution, where speaking Spanish and Russian was a real advantage. But my mom is a professional artist whose teacher was Buckminster Fuller, so as very young kid I was exposed to that. Trying to reconcile what that meant to what happened in WWII, and preventing that from happening again–there you have the underlying thesis of my life.

Did your upbringing also influence your desire to seek out diverse perspectives?

I had an eclectic upbringing, to say the least. My two older sisters and I were born in Guadalajara, where my dad ran a successful pipe business. My dad spoke 11 languages by the time he passed away 17 years ago. In San Francisco, I remember going to restaurants in the ’80s and he’d disappear–he’d be back in the kitchen talking with the staff in Spanish. From that, I learned that everyone is a source.

Pioneers of the new (and chaotic) frontier of business

Flagship Fluxers, Photo: Brooke Nipar

In our February 2012 issue Fast Company Editor Robert Safian identified a diverse set of innovators who embrace instability, tolerate–and even enjoy–recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions. People like author/Onion digital media maverick Baratunde Thurston, Greylock Data Scientist DJ Patil, Microsoft Senior Researcher danah boyd, and GE’s Beth Comstock. This series continues to explore the new values of GenFlux. Find more Fluxers here. And tweet your contributions using #GenFlux.

What’s motivated you to keep trying new things?

Figuring out what you don’t want to do is as important as figuring out what you do want to do. As I was exposed to different things and seen the trade-offs, I’ve opted out. I’ve gone through the entire bucket list of everything I thought I wanted to do when I was growing up. When I was 18 I was in the hospital in a body cast. I did medical rounds with my doctor and saw that I wasn’t interested in the mundane part of working in a hospital. I spent time in an architecture firm and saw how much time you needed to put in as an apprentice to get to Geary level.

By the time I left school, I’d done time with the Clinton-Gore camp and a think tank in DC. I knew I didn’t want do presidential campaigns or work in a think tank. In the mid-90s, I founded a startup called InForum–a live-events forum for Gen-X politics–which grew to be pretty big in the Bay Area. After that, I went to New York and worked with the nonprofit Coro Foundation–an externship program based on the medical rotation model–where I worked as a consultant with the Loews Hotel Group, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and New York’s largest public-employee union, rotating through different stakeholders in civic matters. Half of the people in New York City government are Coro alumni. That really laid the groundwork for the business model of Synthesis. After Coro, I unsuccessfully tried to get funding for a Gen-X Charlie Rose-style TV called ReThink. After that, I went on to do some consulting and corporate business development.

How did the Great Schlep lead you into starting your own firm?

During the 2008 campaign, it became obvious that Obama had a perception problem with Jewish voters. I had a good idea that what needed to be done, but it was outside of the campaign brand playbook–something more politically dangerous but with a huge potential upside. Using raw humor–Sarah Silverman made video for us–and guilt, the Great Schlep was about mobilizing young Jewish Obama supporters, largely through social media, to get out the elderly Jewish vote by actually going to places like Florida where their grandparents lived. After that campaign, I got several calls from Fortune 500 firms looking for Chief Innovation Officers. I was really torn about what to do next and got connected with an executive coach–even doing what I do, you still need to go to someone else to do for you what you do for others. Talking with him, I came to the realization that I didn’t want to work for anyone ever again. He said, “It sounds like you want to build a consulting shop and turn some of these job offers into clients.”

Do you consider yourself a risk-taker?

People from outside might see me as a risk-taker, but I’m actually very conservative–even more so that married with 3-year-old twin daughters. Restlessness and curiosity are driving forces for me, and I always want to be learning from what I’m doing. But I’ve always known that this is my life, so I’ve saved up for exploration–some of the things that you don’t see on LinkedIn, like a residency at Green Gulch, the Zen monastery in Marin Country; or going to Santa Barbara to learn how to surf; or doing PR for Deepak Chopra on a book tour, where I learned individual branding.

Is it possible for everyone to have the kind career you have, though?

In 2012, no. The model of an evolving career is not possible for everyone. I went to state school and had no student debt. I did well at a couple of dot-coms. I’m a big fan of internships–I would love to see a formally instituted “gap year” for graduates, where you could rotate through diverse fields and learn about them very quickly. We don’t live in culture where we go out and ask people to teach use what they do, and we’ve done away with the kinds of mentorships and rotations that would let people get the flux-iness out of our system without so much risk.

Are you done job-hopping?

I’m working with all kind of clients–my day might include a meeting with imams and reverends, then getting on a video link with Geneva to talk about building shelters in Nairobi, and discussing national security issues. I’m thinking, wow, this is really cool. What appeals to me are big, Talmudic-level ideas that give you a lot to wrestle with and work with. This is it for years to come.

Image: Flickr user Iversen Rönnlund