Small Wonder

May 14, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Jyoti Amge is the world’s smallest girl. She weighs about 5 kilograms and at 58 cm’s her height  is really close to The Incredible Shrinking Man’s projected future size of 50 centimeter. She has been the subject of numerous documentaries and enjoys her star status.…

Snow Flakes & Weaver Birds

May 9, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Scaling ourselves down has the promise of something truly magical. Not just the magic of becoming smaller but magical in the sense of real transformative knowledge. If small, we will be able to come closer to, or even enter, what is now often beyond our…

Sunflower Table

May 3, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

Downsizing the human body will not only create an abundance of food, it will also open up unexpected new possibilities for sharing a meal. Possibilities like the dried sunflower table suggested by Marlyn Coetsier. Coetsier, a puppeteer from Amsterdam, researches how we will experience reality…

Peter Gabriel on Humanoid Height

April 21, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Human prejudice against being small is a complicated mix of biological and cultural reasons. In the 1972 dystopian song ‘Get them out by Friday’ by progressive rockband Genesis, small size is appropriated for the economic benefit of a greedy project developer. The 9 minute mini-opera envisions a…

Of Snell Mice and Men

April 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Mice and men display striking genetic similarities in hormone dependent growth disturbances. If a mouse responds in a certain way to a genetic mutation, chances are that a human will respond in similar fashion. The first dwarf mouse was discovered by Nobel Prize winner George Snell in…

Relative Strength Empowerment

April 10, 2011 By arne hendriks 3

Every 20% increase in height is a 73% increase in weight, yet muscles only become 44% stronger ( that’s about the equivalent to increase in surface area), and bones less than that. There is a clear limit to the amount of surplus strength tall people…

Small Food Physics

April 5, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The Disproportionate Restaurant investigates the relationship with food and ingredients from the perspective of a human species of 50 centimeters tall. It maps possibilities that today’s chefs can only dream of, even in the age of molecular gastronomy. There is the relatively predictable resizing of portions and ingredients. A…

Plus Size Camouflage

March 30, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

One of the more complicated issues in shrinking the human species is how to deal with generational size differences. New generations will be smaller than older generations. Dutch designer Heleen Klopper speculates on a future fashion and make-up of camouflaging the large as well as…

Why 50 cm?

March 28, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Why do we propose to make The Incredible Shrinking Man 50 centimeters? Why not 100 centimeters, or 75? The first reason is that 50 centimeters, even if very small, is not hard to imagine since it is the average height of newborn babies. However, newborn…

Bantam Astronauts

March 24, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Perhaps it’s our desire to go to Mars that in the end will lead to smaller human beings. NASA is obsessed by the immense costs of putting things into space. Every extra pound sets them back thousands of dollars. That’s why it is perhaps not surprising…

Pygmy People

March 20, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Pygmy is a term used for various ethnic groups whose average height is less than 150 cm (4 feet 11 inches). The best known pygmies are the Mbuti of Central Africa. There are also pygmies in Asia, Australia and South America. Especially interesting are the Rampasasa of the island of Flores in…

Baby Fruit

March 19, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The upper end of the restaurant market is flooded by baby fruit and vegetables. Baby coconuts, Baby pineapples Baby courgettes, Baby every-single-fruit and vegetable-you-can-imagine. In today’s market only the products that catch the attention of consumers have a chance of becoming economically succesful. Playing with…

On Being the Right Size

March 18, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

It’s hard to deny the clear and convincing arguments made in the 1928 paper On Being the Right Size by the excentric geneticist  J.B.S. Haldane. According to Haldane every living thing grows into the size it’s supposed to have. Eyes, Lungs, wings and limbs all…

Shrink Rays

March 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

According to sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov miniaturization doesn’t actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed, and that is impossible. For the Incredible Shrinking Man however, the primary importance is its prominent existence in our imagination. How do we connect…

Paper Pygmalion

March 15, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

There’s something awkwardly cute about the videoclip by The Mills Brothers in which a man sings about his desire to “own a paper doll that he can call his own”. The representation of human desire through an idol, a sculpture, or even a puppet is as old…

Homo Sindhiensis

March 6, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

If anthropology teaches us one thing it is that the human species was, and is, in a continuous state of development. Homo Sapiens, much like Homo Floresiensis, probably will eventually change into a new species, a species better equiped to deal with the challenges of…

Mapping Shrink Culture

February 27, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Over the past 10 months The Incredible Shrinking Man research collected a wide array of shrink facts, figures and visions. The categories spanned everything from science to art, from history to genetics and entertainment, from technology to psychology and so on. We have deliberately not…

Shrink to Power

February 19, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Popular culture is ripe with examples of the playful desire to shrink. We’ve reported before on the peculiar desire of some people to sexually fantasize about very small men, and women especially. But not all forms of microphilia are of an erotic nature. On the…

GHRHR

February 11, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

It seems as if nature itself is already investigating ways to counter hypergrowth, overpopulation and overconsumption. It’s creating perfectly proportioned, but small, human beings. Pituitary dwarfism, also known as Dwarfism of Sindh, is a form of growth absense where all parts of the body grow equally slow. At…

Robert Therrien

February 1, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Robert Therrien makes monumental sculptures and installations, often in the shape of tables and chairs. In terms of material and form his works corresponds to the model down to the smallest details, but in scale the sculpture differs dramatically. The furniture has assumed such proportions…