Jenny Odell collects and organizes all kinds of things, from meticulously sorting digital finds on Google Maps to tracing the origins of everything she used, wore, ate or bought on one particular day in 2013.

Her work often pulls objects out of context, aggregating and arranging something like a set of pools against a neutral backdrop (as seen above) or taking an entire industrial complex and carefully stripping it of its surroundings (like the facility below).

On June 26th, she will join an assortment of other unusual, curious and brilliant creatives — experts in the realms of art, design, interaction and information — as a speaker at the annual Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis, MN.

Designer, entrepreneur and artist Nicholas Felton, creator of the famously detailed and introspective data visualizations, will be back this year as well to talk about his recent work. His numerous personal annual reports condense the events of a year into a tapestry of maps, graphs and statistics.

Artist and programmer Gene Kogan will bring his interest in “generative systems, artificial intelligence, and software for creativity and self-expression.” He has collaborated on various open-source software projects, working at the “intersection of code, art, and technology activism.”

Others include: a smell researcher and artist with a collection of over 7,000 scents, a designer and software designer pursuing machine learning and news automation, and dozens of other fascinating folks from all over the world.

Eyeo asks: “What data is, where it comes from, and how we utilize it, looks different than ever before. What can we do with it all? What can’t we do? Artists, designers and coders build and bend technology to see what’s possible. What’s next with interaction, what’s revealed by the data. Eyeo brings together the most intriguing and exciting people in these arenas today.” If you haven’t been, this is as good a year as any to go for the first time — it is a wonderful and unique experience. Get tickets here.

A temporary metropolis for tens of thousands built annually in Nevada’s remote Black Rock Desert, the Burning Man festival is famous for its extreme architecture and creative art cars, the latter now including a transformed Boeing 747.

Fitting this year’s theme of Da Vinci’s Workshop (art and technological innovation), the huge gutted hull has been in the works for seven years thanks to Big Imagination Foundation and their supporters.

The carved-out jumbo jet invites people to hop on board for speakers, parties and other events. It is being towed around the dusty playa by a surprisingly small service vehicle, a bit like one might see on the tarmac at an airport.

A team of over 100 artists, engineers and other creatives helped strip and reconstruct the original plane, reinforcing its removed structure with custom interior supports and adding a series of staircases.

Anyone who has attended the festival will know that one of the most fascinating experiences is the serendipity of boarding a big art vehicle and seeing where it leads, either spatially or experientially (or both). This may be the best such adventure yet, featuring interactive art, music and other live performances and inspirational talks.

Maybe it’s a little weird to stare at oversized images of whipped cream and cherries plastered onto the wall while you’re relieving yourself, but hey, at least it’s not the other way around. The Toilennale festival in Oita, Japan attempted to elevate public restroom facilities into cultural experiences by transforming them into art installations or holding events like poetry readings inside.

This particular installation, entitled ‘Melting Dream,’ looks like a gigantic cake – or perhaps an ice cream sundae – from outside (perhaps inspired by actual urinal cakes). Step inside and you’ll be confronted with murals of various sweet treats alongside cherry-red floors. Set adjacent to urinals mounted a wall, suddenly a sugary glaze dripping down fruit takes on a more ambiguous meaning.

If you’re feeling a little disconcerted by this combination of human biological urges, that’s the point. Artist Minako Nishiyama notes that the people of Japan are going about their daily lives as if nothing changed after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. “The concept of the piece is that Japan, the sweet country of ambiguity, is beginning to crumble.”

15 other public restroom transformations included ‘gonzo performance,’ private poetry readings inside stalls, a celebration of toilet graffiti and “an odd recital given by the ‘Zombie,’ an automatic performance machine that plays the recorder.” The facilities remained open for their usual purpose throughout the festival, which opened in July and ran through September 23rd. The next Toilennale is scheduled for 2017.

Looking as much like a kind of outer space habitat system as a campground compound, an assembled complex of POD units can be arrayed in whatever pattern suits the available space and user needs.

The larger ‘Maxi’ sleeps up to 8 people while the smaller ‘Mini’ sleeps 4. Each type can be joined using POD connectors and modified via additional accessories, including an ‘inner sleeping cell’ that divides space within a given unit, separating kids from adults, or at least: sleeping zones from play spaces.

Part of the promise of the system is the ability to weather bad days almost entirely within a closed complex, separating space for sleeping from areas for socialization and storage. Connective tunnels can be closed off to provide privacy or opened for mutual access. These features could also come in handy at festivals and gatherings where some seclusion might be desirable from time to time.

Weatherproof and durable, a compound composed of these modules is as much a temporary tiny home as a camping tent. With dollar prices in the high three figures, these may not be the most affordable solution, but the creators of POD are more interested in quality than cost savings.

Meanwhile, a new and improved version is also on its way: “The all new POD Elite range will go even further to create a social camping experience with interconnecting tents. Totally innovative and stylish, further improvements have been made to the Elite range including enhanced UV protection and a lighter weight, more durable design. Functionality and fun unite in this bespoke camping product.”

Featuring a combination of workshops, lectures, mixers and parties, INSTINT (from the makers of eyeo) brings together some of the most influential and exciting creatives dealing with interactive architecture, art, design and technology from around the world. With less than 60 tickets left, you would be wise to register as soon as possible and if you will be coming to Minneapolis from out of state (or country), be sure to start making travel plans today.

Attending the event last year, WebUrbanist’s founder and lead technologist were stunned by the high caliber not only of the presenters but the 300 attendees as well, all of whom had stories to share about their work in and beyond the realm of interaction design.

This year, WU is once again a proud official media partner of this amazing gathering. In addition to selected talks from last year (embedded above), more videos from INSTINT 2014 can be found on Vimeo – but keep in mind: at least half of the experience is simply interacting with others in attendance during and beyond the event, so the talks themselves tell only part of the story.

Frequently found at the bleeding edge of their intersecting fields, INSTINT’s various compelling presenters manage to show off a combination of stunning completed works while also sharing behind-the-scenes lessons for others looking to create responsive environments, interactive art or smart objects. Attendees will be inspired by the finished projects but also learn a great deal from the trials, errors and iterations described in honest detail as well.

Over three days and in addition to multiple workshops, lunches and mixers, this year’s 14 outstanding speakers include Rachel Wingfield from London, whose experiments with future scenarios combine biology with technology to create living architecture, as well as Nataly Gattengo of San Francisco’s Future Cities Lab who has won awards for robotics, responsive building systems and other developments around the Internet of Things.

More from the organizers: “Great ideas and technology create ever-new opportunities to bring projects to life everywhere and anywhere imaginable. Along with this opportunity comes the inevitable trials and challenges of physical and site specific work. One-off projects made for one-off locations can make you pull your hair out, and/or go broke in the process. The volume of variables, old and new, can be overwhelming: unpredictable environments, bleeding edge technology, custom fabrication, code, bugs, insects, greasy fingers, hackers, crashers, crashes, caches, spoilers, laws, landlords, curators, committees, workers, shippers, solder, electricity, sunlight, moonlight, fluorescent light, reflections, bad ideas, egos, feasibility, durability, production planning, scope, scale, budgets, and on, and on. What knowledge can be applied from previous experiences and what has to be learned on-the-fly, on a per project basis? INSTINT aims to arm you with insights and inspiration, and expand your ability to execute projects in this exciting, but complex, sometimes harrowing, and ever-shifting field.” Register today!