tsu*nahmie

digital scurrying

2009-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

a reconfigurable grid of backlit keypads which connects to a computer. interaction between the keys and lights is determined by the application running on the computer. there is no hard-wired functionality.

applications: live sample cutters, math simulations, drum machines, generative controllers, tonal maps, games, visualizations. browse here. we make available all sources to encourage community contribution and enthusiasm. we share and thrive.

Flight Fluctuations

2009-01-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

A simulation of global air traffic, put together by ppl at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. The map uses data from Flightstats.com, and overlays their position on a Miller cylindrical projection.

What is a switch?

2009-01-14T20:53:00.000-08:00

More from tellart (the jingle bells video):
The “What is a switch?” project is meant to demystify electronics for design students and artists - expanding their conception of what it means to design with embedded electronics. A switch, after all, is just a connection made or broken between power and ground.

What Is a Switch? - Designing Interactions Studio, RISD from Tellart on Vimeo.

What Is a Switch - Internet of Things Studio, RISD ID 2007 from Tellart on Vimeo.

happy holidays from your webcam

2009-01-04T12:42:00.000-08:00

tellart put together this cool "instrument." using the FLARToolkit and Papervision3D, they got your webcam to recognize pictures and play a note and created some cute little falling snowflakes to boot.

Tellart 2008 Holiday Card from Tellart on Vimeo.

on a side note, nahm family christmas 2008 was all about skyping our relatives via the new big tv my parents bought. my aunts, uncles, and cousins were bigger-than-life-size.

$5

2008-11-21T08:45:00.000-08:00

fivedollarcomparison.org is a blog where ppl post what they can buy for five dollars all around the world. (found via jan chipchase's twitter :) )

$5-donkey ride in ecuador

$5-chicken in Uganda

$5-partial bale of alfalfa hay

$5-2 hr bike parking in montreal

$5- taxi in peru

$5-musical instrument in thailand

The Unfinished Swan

2008-10-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

If paintball were cool, it would be in a totally white maze world with no dimensions until you splattered paint everywhere. The Unfinishd Swan is a video game currently in production.

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

stairporn.org

2008-10-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

a blog on stairs. i don't think i even knew i had a staircase fetish until i saw this.

Shaz Madani - works

2008-10-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

Clicked through a notcot post showing Madani's paper art (above) and found myself poking around his portfolio. London College of Communication, St. Martin's College. you know.

Thought this was a cool project, tracking and visualizing a week's expenditures. (black pins are needs, white pins are wants.)

And this is a print promotion for the M25 Motorway in London. "On one side, the poster gives exact directions that would have to be taken to get from one side of London to the other [. ..] The reverse side reads, 'wipe away the confusion take the M25.'"

graphic office

2008-10-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

packaging for whiteboard markers, permanent markers, hilighters, and batteries. all simple but excessively descriptive.

andreas and i were thinking about hyper-labeling the locations of things in our kitchen with huge, typographic signs. "trash." "recycling." "mugs." it would be great, but maybe not as great as office supplies are great.

India + Color

2008-10-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

Saw the most recent Sony Bravia video:

This theme of India as a land of color comes up again in the ad campaigns for India's tourism bureau, "Incredible India," (or rather, Incredible !ndia.) here are stills from the flash banner on their site.

Andreas and I agreed: it's a cool brand identity for a country. for india, specifically.

Oblique Strategies

2008-10-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt had published four editions (in 1975, 1978, 1979 and 1996) of what they call "Oblique Strategies." It's a deck of cards with a random aphorism on each, dedicated to prodding people out of creative funks. And it is now available in iphone:

Some examples:

Use an unacceptable color.

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics.

Fill every beat with something.

Don't stress one thing more than another.

Ask people to work against their better judgment.

Call your mother and ask her what to do.

Humanize something that is free of error.

Breathe more deeply

Do nothing for as long as possible

Use "unqualified" people.

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an excquisite frame

Faced with a choice, do both

Use fewer notes

Get your neck massaged

Remove specifics; convert to ambiguities

Remove the middle, extend the edges

Imagine the music as a series of disconnected events

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

Disconnect from desire

Mechanize something idiosyncratic

Do something boring

Accept advice

Pay attention to distractions

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.

And some unpublished ones from his diaries:

Steal a solution. (22 July)

Describe the landscape in which this belongs. (9 August)

What else is this like? (9 August)

List the qualities it has. List those you'd like. (9 August)

Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it. (9 August)

What would make this really successful? (9 August)

Who would make this really successful? (9 August)

How would you explain this to your parents? (9 August)

Try faking it. - from Stewart Brand (9 August)

What were the branch points in the evolution of this entity (20 August)

Back up a few steps. What else could you have done? (20 August)

When is it for? Who is it for? (23 August)

What do you do? Now, what do you do best? (27 August)

First work alone, then work in unusual pairs. (8 September)

What most recently impressed you? How is it similar? What can you learn from it? What could you take from it? (10 September)

Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left? (30 December)

Subway Time

2008-10-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

I just bought this at Little Otsu on Valencia. its awesome & combines two of my passions: calendars and subway maps.

Overnewsed but Uninformed

2008-10-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

so i don't speak german (as i learned incontestably while in berlin this summer). and thus, i had to rely on google translator to translate the page for me:

"News mediation was the beginning of our century still a few media is limited. ... With the possible anytime access to news about a variety of communication channels has a broad media landscape with a myriad of information producers and suppliers develop. For the viewer, it becomes more difficult to determine authenticity of messages. You are looking for sources to whom they can trust.

Overnewsed but Uniformed helps in the search. Sequences are described, ownership and dependencies disclosed and user behavior illustrated. Background information and the monitoring and analysis of the real message of a bridge no fall in Minneapolis convey the basis on whic the Chamber News better assess and categorize can."

from what I gather, its an infovis of the news-media industry.

can be downloaded (in german) from
www.overnewsed-but-uninformed.de

Signs of Life

2008-08-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

By Freddie Yauner for his work at Platform 11 at RCA in London.

In his words:

///

We spend our lives being directed by signage, but what do the signs get up to when they have no one to tell what to do? Reactive signage, giving a look into the lives of overworked pictograms.

Site specific instalation for Sleepless exhibition at the Great Eastern Hotel. When people were present, the sign would function, but when the space was empty the overworked pictogram [its very hard work standing on one leg all day] would take a well earned break, that is until he was needed back at work!
Flash animation controlled by a motion sensor.

///

kinetic sculpture

2008-07-10T16:10:00.001-07:00

Electric moons

text from yatzer: "Electric moons is one of the installations that will be at display during the STRP festival in Eindhoven, Holland. It’s a performance which makes use of balloons, sound, light and movement. The height of the helium balloons is adjusted with a computer-controlled cable, whilst the internal illumination is accomplished using dimmable super-bright LEDs, creating a pixel in a warped 8x8 spatial matrix."

BMW museum lobby

text from infosthetics: "a mechatronic data sculpture made up of 714 metal balls that translates a virtual design process into the space around it. seemingly weightless, the kinetic sculpture moves through a cycle of free abstractions and typical BMW vehicle forms."
see the hi-res version here.

PES

2008-07-09T22:35:00.000-07:00

http://www.eatpes.com/

extinction timeline

2008-07-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

notable extinction predictions:
2009: mending things
2013: getting lost
2018: secrets
addiction outlives intimacy
spam outlives coins
nothing outlives cher

click here to see it bigger

Monochromatic

2008-06-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

One Is the Loveliest Color

Commitment? Art project? OCD? Five New Yorkers who wear only one color all day, every day (and it’s not black).

By Joanna Goddard
Published Feb 18, 2008

Photographs by Tina Tyrell

Valeria “ValBlu” McCulloch
Shoe Designer. Yves Klein blue.

Why blue?
In college, I majored in color theory. Blue was the most interesting color, historically. Germanic tribes wore it to ward off enemies; Christians used it to denote divinity. Wearing blue for me is being in a dream all day.

Do you make your own blue shoes?
I go to leather fairs and have the factory make me shoes. I also buy white Chanel and Christian Louboutin shoes, and I color them blue with custom-ordered electric-blue Sharpies.

Do you wear blue makeup?
I wear YSL No. 3 mascara, Chanel Blue Satin nail polish, and blue Lancôme lip gloss, which looks clear when you put it on. And my bathroom products are blue, like my toothbrush.

Does the color reflect your personality?
Blue signifies loyalty, and I’m very loyal. It’s hard in this industry, but I’m a humanist.

There was a lot of electric blue in recent seasons.
It’s getting trendy. When it hits “mass,” it’s a turnoff.

What do your friends think?
My friend studied photography, and I was part of her thesis. She did a color study and took photos of me.

What color is your apartment?
My living room is neutral, but just go into my bedroom. I have a blue Nintendo, bedside table, suitcase, pillow, BlackBerry. And I collect blue gemstones. People once believed that sapphires had healing properties.

How does blue make you feel?
Blue is a peaceful color. The U.N. has a blue flag; all the presidential campaigns have blue. It touches every realm of life, from cosmic to future.

Rebecca Turbow
Fashion Designer. Gray.

Why gray?
I actually wore turquoise for eight years, but last September, I switched to gray. I’d had a bad year and needed to get out of it.

That’s a big switch.
I like everything to be clean, and gray is clean. Gray is between black and white, so it’s a noncolor, almost. I feel messy and unclean if I wear other colors.

Where do you shop?
I make all my own clothes. I can’t wear anyone else’s.

What about shoes?
That’s hard because even the soles of my shoes have to be gray or white. I get annoyed if the soles are black.

Do you ever miss turquoise?
When I was in turquoise, people would stare at me everywhere I went. It’s still the color of my clothing line, so my business cards and stickers are turquoise. But I’ve separated myself from it, so I’m separated from my work.

Is that a good thing?
Gray is refreshing. My boyfriend says it looks classy. Sometimes he’ll wear black, and I’ll wear silver. I like that; we match.

Does it bother you when other people wear mixed colors?
I like mixed colors on other people. I just can’t wear or make them. I work for the singer of Of Montreal, and he lets me make him wild, monochrome outfits.

Will you wear gray for the rest of your life?
My mom thinks I should branch out, but I can’t imagine that. I don’t know if it’s a condition; I’ve always wondered if there’s a name for it.

Karim Rashid
Industrial Designer. White half the time, pink half the time.

Why white?
In college, I was obsessed with wearing all white. I felt angelic and free. But then, in the early eighties, I started wearing black. That was status quo in the avant-garde. If you were interesting—a designer, an architect—you wore all black.

How long did that last?
I went to Rome to do my master’s in ’82. I wore all black, with pink hair. But that was considered Fascist. I had to tone down my dress.

Why didn’t you return to black back in New York?
Every profession has dress codes. In 2000, I was on a panel with nine architects, and I wore a white suit. Everyone was wearing black except me. I felt detached from the incestuous profession.

Now you also wear pink. Why?
Sometimes I think it’s because my mother dressed me in pink when I was a child. She wanted me to be a girl.

How do people react to a grown man in pink?
I make them smile. They say, “You make me happy.”

What about underwear?
The only place in the world that sells men’s pink underwear is American Apparel.

How do you keep your clothes clean?
I carry Tide to Go. If I spill red wine, I just rub it off. I should write a book about wearing white.

Do people try to convince you to wear other colors?
I was shopping in Europe with a couple friends, and they talked me into trying on a black shirt and black jeans. If you look good in white, you look really good in black.

But you didn’t buy the jeans?
My statement is, Be who you are. Do what turns you on.

Elizabeth Sweetheart
Fabric Designer. Kelly green.

Why green?
I’m from Nova Scotia, where green is in your surroundings. I missed nature when I moved to New York. I started wearing green nail polish, and it spread all over me.

When did you move here?
I hitchhiked down in 1964. I had long braided hair; I was a beatnik.

Where did you live?
We used to live on the Lower East Side. A hippie gang was on our block, and you had to know them to get down the street. They had weapons and chains. They babysat for our son.

What’s your son up to these days?
Sam is a mentalist, a magician. It’s classic mind-reading; he’ll memorize a deck of cards. He’s our one and only.

How long have you been married?
Forty-one years. Every Saturday morning, we’d say, “Maybe we’ll make it to City Hall this morning.” We missed a few because we slept late. Finally, we went and got married. We didn’t have a ring, so my husband, Robert, made one out of paper.

Do you have any grandchildren?
No, but I have a grand-puppy. My son asked me to babysit him, and I airbrushed his tail green. Sam flipped out.

Tell me about your style.
I always wear overalls. I have 30 pairs. I buy children’s sizes from GapKids and Chadwick’s. And I dye everything—my Nike sneakers, my underwear. I can’t fall asleep unless I’m wearing green.

Do you wear green to work?
Every day. I’ve been in the design business over 44 years.

How do strangers react?
Many people say, “Oh! That’s my favorite color.” On 42nd Street, tourists ask to take my photo. I take the F train and know everyone on it—kids, Japanese girls with green in their hair, all the junkies. I’ve never had a negative experience.

Stephin Merritt
Singer-Songwriter. Brown.

Why brown?
Years ago, I did a photo shoot with my dog, Irving, for Esquire magazine, where they had various celebs wearing fake eighties clothing. They put me in a preposterous outfit. Blondie was also part of the shoot, and they gave me advice: Just say, “Sorry, I only wear black.”

So why didn’t you start wearing black?
Unfortunately, black at this point tends to make you look like a French tourist in Soho. It also makes me look ill. I look ill enough; I really don’t need to call attention to that.

But brown is good?
I have brown hair and eyes, and I believe in matching.

It must be hard to clash when you wear all brown.
Impossible. The great thing about brown is when it fades, you can’t tell what color it originally was. There’s no sense of the “right” color saturation.

What else do you like about it?
Brown shows absolutely nothing. You’d have to spill some fuchsia paint. If you wear black, dandruff is horrific and lint is a nightmare—and dog hair, in my case, is a particular problem.

What color is your dog?
White and beige with a little brown nose. He’s incredibly cute.

Are there any downsides to wearing brown?
I’ve been invited to two events that required black tuxedoes, so I didn’t go. I always said I’d wait until I’d been asked to three tuxedo events before I accepted. So I’m in danger of needing to wear a tuxedo.

What were the events?
The first was a party at an embassy; the second was a wedding. I don’t know why tuxedos were necessary. But obviously I’ve never been to a tuxedo event. Maybe it’s glorious fun.

from New York Magazine

procrastination.

2008-05-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

a film by john kelly, made as part of his masters at RCA

the last twenty seconds = me and my implementation project.

corners and recesses

2008-05-17T13:47:00.000-07:00

work by takeshi miyakawa, and shots of his studio.

also, the stack shelf, by shay alkalay

Super Design Market

2008-05-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

also by multistorey, the installation design for super design market, a "a curated selling market, with products from Britain’s best up and coming and established designers."

SDM 2008

SDM 2007

and also, an "photo booth" installation they did for V&A village fete. see the images they took here. they're pretty convincing.

multistorey

2008-05-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

work by multistorey, a graphic design/branding firm in london

a mail promotion

message

in-envelope

package design for marks & spencer

laundry hamper tag

cd rack tag

magazine rack tag

trash can tag

book cover for the book, paper engineering

graphics for a nokia marketing brochure

chairs!

2008-05-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

3x3 chair

work by takeshi miyakawa

park bench with a twist

canvas chair

steverlynch and hoegner

strap stool

steverlynch and hoegner

zip chair

steverlynch and hoegner

boomerang chair

sliceform

from the show for finishing design students at the university of quebec at montreal

loveseat

hose+chair

_ is the new __.

2008-04-23T20:52:00.000-07:00

thanks, abel.

apologies

2008-04-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

hi, mary. sorry for the long draught. and sorry for the sudden vomiting of posts. if i've been largely absent, it's cause i've been trying out a new application for collecting things on the internet. check it out: buru.com. i've been sorta working for them, doing branding/needfinding.

anyways. here's some stuff. and there's more at my flickr. i'll try to jump back on this...

bookshelves

2008-04-23T20:36:00.000-07:00

achille castiglione bookshelf

totem bookshelf

chaos bookshelf

beeboard bookshelf

parallel shelving

fold up shelves

4578969

lesezeichen

bookshelf wall

graphics... type... logos...

2008-04-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Victor Vasarely op art

colors and rectangles

z475

1975

lost+found

colors and circles

depth

diagrams

national year of reading logo

book cover for the divine comedy

soda cans

guardian infographic

reappropriating metaphors

2008-04-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

designs taking metaphors pretty literally.

wall calendar

zipper installation

folder usb

zip furniture

hanging chairs

typographic links

2008-04-23T20:29:00.002-07:00

physical hyperlinks: connecting words in a book.

a quickr pickr post

rules

2008-04-23T20:29:00.001-07:00

ABC3D

2008-03-21T13:49:00.000-07:00

popup book by marion bataille, a french graphic designer, that will be published in 10/08

windows music

2008-03-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

"music composed using only sounds from windows xp and 98"

iTransit.net

2008-03-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

nyc transit for iphone

main index

website designed specifically for iphone users to access nyc subway information. it does the sliding transitions, of course.

www.itransit.net/#_Itransit

it makes me both wish i were in new york again, and also that i had an iphone.

craigslist goes 2.0

2008-03-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

new craigslist interface. "so web 2.0 we don't need vowels."

crgslst.com

i think i'm a sucker for column-layouts. especially when they slide over attractively. but this is great. the view/remember/open in new tab options will make apartment hunting a lot nicer this summer...

rainbow in your hand.

2008-03-16T19:56:00.001-07:00

bouncing silicone

2008-03-16T01:08:00.000-07:00

Figure 1. A falling liquid stream rebounds off a deep bath of the same silicone oil.

"Normally a liquid stream colliding with a pool of liquid merges immediately upon contact, perhaps also bringing air into the pool with it. However when the pool is moving as the stream hits, it can slide along the surface being separated from the pool by a thin layer of air. The air layer supports the jet and lubricates the motion between it and the bath. The same process happens when sliding a piece of paper across a desk or when a car hydroplanes on a wet road. But instead of a hard surface like the desk or the road, the jet is on top of a liquid surface, which is flexible like a trampoline. Because of the weight of the jet and the force required to change directions, the surface is pressed downward and a dent is formed in the shape of a bowl. The sliding jet then ramps out of this bowl and into the air.

The bouncing jet is a new example of steady noncoalescence and a new example of a fluid flow with multiple stable states at the same conditions."

dvno

2008-03-02T21:20:00.001-08:00

justice's video for dvno.

wow. awesome.

lamps.

2008-03-02T21:18:00.000-08:00

plug lamp

claesson koivisto rune lamp

ilse crawford lamp

james irvine lamp

quiet things

2008-02-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

wedge wallclock

made with bookmaking materials

magnetic curtain by Florian Kräutli

A curtain which you can shape to any form. Through the incorporated structure and magnets, it stays in the shape you push and pull it to.

laptop sleeve with snaps. by working class heroes.

mmmmm... industrial felt.

gmail marketing in russia.

2008-02-24T19:22:00.000-08:00

explosions & art

2008-02-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

the process of cai guo-qiang. beautiful film.

http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=f14f365dd2ae53dc79b7b6d6f55a16e29001e6a2

tech + graphics

2008-02-23T17:31:00.000-08:00

a clock face that uses the pie chart metaphor to tell time

visualizes power through an electric cord

rhizome: definitions

2008-02-23T17:04:00.000-08:00

deleuze and guattari:

"The rhizome is an antigenealogy. It is a short-term memory, or antimemory. The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots. Unlike the graphic arts, drawing or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversilble, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight." p. 21 (Thousand Plateaus)

"Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be." p. 7 TP

"A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines... Every rhiozme contain lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified attributed., as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees." p. 9 TP

"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo. The tree is filiation, but the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance. The tree imposes the verb "to be," but the fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, "and... and.. and..." p. 25 TP

"A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles" p. 7 TP

Casual Infovis - definition

2008-02-20T00:42:00.001-08:00

reflections from a georgia tech student, John Stasko

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~john.stasko/papers/infovis07-casual.pdf

\\\

"In our view the Ambient Infovis, Social Infovis,
and Artistic Infovis systems, as well as other new domains and uses
of visualization point to a complement to traditional infovis that we
call Casual Information Visualization (Casual Infovis). All of these
sub-domains share the same relationship to more traditional infovis
research, that of center and margin. Though each sub-domain has its
own character, we propose Casual Infovis as an umbrella term that reframes
ambient, social, and artistic infovis, as well other edge cases as
a part of, but different from, more traditional infovis systems and techniques.

We note four differences between traditional infovis systems
and Casual Infovis.

* User Population: The user population is enlarged to include a
wide spectrum of users from experts to novices. Users are not
necessarily expert in analytic thinking, nor are they required to
be experts at reading visualizations.

* Usage Pattern: Usage expands past work, to focus on other parts
of life. Systems are intended for usage that is momentary and
repeatable (over weeks and months), or contemplative (a long
moment at an art gallery).

* Data type: The data is typically personally important and relevant,
as opposed to work-motivated. This means that a user’s
relationship to the data is often a more tightly coupled one.

* Insight: We propose that the kinds of insight that Casual Infovis
may support are different from more traditional systems. We
suggest that developers are interested in providing insight about
data that is not analytical, but instead of a different sort.

Thus, we define: Casual Infovis is the use of computer mediated
tools to depict personally meaningful information in visual ways that
support everyday users in both everyday work and non-work situations."

"Casual Infovis shifts the goals of the systems that are built; system designers
focus on creating insights that are different from the design
goals of traditional infovis systems. If infovis is intended, according
to Card, Mackinlay, and Shneiderman, to amplify cognition and
to provide insight, what does this insight consist of? What may help
to define Casual Infovis systems is to explore the shift in these edge
case’s sense of providing insight."

///

key impact: infovis leads to the paradigm shift of information --> insight

complexity as a thermodynamic system

2008-02-19T23:46:00.000-08:00

according to Michael Serres:

"[An organism] receives, stores, exchanges, and gives off both energy and information-- in all forms, from the light of the sun to the flow of matter which passes through it (food, oxygen, heat, signals). This system is not in equilibrium, since thermodynamic stability spells death for it, purely and simply. It is in a temporary state of imbalance, and it tends as much as possible to maintain this imbalance. It is hence subject to the irreversible time of the second law [of thermodynamics], since it is dying." (134-135)

qtd. in Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity (2001)

Noise and complexity, according to Henri Atlan

2008-02-19T23:44:00.000-08:00

"Generalization: theory of organization by the diminution of redundancy under the effect of factors of noise. Following von Neumann, we have arrived at the idea according to which in a system of "extremely high complexity," the property of self-organization should consist in that the factors of noise in the environment product two opposite effects: on the one hand, they increase the quantity of information of the total system by augmenting the autonomy among the parts; on the other, they diminish this quantity of information by the accumulation of errors in the structure of these parts. in order for these effects to be possible, that is to say for them to be able to coexist without the system ceasing to function, it is necessary for the system to be of "extremely high complexity," that is, composed of a great number of parts interconnected in multiple ways." (136-137)

"randomness is a kind of order, if it can be made meaningful; [secondly,] the task of making meaning out of randomness is what self-organization is all about." (136)

"Complexity is composed of a great number of parts interconnected in multiple ways. [...] Complexity is an emergent phenomenon whose occurrence cannot be accurately predicted. [...] Evolution is apparently oriented toward more complexity. [...] Atlan identifies the state between rigid structure (the crystal) and vanishing structure (smoke) as the domain of living organisms. The interstitial condition marks the moment of complexity." (137)

qtd. in Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity (2001)

complexity in terms of "algorithmic compression"

2008-02-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

"the complexity of something is the size of the smallest program which computes it or a complete description of it. Simpler things require smaller programs." - Gregory Chaitin (138-139)

"the complexity is directly proportional to the length of the shortest possible description of that object. As a corollary we can give a rather clear-cut condition for something to be random (i.e. maximally complex): a string of letters is random is there is no rules for generating it whose statement is appreciably shorter-- that is, requires fewer letters to write down-- than the string itself. So an object or pattern is random if its shortest possible description is the object itself. Another way of expressing this is to say that something is random if it is incompressible." When understood in this way, complexity and compressibility are indirectly proportional: the less compressible, the more complex, and vice versa." -John Casti (139)

qtd. in Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity (2001)

complex vs. complicated

2008-02-19T23:39:00.000-08:00

from David Depew and Bruce Weber:

"Complex systems are not just complicated systems. A snowflake is complicated but the rules for generating it are simple. The structure of a snowflake, moreover, persists unchanged and crystalline, from the first moment of its existence until it melts, while complex systems change over time. It is true that a turbulent river rushing through the narrow channel of rapids changes over time too, but it changes chaotically. The kind of change characteristic of complex systems lies somewhere between the pure order of crystalline snowflakes and the disorder of chaotic or turbulent flow. So identified, complex systems are systems that have a large number of components that can interact simultaneously in a sufficiently rich number of parallel ways so that the system shows spontaneous self-organization and produces global emergent structures." (142)

qtd. in Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity (2001)

characteristics of complex systems

2008-02-19T23:24:00.000-08:00

Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity (2001):

compiled by Taylor:

1. Complex systems are comprised of many different parts, which are connected in multiple ways.

2. diverse components can interact both serially and in parallel to generate sequential as well as simultaneous effects and events.

3. Complex systems display spontaneous self-organization, which complicates interiority and exteriority in such a way that the line that is supposed to separate them becomes undecidable.

4. The structures resulting from spontaneous self-organization emerge from but are not necessarily reducible to the interactivity of the components or elements in the system.

5. Though generated by local interactions, emergent properties tend to be global.

6. Inasmuch as self-organizing structures emerge spontaneously, complex systems are neither fixed nor static but develop or evolve. Such evolution presupposes that complex systems are both open and adaptive.

7. Emergence occurs in a narrow possibility space lying between conditions that are too ordered and too disordered. This boundary or margin is "the edge of chaos" which is always far from equilibrium.

for stefan.

2008-01-28T23:29:00.000-08:00

artwork/sculpture/objects by matthias pliessnig.

sketch17

henri

headstand

peri

waiver

sketch10

outrig

sketch35

matthias pliessnig's site

bic, interated.

2008-01-28T23:25:00.000-08:00

bic vase

bic chandelier

bic creature

bic bow and arrow

bic sphere

bic installation

bic installation detail

compiled by designboom

structures

2008-01-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

benches

l'arbre de flonville

http://www.samuelwilkinson.com/

iGuitar?

2008-01-25T15:09:00.000-08:00

a program that lets you finger and play the frets of a guitar. seems... limited. by scale for one, by the awkwardness of picking and fingering so close to eacother by another. seems like a good insight though, for what might be interesting on a multi touch screen. maybe this will prove to be a good tool for song writers on the go....

http://code.google.com/p/pocketguitar/

also:

time lapse

2008-01-24T02:48:00.000-08:00

balloon race

thunderstorm (make sure to watch the last five seconds)

amazing.

2008-01-22T23:12:00.000-08:00

by ENESS, a well-known australian interactive/experience design group.

it seems like they do a little bit of everything: installations, art, tongue in cheek products... plus, the founders all met in third grade!

you must go to their site to see their project for the audi tt launch: http://www.electronicmiracles.com/

more dining entries

2008-01-21T23:56:00.000-08:00

here's some more entries for the the dining in 2015 competition:

name of design : eco-cook
design by : kechenyi camille from france

designer's own words: "In 2015, environment problems from energy will become more and more serious. I believe that everyone’s life will be concerned. Thus kitchenware will be modernise to reduce energy consumption. My eco-cook is an object that helps to save water, energy and time. Everyday, everyone, has to cook pasta, rice or various vegetable. Therefore different pots are needed. In a unique pot, the eco-cook enables to divide 2 or 3 space and to boil different food at the same time. Thereby, water and gas or electricity is saved. Moreover when food is taken out the eco-cook, it will automatically drain out, allowing to win precious time. In 2015 I also believe that most people will always be in a hurry. The eco-cook design permits to help 2015 people that pay close attention to energy and time."

...

name of design : fragile
design by : Mey Kahn + Boaz Kahn from israel

designer's own words: "When was the last time you emphatically broke somthing? The ceramic salt and pepper shaker offers you the opportunity to do it! The product comes in one piece and by breaking it, you make it useful. Breaking is an experience of impulsive outburst, But this time is an act that builds rather than destroys. In a world of products whose shape is completely dictated by the designer, we enable the user to complete the design himself. The event of the breaking leaves its mark on the shaker and gives it its final, unique, one-of-a-kind appearance."

another use for that bic pen.

2008-01-21T23:54:00.000-08:00

designboom competition: dining in 2015. here's an awesome entry: din-ink, by andrea cingoli, paolo emilio bellisario, cristian cellini, and francesca fontana.

Annual Report

2008-01-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

James Felton creates an annual report every January of his past year. a fantastic idea, in my opinion. i like the corporate context informing the graphic language and the treatment of isotropic space.

you'll have to click on the images to see it in greater detail on my flickr [look for the button that says "original size"]. over there i also put up pictures of his annual reports from 2006 and 2005 if you're interested in seeing more. finally, of course, you can also check it all out at his site: feltron.com

finally, finally.

2008-01-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

well, i spent all day yesterday working on it and i think i'm finally finished with retooling my online portfolio for this go-around at the whole job-thing.

check it out: www.stanford.edu/~snahm
(uh, the link doesn't seem to be working. best to copy/paste it. i don't think blogger likes the ~.)

manilla laptop sleeve

2008-01-19T22:07:00.001-08:00

a felt "manilla envelope" for your laptop that is inspired by the macbook air ads. feeds directly into my office supply festishisms.

i must make one. now.

great news.

2008-01-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

the library of congress opened a flickr account!!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

sextant

woman

train yard

oranges

parachute

amazing pictures, but also amazing quality of information. they've put up a lot of archival data with each photo. it's inspiring, really. a lightbulb must have gone off, though: 24.95 for unlimited photo uploads?!

ads with humor.

2008-01-17T22:24:00.000-08:00

science world - sneeze

science world - elevator

science world - carbon

science world - beavers

listerine ad - coffee

listerine ad - fish

listerine ad - garlic

listerine ad - ashtray

jenga 2.0

2008-01-07T00:06:00.001-08:00

mathematicians ask how far outwards you can stack blocks. below, diagrams of the combinatorial architecture of the well-balanced stack.

i'm not sure why i found these images so captivating. maybe it's simply the different shades of gray and all the iterations laid out in a nice grid. really, though, i think i like how a "simple," yet deserving problem gets exploded into a full-on investigation. iterations. force diagrams. some combinations of elements makes this worth posting, i guess.

the simple stuff...

2008-01-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

... that can make a big impact.

cutting board + built in scale

tissue boxes. garnered from various places, esp. muji design competitions.

disguised tissue box

wooden

matte black

2008-01-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

a bathtub

a balcony

business cards

2008-01-03T17:29:00.001-08:00

some various business card designs.

divorce lawyer

a second-hand shop reuses the backs of business cards

acupuncturist

personal trainer

a strength test

camera obscura

a photographer's card makes a gesture towards the camera obscura

transparent, thick

that's a pretty sharp shadow.

dental imprint

pop-up card

a sentimental card, for a hand-made furniture business. seems appropriate.

scratch-off card

logos

2008-01-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

i liked seeing these logos get iterated.

brand union logo

patterned

map

saks

logo, patterned

saks

saks rebrand by michael bierut at pentagram.

type animations

2008-01-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

type experiments by chris tozer:

"wait, what is typography?" this is cute/handy:

and this one is really powerful. it takes a recording of a speech given by hitler, and conveys the message/commentary in english via animated type. a different conception of subtitles:

hot stuff.

2008-01-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

here's some pics of an installation by UVA

UVA interactive art

and some graphics.

on&on

randomly found on flickr. by "in the lab"

blech,

2007-12-26T23:23:00.000-08:00

i felt like this today.

I spent the day working on my new portfolio site. it's slow-go, especially since i tried to decrease the cheating factor this time by "coding" in dreamweaver, rather than just mapping buttons onto a big photoshopped layout... but it kept acting up so i gave up. or gave in, however you might want to look at it. it would be nice if i could figure out the best way to preserve flexibility and efficacy in all of this. my perfectionism is coming out everytime i have to move something around or resize an image and that's why this has been taking so long.

but the basic site looks like this so far:

I kinda stole the concept from a logo i saw. I'm wondering now whether it's too colorful.... whether it will just make all my projects look alternately drab or gaudy. hmm. yeah, and changing the colors now, without css, will result in me needing to do every single page over again. boo.

i miss the subway

2007-12-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

nyc subway - 1964

nyc subway - 1972

designed by Massimo Vignelli

ny subway cover - 1972

from design observer:

"In 1968, Unimark International was commissioned to design a sign system for the subways, and out of this chaos came order. Two Unimark designers, Bob Noorda and Massimo Vignelli, developed a signage plan based on a simple principle: deliver the necessary information at the point of decision, never before, never after. [...] Out with the complicated tangle of geographically accurate train routes. No more messy angles. Instead, train lines would run at 45 and 90 angles only. Each line was represented by a color. Each stop represented by a dot. What could be simpler?"

nyc subway - 2005

nyc subway -- 2007

nyc subway - blank template!

this makes me happy. and terrified.

this is for laura

2007-12-24T19:28:00.000-08:00

mugs.

pantone-mug

memo mugs

here's a poster by sagmeister, where the image is made with coffee cups (kinda related to mugs, right?) in different "cream gradients"

paper art

2007-12-24T15:30:00.000-08:00

brian dettmer - log

brian dettmer - eye's ornament

brian dettmer - the physiological basis of medical practice

peter callesen - little erected ruin

peter callesen - the short distance between time and shadow

jen stark - coriolis effect

jen stark - cylinder

jen stark - circle

jen stark - triangle

cara_barer

jack wang thesis poster

jack wang thesis poster detail

hey andreas, i did these with quickrpickr and it works well. another benefit: it makes me much more attentive to my flickr stuff.

stories from the field

2007-12-24T14:17:00.000-08:00

andreas entered a competition to create a logo for the UN film festival. the festival was themed "stories from the field."

here are other entries i thought were nice:

a quickr pickr post

catching up. archives. worries.

2007-12-23T08:52:00.000-08:00

i'm always too optimistic about my productivity. i had big plans for this, my last winter vacation. my visions encompassed a new online portfolio, scores of job applications, screenprinting, reading through seven or so books on rhizomes, complexity theory, and geophilosophy, and catching up on blogging.

but everything is getting bogged down because i forgot how much time i waste everyday just being around all my possessions. it feels so...pleasant and borderline nostalgic to be in the room that led me through high school and to have the wonderful chore of going through all the things that have fallen into disorganization while i've been gone the past few years.

magazines. i've been reading all the magazines that had continued to come in my absence. and rereading the ones that deserve it, several years after their publications. i have been disastrously trying to sort through my closet, which-- via my mother's good intentions-- has become bloated through the store-closing sales of a local department store and is now uncomfortably swollen with clothes and accessories. and i spend about fifteen minutes each morning repositioning the tom clancy hardcovers that are holding up my broken bed. i detangle necklaces for an hour and don't notice that time has passed.

in short, my vacation has been distracted with my own brand of domesticity. i am about fed up with it, but as soon as i feel productivity coming on again, a carful of family members roll up from new jersey. i'm happy to see them and to be in a household that feels like it has something to do every day, but all the same, this bodes poorly for my portfolio etc.

part of my hesitancy, though, is rooted in a bizarre ideological paralysis i'm having about how to organize myself and my thoughts. before leaving stanford for birmingham, i arrived in andreas's loft space, flustered, near-militant, and demanded that he sit down and figure out how i was going to archive my life.

with blogging, flickr, facebook, all the various files and formats on my computer, on my external hard drive, the logbooks that keep multiplying, the files of clippings that have yet to make it into the logbooks.... we have all these methods of making, keeping, and storing things, but i feel like i'm engaging all these archives without an idea of what kind of work i want them to do for me in the future.

the way i see it, the archive has been based on "retrieval," or being able to go back and find something later. but how often do we go back and look for something specific? sites like flickr or digg are really good at sharing things between lots of people in a given slice of time, but will the site with the most diggs on a monday even matter the next friday? when will anyone ever go looking back for that stuff? ...it comes down to "relevance" and what that means in a cultural semantic. right now, time and keywords determine relevance, but should we be searching by "relevance" at all?

clearly, we don't yet have criteria for what is "good," "useful," and "important" in the storing and organizing of information. i t would be nice if data could be informative in real-time, all the time. because no matter how good or thorough your tagging is, tagging only contextualizes things with that capcity that you, the user, are capable of tagging it in a given moment in time. i guess i want my archive to be better than i am at organizing and figuring out the potential in things. i want it to be able to draw connections that i might not be able to see.

so... all this to say: i'm not doing so well with blogging. i don't post often enough and certainly don't always post the things that i really should be archiving/sharing. sometimes it feels like too much of a hassle to scan something, so i won't blog it at all. and sometimes i feel a weird guilt about writing too much or else putting up too many images. and i am definitely deterred from posting about something if it seems "achronological." which is stupid, especially, since i think that chronology can be the most retarded organization-crutch to fall back on.

anyways. i shall be blogging haphazardly since i don't have any better ways of doing things. quickrpickr will help, i think. its a flickr app that will help me put images up better. and i'm going to try to keep up my flickr stuff better. captions? tags? who knows. all that stuff annoys me but it's probably a good idea. archiving seems to be a hard business.

any suggestions?

rain

2007-12-09T21:51:00.000-08:00

have you ever felt that rain is just one big negative feedback loop?

when it's raining, people are generally upset at the absence of sun. but they have to go out regardless, so they exit their residence and quickly discover (if they are a stanford student, anyway,) that they cannot bike due to the rain. ultimately, rain causes people to be later than they would otherwise be-- and so lateness, in this case, can be viewed as a negative feedback signal that tells you "it's raining."

but then, since you can't bike, you're walking to class. your reduced speed means you're spending even more time out in the rain, despite the fact that you dislike rain more than you dislike sun and thus, would rather spend less time outdoors when it's raining.

as you're walking, your shoes kick up water and your pants drag a little on the ground. you get wet, and because of water cohesion, your pants get wetter and wetter as the water absorbs upwards. more time spent outdoors (which you don't want to be spending anyway), means wetter pants.

and then, since your pants are soaking up more and more water, they're increasingly heavy. which means that they drag more and pick up water at a much faster rate.

by the time you finally get inside, your pants legs are so wet, that it's almost more irritating to be indoors than to be outdoors. which means that rain has spoiled even the initial positive option: that one would prefer indoors to outdoors.

and of course, you and everyone else have tracked the outdoors into the indoors, which means that all this negative feedback has actually changed the system and deteriorated it. things are slippery, dangerous, and dirtier. wet umbrellas are annoying and everywhere. i can't think of a single thing that is positively introduced to the indoors on rainy days...

the point of all this is to say that there are a lot of systems out there that are modeled like this. computer/tech interfaces come to mind (i.e. error messages that just interrupt you to tell you, alarmingly, that things are wrong but not how to fix it). i think we all get to a point where we just accept it.

but wouldn't it be great if we were able to deal with systems like that and actually do something different and insightful? or at least avoid creating rainy day systems in the first place?

when did staples become so iconic?

2007-12-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

saw this on nytimes book design review: a promo video for a novel, the gum thief, by douglas coupland.

question one: when did book releases start warranting youtube videos?
question two: since when did staples have such an iconic brand language?

just seeing the taupe-painted rafters of the ceiling in this video gave me that incredible sense of productive calm that i get every time i walk into a staples... (if anyone didn't know, i have a total office supply fetish.) plus, this video really illuminates the whole signage-as-brand thing that you see in these kind of large stores. those black signs with white type (helvetica, of course, but narrow? bold?)-- could this video be anywhere else?

bookshelves pt. 3

2007-12-08T10:03:00.001-08:00

Fwis has published their second annual review of bookshelves on their covers blog.

a lectern attachment for the ikea billy shelf.

and here are some interesting "concept shelves," i guess

I like these as modular furniture that doesn't feel obligated to snap together or fasten in a modular way.
here's a detail of the colors on the insides:

house-as-giant-bookshelf

could be interpreted as either heavy-duty bookends or "books-to-go"

i actually think that this would be great in action. say you were organizing your library by fiction vs. nonfiction, every time you picked up something or added something, you would have immediate feedback on the balance of your literary diet...

this is just cute.

my light.

2007-12-06T20:26:00.001-08:00

(closed)

(and opened)

... and here's a video.

I started with the challenge of building a better desk lamp, with my main intuition being that I wanted something wall mounted and discrete to be more economical about space on a work surface. However, that quickly evolved into the question of what was important when it came to task lighting.

Why can't "task" be gratifying? Why can't it be stimulating? My lamp design evolved into a design challenge of bringing gratification to a useful, pragmatic object.

I took a lot of inspiration from things i'd seen recently:

1. the gratification from the changing colors of Michael Hayden's light installation at chicago o'hare airport.

2. the olafur eliasson exhibit at sfmoma:

the changing gradients of color...

and the transformation is built into the bridge entering the exhibit...

(it's the same bridge... just uses polarized material that is silvery from one angle, i.e. entering, and brilliantly colored from the other, i.e. exiting.)

Some personal reflection (i need to get this down somewhere...):

Part of the assignment was to develop in an object a personal statement, i.e. a personal point of view on design and functionality. i was surprised to find that this did crystallize something for me... i was able to articulate four things, four words really, that were essential for me in designing this lamp. Gratification and stimulation were both part of that; contextual was another-- i'm obsessed with context and all the complex baggage that comes with it-- and the last word is still a bit unresolved... "dimensional" maybe? "enabling"? as words, none of those mean too much, i guess, but it's all part of... something more important. priorities. something that doesn't change about me-- not over time, space, or whatever else.

i felt-- amongst other presenters in my class-- that my design was ultimately about a sort of intellectualism. that it was a considered object. it was important to me that the lamp have a context. that it have use in a particular situation, but that the design itself was able to expand and empower that context-- to make it better, more compelling, or else to enable one to progress in some way. i think the other side to this is that it is all meant to be a part of someone's life, which is inherently complicated, emotional, variable, etc.

i like bridging the exercise of rationality with the tapping into something more human. and i think gratification is the right word for that, because unlike "pleasure," there is some sort of efficacy to gratification. something mental occurs in the user in order for an object to gratify, rather than just please. and yet gratification, like pleasure, inspires some degree of positive feedback, which is empowering and transformative if employed correctly. maybe it is all coming back to "transformative" and what a designer can transform. objects? experiences? expectations? societies?

well... today i'm a bit tired. but tomorrow, or soon thereafter, i will remember to post about rainy days/negative feedback systems, and i will put up my vision statement. which may help all of this make more sense.

typographic hands

2007-11-28T15:59:00.001-08:00

more can be seen here

foodpairings

2007-11-27T11:56:00.001-08:00

social networking for ingredients. click around: here.

ps. can someone tell me what font this is?

IKEA

2007-11-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

color-averaged ikea catalog, from infosthetics, who sourced it from jason salovan.

a full-size, 374-page reproduction of the entire 2007 IKEA catalogue, reduced & abstracted to only averaged color & lay-out structure.

"with an estimated 175 million copies distributed in 2006, the IKEA catalogue is thought to have surpassed the Bible as the most published printed work in the world. this group of 3 projects (374 Farben, Field Guide to Style, and Color & Catalogue) transforms that ubiquity of design into "varied pure color arrangements"."

see entire catalog here.

"surpassed the bible," is thought-provoking. i was in ikea this past sunday night and felt very zen during my two hour visit. ...was looking around for illuminated object insights and observed myself walking strange, labyrinthine paths around the store... bringing objects from all over the store to hold up against all types of lights... like bizarre offerings to lampshade alters. spent over a hundred on prototyping materials and impulse-purchased idea for a cork board substitute. and if that's not religious zeal, i don't know what is.

i will put up a picture of my cork board curtain later when i'm at home. i'm very happy with it; but will be happier once i get the paperclips that i want.

the undesigned

2007-11-06T11:28:00.001-08:00

SDesignUnit is a collective of designers based in seoul. their manifesto: "we are designing the undesigned through observation." their site has a few of their works and a huge collection of observational photos-- lots of information graphics, urban/public design/architecture, foodstuffs. they take a really wide-eyed, playful approach to what is essentially needfinding.

their enthusiasm for anonymous design reminds me of kiosk, a great store in nyc that i checked out this past summer. kiosk features "humble design" products from foreign countries visited by the store owner; the store features products from just one country at a time. currently, it's finland, the summer was germany. it's a great concept for a store, although i'm hardly the first one to have praised it. i got andreas's birthday present there: two kaweco sports pens from germany.

here's pictures of some items from kiosk's online store, along with some explanations.

Red Stripe Staples

Metal
2.5" x 3" x .5"

The concept behind the staples is simple, why pull out a staple when you can break it apart? The red stripe is the breaking point and the graphic makes things pretty clear.

Lottery Tickets

Paper and Metal Wire
5" diameter
Eslöv, SWEDEN

This type of lottery is called American in Sweden - the concept is enviously simple: Each ticket is perforated in the middle so that you easily can tear of one part and give to the loser winner. When you have expensively sold out of hope, you can easily break open the seal of the metal ring and get the stubs off for mixing. These types of tickets have been around forever. In Sweden you have to get a permit for each lottery you arrange unless you are a registered sports-club...

Bamboo Steamer Basket

Bamboo
11” diameter x 6 1/2”
Oita, JAPAN

Round Tape Dispenser

location unknown
5.5" x 6"

Large A1 Size Calendar

33” x 21 ½” /84cm x 54.5 cm
Hiroshima

book covers pt. 5

2007-11-04T13:58:00.001-08:00

below is a book cover. sorry if white on white = confusing.

"No Cause for Indictment: An autopsy of Newark": a book on the newark riots.

this cover reminds me of the artwork of julie mehretu. she's one of my favorites; i was lucky enough to see one of her paintings in person for the first time two weeks ago. first thing that strikes you: they're huge and have both incredibly sweeping gestures and really intricate details. it was mind blowing.

"The Best Creative Nonfiction": good, surprising front/back cover treatment by Rodrigo Corral.

formgiving: DP's 1&2

2007-10-30T13:34:00.000-07:00

on request, images of my homework:

creating forms that represent "hidden" and "exposed."

"secular" and "sacred"

A pen in the design language of Tom Dixon.

it's made out of steel rod, which led me to convert the gas stove in the french house kitchen into a smithy for sixish hours.

Briefly explaining myself: it pulls from his style/use/habits of line-->3D, symmetry/assymetry, and a deference to material. here are some of his pieces:

there were some really really cool pens in class. i'm sad i don't have pictures.

for all the germaphobes and vacuum enthusiasts

2007-10-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

this seems like an obviously good idea.

UV-C lights kills "99.9% of potentially harmful, otherwise invisible things that standard vacuums (even pink cyclone based cleaners) are powerless against – such as dust mites, mould, flea eggs and even viruses and bacteria."

retails for $499.95

Battles

2007-10-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

I got to see them in new york (for free!) and they were amazing. stefan showed me these videos this week. it was happiness in the midst of pen-making misery.

"Tonto" by Battles

"Atlas" by Battles

another reason to like the economist

2007-10-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

great illustration. everything comes together nicely. plus, has a nice 70's air to it.

"Because it isn't only six-year-olds who don't want to be left in the dark." see more ads from the campaign here.

more blog/reality crossovers....

2007-10-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

was superpleased to see "flip and tumble" bags on notcot, the product of a stanford PD thesis project. the post follows after a series that is focusing on "reusable plastic bag" culture and i'm totally objective in saying that eva's and hetal's product is the best.

the site looks great, the branding is much improved. and, having tried out the prototypes, i can confidently say that bunching up these bags is seriously as simple as the site claims. two seconds, max.

this is pretty exciting: people i remember from school going on to do things in life. i suppose this will become more and more common; and maybe i was expecting it from the beginning. but i couldn't have predicted how significant it feels to see people's designs out there in the world. i wish i could type out deeper thoughts than this, because what i'm thinking feels a bit more complicated/profound. hrrrm.

in other news, twenty seventeen was featured on some girl's blog. we've had that happen once in the past, but this is nice too. so now, my amateur modeling/boobshot is on the internet again. and our post follows one that has a picture of lindsey lohan. i think i've finally made it, guys.

entertainment.

2007-10-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

watch this.

david, ed, and joe made it for one of those 24 hr film competitions. hi-larious.

i don't know why this one isn't up. david made it way back in the beginning of the summer and i guess i was just too lame to post it back then. its a movie explaining "design."

a london calling

2007-10-18T12:48:00.001-07:00

from creative review: "unidentified flyposted objects"

a print campaign that is targeted at graphic designers. posters & mailings. screenprinting and letterpress makes me happy. nice colors, also.

i would write more, but for midterms.

Bitforms

2007-10-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was trying to explain a mindblowing exhibit i saw at a gallery in the meatpacking district this past summer-- Daniel Rozin at Bitforms. we came across it totally by accident, when we were trying to visit a gallery in the same building. it was not only incredible to see, but lucky too, since it really affected/helped andreas out with thesis thoughts...

So there's a picture of Joann and me. It was amazing to be interacting with his work, which all sensed a person and behaved like "smart" mirrors to give us feedback of our own presence.

here's a shot of the mechanisms that went into making it work: the colors are created by rotating the position of a ring with a gradient on the outside. the motors would make these amazing insect-like sounds....

You can't really see in this picture, but this work with wooden pegs is incredible. the pegs are cut with a slanted edge, so that a slight ledge created shadows. by rotating the pegs, rozin could control lights and darks in the image as a whole. plus, they moved totally silently... so seeing them move was really surreal-creepy-beautiful.

Here's a photo from his site; maybe it explains things better:

I don't have too much time to write something out about rozin himself, but here's the copy-paste from bitforms:

Daniel Rozin (b. 1961, Jerusalem) creates interactive installations and sculptures that have the unique ability to change and respond to the presence of a viewer. Although computers are often used, they are seldom visible. Mirrors and mediated perception of the self are central themes in Rozin’s recent work. In most of his pieces the viewer takes part, actively and creatively, in the performance of his art.

Displayed at the gallery doorstep, Rozin’s Weave Mirror assembles 768 motorized and laminated C-shaped prints along the surface of a picture plane that texturally mimics a homespun basket. A seemingly organic smoky portrait comes in focus to the sound of clacking steps made by the sculpture’s moving parts. Informed by traditions of both textile design and new media, the Weave Mirror and paints a picture of viewers using a gradual rotation in greyscale value on each C-ring. A playful juxtaposition between the rustic and photographic, this sculpture is suspended from the ceiling. Its functional circuitry and wiring is visible behind the picture plane, exposing its genius craft.

Also exhibited for the first time, Rozin’s Peg Mirror comprises 650 circular wooden pieces that are cut on an angle. Casting shadows by twisting and rotating in unison, wooden pegs forming concentric circles surround a small central camera. The mirrored image produced in this work is activated by software authored by Rozin that processes video signals and breaks up imagery geometrically, seemingly pixel by pixel. The silently moving wood components in this piece flicker like jewels or coins in the spotlight, challenging our notions about what constitutes a “digital object”.

For more than a decade Rozin’s art has employed a wide range of materials including chrome spheres, flat wood panels, and city trash from the streets of New York. Software art that links screen-based performance with real-time video processing has been another focus of Rozin’s efforts since the mid-1990s. The Snow Mirror, which uses an artist-authored algorithm that floats site-specific visual imagery of the immediate past into the present, hovers in the gallery mid-air as a projection on silk fabric. Exhibiting for the first time in the United States, the Snow Mirror debuted at bitforms gallery in Seoul last year.

coming back from kairos at 2 am

2007-10-04T02:24:00.000-07:00

now that mary has been spreading the gospel, i feel very very bad about not having posted much since school started. a combination of school kicking my ass and my computer monitor being (a) tv static or (b) distorted in the x-axis has dissuaded me from looking at pretty things on the internet as well.

here's a nice line from papercuts today:

When my wife and I got married, we combined our book collections and made a deal. It’s the kind of brutal arrangement that pretty much guarantees we’re sticking it out until the end. Here’s how it works: If she ever leaves me, I get to keep all her books. If I ever leave her, she gets mine. Loser take all. More things in life ought to work that way.

and for no reason at all than that paragraph from mr. dwight garner, a few life ambitions: 1. tree house. 2wedding registry at phaidon to accumulate all expensive design books that i want. 3. octagonal-shaped library (in which to house all my happy books).

i've been taking a seminar that bill burnett is calling "voice lessons." it's a predicatably "bill" class, i suppose, one to teach us how to maneuver around the world as ambiguously-degreed PD people and how to "find our voice." how to be smart about it, how to articulate it, and figuring out what "it" is exactly and what "it" is that you want. it's the class i look forward to the most-- for the people, for the break from the present, for the self-reflection... we watched a clip of the film version of the fountainhead today and also did some elevator pitches, which got me to thinking about tall buildings.

with this seminar in addition to a negotiation class i'm taking this quarter, i feel like everything is starting to get directed "up." going up elevators is more than just 30 second pitches... it seems to be a lot more about some literary motif... elevating life in a wholly practical way that is a little depressing, a little resigned. most definitely mundane. but today, standing in an "elevator" created by pushing some chairs around, it felt positively terrifying-- and without even leaving the ground.

i remember having written in people's high school yearbooks about being at the unsteady cusp of something in our lives. some sort of precarious place that's either at the top of a peak in a thrilling way, or maybe in an intimidating way. well, that was all bullshit back then. i'm really feeling it now. today in the seminar, we jotted down some thoughts on "workview" (that's it, just the word and what it feels like in your head). i decided to type it up here. (indulge me.)

I'm realizing that work is increasingly about setting out to do something. And only after that, it's attending to the details. Details can drag you down and details are most often about people. Details carry everything else out; so it seems that ideas are in setting out and details are the means of execution. Those details form the "task."

But something I didn't expect was "setting out" being work; getting started and even starting over-- it's the ideas that get you out of the details...

Work, versus school, is to become a specialist. I think that work means becoming the person who is responsible for something, someone the others turn to for x. It's training yourself for longer attention spans and more and more reliance on others. It's hurrying and waiting, because you're part of something bigger-- and only sometimes more empowering-- than yourself.

So i wrote that down in class, but i think what i hit on was the insight that what i most fear is the stopping of growth. i never want to stop being a generalist. i never want to have become an authority on something. but it seems like the elevators are only going up sometimes, not in or out or slightly bearing left.

have you seen hotel chevalier yet? i wish an elevator could take me to live in a wes anderson movie.

i want this

2007-09-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Seven Hundred Penguins, a collection of penguin book covers.

rectangular or polar?

2007-09-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

an undisciplined booklet of graph paper.

and these:

ingenious. wish i had them in calculus way back when.

eye-catching

2007-09-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

look at these colors!

for some reason, the palette of colors in this... air canada ad (?) really caught my eye... it's that surreal technicolor printing of the sixties and seventies. i would love to know more about that printing process-- whatever it was that gave color the qualities that it has in "suriving" documents.

just below on the same blog (hi + low), i saw posts of these two graphic design projects: poster by sf resident, tauba auerbach, and pop art by edward ruscha. it wasn't deliberate, but both seemed applications of the color inspiration in that postcard.

the minnesota state fair

2007-09-06T09:23:00.001-07:00

Photos taken by andy at reference library: cakes and jams at the minnesota state fair. for some reason, i find these totally inspiring, specifically for twenty seventeen thoughts that are floating around in my head. ever since my idea for a french house 07 shirt was never realized (i digress: it would have been a shirt with horizontal lines across the whole front and a graphic of several multi-colored cups sitting on the line-aka-shelves), i've been thinking about stuff-on-shelves shirts. plus, lucy has always been inspired by cakes.

the blog is a picture album of lo-fi photos of random, usually old or nostalgic things, many images taken from ebay. it successfully tapped into my nostalgia-triggers when i saw The Ox-Cart Man post, one of my favorite books from elementary school (i liked it for no reason at all, in hindsight). the undercurrent of curiosity reminds me of cabinet magazine, but with less preoccupation with "taste" and eccentricity-- for better or worse(?).

another thing about reference library: all prejudices i have against horses aside, i like how the posting just below features a horse with the sole tag "beautiful." so sensitive-indie-artsy. i love it.

papercuts and major life decisions.

2007-09-06T08:30:00.000-07:00

my new favorite blog to read is papercuts at the new york times site which is, not surprisingly, "a blog about books". i think Dwight Garner has such potent personality coming across in his entries-- something that i admire and am thinking its about time to emulate. in a post on book-tearing voyeurism, he writes a simple enough introduction,

"I’ve occasionally, I suppose, gotten a thrill from tossing a bad book across the room, or out into the back lawn, or dropping one straight into a Manhattan trash can.
And once, traveling in Mexico, I ripped in two a copy of a paperback I was reading – Jayne Anne Phillips’s “Machine Dreams” – so my wife could start the first half while I polished off the second."

shocking, right? (i'm totally serious.) one of my favorite features, a longish piece titled The Long Ride Home, is just notable for its sensitivity to things. things in general.

he features interesting people, to whom he asks all the same questions. Miranda July just put up a playlist and almost convinced me to actually buy something off itunes. i was happy to see Ricardo's dad, Dagoberto Gilb being interviewed for his new book. when asked about a short story he's currently writing, gilb explains, "I was asked to write it for an anthology, and I really love my life when I am asked to write exactly what I want to write."

in response to one of garner's stock questions, "How much time - if any - do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?" Daniel Clowes answers, "I’m kind of an incompetent and unfocused “Web surfer” (that sounds like something my grandmother would say - surely there’s a more current phrase?)" i wanted to quote that just because i think it articulates how i feel all the time on the internet and i was charmed. (in response to the same question, Gilb quips, "Is e-mail the Web? Too much of that, though I think of e-mail as a form of belles-lettres (though I also would say the tacos down at La Moreliana are gourmet good).")

but i suppose i shouldn't be shocked or charmed. i mean, clowes is probably a funny, artistic guy with a good interview more often than not. and of course, garner has made a career as a new york times blogger for a reason. his posts are interesting--they pull from a lot of different sources all over the web and his personal history-- they are diverse, they illuminate a lot of niche arenas of the "book world," and most importantly, they're not overdone.

anyway, all this talking... before i sound like i'm writing an essay, or worse, before i become a total black ink review cliche, all this to say that maybe it's about time to start writing more on my own little blog to no one. now that i'm a production line for problem sets and am using my laptop more for its ram processing than for word processing, i think i should try to sharpen my mental pencils and keep writing. even if only more fleshed out thoughts and considerations of the pretty pictures i might put up here. so with dwight garner's framed photo on my metaphorical desk, i'll do my best to dutifully tap away. though it feels ironically more self conscious to be publicly doing this for nobody but myself... oh. hi, mary.

a dozen pencils

2007-09-06T08:17:00.001-07:00

this is a project by yuta watanabe, a japanese design student in london. (portfolio: here) a dozen pencils caught my attention a while back, probably speaking to my office-supply fetishisms. some of the ideas are more enticing than others; i like the clothespin, the glasses... but looking at them again, i think i mostly like the colors and background gradients in these photos. it evokes a moodiness that i think i see in a lot of films, and not in a lot of art: a grown-up effort to recreate an "elementary school earnestness."

something to look forward to

2007-08-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

Found thisdayintype.com, which consists of a typographic interpretation of the date, each day. i suppose it's the layman's pentagram font calendar.

here are some of my favorites.

wish this one didn't have the red text, since the form of the numbers is quite lovely.

could do without the background image on this one, though i do like the gradient on the 7.

this one is here for mary, since i think she will enjoy an exclamation point with a speech bubble.

(it's august 3rd)

this one isn't too revelatory, but it gets an honorable mention for attention to detail. i appreciate that the A and the 5 meet so well.