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a quick overview of making your survival software toolkit mobile on a thumbdrive; nice reading and worth the try for those working in various location, without laptops
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add a RSS Feed to your Facebook profile in order to drive more traffic to your blog/website
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links for 2008-02-28
February 28, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: application, archiving, blog, diffusion, facebook, gtd, lifehack, mobile, PR, productivity, RSS, storage, traffic, usb, webdev
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Thoughts on a late Tate Friday evening
A few weeks ago, on a cold Friday evening, with Amandine, we went at the Tate Modern – I then realised it was a long long time i did not cross the bridge to go and spend a couple of hours in the museum. It was nice to be there, and while walking in the main exhibition, I started to take some notes about some pieces and ideas that were coming to my mind; below are a couple of them, these are personnal rough notes taken on the go if such a disclaimer can avoid any confusions.
We first went to see the Shibboleth by Dorris Salcedo – the piece in the Turbine Hall at the moment; it echoed the rehabilitation of the building in 2001 by Herzog and De Meuron in 2001, originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1947 – the exact same architects who designed the Church we came across in East London, more pictures by Amandine on her Daily Bread.
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On flickr there’s a dedicated pool to this Gilbert Scott, architect, who acted as design consultant on the Battersea power Station.You can’t help but wonder about the how the Shibboleth piece has been made, built, and then also on the why. The idea in this quite amazing installation is to deal with the past of Great Britain as an colonialist Empire, as Amandine reframed it to me.
Shibboleth is any language usage indicative of one’s social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group.
I like the term ‘an archeological sense of history’ as stated in the leaflet, more details on the website. Aalex nonetheless had a quite different opinion spotting the fact that being forced to read 10 pages of obscure text to understand a piece of art was something that was a bit too much, and definitely not really enjoyable. I couldn’t help but think again what I wrote earlier. I like this process when you reconsider what you like under a new light, shed by someone you like the work.
We finally went to the main exhibition of Juan Muñoz. Of all the nice things there, I really liked the Room 7 “The Crossroads Cabinets” where he makes use of the notion of Cabinets de Curiosités to present collections of objects; it’s related with the Renaissance idea of bringing together disparate objects: relics, works of art, freaks of nature and other oddities. Quite strangely this definition fitted quite perfectly the one of a blog nowadays in general; R-Echos.net and Assembling in particular. It would be nice to imagine a physical transcription/representation of those two website.
From there we finally went to the permanent collections which offered me a couple more thoughts and ideas; Mondrian, “Composition C (no.111) with Red, Yellow and Blue”, 1935 – that’s a very strange discovery: I realised I never ever saw a Mondrian in real, face to face. The reality is far from what my assumptions made me believe was the truth: Mondrian was to me using a perfect sort of cold and rigid mathematics, and the drawing and small reproductions in books I read drove me to think of his work in terms of perfect vector shapes, plain ‘simple’ colours arrangements uniformly recovering the surface of the canvas. Bam! Plain wrong: first, no canvas on this one – it seems to be wood. Then I realised the wood is badly cut, Mondrian did not even try to polish the sides, the whole thing seems to be closer to a rough than the perfect execution I was expecting. Nothing so rigid in fact, but much more intense, with the trace of the brush in the paint. Maybe this one was just a sketch – I would need to see more Mondrian to be sure – but it made me happy to rediscover his work leading at his own time toward a new aesthetic being more live, raw and sketchy than the clean shiny surface I assumed.
I quite liked as well the Ellsworth Kelly plain colours collection “Mediteranée” – not all the canvas being perfectly aligned on the front face create a sort of topography of colours.
Dan Flavin famous use of lights and colors made me sad I missed his last exhibition a little while ago; the use of colour reflections is brilliant and should inspire any designer, like using plain color reflection on a folded poster.
Now, more than 10 years after, I remember when in first year of Fine Art school, being taught by Pierre Charpin and Vincent Beaurin, I discovered some of the voluptuaries of the colour phenomenon applied to objects, design, sculpture, … one of the expression they both used that marked my mind was the Augmentation of the Signal. They both really and deeeply influenced me, my practice, my behaviours – maybe without even being conscious of this fact.
Seeing the pieces from Dan Flavin made a mental connection with the Field Study I republished some times ago two times on R-Echos / Field Study and R-Echos / Fluorescent Field; they use the electricity around high voltage line to light up neon tube without even wiring or connecting them.
Following on the topic of documenting, representing collections, assembling information, I quite liked as well the serie “ “The Hotel, Room 28-44-47-29” from Sophie Calle where ragments of her found/stolen pieces are made into a collection
“Map not to indicate” from Terry Atkinson & Mickael Baldwin was presented in the same room – I felt there was a sort of narration in between those 2 pieces. The “Map not to indicate” caught my attention in its subversive use of a tool I use all the time.
Map Not to Indicate is one of a series of three prints created by the collective Art and Language, which play with the conventions of marking the world’s geographical boundaries. The extensive title lists all the geographic areas that the artists have removed from the map. Only Iowa and Kentucky are outlined and labelled but, floating like islands, they lose geographical relevance, metaphorically cast adrift from their cartographic moorings.
Funnily, the day after, going to a party in the south of London, near Crystal Palace, we had to rush in a corner shop to buy an A-Z to find the place we thought we would find quite easily; unfortunately, the limit of the map was just one centimeter above our approximative guessing of the location. We were stuck, ourselves, with a map no to indicate…
A little bit after, walking along the rooms i came across Sol Lewitt piece, whose work I think I excessively like. I also participated in an hommage to him and his work in the first issue of the Atlas Journal (see the image above).
I was stuck by a consideration when confronted to the Sol Lewitt sculpture “Five Open Geometric Structures” 1979: there was no external light, only spots from super high roof projecting a constant light and shadow throughout the day – I was left wondering about light parameters in his studio, or where those pieces were created – and if light and its natural movement was finally a part of his work, meaning, in a way, that the abstract and perfect geometry would include (or not) the external world (and its underlying physical interaction) as a parameter of its existence.
But Since Sol Lewitt was creating this piece ‘objectively’ there was no such consideration, I guess.Since the 1960s, LeWitt has made three-dimensional work using basic geometric units, such as cubes and squares, arranged in pre-determined mathematical sequences. He has written: “To work with a plan that is pre-set is one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity for designing each work in turn. The plan would design the work.” The objects are made by assistants according to LeWitt’s instructions. By minimising his physical presence in the process of fabrication, LeWitt emphasises the impersonality of these structures.
It would be nice to get some ideas and insights in the comments.
Recently I came across some photographic compositions from Brad Troemel, trough R-Echos – which in a way is a bit the opposite of John Baldessari; Brad Troemel reframe bits of the subjects with plain colours, which John Baldessari on the contrary would have probably covered. I liked the assembling of pictures of Baldessari, with the only common denominator: this covering spot of colour on the “Hope (Blue) supported by a bed of Orange (Life): amid a context of Alusions”, 1991.
In the library, I also spotted a couple of interesting things amongst them:
- From 1984 to 1987, Peter Saville designed for Factory records a series of audio cassettes that were packaged in a box, bound in fabric like traditional book binders would have done; on the top of the box, a very simple inscription of the artist name and the title of the album, inside the box would come the audio cassette and a couple of leaflet bringing the extraordinary visuals from the designer.
on this page I noticed a nice homage to the original design which made me think to Field Study republished article i spoke earlier – I originally discovered from a post on yewknee.com but it is originating on Flickr.
- “Massive Change” is a book by Bruce Mau, published by Phaïdon – as the bottom line states it: It’s not about the world of design. It’s about the design of the world. It soudns nice for a topic – I just fear that this could fall short as it does so often. The topic is quite related to another book which I like a lot and which I am currently reading: “In the Bubble: Designing in a complex world” which I was expecting to find this book in computer/technology/design/business section and finally found it in the Media Studies at Foyles the other week.
The Bruce Mau’s blog called ‘Massive Change’ like his book seems to have been running from June 2006 to September 2007; as it seems not be updated anymore, I would say the feed is like a dead shell, was it only used in a promotional approach to marketing the book? And maybe it stays now online with the purpose of archiving – I wonder if they plan to keep the website running for long, strangely the book has been published in 2004. Those dates makes no sens at all to me.
I really like the approach of blogs like LifeHackers: even if the book is published, the interrest to keep things alive is not going to die since I assume the blog is supporting Gina Trapani in her activities and business on the long run – while someone like Bruce Mau maybe does not need to invest energy any further once the book has been launched and met a big (awaited) success.
- “Project VITRA”has been designed and edited by Cornel Windlin and Rolf Fellbaum. It is a very nice book which give so many thoughtfull insights on the adventure that finally became the Project Vitra: Sites, Products, Authors, Museum, Collections, Signs, Chronology, Glossary. As Marius Watz said it a little while ago:
Lineto and its designers were players in the spirit of experimentation that dominated graphic design in the 1990s. They challenged typographic conventions with fonts such as Windlin’s classic Moonbase Alpha, and championed the new role of the designer as author. Also apparent in projects like Lego Font Creator, Rubik Maker and Sign Generator is an understanding of form as system, manifested as software.
This one might finally well be the next offline product I will buy.
February 28, 2008
Categories: collection
Tags: art, exhibition, tate
Comments (2) - what do you think of this?
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links for 2008-02-27
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Xwd is an X Window System window dumping utility. Xwd allows X users to store window images in a specially formatted dump file.
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Xvfb is an X server that can run on machines with no display hardware and no physical input devices. It emulates a dumb framebuffer using virtual memory.
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automatically search for Hot Linked Images within your posts and automatically cache the images locally and update the img links within your posts
February 27, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: cache, image, linux, plugin, r_echos, server, wordpress, x11, __ofs
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links for 2008-02-26
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a very nice color picker to be integrated wherever is needed, just adding a form/input and hop!
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use javascript, png and css to simulate gradients in a css compliant manner – nice!
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a nice use of the mdfind command to export xml out of searches… big potential there, i think: SpotLight to Atom (rss) – it sounds a bit like the electronest.com website build on top of Apache very standard features
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dictionnary of AppleScript for the Microsoft Word application
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the wikipedia page for AppleScript, giving informations about one of the most powerful resource in an Apple computer: it’s automation ability(tags: applescript osx)
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using the Finder as development and production environment; remembered me a bunch of ideas we explored with Andreas Schneider about using the standard tools of a computer system to generate presentations, website, weblog, etc.
February 26, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: agregation, applescript, atom, automation, code, color, colorpicker, css, development, filesystem, finder, gradient, IDE, javascript, jQuery, osx, plugin, reference, RSS, spotlight, syndication, system, terminal, word, workflow, xml, _playbill
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links for 2008-02-25
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Tarantino and Avary decided to write a short, on the theory that it would be easier to get made than a feature… the film became a trilogy, with one section by Tarantino, one by Avary, and one by a third director who never materialized. Each eventually e
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Del.icio.us API / help. This document and the APIs herein are subject to change at any time.
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article describing a simple use of the delicious API on a mail server
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tracking software for website statistices – tehy pretty much evolved form the evrsion i use to know a couple of years back… it seems like they developped quite neat services and smart tools
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enables you to have your posts submitted automatically to social bookmarking sites like delicio.us
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a nice summary of a few features and softwares to betterise your experience with delicious bookmarks
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this gallery has both onsite and online exhibition
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an overview of the reputation economy, using delicious – the via: tag to give credits; it’s weird this system could not be automatically generated when you use the “copy this” functions.
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a kind of GTD tricks using GMail as the main tool – it’s nice to see good old emails back on tracks in the middle of RSS. it’s a “now old” media on the internet and pretty much everybody feels comfortable with it. A bit of automation oculd bring emails to
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a unique flexible identity system which help to login multiple online services and centralise information regarding personal electronic presence
February 25, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: advertisement, aggregator, analytics, api, architecture, art, auckland, automation, body, book, business, car, code, coding, color, community, connection, delicious, dev, development, digital, documentation, electronic_presence, email, fashion, filter, gallery, get, gmail, google, gtd, ideas, identity, interface, internet, lifehack, login, management, marketing, microformats, monitoring, movie, network, networking, nz, optimization, organisation, photography, picture, plugin, post, privacy, process, productivity, protocol, reputation, RSS, r_echos, service, shoes, social, software, statistics, submission, tagging, tip, tool, tracking, traffic, twitter, url, vehicle, visualization, webdev, webservice, wikipedia, wireless, wordpress, workflow, __ofs
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links for 2008-02-24
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an insight – back in the days (2005!) – on how to insert metainformation in delicious’ bookmarks
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a daily selection of website from the french newspaper Libération; via Tex Server who has been linked from them
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it’s good to see there are bigger company exploring new path of doing things – the exact same way ElectroNest decided to explore new way of managing relationship, workflow and business…
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a guide and some explanations on how to setup a FaceBook application
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an application which lets you change your boot image on apple computer
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»Internet art, net art, and networked art in relation.« A collection of conversations and interviews (with: Isabelle Arvers, Marc Garrett, Benjamin Weil, Charlie Gere, Christiane Paul, Cory Arcangel, Jemima Rellie, Sara Tucker , Jon Ippolito and Dirk De
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a semantic approach to “related tags” in delicious bookmark. Applying language algorythms to RSS feed parsing.
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Indexhibit is a web application used to build and maintain an archetypal, invisible website format that combines text, image, movie and sound. Daniel Eatock is behind this nice project aimed at easily realising online collections
February 24, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: *****, *****, *****, *****, application, business, collection, datamining, delicious, design, development, facebook, feed, filesystem, hack, links, management, marketing, meta, metadata, netart, opensource, organisation, osx, practice, process, reference, research, RSS, semantic, software, tagging, theory, tool, to_read, webdesign, website, zeitgeist
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links for 2008-02-22
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a mini server; quite amazing stuff: my mac mini looks like big next to it
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this post is about font size and how to determine it; very interesting reading for anyone presenting information on screen.
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how to handle hanging ponctuation on the web, with explanation on the css side of things – with pierre we are developing set of javascript to handle those. it’s nice to see many effort pointing towards betterising typography on screen/web
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how to exclude your own visit from google analytics stats, a practical howto. interesting technique involving the use of a cookie, which is signaling who you are to the tracking system.
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Today, we had a meeting Duncan and I – and it’s always a pleasure to discuss about architecture, cycling, design, business, web things, and life in general – those guys are not only doing nice products for your bicycle needs: they *are* nice!
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film director of Dead man’s shoes & This is england, both out on Warp films.
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the website state: Warp Films is an independent film production company which aims to mirror the ethos of its partner music label Warp Records
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known for his naturalistic, social realism directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues
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Warp X is hoping to “retox” the world of British film by providing a one-stop-shop for creative film talent
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php and apache to mod rewrite – the beginning of a home made class – interesting reading
February 22, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: analytics, bicycle, bike, cinema, code, company, design, dev, director, electronic_presence, england, film, filter, font, frontyard, furniture, google, hardware, howto, linux, movie, movies, music, outdoor, pc, php, ponctuation, production, rack, storage, text, typography, uk, url_rewrite, video, web, webdesign
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links for 2008-02-20
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emotion is what motivated this post – it’s pretty damn intriguing…
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website that are much more than websites
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an overview of the future development of the internet, with a certain fascination for semantic web, it also speak about web of data, and a kind of ambient findability like series scenarios
February 20, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: api, application, data, database, innovation, internet, mashup, microsoft, news, object, semantic, services, tangible, technology, tools, trend, web2.0, writing
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links for 2008-02-19
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not your typical “What font should I use” typography but rather your “knowing your hanging punctuation from your em-dash” typography. Call me a little bit purist but this bothers me.
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Simon Geilfus website; lots of processinf coding – nice typographic (animated?) work
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a nice research: collecting methods, resources, and theories concerning the curation of (New) Media, Internet-based, and Video Art.
February 19, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: art, blog, coder, curation, database, graphicdesign, legibility, microtypography, processing, research, resource, theory, typography
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links for 2008-02-17
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nice use of the background to display images, content; nice feature: hide menu which decluster the space to let the image gallery alone
February 17, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: background, image, interface
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links for 2008-02-14
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designed by Stanley Morison (MonoType) in 1931 for the british newspaper The Time, based on Plantin
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Designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger (Haas Type Foundry) to compete with Akzidenz Grotesk
February 14, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: context, font, history, typography, wikipedia
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links for 2008-02-12
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seems to be a nice alternative to image backgrounds to produce gradient
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analyzes your music collection and creates a short audio signature to represent who you are and what you listen to – by Jason Freeman
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nice indication of the windows size from the start; the content does not need any introduction anymore.
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Thisandagain is the online personal space of Andrew Sliwinski, a User Experience Strategist, Designer, and Technologist living and working near Detroit, MI.
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nice interface which use black rectangle; it would be nice if the size were relative(tags: portfolio graphicdesign)
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Peter Saville did a very nice set of boxes for audio cassettes back in the days; it looks like book binding
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Brad Troemel did a serie of picture, where the subject is reframed
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Easily view images in a directory tree—without actually clicking through to every image
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An architectural icon; Battersea Power Station in London is a defunct power station that was the first in a series of large coal-fired electrical generating facilities
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A bastion of the architectural establishment in early 20th century Britain
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a group on flickr collecting pictures from architect Gilbert Scott
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some nice types and book covers
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Damien Hirst at the launch of ‘In the darkest hour there may be light’, his personal art collection at the Serpentine Gallery(tags: art collection)
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I traded one red paperclip for a house.
February 12, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, *****, analysis, architecture, art, audio, blog, books, cassette, code, collection, color, creative, css, design, editorial, electronic_presence, exchange, extensions, filemanager, filesystem, firefox, flickr, gradient, graphicdesign, history, identity, image, image_on_the_fly, interface, itunes, london, marketing, meme, music, netart, netherlands, photography, picture, plugin, portfolio, statistics, trade, typography, uk, urban, usability, web, webdesign
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links for 2008-02-11
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Tommi found a couple of nice trick on wordpress this weekend; this one is naked wordpress theme so that it’s easier and faster to kick off a custom theme design.
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via Tommi (again) – let’s you replace any html text by a flash file generated on the fly which let’s you use custom not standard typefaces…
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nice writing about a Moleskine competitor
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Via Markus – another rant against FaceBook after the one send by Adriana, makes me wonder why not to start a kind of workshop to teach people how to get the same thing as FaceBook with their own tools and intelligence
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it seems like electricity is magic!
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Laxton fields seems to be the last common land in the UK after the enclosure; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure
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This term marked the end of the Common Land, the open field system in the UK
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WordPress can displace or pass over one or more initial posts which would normally be collected by your query through the use of the offset parameter.
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to check; it seems to crash with WP2.3.3 but it might be just a problem of header
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another Flash text replacer for WordPress
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Father of the modern Chemistry; he established that matter cannot be created or destroyed, although it may be rearranged (Conservation of mass Law). This evening, Amandine used it very nicely to explain her work.
February 11, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: article, chemistry, common, custom_query, development, electricity, flash, flickr, font, fonts, hardware, history, internet, life_hack, light, map, moleskine, neon, networking, php, plugin, politics, privacy, reference, self_organisation, sifr, sketchbook, social, theme, typography, webdesign, wikipedia, wordpress
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CMYK setup
February 11, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized
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Field Notes versus Moleskine Cahier
From left to right, a black Moleskine cahier, a Field Notes notebook, and a “natural” (or whatever they call it) Moleskine cahier sporting some additions of my own.
The Moleskine’s cover is thicker and darker than the Field Notes’, and you may be able to tell the Moleskines’ covers are stiched whereas the Field Notes is stapled.
February 08, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized
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links for 2008-02-08
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Spotlight can receive plugin. This article describes how to actually develop one which will index the content of Stickies.
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this article describes a bit of the troubles along the way for Google if Microsoft grasp the Yahoo business
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This an area I never really searched into: Spotlight plugins – it seems like there are a lot of gems; this one for example brings the top ten Google results.
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This one is another Spotlight plugin: Delicious Indexer – it will index your online bookmarks and lets you retrieve them from the desktop.
From LSO’s Chronicle
Russian 20th-century music is inseparable from history. As film composers, Shostakovich and Prokofiev both got used to the idea of providing accompaniments to images of great moments from their country’s past. But few have chronicled their own times as relentlessly as Shostakovich.
Variously fêted and reviled by the Soviet authorities, and constantly treading a fine line between triumph and disaster – sometimes even between life and death – his desire to compose never wavered, and thus it is that the late symphonies featured in this series offer an image of the postwar decades in music of unfailingly intense expression, from the ‘optimistic tragedy’ of the Tenth to the descriptive power of the Eleventh, and the dark contemplations of the Fourteenth to the quirky irony of the Fifteenth. Yet out of necessity Shostakovich’s is also an art rich in ambiguity, its surface messages often seemingly undermined by steely irony and double meaning.
Three decades after his death these great works still have the power both to fascinate and to reach deep into our hearts and minds.
From Wikipedia: Shostakovich’s page:
After a period influenced by Prokofiev and Stravinsky (Symphony No. 1), Shostakovich switched to modernism (Symphony No. 2 and The Nose) before developing a hybrid of styles with Lady Macbeth and the state-suppressed Fourth Symphony. This hybrid style ranged from the neo-classical (with Stravinskian influences) to the post-romantic music (with Mahlerian influences). His tonality involved much use of modality and some astringent neo-classical harmonies à la Hindemith and Prokofiev. His music frequently includes sharp contrasts and elements of the grotesque.
February 08, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: accessibility, apple, application, archive, browser, code, delicious, desktop, google, london, metadata, microsoft, music, orchestra, osx, plugin, Plugins, search, software, spotlight, yahoo
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links for 2008-02-07
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big title use make the Palais de Tokyo website (inspired by ECAL website?) – very nice submenu on the side
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(tags: streetwear website)
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via Hei (DomDomDom) – a nice gallery of images for an exhibition about “Bikes, Kits and Maps for Portland, Oregon”
February 07, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: art, bike, clothes, cycling, design, exhibition, furniture, gallery, hierarchy, image, luxury, paris, products, streetwear, typography, website
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links for 2008-02-06
I met Goldin+Senneby at a meeting at Gasworks yesterday, and we didn’t had time to discuss more about what they were doing – there was much stuff to organise for the incoming ‘Disclosures’. When I came back at home, after the meeting, I was really pleased to discover their work. This image, particulary struck my mind – I instantly recognised the landscape.
- Goldin+Senneby » Blog Archive » After MicrosoftThe most distributed image ever is being phased out. What remains is a hill in Sonoma Valley, California. In the context of this project we have re-visited the hill. “After Microsoft” tells the story of a January day in the late 90’s when the hill [...](tags: photography art gasworks microsoft icon desktop background)
February 06, 2008
Categories: bookmark
Tags: art, background, desktop, gasworks, icon, microsoft, photography
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Laxton Field System
February 06, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized
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Tube & Field Study
amazing!
i quite like the effect, even though it certainly is bad for the health.
sounds like mad scientist experiments i can’t help but to link to MMD project: http://textasplayground.net/assembling/2006/03/28/mass-media-unit-memory/February 06, 2008
Categories: Uncategorized
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