from BBC
Categories: data beautification
Tags: colour, light, war
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
(found images while browsing trough old archived files)
Categories: data beautification, found image
Comments Off
(while searchinng trough archives CDs)
a tee shirt for ecal exhibition at Milan Furniture Fair
Categories: Uncategorized, collection, data beautification, found image
Comments Off
Koyaanisqatsi is a wonderful filmed statement
on how technology is shaping our world, our lives, our mind…
Yesterday, I stumbled upon a website of friends of mine ‘Un Peu De Cinema’ (a little bit of movies); I quite liked the way he summarised the movie ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’ (1974) by Sam Peckinpah (112 min) with all the killing scenes, in a post called Bang Bang. I was left wondering if I could find an excuse to do something similar with a movie I would like: not to break the plot, but just to speak about it.
I finally found an excuse.
Yesterday evening, we watched ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ - an amazing movie from 1982, directed by Godfrey Reggio, with the music composed by Philipp Glass, and a cinematography by Ron Fricke. This is a one hour twenty minute of beautiful and meaningful images: slow motion and time-lapse sequences, the movie is recording the contemporary state of our planet; with the advance of technology, automation, industrialisation.
Somehow it made me think to a couple of things:
1/ the digital pieces produced by ThomasTraum (aka Thomas Eberwein aka half of DigitalClub) with his fascination for particles and volumetrics 3d associated to electronic music. Thomas will be featured on ‘Advanced Beauty’ a massive HD-DVD project initiated and curated by Matt Pyke from Universal Everything.
2/ ‘Man with a movie camera’ - an experimental 1929 silent documentary film, by Russian director Dziga Vertov; this 1929 movie is sharing some of the cinematographic techniques and the subject with the ‘Koyaanisqatsi’. The crowded urban landscape are definitely reminiscent.
Interestingly, out of the ordinary situations, we can find beautiful instants: at some point, to illustrate this post, I decided I would take a picture of each and every scene that struck my mind and catch my attention. I would present them the same way as Harry did for his ‘Un Peu De Cinema’ - I ended up with around 70 images. Obviously it was not possible.
I then decided to select the best of the best, the one I would prefer… a hard choice to make.
First selection left me with 23 pictures. At each selection step, I was reducing the number of images you would see here; finally I was left with the 4 images below which are not supposed to be a summary of the film, but simply some sort of immobile quote of beautiful animated sequence of images.
From Wikipedia, about Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of balance
The film consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes across the United States. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means ‘life of moral corruption and turmoil, life out of balance’, and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way.
The film is the first in the Qatsi trilogy of films: it is followed by Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). The trilogy depicts different aspects of the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Koyaanisqatsi is the best known of the trilogy and is considered a cult film. However, due to copyright issues, the film was out of print for most of the 1990s.
In a short documentary about the film, Essence of Life (included in the 2002 DVD release), Reggio states that the Qatsi films are intended to simply create an experience and that “it is up [to] the viewer to take for herself what it is that [the film] means.” Reggio said in Essence of Life “these films have never been about the effect of technology, of industry on people. It’s been that everyone: politics, education, things of the financial structure, the nation state structure, language, the culture, religion, all of that exists within the host of technology. So it’s not the effect of it’s that everything exists within [technology]. It’s not that we use technology, we live technology. Technology has become as ubiquitous as the air we breathe…”
Categories: data beautification, experiments, movie, thinking loud
Tags: culture, movie, society, technology
Leave a comment
I wish this ceiling would be connected to parameters.
I am sure you know already about the Nabaztag.
This device reacts to information, it acts as a tangible filters to information flows on your network and transform them into a audio or visual signal, diffused into your real world - allowing you to go away from the computer to focus on your ‘analog’ things and come back only when this very email you were waiting for has arrived: you are alerted by the bunny on your desk.
To be honnest: this little rabbit that talks to me or glow in the dark… it just makes me feel stupid. To me it’s not really something I would like to have to interact with. It really feels like being in Disneyland - except it’s at my home, on my desk… sounds like a nightmare!
But, despite my reluctance I have to recognise I am completely amazed by the gigantic potentials of the brand new applications which arise with intelligent objects.
On the other hand we could imagine subtle yet meaningful modification of our direct environment, (light coloring or dimming, for example) depending on alteration of our electronic presence. Design and culture to the rescue if I could say so: in fact, I just saw a few pictures from the exhibition of lamp by Ingo Maurer on lightscapes on http://maxspace.funporium.com/ which inspired me to share these reflections.
One of the first thing which came to my mind is the LightHives project by Alex Haw (another Bunkerer), even if Light Hive goes more about surveillance and community, while those application I’m referring to are more attached to the personal sphere and are a private representation - both share the basic principle of an abstract representation of a live activity
I wrote a bit about electronic presence and digital objects a little while ago on my personnal hub - but not as much as I talk about those topic everyday when working at Electronest; we should definitely write more about the ideas, concepts and projects that emerged since we started those discussions with Pierre.
Refering to electronic presence and digital objects is all about expanding conceptual boundaries and design process:
using terms like ‘electronic presence’ or ‘digital objects’ which are going beyond the simple scope of the web page design. The term ‘electronic presence’ does not only refer to an url with fancy images and well designed logotypes. ‘Electronic presence’ is closer to a global attitude towards digital mediums and cultures embrassing from the simple home page to the electronic installation (tangible computing) through customized content managment systems, home made software, generative application, etc.
An essential curiosity glues all the separates aspects of a digital communication together and supports the communication expertise background. A website can be an extension or a representation of an activity in real life.
Lights or simple lamps could then be connected to the local network, and represent events that otherwise coul go unnoticed. It could be a violent reminder, or simple and discreet light dimming. By using light reflection on color, we could use the ceiling as a silent echo of what is happening on the other side of the screen.
LED Benches
Ingo Maurer, 2002
Glass, LEDs.
LED Wallpaper
Ingo Maurer, 2007
Plastic film with conductive circuits, LEDs.
note: People behind the Nabaztag seems to be more clever than the aesthetic and culture their rabbit promotes; they have a Nabaztag API. Maybe I just should remove the plastic shell of that hideous thing and play with it a little bit…
edit: roof is the outdoor bit, ceiling the interior one - well well…
Categories: data beautification, designing, project, tangible, thinking loud
Tags: architecture, device, environment, info hub, interface, network, parameters, tangible, wifi
Leave a comment
amandine just got accepted for her MA
Categories: data beautification, internal
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
[original via: thomastraum's myspace]
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification, drawing, generative, offline
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification, drawing, generative, offline
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
Categories: data beautification
Leave a comment
Those 2 volumes are each dedicated to a specific part of the project; the first volume is all about the original text to speech and speech to text process. The second volume adresses the moment when we turned the role of the speaker into a singer - using the iTunes library we found on the hard drive of the computers: one computer was singing the tunes while the other attempted to interpret what it was listening to into text.
Both books use the Jawut typeface which has been developped specifically for it.
Categories: book, data beautification, designing, generative, poetry, typography
Tags: book, discussion, hardware, text to speech, typography
Comment (1)
KD01k est une édition du traité de Sun Tzu «l’art de la guerre» en 13 volumes. Chacun des volumes donne une lecture de ce texte écrit entre le IVe et le Ve siècle avant Jésus Christ. Chacun des volumes est une lecture générative du texte; elle est basée sur une analyse statistique de la ponctuation, cette dernière engendrant la mise en forme du texte par lui-même, jusqu’à l’abstraction.
Categories: data beautification, designing, memory
Tags: book, coding, edition, generative, principle, rule
Comments (3)
