Oh hello, lots of shoes hanging infront of a balcony? This sort of arty shit makes me happy. I pottered around Clerkenwell Design Week (by which I mean they lie as it lasts only 3 days) before going to the Pop Up Pirate typography bar thing (Bitchbuzz review here).
I thought a light by Dare Studio was cool, but distracted myself from a lot of things that weren’t that interesting by trying to juggle a camera and a square of pizza. Pepperoni can be a tricky bitch.
It was all pretty interesting apart from the section about floor panels. The band that played from the balcony was pretty good, though I don’t know their name. There was lots of shiny stuff to keep me entertained. And fancy back-lighting of a wall behind a chair. Some of it came in mirrored cubicles. I could have wept. Photos instead of words.
Oh, and a Robot thing that doubled as a bike rack. CAN I HAVE ONE?
I was watching Eagle vs. Shark yesterday, which is good and essentially negates all the subtle bits of conversation with a summary of how most romantic conversations go. It’s rather good, quite unsubtle, but not a Napoleon Dynamite sort of film. Napoleon Dynamite essentially works as a perfect benchmark for comparison.
“I have to keep creating, otherwise I’ll juse die” says Jemaine Clement as Jarrod.
How embarrassing, thought I. Often I find that days without doing or making things are horrible. What a painful comparison.
Here’s my very old video from Kinetica that I’ve just put together. Because of camera ineptitude there’s no video of my favourite part: the lights that reacted to sound, but there’s an inadequate photo of them here on Flickr.
The exhibition had a section with the pencils that rotate and make circles (above) – which drew on our ability to stand aimlessly watching pencils draw motorised circles. Something I noticed is that the holder design didn’t allow for the pencils to get shorter – it didn’t compensate by pushing defaultly against the wall, but left them suspended away from the paper when they were blunt going round in sad little circles. Perhaps I’ve got too much pencil empathy.
There’s also the small beer robot that poured you beer into plastic cups and then flashed red in an alert to tell you it’s drinking time. Lots of good stuff there.
Kinetica, a number of Saturdays ago, was a mad mess of flashing lights and things that swirled. I love that it counts as art. I spent the day joining the league of irritating people with cameras, toting an EP-1 that’s never left the house – and thus have video footage.
Beside the robot that served you beer, my favourite bit was a block of hanging lights that reacted to sound. Simple but wonderful to watch. As part of the league of camera holders the adults lined up against the wall to do camera jiggery pokery, whilst a small kid ROARED at them. It was lovely, but I failed to hit the record button or some more technical error (very sad). May have to practice my button-pressing. Video on way – my laziness with it has already delayed this brief post. It will appear one day.
I love this concept from Marcus Walters/Mother from 2008, and I do not care if I’m a year behind the times. It reminds me of when I was in reception class [reception class where I come from is half a year of school before joining year 1] we used to spend sessions waving transparent coloured bits of acetate over our eyes and looking at windows. I’m not entirely sure for what reason. But it reminds me of feeling fun and childish and happiness. And really mesmerised, but that’s less of a Coke attribute.
I’m reading this at the moment which is full of lovely (and some odd) digital designs. It’s made by the Troika guys who made Cloud which I saw at the London Design Museum during summer. Troika features a couple of times in the book unsurprisingly. The Cloud is made up of flip-dots that flip around forming a reflection and representation of life. It used to sit in Heathrow’s terminal 5 but was broken up into smaller chunks to be given out to museums. I’ve got a couple of video bits of the Cloud, although it wouldn’t play ball and kept sitting still.
This is a really good idea executed brilliantly. “A real human interface” – basically a human in a box being a computer. Not just any any old human; one with thick glasses and a spinning rainbow loading/freezing circle so you know it’s a mac.
Am I sold because it uses cardboard props? Not solely. It’s got nice style (the hand-pushed loading bars, the small bits of ham floating around, nice use of selotape, and silly nice details like the windcatcher), and I like that it pretends to be interactive, even if isn’t.
I stumbled across this interesting agency site recently. Nice interactive design – draw some shapes and their photos/portfolio appear. You can drag the layers around, and view them separately with a layer palette style thing at the top. If you’re patient and wait for the instructions, you’ll find you can also get news and search. The news feature is pretty cool.
It’s initially very distracting (although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing), so I’ve only just checked what the site’s for: a company called magneticNorth.
I’d be interested in a second opinion on this site though: How do you rate it?
My colleague Lee has exciting weekends. He likes to stick headphones together using sandwich bags and invent ‘tangle proof headphones’ with youtube video presentations explaining how they work.
Today he is pleased because his name is all over the net.
He’s about to hit 100,000 views in 3 days (even without featuring lego, star wars, or William Shatner in any way) and the idea’s been featured in Pocket-Lint, Gizmo Watch, and Core 77, amongst others.
I made a cruel joke and said Stephen Fry has tweeted about it. He hadn’t, and I’m very sorry Lee.
Unfortunately, it’s now impossible to patent the idea since it’s on public display, but his name’s streaking google so it’s not so bad for three days. Guess those PR skills have pay off.
His site is leewashington.com and the video’s below. It’s a bit plain says Steve, so we suggest maybe adding a Drum n Bass overlay. And even if it is a catchier name, he gets upset if you refer to them as “sandwich bag headphones.”
