Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Motion mapping

Enlighted by Marc Downie's work at the MIT Media Lab, I just checked his company Openended Group where he co-creates digital artworks for stage, screen, gallery, museum and public spaces.
His PhD thesis (459 pages) on choreographing the extended agent is available for download online.

I selected this quote that I find particularly interesting regarding my current research ...

If you cast your mind back to childhood, you will soon discover our topic – motion-mapping – most clearly and imaginatively revealed. There in the games and pursuits of your earliest years you can distinguish this phenomenon in its three most basic forms. You can also follow each form forward in time to find out what they grew into -- forms of art.

You might start by bringing back the movement games you played so ardently as a child – in particular the games of imitation and mimicry, like Copycat, Follow the leader, Charades, Simon Says, and the innumerable variants you and your friends would improvise. These games had you map the movements of others onto your own body, sometimes in the simplest one-to-one transformations (as when you followed the leader), but sometimes more intricately, as when you mimicked a lion, or a horse, or a gladiator...

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Design thinking: exhibition by Ideo


The Divisumma 18 Calculator by Olivetti and designed by Mario Bellini, 1973.

An exhibition I cannot miss ...
IDEO Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection On view June 22, 2007–January 20, 2008 at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

IDEO, a leading innovation and design firm for more than 20 years, is the fourth guest curator in the exhibition series presented in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery. IDEO organizes works from the permanent collection around the theme of "design thinking," displaying objects such as an array of flashlights from the 1940s-1990s, showing diverse designs for portable lighting; a 19th-century textile panel with instructions for making hand shadow figures; a cane with pull-out map; the 1940s “Silver Streak” glass iron; the "Divisumma 18" calculator, designed by Mario Bellini; and a child's chair, designed by Charles and Ray Eames.

Informational diagrams



Another master piece in the domaine of graphic representation of information. Best informational diagrams edited by Pie Books

Graphs, charts, maps, schematics… a collection of the latest in graphics that visualize complex information thus making it easy to comprehend. This wide range of diagram masterpieces from around the world documents the state of the art.





Shell



[The other's eyes] turn to me a liquid pool waiting for unforseeable disturbances. They are more naked than the flesh without pelt or hide, without clothing. ... They are more naked than things can be, than walls bared of their adornments and revolvers stripped of their camouflage; they bare a substance susceptible and vulnerable. Their nudity exposes them to whatever message I may want to impose, whatever offense I can contrive - Alphonso Lingis, Foreign Bodies, p171.


In shell, I tailored a plastic envelop of a human body, envelop that is then discarded. The plastic fabric is carved with textural information. Its transparence resembles a ghost, its undefined junctions and closed top suggest a metamorphosis rather than a piece of clothing. It is an object that has been depersonalized by being discarded in public.

Attached to a long stick, it floats in the wind, linking the experience of the playground (yard), the uncomfortable cocoon (the shell) and academic knowledge (the Widener library at Harvard University).



Social subjectivity?

Should we design for everybody within a consensus or should we find a new line of products outside of the consensus? Should we go for the consensus and define what this consensus is or should we rethink the interaction with products itself? When researching on interaction design and defining visionnary work, I found the following quote to be inspiring:

Is it really so sad and dangerous to be fed up with seeing with your eyes, breathing with your lungs, swallowing with your mouth, talking with your tongue, thinking with your brain, having an anus and larynx, head and legs? Why not walk with your head, sing with your sinuses, see through your skin, breathe with your belly.
Where psychoanalysis says, "Stop, find your self again," we should say instead, "Let's go further still ... we haven't sufficiently dismantled our self." Substitute forgetting for anamnesis, experimentation for interpretation. Find your body without organs. Find out how to make it. It's a question of life and death, youth and old age, sadness and joy. It is where everything is played out. (150-151) - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille Plateaux: Capitalisme et schizophrénie, 1980.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Visual Communication bible



The bible in visual communication Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockmann.

A Visual Communication Manual for graphic designers, typographers and three dimensional designers. Considered by most to be the definitive book on grid systems. This book is a must for any designer. From concept to instructional, this book covers typography through grid systems used in design both 2D and 3D.



Richard Saul Wurman


American demographics

Richard Saul Wurman is a classic reference in information design recommended to me by Mirja Leinss.
He created the online content understanding USA, a celebration and a visual demonstration of questions and answers leading to understanding.


Information Anxiety

He also created a comprehensive online content on understanding healthcare.


A human dashboard

Interactive dresses

Hexagram is an institute for research and creation in media arts and technologies. They present “Indice de l’indifférence: Walking City”, an exposition by Ying Gao.



The vernissage of the latest exposition by Ying Gao, “Indice de l’indiférence : Walking City” an installation featuring her interactive dresses, will take place at Galerie Diagonale on May 31, from 4 pm to 6 pm with the exposition taking place from May 29 to June 9.








Two beautiful examples of breathing dress





More of Ying Gao's work

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Glass fabric lamps


Santa maria della Luce

Intriging angel-like lamps made of glass fabric and aluminium by designer Ingo Maurer.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Anthony James


Anthony James, Bachelor 2x4x2, Holasek Weir Gallery

Anthony James on artnet