A sponsored post of my favorite Japanese animes!

Akira

Anime are usually perceived either for children, teenagers or pervert adults. In fact, a lot of them are really good: cinematographically inspiring, with rich character development and epics stories. Each of them is a wellspring of interaction design ideas for innovative products. I find them refreshing. From Akira, Ghost in the Shell, to Blood: The Last Vampire. I cannot wait to watch Karas! A few manga series maintain these high standards with similar qualities.

It has been now a year that I started watching Bleach, a manga series written and illustrated by Tite Kubo. In Bleach, a high school student, Ichigo, has the ability to see ghosts and interact with shinigami or death God. I absolutely adore the soul society made of handsome and complicated post-human characters.


The Quincy in Bleach.

I watched Death Note, an anime written by Tsugumi Ohba. A high school student decides to rid the world of evil with the help of a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it. The shinigamis in Death Note resemble apocalyptic Goths. What strikes me in these anime is the ability the characters have, good and bad, to stick proudly to their initial moral values.


L, my favorite character in Death Note

I adored Noein, a short science fiction anime television series directed by Kazuki Akane and Kenji Yasuda. Two timespaces fight with one another: La'cryma, a possible future of our own universe, and Shangri'la, a dimension intent on the destruction of all space and time. The “dragon Torque”, the child version of a character from the future, is the key to stop Shangri'la's invasion.


Karasu in Noein

One Piece presents the adventures of “the Straw Hat Pirates”, formed and led by a captain named Monkey D. Luffy. The characters try to obtain the world's ultimate treasure, One Piece. With each character’s back-story, the adventures become entwined with one another.


One Piece

I am an anime fan. I saw fans gathering at conferences with splendid anime costumes. The Halloween Costumes' web site proposes a selection of characters costumes. I must say, I was disappointed by some of them, mainly by the feminine outfits. The Nico Robbin costume looks kind of tacky while she always appear to wear the latest couture piece in the anime!

On the contrary, the Bleach’s simple shinigami costumes are quite good. I had a good laugh at the execution ground outfit for Ichigo (from Bleach). Who would want to wear a broken arm outfit while he/she could enact the bankai form!

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I don't need a robot

Illustration by Dean Morris Graphic Designer as part of the Humor Show (1987), I don't need a robot for ID magazine nowadays would have a different message and could demonstrate the beauty of Coronamatic Typewriters. A little nostalgic?



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Video scenarios of tech-enabled behaviors

Mobility platform videos for Intel by Ideo.

Visualizing high-tech's human-centered future by Ideo.
Tapping into the growing broadband access around the world, Intel has innovated a series of chipsets and mobile platforms that enable smarter, more efficient laptops, mobile phones, and PDAs. While these offerings represent new possibilities for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), it's not uncommon for OEMs to need an added push to invest in unproven technology. To bring to life the potential of this technology, IDEO worked with Intel to visualize what user behaviors might be enabled by the offerings. The work, which culminated in the form of three videos, points to Intel's larger shift toward human-centered technology innovation.



In looking at Intel's next-generation products, IDEO had a clear sense of the emphasis on mobility. From a design perspective, the offerings were each exciting, offering new ways for people to live and work, but lacked the cohesion of a system. To integrate the platforms, IDEO developed user scenarios that merged product, interaction, and experience as they related to such behaviors as hands-free communication, social networking, and purchasing. These user scenarios were then fully storyboarded and scripted for video production.

In depicting user behaviors through video scenarios, IDEO created a unified vision for Intel's offerings that has served to foster alignment within Intel as well as to communicate product value to OEMs and service providers.

By Architectradure

Poetic chairs

I stumbled upon Stuhlhockerbank by Yvonne Fehling and Jennie Peiz. For a public use of architecture merging chair and stool into seat elements, the life of the sitting place becomes engraved in the artist' sculpture. The chairs are discombobulated.




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Children's toys

Toys always invite for reflection, but toys within the contemporary art context bring another dimension. I select these ones featured on Artnet.

I also author another blog that reflects this passion of mine!


Therapeutic children's toys by Renate Müller & Helene Haeusler, 1960.
Materials: Canvas, leather, wear

A 39cm high camel, a dice of 29.5 x 30 x 32 cm and an Hippopotamus of 35 x 75 x 34 cm.


Detail Song of the Finsh (The Bride) Jigsaw Puzzle by Isabel Samaras. The stories of Monsters and the mystical lives they lead ...



Benny and Red Bird Color Version by Kathy Olivas

(...) Many of the toys show a meticulous care in their creation; they are mechanically functional and cleverly conceived to move, lift or turn. I consider them to be truly remarkable in their abilities to function as well as being aesthetically pleasing. The enormous creative potential inherent in each piece became a challenge that I could not resist. Initially the toys were seen as individual objects, as the series developed, so did the thematic complexity. I did not realize that it would lead me on a journey of re-discovering my own childhood - Sidney Menkes

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A special chandelier

Back from the ICA with Adam, I was struck by the work designer Tobias Wong a provocateur who creates the unexpected from the everyday and the everyday from the unexpected as he was being introduced during the exhibition, but I also think it is more than. What is so special about such art and craft work is to feel inspired in experiencing the work.

The object is special. It takes a refined sensitivity from the artist to make the careful design decisions exhibited by this piece. In the black shade chandelier, a classical design is made new by a switch between the form of the candelabra and the candle. These are two different objects, two different materials that create a single form in glass and insist on the simple mechanism of an oil lamp. These subtleties are the decisions that I love in this work.

In the exhibition was also presented the Disposable Crystal Cup, a sixteen-ounce paper cup printed with a trompe l’oeil crystal pattern. In this piece I felt Tobias Wong took the epidemic of the thrown away and juxtaposed it with the ultimate of luxury imagery.


Tobiad Wong also created this traditional crystal chandelier encapsulated in industrial white rubber

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Transitional objects

Filet From the series Hommage au Sol - accesoires de prolongement du corps, objets transitionels de perception
1989-1994

Marie-Claire Bevar works with textiles, transforms them, adds all kinds of other materials to them, turns them into objects which has been her passion and necessity since childhood.

After collaborating both in trade and in theater, she decided to create objects as part of a personal introspection expressing itself through propositions evolving around the theme of the body. Both in Hommage au Sol and in L'Avant-Bras, Le Lien, Le Trait d'Union on one side and in Artextilabo, a laboratory of experimentations.


Doré

Hommage au Sol focuses around the foot and its relation to the ground. It includes accessories extending the body, transitory objects of perception, photos, videos and written documentation.


Venise

L'Avant-Bras, Le Lien, Le Trait d'Union is a work in progress. First she experimented with materials and techniques proper to the theme. A first series of objects were created, and now the artist is reflecting on them, furthering her research and figuring out how to stage them and present them to the public.

Chatting with Paulina on transitional objects made me revisit its classical roots. And what a pleasure to re-read Jerome Singer and his wife Dorothy's -authors of the awesome house of make believe book- fascinating journal paper from which I quote:

One possible route to the beginnings of the creation of miniaturized virtual realities by the very young may emerge in the course of older babies’ or toddlers’ manifestations of what the psychoanalyst, Winnicott (1971), termed involvement with “transitional objects.” Early on many children become attached to a soft cloth or to some combination of an old crib blanket and a “plush” toy, a cloth bunny rabbit, bear, or lamb. The well-known Peanuts’ cartoons’ youngest character, Linus, carries a worn blanket around all day and clings to it tenaciously. Such behavior generally meets those criteria of play developed in the research of Smith and Vollstedt (1985), nonliteralness and associated positive affect. Actually, one might propose that the tenacity with which children cling to these objects even as they fade in color, shrink or become ragged, may reflect the very beginnings of an experience of autonomy (“my blankie”) and personal ownership, a primordial expression of our nearly universal adult sense of private property upon which whole societies and legal systems are constructed.

In Singer, Jerome L. & Singer, Dorothy G. (2006). Preschoolers' imaginative play as precursor of narrative consciousness. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 25 (2):97-117.

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The mix tape business

A come back for the mix tape business. After the tape with style we have the regular tape packaging that hides a usb key.

My favorite part is the usb mix tape's advertisement:
Stores up to 1 hour of high quality digital music - the same amount as you get on a C60 cassette tape. Perfect for creating your own unique compilation or mix ‘tape’. When you have 60 minutes you have to think carefully about what you are going to put on there!

Is the idea that by constraining the potential of a product, users will carefully consider the potential being given? This is a bit sad.
Or is the idea that this product is super conceptual and needs to offer the same amount of 60 minutes of music that is usual in C60 cassette tapes? In that case there is a nostalgic connection, but no innovation. At the end I like the metaphor effort in it, but I prefer the possibility to uniquely tailor my tape with style. The tailoring of the tape could take advantage of online digital art communities such as Open Studio!

A link to cool looking cassette tapes.

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Birthday invasion

Today it is my birthday's invasion!

Bio Battery Powered By Sugar

4 prototype bio battery units connected to Walkman for playback

Following up on my previous post kinetic vs electric toys by Sony, Sony also developed a bio battery prototype that generates electricity from sugar, similar to the method used in living organisms. Sugar is a naturally occurring energy source produced by plants through photosynthesis. It is therefore regenerative, and can be found in most areas of the earth, underlining the potential for sugar-based bio batteries as an ecologically-friendly energy device of the future.



As humans breakdown food for energy, the battery would generate electricity by breaking down carbohydrates or sugars through the use of enzymes. Since sugar is a natural energy source, the bio battery would be an environmentally friendly choice as it would dramatically reduce disposal issues with disposable batteries used today.

Test cells have generated up to 50 milliwatts, which is the highest for a bio battery of this type according to Sony. Currently, it produces just enough to power music play back on a memory-type Walkman. Thank you Got 2 be green for the source!