Illustration Friday: Flavor

(Don't forget: Click on the image for larger version)

Thursday Lovin': Small Ads

Spiffing little adverts from the UK (and Screenhead). Very funny.

Wednesday Lovin' Part Deux: Free Movies

Who could forget that great horror movie Attack of the Giant Leeches? Well, now you can download it and watch it on your iPod. Oh, joy.

Actually, there are some good films (and delightfully bad ones as well) at this site. Try Metropolis or Nosferatu or Buster Keaton.

Enjoy!

Wednesday Lovin': Fun with the CIA

GRENADA, the comic book

(great name for a musical too!)

Illustration Friday: Imagine

(don't forget to click on the image for larger version)

This one is very subtle. Let's see if you get it.

(Very) Early Sunday Lovin': Russian Jumping

Not sure about the narrative in this one but enjoyed it none the less. What is it? I don't know exactly. Watch it and ask yourself: "What did they put in that poor boy's borscht?"

Illustration Friday: Surprise!

(you know the game: click on the image for larger version)

Christmas-related Hyperglycemia

Take a look at these gingerbread structures. I found it ironic that the project proceeds supported the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

Open Source Journalism: MLK BLVD

Here is a project documenting various Martin Luther King Boulevards across the country. It is disheartening to say the least.

Read more about it here.

Illustration Friday: Small

(click for larger version if you so choose)

Glad that I found time to do I.F. again. I've been so incredibly busy. This is a pencil sketch with digital color. Quick as usual. Maybe at X-mas I will be able to slow down a little and spend some time on my submission. This took about 20 minutes at most.

Best Blog Ever!

I don't know what to say. I have been waiting for this blog my whole life. Images + Books + Science + History + (a taste of) Victoriana = Love.

(From Drawn)

Thursday Lovin': Paper Cutouts

The work displayed on this site are all delicate little sculptures made from single sheets of paper.

Silent Mutations

I thought that I would never see
My DNA inside a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is mine
Hidden genes that tow the line;
A tree that looks with my own eyes,
And lifts my leafy arms - SURPRISE!;
The Me-Tree that does like to wear
A gel of nests up in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
But I don't have breasts - Hey, don't complain!.
The DNA of fools like me,
Can now be hidden in a tree.

(Apologies to Joyce Kilmer)

Rediscovering Our Youth

I must admit something rather silly. I stole the book above from my daughters. In part because it is one of the few books by illustrator Mary Blair but it really has more to do with the sentimental value.

The book was originally mine and I wanted to kids to enjoy it as I had. The illustrations are light and colorful and, to me, seem a perfect visual metaphor for my youth. The book, unlike any other I own, is pure comfort and memory - an warm old blanket, if you will.

I was surprised then to find that many people are sharing illustrations that they remember from their childhood. It is an interesting study to see what influenced people and what they remembered or found valuable now. While some of it may be a celebration of all things retro, I think there is more to it. I think it is the sentimentality and the fact that a lot of the work was really pretty good.

My kids don't get "I Can Fly" and want nothing much to do with it (justifying my petty thievery). It will be fun to see what they hold dear. I wonder if it will be the Harry Potter video games, the Arthur DVDs, or, perhaps, Olivia.

My vote goes for Olivia.

Addendum: I love Drazen's Halloween take on Mary Blair.

Wednesday Lovin': Fox News throughout history

Silliness...enough said

Dear Future Self...

In the classic Calvin and Hobbes comics there are several moments when Calvin sends notes to his future self. The more academic description comes from Wikipedia:

In a storyline in the daily comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin attempted to create an ontological paradox by travelling two hours into the future to retrieve a story he had to write for homework and did not want to do. He reasoned that by that time it would be done and he could then bring it back to the past and spend the time goofing off instead of working. Of course, the future Calvin didn't have the homework either, having decided two hours previously to time-travel instead of doing it. Calvin eventually ended up fighting with two of his future selves, while Hobbes and his future self wrote a story based on the whole predicament. The story (which was about Hobbes saving the day) received an A+.

I actually done this once in my life (writing to myself) - primarily to see how long it would take to post something in town. But I found it quite interesting writing to my future self. It is sort of like reading a journal or diary years after the fact.

Well, Forbes has a page where you can email yourself or someone in the future. I am thinking of sending myself an email in 1 year. 5 years could be interesting. 20 years is a bit optimistic considering I go through email accounts as frequently as my cat goes through chew toys.

Anyhow, it could be a bit of fun. Delayed gratification.

It could also be a bit heart wrenching especially for those who may send messages then pass away before they are delivered.

Regardless, it might be nice to let your future selves know that you are thinking about them.

(from Boing Boing)

Paris is Burning

It is no wonder that the riots in Paris, ignited by the deaths of two Muslim youths, coincides with Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. For many Muslims world over, it is time of thanksgiving, the end of a period of reflection, and celebration of family and faith. It is, for those living in west, also a moment in time that sets the divisions between cultures in fine contrast.

Let me explain: I wanted to share with my class images of how people celebrate both Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights) and Eid al-Fitr. Doing a search for images I could find many for Diwali but was really frustrated by the fact that all images pertaining to Eid were, for the most part, people praying. The strangeness is this: think about Christmas and now imagine doing a search for the holiday and calling up only pictures of people sitting in church.

Flickr has some 500 photographs of people all over the world celebrating Eid. The images are often personal with little that actually gives some overriding sense of the celebrations.

And this brings me back to Paris and the riots that started in Clichy-sous-Bois. It takes us to Birmingham and Amsterdam. All these places in Europe that have large immigrant populations from predominately Muslim countries. In these places Muslim immigrants live in what could be considered nothing less than ghettos. Not only is there a lack of integration but downright bitter poverty and boiling frustration.

Radicalism blossoms in these conditions and European countries, which welcomed immigration in the past partly as a long term result of colonialism and as means of building and sustaining modern economies, are now facing the stark reality that, whether they like it not, immigrant cultures cannot be ignored. To continue on this path means only more roiting and unrest, at best, and, worse, radical fundamentalism. Islam, throughout Europe now, is an identity one can hold onto when one is neither Moroccan or French, Turkish or German, Pakistani or English.

If governments and their citizens really considered this and are really concerned about the potential for terrorism they would act immediately to integrate disaffected populations and begin to celebrate the cultures which now augment their great traditions.

Back to the images of Eid. When I can do a search and find images of Eid celebrations in Paris, or when I see a commercial for Eid in London, and when I look and can say to myself, "that's French" or "that's Dutch" I know that we, this global culture, will be just a little better off.

Visual Complexity

Visual Complexity is a vertible warehouse of over 200 examples of representations of complex networks.

It is a fascinating site in that it makes explicit the complexity that underlies seemingly simple things. Take high school social networks and look at the image above. Hmmm. See that little dot over by itself on the left....that's me.

Actually what can be gleaned from this image is that white people (in white) hang around with other white people (mostly) and african-americans (in green) with other african-americans (mostly) and that everyone else fits in all over the place (at this one particular school).

Some of the images are hard to read and understand. Some are full of overlapping images and we can't really make sense of them. But, in some instances, that may actually be the point.

(Almost Forgot: Thanks, Jayme)

Illustration Friday: Broken (and Remote)

(click for higher resolution image, buddy.)

Thought I'd work in both "Remote" and "Broken" as I was too busy to complete last weeks entry. I was really pleased with the way the woman turned out. I drew solely from my mind's eye as I was in a hurry (a perpetual state of being these days). My car is a bit junky but that's the point, I guess.

The rock is really funny...out of place, awkward. But a convenient place to rest, I suppose. Whatever to tell the story...

UPDATE: It is strange how seeing an image every day influences our feelings. I have gone from luke warm to completely frigid in my feelings about this image. All the corners cut, the hurrying through just to post something...I know I can do much better and will.

No Comment

I don't quite know how to describe this one.

(from Gizmodo)

Polio - The Comic Book

I am very interested in the ways that storytelling can impart information that is otherwise difficult or, frankly, too dry to present quickly and effectively. Edward Tufte,an information designer, in his books (Visual Explanations in particular) finds wonderful confections and visual displays that tell stories and reveal important information if the viewer takes time to read them. Tufte's examples are wonderful but some take an added bit of knowledge or explanation to understand the stories the way they were intended by the author or artist.

Sometimes, informative storytelling happens in such a way that complex information gets wrapped in a wonder candy-coated shell and the what we learn taste so good going down. This little story about Polio, I feel, works in that way.

When you've finished reading it, you'll say, "Makes sense to me."

Knitting Halloween

Amy Archibald, from somewhere in Oklahoma, has crocheted these Yoda ears. Light sabers and Darth Vader mask (possibly) in the works.

I still cherish the papier-mache mask Darth Vader mask my mom made for me in '78. Aren't moms great?!

The Plame Game

I don't know about you but I am really rather enjoying the whole Plame leak investigation/Judith Miller/Rove/Libby affair.

The best and most comprehensive coverage with video clips from a number of tv news programs (and the daily show, of course), I believe, is Crooks and Liars.

In the same vein, you have to love the Daily Show's view of White House as a television show (click on "The White House Show"). Brilliant.

Illustration Friday: Cold

(Click on image for larger version in Spectaculovision™)

Inked a quick sketch and went with a modest palette. Pretty quick again. I like the simple story it tells. Only disappointment was I couldn't work a squid into it. Enjoy.

Illustration Friday: Lost

(Click on image for larger version)

This is a quicky and I don't feel done with it. I have to post because I am having trouble finding time to work on this. Mid-term week. Sigh. And the students gripe about it.

Anyway, this time round I tried to simplify my process. I was away from the scanner again (curse those faculty and committee meetings!) and didn't want the frustration of not being able to get the effects that I desired with the tablet and mouse. I feel as though each week is so divergently different from the next that I haven't a consistant style.

Ten Words that Will Hurt Your Resume

I came across this blog offering and decided that I could do a much better job of finding words that may have negative repercussions on the way a potential employer views your resume. Here is my selection:

1.) Mujahideen

2.) Jiggy

3.) Nasal Spray

4.) Necrophilia

5.) Tickly

6.) Aardvark

7.) Inflatable

8.) Dander

9.) Plutonium *

10.) Peep

* This word is safe to use if you are apply for work in: a nuclear power plant, a university research lab, Hollywood, convenience store on route 66.

Design in a Small Town 8: Dismantling the Creative Class

I don't remember if I've talked about it before but much of my ire about metrocentrism came from reading Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class. While that book, which talks about how important creative people are to the economy, highlights hipster creative youth (which in my research often means young white males) it does so at the expense of other more pressing issues that cities (and rural areas) face. It also glosses over the struggles young creatives face.

Angela McRobbie, who studies British culture industries such as fashion design, lays bare the mythology of the hipster, artsy-fartsy lifestyle. She highlights how labour actually places the burden of social programs back on the individual creative producer and dismantles unionization through a 'hollywoodization' of work. Creative individuals who love the work they do go from job to job with no long term prospects and very little security net. This is the seedy underside of the creative class.

Add to that a city's need to support growing numbers of underprivileged individuals, address social inequities, and, heck, in some parts of the country just consider mundane infrastructure issues makes the focus on attracting creatives short sighted. Diversified creative communities are important, don't get me wrong, and we should pay attention to what their members have to offer. But the discussion needs to move beyond a celebration of the few who have made it and happen to be currently living in the city. There is a whole country that could use creative people, not just in the capacity they were trained, but in ways that could help communities grow and flourish.

For a good dismantling of Florida's creative class arguments read this article.

Biblioperving

I've just surfaced again from being inside some of the oldest and most remarkable books in the world.

The British Library hosts an online gallery that is filled with beautiful examples of historical works that are not only interesting to read (and, in some instances, decipher) but to merely regard.

(thanks to Jann)

After Design

Sometimes the most beautiful things in world are really quite ugly. More often than not there is something deep within us that prompts a certain visceral reaction that favors an aesthetic. Or, more simply yet, we have emotional connections that allow us to look past the object itself and see only the beauty in our mind's eye. Don't get what I am talking about then think about the crap your mom posted on the refrigerator.

Of course, this begs the question whether there are generally accepted notions of beauty regardless of culture or education. The more interesting question perhaps is why do we find things so friggin' ugly sometimes.

When we spend time exploring the production of visual materials the process is often such that the exploration - not unlike a romance - builds a bond between the product and the producer. That bond, if enough time is spent building that relationship, can be quite strong.

What is the point to this? What does this have to do with the image above?

The image is of Hotel Fox, a hotel in Copenhagen that is a Volkswagen project. The hotel will house the journalists coming to report on the unveiling of a new car. Illustrators and designers were hired to do up each room. The results are very strange and, I must admit in my opinion of some, awful.

Why do I have such strong sentiments? Take a look at this room. I cannot imagine spending the night in it only to wake up face to face with an oversized pink mexican hip hop wrestler. It is so much the illustrator's private party that I can't seem to feel welcome.

It's got me to thinking that, while I celebrate the freedom to play and liberation from Martha Stewart's aesthetic grasp, I find the work too much, well, work to interact with and appreciate.

Illustration Friday: Float

(please click on image to see larger version - don't be shy now!)

Once again went for the all digital solution and tried to get my markmaking somewhat looser and similar to a pencil sketch. I also wanted something lighter in spirit than last week's experiment, hence the jolly polar bear reading, oh my, Kierkegaard. So much for lighter....sigh...

Thursday Lovin': Shining Remix

I found this and thought to myself that it would be good example for my Intro to Viz Com class of how narrrative is constructed in film as the little movie shows how elements from the horror movie The Shining can be reworked into a faux-preview of a romantic comedy.

My colleague pointed out, more brillantly, that it'd be a good example of how media can be twisted and meaning extracted and replaced - in essence, how propaganda could be made by remixing story elements.

Regardless, it is very funny. Check it out.

(from Screenhead)

Question: Why don't you sketch the barn?

Answer: I prefer to drive with both hands on the wheel (har har har).

(see last post)

Shooting the Barn

On the short commute to work each day I pass through a stretch of wheatfields and basalt quarries. I've driven the road so many times that the car seems to drive itself while I work out the day's schedule in my mind or deal with my cowlicks in the rearview mirror. Anybody with even a modest amount of driving to do each day knows what I am talking about.

But it struck me the other day how much this little stretch of road is changing and that startled me out of my complacency. It is only a matter of time before the road is widened or businesses start popping up on cheap farmland. Of course, like most things rural change happens at a pre-global warming glacial pace. Anyway, what spurred this revelation was the site of a row of cars parked on the shoulder and a troop of photographers (from a university class perhaps?) taking pictures of the barn shown above.

I saw another photographer today and one yesterday. That barn is getting photographed more than Kate Moss these days, I thought. Why? Driving home tonight I looked closely and noticed that it is near collapse. The bent boards on its sides are straining under the weight of the structure and are about to give way any day.

Oddly enough the barn has always been there - at least for as long as I can remember. It is a metaphor for the agricultural history and the small scale lives that made up this community and thousands like it all over the west and the whole country for that matter.

Now I understand the need to capture it and to hold on to the moment before it is gone: it is not the barn that we will miss, after all there are hundreds dotting the roads and hills surrounding us, but instead it is the idea behind that metaphor - the idea of another time and place.

Deeper Light

As classes have hit full stride and I have a number of projects in the pipeline, Metasurface is suffering slightly.

Deeper, as you can see, is up in a skeletal state. Deeper will be an expanded portfolio section (the portfolio that is there now will transmogrify into something quite different) and a storehouse for my academic writing and ideas that may be too large for the average post.

In the meantime, Illustration Friday is providing a needed respite from the stresses of the week and, hopefully, some interesting alternative content for this site.

Illustration Friday: Fresh

(please click for larger and more legible version)

This week's project was again an experiment in mood and narrative. 'Fresh' always conjures up such happy things for me or, perhaps, the designer's term for anything new. I tried to get it to take on a contrary meaning.

Anyway, like the other recent pieces (escape and depth) I continued playing with an all digital process (usually I work in pencil, then ink, scan it in and only use the computer for coloring). I am not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. After a number of Photoshop freeze-ups in which I lost work, I decided to just get the thing done before heading back to work tomorrow.

Illustration Friday: Escape Part Deux

Illustration Friday: Escape

Wednesday Lovin': 5ives

A little like McSweeney's Lists, 5ives has some very funny lists.

Speak to Me Softly

37signals has an interesting review of Flickr's sign up page, the down-to-earth (non-technicalese) language it once had, and how the "feel" of that page was rendered much less pleasurable by Yahoo! after they purchased the photo-sharing site.

(My, that was a long sentence.)

Illustration Friday: Depth

While your attention was focused elsewhere...

Today's Guardian reports that 200 detainees at Guantanamo are on a hunger strike and intend to die.

Un/cool, daddy-o

In Thomas Frank's The Conquest of Cool you'll find a compelling story of a shift in advertising in the 1960s that began to use revolutionary language and satire to celebrate youthful hipness. The irony, as I've mentioned before, is that we are continually feed cold left-overs of rebellion. The desire to sell often falls back on notions of cool. Even the design professions themselves succumb to this archaic train of thought.

A few years ago, HOW magazine (a graphic design periodical) ran an article about creative vision. On the cover was a designer-type decked out in a goatee and funky glasses:


It made me wonder if designers are calling up such worn notions of "creativity" and the creative individual. If so, we are in trouble. And it is not just HOW. I visited a successful product designer friend of mine in the summer. The first thing I noticed about him was his textbook hipster appearance. It made me wonder if his design work also followed such stereotypical and, frankly, uncreative fifty year-old ideas. The hipster aesthetic borrows much from the Beatniks and the stereotypical image (see my illustration above). The Beatniks, along with the rebel ab ex artists like Pollock and writers like Kerouac and Ginsberg, sort of set the stage for marketable concept of rebellion. There is no coincidence that their rise to notoriety coalesces completely with Frank's timeline.

We are often sold this notion about designers being super creative but the need to find the next cool thing, to me, seems a recipe for disaster as the cooptation leads to a rapid death spiral into what or an endless loop of historical references. Will design follow art? If so, what happens when graphic design, for instance, is pure concept (no form)?

I predict that the next few years will be interesting. Will we rehash the past forever and keep buying the ideas of the radical? OR will design become more shock oriented? OR quiet? OR...

Whatever happens, let me know when the hipster is dead so I can shave my beard down to a goatee.

Brutal Incompetence

Dennis send this frightening account of the struggle to survive and the law enforcement response in New Orleans last week.

Wednesday Lovin': The Real Looters

Jeff Sellen, at Washington State University, puts things into perspective with this set of figures.

When a Photo Op won't do - criticism from around the world

The NY Times reports that Bush and the Republicans are worried about growing American resentment over, gee, what is it? Oh, yeah:

- the Iraq war
- gas prices
- health care prices
- the state of our environment

and, of course:

- the government's mishandling of the Katrina relief.

The usual approach, gloss it up with a photo op and vapid promises, is wearing thin.

At a party last night, someone made an announcement about where to send relief dollars. A friend from Bangladesh interrupted and asked, "Is America no longer the richest country in the world?"

There was silence. He continued, "It makes sense for Americans and the world to support relief efforts in Sri Lanka or Indonesia where they might need more money. But here?"

I got what he was saying. I have felt it too. In the richest country in the world the government should've been down in the delta on Tuesday. Heck, they should've spent the money to pay for the levee repair. It would've been insurance. Now, we are expected to pay for this administration's muck ups.

Someone remarked that a relative in Canada (who happens to study the oil industry) cannot understand why the price of oil in his country rose with disaster in Gulf coast. That is a sentiment mirrored in some European countries as well.

I figure Bush now has to balance giving gifts to oil buddies, molding his legacy, and laying the ground for another republican administration. But the state of the war, the price of gasoline and health care, the inaction on Katrina relief are all things that have already happened. The latest news, the growing frustration across the country (feelings felt across the world for some time) are exposing what us on the left have always known: this president and the neo-con right need to go so that we can heal and start planning for a future that is more inclusive, egalitarian, nurturing, and forward-thinking. Sure, these things can be mimicked in a photo op. But New Orleans has now ripped open the facade. Hopefully, Americans are taking a good look inside.

Illustration Friday: Roots

roots_small.gif

Interesting

There's been a lot about the flickr set that supposedly showed bias in reporting of the looting in New Orleans. When African-Americans were shown in images, certain news agencies called it 'looting' and with whites it was 'finding'.

It doesn't take a genius to see that many of the people left behind in New Orleans were the poor and many, of course, were African-American.

In regards to my last post, this is an interesting article about the imbalance of gender in tsunami deaths from Wikipedia in March.

Trumping Disasters

While the images of the destruction caused by Katrina are pretty remarkable and sobering, I think that comparison with the tsunami is a little off. I think the blow to New Orleans' levee system (and subsequent flooding) and its impact on oil production will make it a very expensive, if not the most expensive natural disaster in this country's history. It seems like Americans sort of want a bigger disaster.

But in terms of scale and death, the tsunami was really something quite awful. Well over 200,000 dead if not more. It is ridiculous, however, to compare misery. I remember the cover of Newsweek with the woman crying over a dead family member - an image burned into my brain. Today it's the woman mourning her husband, his body wrapped in a blanket. She couldn't get him oxygen in time. Death is death.

Tuesday Lovin': Iconic Napoleon

The Ghost of Ernesto

There are a lot of "iconic" images of the 20th century but probably the most enduring and significant is this picture of Che Guevara.

This image, like so much that represented the rebellious individual during the middle of the 20th century, has been commodified and sold back to us. There is no such thing as cool anymore. If you didn't get the message, oh, say 1989 then look at what passes for cool these days. Not only are we sold archaic notions of the outsider, we see it perpetually reinvented and sold back to us yet again.

Napoleon Dynamite is the new Che Guevara, in spirit anyway, simply because he can satisfy the corporate need for an outsider icon and reinvigorate our ideas of rebellion. When bearded Marxists look a little too much like the Taliban and the image is so well worn that everyone who wants instant rebel pedigree papers mimics the image of Che, its time to look toward the low income, scrawny white kid with an afro.

The Argentinean guerrilla's family is now trying to control the use of the image. I am afraid that it is too late. We have long ago absorbed the image into our collective unconscious. What can they do? Rent Napoleon Dynamite, of course.

For a good analysis of the use of Che's image read Rick Poyner's Obey the Giant.

Bumpy Ride: Katrina and the Waves

The song goes something like this:

Do you know what it means to miss new orleans
And miss it each night and day
I know I’m not wrong... this feeling’s gettin’ stronger
The longer, I stay away

About 3 million people are missing home as they have been evacuated. Nearly 500,000 in NO proper. New Orleans, as we all know by now, sits below sea level.

If that first image didn't do anything for you then think storm surge and take a look at this image followed by this. The latter states that Category 4 storm surges can produce 13 to 18 foot surges. Katrina is a Category 5, I believe.

Yikes!

(BTW, the song above is Louis Armstrong not Katrina and the Waves)

The Halo Conspiracy

Our leaders are holier than thou. According to the press anyway.

Prometro: The Argument for Density

An interesting read in the Harvard Gazette (by way of kottke.org). A snippet:

"...It's the turn-of-the-century photographs that Jacob Riis took of the slums on the Lower East Side, it's the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis that had to be torn down in the 1970s. It's the image of the huddled masses, of disease, crime, congestion. But the statistics show that density is not a leading factor for these conditions. For example, the TB statistics show that the key elements are new immigrants and poverty. Similarly, it's poverty and the lack of job opportunities that drive crime and not density, per se."

The article highlights the benefits (and, well, joys) of living in the city. These include less environmental impact, better tax-base, and nearby high-quality institutions and cultural resources.

Friday Lovin': Worst Album Covers

Say no more.

(BTW, no, I don't visit the Sun regularly. Came across it at populicio.us.)

Design in a small town part 7: Technometrocentrism

Discover magazine has an article by Steven Johnson about Dodgeball - a chimerical tool made up of mapping/wayfinding and social networking technologies.

While it is an interesting little article that brings up the notion that more urban centers better cater to niche groups than rural or small suburban areas (a premise that is hard to argue against), the discussion implicitly follows several assumptions that I find a little problematic.

The gist of my criticism concerns the narrow definition of socializing and the implied socio-economic class and age of those that are assumed to be using Dodgeball. It is clear that the technology described is created for young, semi-affluent, somewhat tech-savvy users.

To go to a bar and hang out and meet "crushes" speaks loads about who this product is intended to serve. Johnson, in his analysis fails to mention the age and socio-economic factors. Johnson instead uses the example of a button store saying that it has a better chance of succeeding in the city due to higher numbers of button freaks. Sure, niche button stores in small towns don't make it but, really, mainstream grocery stores often struggle as well (although, I must say, the rubber stamp/stationary store in my town is not only still around after a couple of years but seems to be doing quite well). It often seems that the reason small town businesses struggle is that younger generations are sold on a mythology that life is better in the city and often that mythology aggrandizes and legitimizes the congregations of big capital and cultural institutions that benefit from being near well-established commercial routes (and those big business). This, of course, comes about as we moved away from small-scale farming towards large-scale agri-business. We are still holding on to the idea that to remain in the boonies means that we need to work on a farm.

I find it immaterial to argue against the reasons that urban areas grow and their importance in general but what I do argue is that we keep pushing the city on children and I think in the future it might be a pretty stupid thing to do. We should look at building all sorts of opportunities and institutions for all ages and socio-economic brackets in rural areas as well.

Johnson remarks:

Dodgeball suggests an intriguing twist on long tail theory. As the technology increasingly allows us to satisfy more eclectic needs, any time those needs require a physical presence —whether it's sipping your cold soup or meeting your crush in a bar —the logic of the long tail will favor urban environments over less densely populated ones. If you'’re downloading the latest album from an obscure Scandinavian doo-wop group, geography doesn'’t matter: It's just as easy to get the bits delivered to you in the middle of Wyoming as it is in the middle of Manhattan. But if you'’re trying to meet up with other fans of Scandinavian doo-wop, you'll have more luck in Manhattan.

Ok. I am surprised this comes from Johnson. I don't think the popular discussions about internet and community were bunk and I would argue that not only does the technology sometimes sublimate for physical proximity (come on, how often would you really go and hang out with Scandinavian doo-wop fans?) it also provides interpersonal distance. And sometimes, if done right, community develops around resources to which people in rural areas connect. Also distance, if you live in the country I would argue, is even perceived differently than in the city. One city block could be 40 miles in the country. I would argue then that people in rural areas are not disadvantaged at all but have an option to remain at a distance and sublimate through technology or can engage by driving *short* distances if they so choose, communicating by phone, or, like me when I feel completely disengaged, visiting cities when I so choose.

To conclude, Johnson's comment about technologies like Dodgeball leading to bigger cities, I think is crazy. As populations age and the technology mutates into something just as meaningful not only for rural and suburban folk but for far older, or younger, or less affluent users it will not draw people to the cities. In fact, it may, with some change in our mythologies revitalize the small town and relieve overburdened populations in the cities.

14 Days and the Anti-War Movement

There is a palatable sense that the anti-war movement is gaining momentum. Anytime Bush has to take time off from his vacation to travel and sell the war it means that public sentiment is changing and moving against the war. Beyond the media attention to Cindy Sheehan's vigil, I assume the new momentum is due to that fact that things in Iraq look worse today than they did 6 months ago.

While looking through my massive bookmarks used for class stuff, I came across this and wondered what it'd look like now.

Mixing Worlds

Wired Magazine has a number of articles today about the intermingling of virtual and non-virtual worlds. They are interesting in that the underlying theme seems to be that there is some therapeutic effect of virtuality - whether it involves an immersive Falluja-like world used to cure Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or just hanging out with an artificial puppy.

Following a link from the PTSD article, it is a bit disturbing to continue on to USC's Institute for Creative Technologies and view the project list.

If you ever maintained any doubt that the entertainment industry and the defense industry were co-dependent, you will be complete disabused of that thinking. An example is The Concept Development and Visualization group that pairs concept or production designers with military folks to think up wonderful new ways to kill and mame people worldwide!

Maybe I am being a little harsh. But there is hope as I think Deuce Bigalow would make a great non-lethal weapon!

Sunday Lovin': Spamusement

I thought I could avoid it this year but it is back: the 'sunday before school starts' blues. Luckily, someone recommended this for a few laughs and it is very spamusing. It might just do the job and cure this funk.

In the same vain...

Slate has an article about Islamic video games.

Getting Serious about Machinima

Although I have known about Machinima for several years, I never really gave it much attention. Machinima (pronounced ma-shin-e-ma) is a type of filmmaking using game engines. What does that mean? Well, individuals record their actions within a video game environment such as Doom or Quake or Halo and edit the 'footage' later to create a story.

My prejudice has always been that the engines used are often 1st person shooter games and I couldn't understand how you could have a very interesting story made from the prefab components.

Recently, however, I've come across several sites and projects that are pretty interesting. The classic, really, is Red vs. Blue. It is funny because the writers give the normally hyper-stoic warrior characters silly personalities. The disjunction is often funny but wears thin with multiple viewings.

Today, I've seen a lot of blogspace dedicated to This Spartan Life. This Spartan Life is a talkshow created in Halo.

Sounds ridiculous but don't think that. Give it a chance. The interview with Bob Stein is not only subtly funny but very thought provoking as well. The segment, to me, is a great exercise in making explicit the possibilities inherent in the medium.

I have to admit that seeing Red vs. Blue and other machinima films I have been completely consumed by the idea that game engines really are a spectacular if only nascent tool for storytelling. The physics, lighting, character movement, and, perhaps most importantly, often unlimited camera movement (a unique feature of games, if you think about it) are all preprogrammed allowing machinima directors a certain level of freedom.

I think we will continue to see a lot more convergence of filmmaking and gameplaying in the future. I am consumed by the desire to create an engine add-on for some of the new next gen game engines allowing for a more elevated level of cinematic production. Imagine directing your own Godfather flick....

Friday Lovin': Lilo's hoo hoo dilly

Cat porn?

(Thanks to Mona from Seattle for exploiting her cat. Photo from Flickr)

(BTW - Mona explains: "It's a she and that is not Lilo's hoo hoo dilly.")

Visual Perception

I have learned more in the past few minutes from Jayme's wonderblog Visual Perception than I have all year. Check it out!

Watch Out for Rof! (Unless it's for sale)

It's nice to see when professionals mess up. But it really messes with my mind, man. Case and point...

I visited a news site (whose name I will not say other than it starts with a 'C' and ends with an 'N' and has another 'N' somewhere in the middle) and went to find out more about the earthquake in Japan.

This is what I found:



I had never heard of 'rof' before so I did what any concerned citizen would do I googled it. I mean, if rof is so dangerous could it possibly kill me? Does rof attack only during earthquakes? Or could it happen, say, during a tense barbeque or mildly foggy day perhaps? I want to know.

The search results yielded little unless, of course, it was the Registre des Ostéopathes de France that fell and injured people in Japan. But more clues were uncovered. Look:



Apparently, you can buy rof (or used rof anyway) on Ebay.

To solve this once and for all, I did an image search and this is what I believe fell on those poor Japanese:

Don't Pretend Lunacy

Here is some interesting Japanese propaganda from WWII.

The views of Asia pre- and postwar are informative. The additional pamplet directed at US soldiers, less so (but no less entertaining).

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

In an earlier post I talked about Jules Verne and Paris in the Twentieth Century. One thing I failed to mention as being off in Verne's prediction is that transportation in his vision is primarily through elevated pneumatic tube trains.

Well, although this may not quite be pneumatic it got me thinking about PITTC again. Looking at the concept more closely, I wonder if it'd really work? It's wacky but if someone told me that you could propel a car with an machine that, when fed dead dinosaur juice, makes little explosions a number of times every second...

I'd be curious to see a critique of the system. I, for one, don't really get excited by travelling in an airless tube at 4000 mph. But, hey, New York to LA in less than hour without having to eject myself from atmosphere, hmmmmm, I may have to think about it.

(photo credit: Carole N., image found at stockXchng (sxc.hu) a free stock photo community website)

Keeping up Appearances

An interesting little tidbit about website appearances highlights how certain designs are more "masculine" than others. Glean from it what you will.

Friday Lovin': Earth from Space

Why not spend quality time at work watching the earth from one of the many satellites circling the planet?

Thought: Remember the iconic image of Earth from the moon? It seemed for a while that the image spoke loads about how we are stuck on this planet together and that we desperately need to take care it. Then the Hummer was created. Sigh.

Design in a small town part 6: Bad Design/Liability

On a cold and blustery day last fall I was driving to work when I noticed something odd downtown. Every 3 feet or so there was a traffic cone placed in the middle of the sidewalk. On my way home I made sure to stop and see what this was all about.

Well, simply put, the town's walk of fame sidewalk plaques were, when sprinkled with frost and snow that had melted, extremely slippery. I had seen these little squares and had always thought of them as embarrassing bad design but it never crossed my mind that the design was so bad that it could hurt you!

Let's break it down. First, the aesthetics:

- The original design had two fonts (the rounded sans and a serif) that did not work well together (the serif - part of a logotype I believe, is now covered)
- The mark at the top is difficult to decipher (I think it is a representation of an artesian well. Either that or a picture of It from the Addams Family)
- The black granite is reflective often making it difficult to read the sandblasted lettering

Secondly, one should consider these other factors:

- The granite is extremely slippery when wet
- The walk of fame is a block away from a retirement home and the sidewalks are used often by people who have a difficult time walking especially in icy weather
- The solutions, so far, have rendered the original concept moot. The cones sit on top of the plaques and the no-slip safety tape obscure much of the writing

It seems that this is either something done by committee or by an individual who didn't think about these factors. The result is dangerous.

Design in a small town part 5: OTT

As usual I left renewing my car tabs until the last possible minute which meant I had to visit the local licensing office. Oddly enough, in this town, it means a visit to an old train station.

With a name like 'Pullman' you can imagine there'd be a number of train stations laying about and that some (if not all) would be repurposed. Anyhow, I walked into the station to get my new tabs when, lo and behold, the place was decked out with pictures of old trains, the original schedule board and seating area, a huge clock, and even a mannequin dressed as a conductor. The windows for the DOL are the same ticket windows used for fifty years at the beginning of the last century.

I was standing there when the little wooden window shot up and the gentleman asked how he could help me. I responded, "I'd like a ticket for the 12:30 to Chattanooga." Then I proceed to laugh at myself while the bloke stared at me completely straightfaced. To save face I said, "oh, that's right. I am 60 years too late." He still didn't crack a smile.

Come to find out the gentleman owns the place. As you can see from the picture above he must have a love affair with trains. In front of the station you can see an actual passenger car and in front of that you can see a wooden engine that was built recently. Wait! A wooden train engine?

As with previous entries, design in a small town often mean lack of restraint (and building codes apparently). It is one thing to have the interior of place dressed to one's fetishes but to impose a large and awkward wooden structure that has little use is another.

But, as usual, the deeper significance is that little strange things like this structure are oddly what give small towns quirky charm. The best thing to do, then, is to sit back, wait, and see what other craziness pops up.

Why I love Banksy

Me thinks these are strange times in the art world. Works that shock, works that don't, and old favorites such as ab ex and pop, while ever present, have transmogrified but don't seem to be cutting it. Whitney's biennial a few years ago questioned what could be considered art and found a chaotic breadth of work as an answer.

So, what is new? What is *ack* 'fresh'?

Take a bit of humor, a dash of bravado, a pinch of activism and you get...Banksy.

This link (thanks to Robert for sending it along) has some of Banksy's latest work in Palestine on Israel's 'security barrier'. It is very much a comment on the wall. The NEWS section of his website has more images of the project and Banksy is not afraid to add little transcripts of his discussions next to the images. Those discussions speak loads. An example:

Old man: You paint the wall, you
make it look beautiful.

Me:Thanks

Old man:We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this
wall, go home.

His other work includes hanging his own pieces (of a stuffy 18th century royal who has just finished spraypainting graffiti, no less) in the National Gallery in London. His graffiti is so well designed that it'll make you laugh.

For more Banksy check out Banksy's homepage.

NASSA - The other space program

The Old Negro Space Program is a very funny mockumentary that simultaneously takes the piss out NASA, academia, the formulaic nature of the contemporary documentary, and American bigotry.

It sometimes treads lightly on uncomfortable ground but that is what makes it smart. Watch the whole thing - especially the part with the letter home.

Simple Messages

Dennis sends this one along. Funny and, oh, so perfect.

Forest Grove Estates: New Media Storytelling

Simple yet very compelling story

Open-source, free culture, and the coming storm

For those of you that don't know me well, I am writing a book about the intersections of design culture, free culture, and creative production in 21st century - a little topic. Writing, as we can all remember from term papers and essay tests, is hard work. And, in the past 2 months, for every word I written, I have erased four.

Tonight, I was reminded why I started writing the book: people are doing some remarkably cool things and, in my opinion, changing the world (insert sinister laughter here).

I am not talking about something as piddly as eradicating polio or forgiving 3rd world debt. No, I am talking about makin' FREE SOFTWARE!

Let me explain. Tonight I found two new applications that are freeware or open-source projects. One is a painting application similar to Corel Painter unfortunately called Artrage. The other is an SVG production package called Inkscape. Although they may not have all the features of Painter or Illustrator or Freehand they are creative productions that simply give to a wider audience the tools for creative production. The result is a unique cultural system (that is the real brilliant design project) that encourages others to engage in creative work of their own.

The system is all about sharing, gift-giving, reputation, and doing things because we love to do them. The interesting thing is that as the technology advances it seems the quality of the products and the resulting productions (from those products) is not that far off from the big name commercial works (think Linux as opposed to Windows as an example). The coming storm is a time when the open source design projects compete directly with or that flavors of idiosyncratic products make redundant bloated commercial wares (think the Podcasting versions of game design, for instance).

The resulting changing to society could be significant. But more on that later....

BTW, the image above is a work done in Artrage by Duncan Pond (another unfortunate name. I certainly hope his parents didn't give him the middle name of Drowninda) Click on the thumbnail to see the higher resolution image.

Design in a small town part 4: The Webcam

There are instances when big-city life and small-town events are just as dull as one another. This perhaps highlights a deficiency in the way a technology is used to present place and event. Web-cams, for the most part, be they in New York or wherever pretty much fail to actually give us any real sense of place or feeling of presence.

I would like to see webcams that record nice high resolution images that are crisp when displayed (especially on large monitors). It will be a great day when we can actually see the paint drying as we watch it from 5000 miles away.

Rant: Neglect in a Northern Town

My sister and I have "viral song wars" wherein we try to get a catchy tune stuck in each other's head. Today I was telling her that the song stuck in my head intermittently for the past few days has been Dream Academy's Life in Northern Town.

We both agreed that it isn't really catchy but that we liked the song and that the video sticks in our minds after all these years. We talked about how depressing it seemed. The lyrics (about a father who comes to visit his children rarely maybe because the town is economically in the dumps so he has to find work elsewhere - that's the story I made up from the lyrics years ago) and the video (rainy English village) make it one of those songs that, for me, remind me of the sweetness of youth tinged with adult melancoly (we want to go back even if it wasn't the greatest time in our lives).

Or was I just putting more into a crappy video and song that I had forgotten about for two decades?

I came home and did a search for the video and, lo, yahoo has it. I click on the 'view video' only to get an error and message that if I want to view on a Macintosh I have to use Netscape 4.7!! Netscape 4.7 for the Macintosh running OS X, for those of you on PCs, requires that I run Classic (old school operating system emulation). So, I do this, download 4.7 and try to view the video again. Next it tells to download Windows media player. Well, to find the media player that will work on 4.7 is like going on an archeological dig.

At the end of this, my computer gets hung up during installation. The result is that my time machine only goes so far back and I am stuck in the mid-90s.

The song and the video then settle back into the recesses of my mind until three months from now when I am brushing my teeth.

BTW

BTW (by the way not bind torture weedwack), I am very disappointed that all 2 1/2 of you that read this blog haven't commented on the ugliest dog in the world. Can he (or she or it) not get any respect from you lot? So, it looks like something that the gates of hell opened up and burped out. Can't you find it in your cold, wicked hearts to look past its faults, its blemishes, its terrible dental hygiene to make...yeah, you're right it is disgusting. Sorry, about that.

Sharing Everything

The internet has always been a communal space. Even in the heady days of the dot.com bubble it was all about us - the general users not the corporate entities. This is continually reinforced through web applications such as Flickr, a site that allows people to upload and share their photographs with one another (and even specify that how they can be used by others).

Flickr is home to a lot of interesting stuff as people use it for a number of reasons: sketchbook storage, portfolios, family photo share, documentation....

In fact Flickr has arguable become the Wikipedia of social anthropology by capturing the visual culture of a global group of users. It fills the niche left by blogs and websites and often cuts through the crap that people use to puff themselves up on those types of sites.

What I find fascinating is the things people choose to document and how useful they can be without seeming to be useful at all. To explain visit this site. It is in essence a teeny visual narrative of one person's brain tumor removal surgery. The narrative ends happily and the way that it is presented, for instance the surgery pictures almost seem as though the operation was performed in this couple's bathroom or the smiling faces throughout the story allow us to read it as, I guess, a generally positive experience. This is a refreshing counterpoint to the sterility of most medical discourses.

If I had tumor and scared shitless of surgery, I think this set of photos would go a long way to alleviating my fears.

Visual Poetry and the online magazine

The first time that I saw Born Magazine I felt that we had reached milestone in the development of new media. To the uninitiated, Born Magazine features Flash and Quicktime movies used to give visual form to poetry. The results are often challenging, entertaining, thoughful, and, I might add, beautiful.

There have been a number of other similar magazines but not none really have the reputation or the quality of Born. Although Born has been around for a while the site is updated quarterly and always fresh.

Another online magazine that covers similar ground is Splotch. It is a beautifully constructed with well design visuals accompanying very interesting writing.

The Kids are alright

Hillary vs. the Xbox

Tuesday Lovin': Safe Sex is cute...

Japanese Condom Packaging reveals how embedded the culture of cute is in all facets of Japanese society.

Note: I don't think I will ever be able to eat a Kit Kat again.

Tuesday Tira Mi Su: World's Ugliest Dog

I kind of like him. Kind of...

The Trouble with Ordinariness

It has been difficult to think of something to say about the London bombings. One thing that sticks in my mind is the fact that London is under constant super surveillance. What results, then, is not the elimination of terrorists acts or any violence for that matter but instead an exposure of a sort of wicked dialectic of normalcy (even mundanity) and, well, death.

The image above is supposedly of the suicide bombers. There is nothing there to indicate that they will kill themselves and others. It is that fact alone that makes it an interesting image. We can look at it and say at that moment nothing had happened and life was going on as usual.

Terrorism works on this priniciple: take that ordinariness and shatter it. The irrational act then eliminates the ordinary.

Ok, but what about the death of the Brazilian electrician? With our definition could it not be argued that he experienced (at the hand of London Metro Police - who were in plain clothes, I might add) a similar sort of terror?

The dialectic then becomes one more about the illusion of order and the fragility of life when we start believing in the irrationality instilled by fear.

Launch Time

CNN's current cover story (10 am pst July 26, 2005) is the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.

By now videos of shuttle launches are sort of ho hum. I remember as kid being herded into the gym at school to watch the shuttle launch and landing. It has become so routine (Mom used to say, "Did you clean your room? Brush your teeth? Watch the shuttle launch?") that the only thing to remind us of the spacecraft is something like its disintegration over Texas two years ago.

Well, for no apparent reason, I watched the launch online and noticed something different. Nasa now has something like over 120 cameras trained on the shuttle (some literally attached to the rocket boosters) to watch for any leaks, cracks, missing ceramic tiles, explosions, stowaways, whatever.

If you happen to get the NASA channel then I am sure they had even more spectacular coverage.

Update: NASA's launch video on their website is the same as CNN's. But you can view the NASA channel with live feed of astronauts doing exciting things like brushing their teeth here

The Best Blog, er, Website Ever!?!

Today, in Gregland, this is now officially the best website ever in the history of humankind.

(I love the losingest kittens.)

How Broadband Changed My Life...

In the past three or four months we've had cable and have become, basically, HGTV zombies. Barring the Daily Show we've found nothing worth watching except the 'your home is ugly and we'll redecorate it'™® channel. We have redecorated everything it seems and the only thing left to do is add window treatments to the cat. So, we've decided it is time to say good bye to our cable.

In its place we've finally installed broadband.

It is not that I hope to replace TV with passive, mind-numbing TV-ish internet entertainment. But the thought did cross my mind. My efforts to see what video is available has turned up this gem: TV4All

It provides links to hundreds of video streams from all over the world. This is a great resource especially for those of you out there that have missed those Belarussian Cooking Programs!

update: hey, european music video channels actually play music videos!

Framing and what it means to you!

Last Sunday's NYTimes magazine ran an article about the battle to control language in political discussions.

The article focuses on the cognitive linguistic work of George Lakoff. Some democrats are focusing on Lakoff's notion of Framing that simplifies concepts as keywords or metaphorical mental imagery as a better way of getting their ideas across to broader public.

It is an interesting discussion - one that merits reading the whole article - as it highlights two salient points:

- people are not really all that rational
- mental imagery is important when trying to get your point across

So, here is my attempt at framing: Read the article or your brain will shrivel up and blow away!

Tuesday Lovin': How it works...

Take a stroll through this book. I like page 26 of the 1971 edition. note about illustration: I think the woman is planning the man's demise.

It is a fun bit of 'biblioarcheology'.

Friday Lovin': Giant Table

Check it out.

Reasons for the decline of moviegoing

I don't often go out to the movies. Part of the reason is that I have wiggly kids. Also, to take the whole brood means putting my home in escrow (and if we buy treats, it means holding up the bank next to the theater). And in all honesty the experience really isn't that great. At home, we can really take our time, rewind the film, and, most importantly, we can watch foreign films that never, ever come to this dinky town.

Another reason for the sagging moviegoing numbers, I contend, is that we are quickly becoming a production-savvy society. We not only like good stories and captivating imagery but also we also look how the movie is made. All those DVD special features and our own experimentation with dv cameras and sophisticated imagemaking software has made us very picky consumers.

There are a gazillon reasons as to why we hate going to the movies. Here is a rant I found today.

One last idea: maybe when we deck ourselves out in gadgets (Ipods, in particular) and carry so much media around with us, we start to see our lives as movies.

INT. CAFE - DAY.

MED. SHOT of GREG as he sits at his laptop. He sighs and sits back looking off into space. He sips his coffee.

C.U. as he stares blankly.

FADE OUT.

The Best Blog Ever!?!

I found this today and think that, for a short time anyway, it could be the best blog ever:

toby's monitor

(note: hope you enjoy this one, Amy)

Friday Lovin': Animation and the French School

I love this because it is so over the top: Le Building

There is a lot of really good stuff coming out of France. It's probably that Jesus-blood thing....

Strange Connections

(Note: I am in a cafe that is playing their 'worst of the 80s' cd so I apologize for any errors. My brain is melting!)

I am in a cafe because I need caffeine. I was up late watching a show on the History Channel called something like 'Beyond the Da Vinci Code' or 'Tantalizing enough to keep you awake until 2am'. Anyway, the show systematically debunked the interesting little stories and clues in the book (soon to be movie) The Da Vinci Code.

For those of you that don't know the premise of the book, the mystery centers around a search for the holy grail. The 'san graal' or holy grail, as author Dan Brown tells us, is actually 'sang raal' (royal blood) and the book provides a complex story about how the templar knights and a secret sect called the Priory of Scion (to which Leonardo Da Vinci, in the book, belongs) protect the secret that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen and that they had a child (a girl named Sarah). Supposedly, Mary stole away to France where the holy blood line continued with the Merovingian royal family. The decendents of Jesus, following logic, went on to produce such rich cultural treasures as the Sophie Marceau teen flick 'La Boum' and the Citroen Deux Cheveaux.

Regardless, historians believe that Jesus could've been married to Mary as it was not unusual, at the time, for Jewish men to have arranged marriages in their 20s. And there is evidence that Mary did indeed escape to Egypt then to the south of France.

While this is all interesting in itself, I find a metareading of the Da Vinci phenomenon fascinating especially in light of several recent books: Everything Bad is Good for You and The Goddess and the Alphabet.

Let me explain: All these text, Da Vinci Code included, toy with the idea that there are fundamental ways of viewing the world (through Patriarchical and Matriarchical lenses is the most facile description of these viewpoints). Leonard Shlain's Goddess follows an argument that has more holes in it than a Fallujah Islamists' hideout but the central tenet that we privilege the written word and rationality to the point that disables the feminine in much of our lives. In The Da Vinci Code the Priory of Scion also believes that the story of Jesus and Mary is one more egalitarian than the church wanted. Da Vinci's symbology, Brown asserts, reaffirms the feminine in religious texts.

What does this have to do with Everything Bad, you ask? We often equate visual media as emotional (read not rational) and author Steven Johnson makes the argument that all sorts of visual media is not mindless but that is actually quite complex thus making us smarter. To me, I see this argument as part of the broader acceptance of the visual and, possible, a move from patriarchy-enabling rationalization toward more emotive egalitarian modes of thought. (note: insert tongue in cheek)

Then again my whole argument could just be result of my emotional state after be subjected to Kenny Logins' 'Footloose'.

Getting serious about Tut

It is not all fun and games when race is involved.

(BTW, visit Moveon.org to give your support to NPR and PBS).

Rem's Magic Playhouse

I am currently sitting in the Seattle room of the Seattle public library. Yes, this is Rem Koolhas' baby.

I find it a fascinating place. A bit cold and awfully open but I think that also gives it charm oddly enough. It is never loud (like I thought it would be) and I have found many spaces that quite comfortable (with squishy furniture).

As a library, I don't think the building will age gracefully. The first thing to go will be the spongy furniture, I am sure. Then the low stack will be need to be replaced with taller shelving and that alone will alter the visual experience. Public libraries show a lot of wear and tear very quickly and this space is not immune from that fate.

But that's just spongy furniture and shelving. The details are what makes the space unique. The windows (and the building's facade is essentially one giant window broken by a diagonal grid of metal beams) sandwich an aluminium (?) mesh that is both seemingly transparent and very effective at deflecting the light.

The carpet near an info desk takes it cues from a garden space directly outside the building and brings it indoors. The effect is a very funky, very contemporary space.

I can't help but think about a discussion I had with an architect friend of mine. He remarked that this building has very little to do with books, reading, and the normal functions of a library. In many ways, I have to agree. I can forsee a time in the future when this space serves another purpose. It would do it quite well (and perhaps age gracefully in this new function).

Design in a small town part 3

Sometimes good design has a lot to do with restraint. The coffee shop above is a popular hangout and one of about 200 of the same franchise in our meager little town. The interior has beautiful walls of exposed brick that, during renovation, revealed 80 year old (or so) painted signage and, I guess, graffiti.

I assume the shop owners were worried that the facade wasn't fitting the feeling of the rest of the place. So, they took it upon themselves to add trompe l'oeil faux brick, windows and a handpainted sign. Although hard to see unless you are walking on the other side of the street, all of this is really overkill that does more to destroy the coherent design dialogue between the shop's established identity system and interior design.

Sometimes good design means whispering instead of yelling or, more to the point, knowing when to stop designing!

metasurface hiatus

I am currently sitting in an airport waiting for my plane to Seattle. I will not be posting as often as I would like (if at all). Hang in there and stay out of trouble.

Podcasting Television?

In informal discussions with students in my large lecture classes (~350 students) I have been surprised by how many students claim that they DON'T watch television.

Many claim that they have maybe 1 or 2 shows that they may record or watch but the truth of the matter is that DVDs, the internet and video games (even music) have taken chunks of time away from the tube.

It is really interesting how students take little bits of media and, more often than not, literally take it with them.

Although there are a plethora of portable media players (see gizmodo.com), the technology still hasn't hit mainstream.

At the risk of venturing into popular techno-fetishism, I think in the next year or two as the technology becomes widely accepted (in rural areas too) we are going to need to continue the project to reconceptualize graphic and interface design.

The media and the technology that support them, I posit, often promote quick and lasting changes that we (as lowly human beings too concerned with the mundane aspects of our lives) are unable to appreciate until it is practically too late. To quickly jump on hte bandwagon smacks of careless abandon and, in the case of education, pandering popular deterministic mythologies. What's a young educator to do?

The Visionary Imagination

(thanks to idfueland the nameless bloke who originally posted the image on Flikr)

Designers and artists often live in two worlds at once: the imaginary and the real world. Sometimes it is difficult for us to envision what the artist is showing us and other times it is simply magical. In good visionary projects we instantly get it and, for a moment, peer into another world. The object depicted above was created by French theater/puppeteer troupe Royal De Luxeto to celebrate the 100th anniversity of Jules Verne's death. This was one of a number of projects in Nantes, Verne's hometown.

With the ability to translate and share the imaginary comes a lot of responsibility. Ironically, Verne's last book Paris in the 20th Century has pretty much come to be. Maybe if he'd been responsible enough NOT TO DIE and had finished the sodding book and published it we wouldn't be in this mess!

(Yikes! Sorry for that outburst. I am going back to my tut heads...)

Slacker Guilt: Fun Post Freebie

I got so caught up in my own angst-ridden writer's block last Friday that I forgot to post. So here is what I would've posted:

A couple of weeks ago the NY Times ran an article about a visual reconstruction of the dashing young King Tut. Here's an image from National Geographic magazine:



Like any good educator I thought to myself: "How can I use this image to teach deep and meaningful things about our visual culture and our ability to see the (formerly) invisible?!"

Then I thought to myself: "Screw that! I just want to draw some funky hair on that guy!"

So, if you have Photoshop, go to this site and download some funky hair brushes, install them, and have at it.

Here is my latest creation:



Note: For those of you who perhaps noticed a similarity between the boy king's and my own profile all I can offer is this.

The Line King

During my lunch breaks these past few days I've been viewing The Line King . It's a quiet and unpretentious documentary about New York cartoonist Al Hirschfeld who passed away in 2003.

The documentary traces his life throughout the 20th century and, while I have been a fan for as long as I can remember, I hadn't stopped to think about what his signature style has come to mean. Basically, he IS New York City in the 20th Century.

Renowned for his caricatures of theater personalities and performing artists in general, Hirschfeld had the fortune of being in the thick of it throughout his entire life. If you want to find the essence of the magical impression that many have of New York, take the time to explore the body of his work. The DVD is a perfect way to do this.

Included in the bonus features is a segment where he draws Paul Newman. Hirschfeld is 99 years old and while much of his markmaking is scratchy he occasionally pulls off a sweeping line that is so elegant. I suppose it is like travelling in Manhattan and seeing the dirt, grime, and rats only to turn the corner to catch a glimpse of the Chrysler building.

Teaching Future Deep Throats

Now that the identity of Woodward and Bernstein’s infamous informant, Deep Throat, has been revealed it is safe to inform the world that Mark Felt is indeed a former University of Idaho graduate.

Felt graduated in 1935. If there was any question about his role in bringing down Nixon, here is a picture from his senior yearbook:

Design in a small town part 2

I have to admit that, while I am frustrated at metrocentrism in general, I find myself practicing it often. I get frustrated by the lack of thought that not only goes into the city planning but also the design of little displays, public spaces, signage, and other artifacts which make up the backdrop of our lives.

Take, for instance, the image above. This wine bar is actually quite nice and popular gathering place. Housed in an old Post Office building there is a certain charm to it, I suppose. But the signage is so awful. To add insult to injury, the recent addition of the reader board does nothing to remedy the overall design. It makes me cringe and laugh at the same time when I have to pass it on my way to work.

Did the owners not think that a reader board has come to signify something quite different from the atmosphere of a wine bar!?!

At the same time, the tackiness becomes part of the, well, mystique of small towns. The town appears, for a lack of a better word, authentic. Cities often, on fresh visit, appear to be confused conglomerations of the hyperdesigned and the utter corroded

Boonies, eh?

Hicksville, backwoods, the wilds, the boondocks...er, bundocks

Design in a small town part 1

Years ago I left Seattle to live with my wife in a small town in eastern Washington. My friends thought I was crazy for moving back to the town that I had seemingly spent 18 or so years trying to escape. My designer friends expressed the viewpoint that I was removing myself from a viable design scene and thus committing career suicide.

In many ways they were right. Regardless, I am amused by the metrocentrism of my peers. I think that it not only needs to change but WILL change in the next 10 years.

My research of creative communities leads me to believe that as designers (of all sorts) seek to settle down more that they will explore the option of moving to the 'boonies'. I believe that the fear many have of small towns often stems from the various traumas of youth, general impressions of rural america, and their desire to be near many potential clients.

Or it could just be that small towns are, well, tacky. Others have recently discovered strange design artifacts from small towns.

More later...

The Political Flash

Flash movies are more often than not an annoyance that pertains little to the meat and matter of a website.

But I keep coming across efforts to use Flash as a method of storytelling in the service of imparting complex information or sharing political viewpoints. Many of these Flash movies suffer the same problems as their splash counterparts.

I recently found an informative Flash animation from MoveOn.org. I am uncertain whether the chosen media diminishes (somewhat) the value of the message. Check it out: Bush in 30 Years

The Invisible Art

I stumbled across The Invisible Art a few weeks ago. The book outlines a comprehensive history of matte painting in film. Matte painting is a hyperrealistic painting of a environment or object that is composited into a motion picture image to provide additional or fantastic sceneographic design (see wikipedia ). The matte painting work is so skillfully done that it is seamlessly integrated into the film.

The book is a bit of a dry read unless you are really into filmmaking or production design but it is interesting to flip through in order to trace the history and, most importantly perhaps, see examples from well-known scenes in a number of films that leave you going: "That was a painting?"

With digital technologies we take this skill for granted. I wonder if these painters worry about their careers in the same way that poster artists do?

Welcome!

Metasurface will hopefully provide a novel view of the warp and weft of contemporary visual culture.

I am hoping that, in the least, it can be more than a monologue. I would like to explore a host of issues - not just those pertaining to visual culture and communication - such as creative communities (the emphasis of my research), design culture, design education, art and design in rural America, teaching in higher education and host of corollary topics.

Please join me and help me achieve my lofty goals.