Random Etc. Notes to self. Work, play, and the rest.
SFMOMA ArtScope
Once again I've been beaten to the punch by Stamen, infosthetics, Geraldine, Esquire and more. But here it is for posterity: we released SFMOMA ArtScope a couple of weeks ago. This was a fun one, we're really pleased with the lens approach (rather than continuous zooming) and we're loving the serendipitous bouncing from piece to piece when you search.
Inside info: the artwork is arranged by acquisition date, earliest acquisitions are top left and latest are bottom right.
Criticism for Twitter Blocks
We finally kicked Twitter Blocks out of the door yesterday. It's been in development for about a month, mainly by Ryan Alexander and myself (but all Ryan whilst I was working on Oakland Crimespotting, he's a star). It's the first time we've done 3D things using Flash and it's amazing what's being done with Papervision3D at the moment. On the other hand, having 3D shoe-horned into the 2D Flash engine means the learning curve is a lot steeper than the native-3D Processing/OpenGL worlds Ryan and I are used to.
Whenever Stamen launches a new thing, my immediate reaction is a sigh of relief followed by a slightly obsessive-compulsive trawl of what people are saying about it online. (I use a combination of alerts from Technorati, Google Blog Seach and Bloglines to keep track).
The interesting thing about working with companies like Digg and Twitter is that your work inherits all the criticisms and detractors of those sites as well. Digg's users are clamouring for a picture section, so when we launched Digg Arc many of the responses ignored the piece entirely and chastised Digg for paying attention to visualisation and not to the main site. The same argument is already being used against Twitter Blocks, even though the amount of time Twitter's developers put into it was tiny compared to the amount of time they're putting into stability and new features.
Don't get me wrong: some of the early feedback we're getting is very positive, the team at Twitter have been very receptive and we're proud of our work. This much is good. Some of the feedback we're getting points out that the work isn't immediately understandable (I agree, and maybe we could do some more explaining, but I think we're OK for now).
However, there is also a strong and steady flow of negative comments that I've gathered here so I can think about them all in one place.
“Pretty visualization but I doubt its practicality.” PoppuPot
“Twitter Blocks is the kind of thing that demos well at conferences. Not too useful in real life.” Dave Winer
“exploring myneighbourhood : fun 3D view but so what? not sure i will do that everyday.” jean-michel gobet
“Well its interesting that its a new Twitter toy, but I just don't get it. Functional?” programwitch
“Puzzled but Entertained” … “Not really got the slightest idea why this is anything other than an interesting folly.” Tom Coates
“What is the point? Beats me.” Russel Heimlich
“I have to say I was absolutely gobsmacked by how utterly pointless it is.” EirePreneur
(The last one is, short of a personal insult, pretty much the harshest thing anyone has ever said about work I've been involved in.)
To address Tom Coates' point, if you're entertained we've done our job. If you're puzzled then maybe we can help explain things better next time. But I don't mind if some of our work is seen as a folly (“an extravagant, frivolous or fanciful building, designed more for artistic expression than for practicality”). Not everything that everyone does has to be useful or profound. (Nevermind that we've personally found Twitter Blocks a useful way to explore the Twitter network in the last few weeks, with frequent remarks of “I didn't know X was on Twitter”).
Jim Bumgardner (aka KrazyDad, author of O'Reilly's Flickr Hacks) addressed the “so what?” response to frivolous work in a blog post called Utility is Overrated a couple of months back. In the comments there's a comparison with Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation. In it, she states that “interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art”. I don't want to point at Twitter Blocks and say “art” (the Motorola sponsorship in particular makes that tricky) but I think that people are thinking too hard about things if they're looking for the “point” of it.
I'm not asking that people stop casting a critical eye over what's presented to them, especially when it's being hyped to death and it's commercially branded. It's fine to ask “what's it for?”, especially of new tools or things that aim to improve the efficiency or effectiveness of this or that. But why not also accept that some things might just be for entertainment and ask “am I having fun” once in a while instead of looking for a problem to be solved or an important statement to be read? Some things just are.
Bleigiessen
Yesterday my colleagues and I took part in the monthly guided tour of the new Wellcome Trust building on London's Euston Road. The main point of the visit was a chance to get up close and personal with the seven stories of Thomas Heatherwick's Bleigiessen installation.
Bleigiessen is described on the Wellcome trust page as follows:
Consisting of 150 000 specially processed glass spheres, suspended on almost one million metres of fine stainless steel wire, the sculpture glows with a constantly shifting rainbow of colours. This effect was created through a unique process of sandwiching reflective 'dichroic' film within the glass.
The form of the sculpture has been derived, through the use of 3-D computer modelling, from the twisted shape of a drop of molten metal, which cooled and solidified as it fell through tumbling water. The aim was to produce a sinuous, curvaceous form with variety, so that it would look different from each of the building's nine floors.
So Bleigiessen's organic forms turn out to be from a happy accident with molten metal, rather than the DNA or biological roots I had naively assumed given its Wellcome Trust connections. I like that. More background on Heatherwick in this great PingMag feature.
Since it's on UCL's doorstep, I've admired the sculpture from the pavement several times before, and I wasn't alone in having my nose pressed up against the glass when it was under construction. Inside though, the ambition and scope of the work becomes clear.
Bleigiessen's thousands of steel cables render its interior an obscure and enticing mystery, strobing in and out of view as the layers of cables overlap. To me sculpture is art manifest by space and requiring movement to explore and enjoy it, and so Bleigiessen is the anti-sculpture in that it demands stillness from its viewer. Tilt your head up and down to take it all in, by all means, but don't cross its overwhelming verticality.
Well worth the trip, the only downside is that the fast and smooth glass lifts don't linger alongside it for long enough. Tours are currently running on the last Friday of every month, the Wellcome Trust site has the details.
On Personalisation and International Arts and Crafts
I'm enjoying the first public fruits of Schulze and Webb's work with Nokia on personalisation, in particular their explorations with mobile phone design in wood and fabric.
Anne Galloway asks if this is "personalisation for the many or the few?" and this talk of personalisation, local manufacture and crafting leads me to revisit my thoughts following a visit to the V&A's International Arts and Crafts exhibition this summer.
I can't say that the products or design values of the movement weren't to my taste, and nor can I deny the influence and impact of the movement on current design. However, the ideals of the arts and crafts movement as told by the exhibition were seemingly at odds with the pieces on display and the works of the designers who most actively promoted it. Ostensibly the movement was aimed at making high-quality everyday items accessible to the masses, and a desired return to simpler values, natural materials, high quality craftsmanship and in particular the notion of house and home as work of art. Unfortunately it seemed to be composed of well-off city-dwellers whose desire for so-called simple life arose from a romanticised and fetishised view of the countryside. Save a brief nod to Gustav Stickley's desire for commercial viability it wasn't clear how ordinary people would ever attain the wealth required to live that lifestyle, but meanwhile the apparent worthiness and endearing qualites of handicrafts and one-off items were co-opted to design and furnish the houses of rich patrons of the arts in Victorian urban centres.
Perhaps I missed something and just neatly summarised a total misunderstanding of the Arts and Crafts movement, but sticking my neck out a little I can see the some of the same contradictions at work in Schulze and Webb's explorations. On the one hand, the assertion is made that personalisation and craft should be (and arguably are) accessible to everyone, but on the other hand the waters are muddied with talk of one-off/short-run bespoke and luxury items for a designer market. I'm pretty sure that arises because they quite rightly believe in the value both areas of design, but I'm interested to hear Jack and Matt's thoughts on why these areas are seemingly so easy to mix up, and I'm especially eager to see what comes next.
More Processing Blogs
Alison Mealy's blog has been added to Processing Blogs.
You might know about Alison from her hugely and deservedly popular Processing-UnrealEd mashup, UnrealArt and despite her initial reluctance I'm looking forward to seeing what else she comes up with. I'm sure you'll agree that the culture of sharing of what she unjustly calls her "pathetic" experiments is actually what makes Processing such a great thing - keep it up Alison!
Destination: Whipping Trees
This year I was privileged to have some of my work accepted into the architecture section of London's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
The piece, "Destinations", shows a day's worth of simulated passenger movements across an airport check-in concourse, rendered in a slightly smoky way (at least that was the intention). The actual piece was approximately 90cm long.
© Copyright reserved YRM Limited 2004.
Whilst browsing the exhibition, I had a real shivers-down-the-spine moment, when I came across some sketches by David Nash of his sculpture, Ash Dome.
Copyright © 2004 Crown Point Press (used without permission).
The sketches were eerily reminiscent of a VRML project I completed late last year called Whipping Trees:
(You can view the interactive version here, it requires Cortona on the PC, I don't know if it runs on a Mac.)
It turns out Nash was over 20 years earlier than I was, and his work actually exists in full-size real-life (lick-it-it-tastes-like-a-snozzberry) physical form too (Annely Juda Fine Art has images, but don't allow deep links, tsk). I have resolved to visit it at some point soon, and to send him an image of my project.
Charles Forman aka SetPixel
Charles Forman aka SetPixel is posting a weekly paper on his art/programming experiments. So far he's tried setting himself on fire, and putting it out with snow. Simple ideas, playfully executed. I'll definitely be tuning in for the next installment.
Of course, he's using Processing for his experiments, though he notes he's not getting the speed he needs. When will there be a platform as expressive as Processing with reliable real-time video performance?
Update: it looks like setpixel.com has been relaunched as a collaborative site for video-based installations and interactive artwork, featuring contributions to date from Cristobal Mendoza, Glen Murphy, Ubi De Feo, Chris O'Shea, Josh Nimoy and Christian Giordano.
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