Richard Harvey

Nervous Toaster from Richard Harvey on Vimeo.

More of his work here.

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting - Berg

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

"This film explores playful uses for the increasingly ubiquitous ‘glowing rectangles’ that inhabit the world.

We use photographic and animation techniques that were developed to draw moving 3-dimensional typography and objects with an iPad. In dark environments, we play movies on the surface of the iPad that extrude 3-d light forms as they move through the exposure. Multiple exposures with slightly different movies make up the stop-frame animation."

Amazing project by Berg

Areas of outstanding urban beauty

Britain's most beautiful car park

The winner of CABE’s photo competition to find Areas of Outstanding Urban Beauty is The Galleries car park by Christopher Hoare.

The photo competition is part of People and places, a project about involving people in shaping the look and feel of the places where they live. See all of the entries on flickr.

Playing Tetris Reduces Flashbacks From Traumatic Experiences

The computer game Tetris may have a special ability to reduce flashbacks after viewing traumatic images, according to scientists at the University of Oxford.

Full article by the Welcome Trust here.

The Apology Line

Director: James Lees

The most talked-about short documentary of the year: the 'apology line' is where members of the public can anonymously confess to absolutely anything, over the phone. Based on the original apology line project in New York, the apologies are uncomfortably honest, sometimes funny, occasionally shocking, but always fascinating.

http://www.myspace.com/apologyline

Visited: Eric Whitacre @ Barbican Centre

I've seen lots of exhibitions at the Barbican Centre but I've been wanting to see a concert there for ages. Two weeks ago I decided to go see the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Eric Whitacre perform some of his music along with some pieces by other American composers including Barber and Lauridsen. Part of the reason for also wanting to see this concert is I'm currently learning some pieces by Whitacre with the choir that I sing in and I'm also interested in his 'Virtual Choir' project which I have previously written about on this blog here.

It was a very enjoyable concert but at times I felt the choir did not come through enough and the balance between the choir and orchestra could have been better at times. Watch the video below to get an idea of Whitacre's compositions (The piece I am currently learning).

NEWS - Secret Cinema presents Lawrence of Arabia

Last month I worked as part of the art department for Secret Cinema's production of Lawrence of Arabia, that took place at Alexandra Palace. We worked to create the atmosphere and all round experience of Lawrence of Arabia within the location. In particular, I helped to construct the sets, interior decorations and prop making. Audience members arrived at Alexandra Palace dressed for the occasion, some still unaware of what film they were about to watch. Actors in full costume, some complete with horses and camels, helped to immerse the visitors into the event in preparation for watching the film. (Watch the video for highlights).

It was a really cool project to be involved with, especially as it was the first large scale event / project I have worked on. The rest of the team were also really nice people to work with.

Working on this project also tied in nicely with some personal work that I am doing at the moment. I have been looking at how to add physicality to digital interactions through creating real world experiences, peoples physical reactions to digital stimuli and creating social movements through online social networks. All of Secret Cinema's promotion, hype and communication with audience members happens through digital means. They have a very strong online presence and members of their community are asked to carry out certain tasks before they come to film screenings. For example they are asked to dress up accordingly and bring props, but for this film they were also asked to group themselves into 'tribes' according to where they live in London, which in turn then created online and real world interactions. People displayed their 'tribe markings' on their social network profiles to link with other people who were in the same tribe as them. They were then encouraged to display their tribe markings when traveling to the film screening and group together once at the location. I was impressed by how involved the audience got with the whole experience, but this was probably largely due to all the effort Secret Cinema had put into not only creating the amazing environment at the Alexandra Palace but also the communication they had with the visitors in the lead up to the event. People also seemed really excited at the chance to act out of the normal and be part of this collective 'secret' immersive experience.

Visited: Nosaj Thing @ Pattern Cutters Factory

Went to this gig a few weeks ago at the Pattern Cutters Factory, Dalston. Nosaj Thing's debut UK audio visual show. Pretty Amazing. Watch the video to get an idea of what it was like.

Sorry, I got distracted.

I really enjoyed this video of a talk by Steven Johnson called 'Where good ideas come from' especially because it kind of relates to my motivations for this blog. My blog is basically my incubator system for my small hunches I collect from the internet (see the video)! He also briefly talks about how DISTRACTIONS on the internet can lead to 'miraculous and marvelous new ways to connect...So many ways to reach out and find other people who have that missing piece, which will complete the idea we're working on. We're to stumble serendipitously across some amazing new piece of information that we can use to build and improve our own ideas'.

Definitely worth a watch.

Steven Johnson says "Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down; but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies, frequent coffee houses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent." - From BBC News homepage 8th November 2010.

NEWS - Unit 6, Building has Begun

We have started to build the bedrooms in our house (Unit 6). The structures of 4 bedrooms are nearing completion. We still have 2 more rooms to build, there will be 6 altogether. More updates to follow.

NEWS - Making connections

Hopefully my blog is now connected to my Twitter Account - www.twitter.com/AminaNazari

Plastic Bag

Short film by American director Ramin Bahrani traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it.

Dream recording device

"A US researcher has said he plans to electronically record and interpret dreams.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers said they have developed a system capable of recording higher-level brain activity. "We would like to read people's dreams," says the lead scientist Dr Moran Cerf."

Read more - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11635625

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

A friend posted a link for this video created by the RSA. Talks a lot about education and creativity and changes that need to be made to make schooling more effective and more appropriate for today. Also the animation is pretty cool.

Homemade Spacecraft

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Today

Eric Baker - images for TODAY

@DesignObserver

Yellow Chair Stories

Yellow Chair Stories was a live service design intervention, where Anab opened her personal Wifi to her neighbours and passersby. This approach illustrated how wireless technologies could become interfaces to recreate transient spaces for conversations at the threshold of the public and the private, the physical and the electronic.

The project won a UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005, and was presented at Ubicomp 2005, ISEA 2006, DesignEngaged 2005 and various other conferences. It has also been successfully replicated in different parts of the world. - from Superflux

An interesting project looking at how get to know your 'WiFi neighbours' in real life and encouraging interaction with people who perhaps pass your house everyday or live in your area. I like how she created a shared folder on the network so that this became an online space to share, leave or receive information from the other people who had sat in the yellow chair or who had used the open WiFi network.

Listening to:

Serious Games

NESTA recently ran a talk called 'Serious Games' which I've been reading about. Shame I missed it as I would've liked to have gone but read about it here and read the review by Creative Futures here.

OR watch the video of the talk here.

Kickstart

http://www.kickstarter.com/

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film,art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

Distracted but still related.

"We’re living in a new world – a place where our audiences see their own lives broadcast to friends across networks like Facebook and Twitter, and where jokes, arguments and love affairs are conducted through comments and responses, likes and retweets, friending and tagging. Broadcasters have probably been a bit slow to create formats fast enough and open-ended enough to reflect the way we live our lives now." – Matt Locke (Head of Crossplatform at Channel 4 / Really Interesting Group)

His blog here.

Phonoaesthetics

Thomas James Niblett’s extraordinary final year project has seen him awarded the Top Art, Design and Media Graduate prize at the British Graduate 100 Awards this month. The awards celebrate the most outstanding undergraduates and graduates in Britain.

Thomas James graduated from Chelsea’s BA Graphic Design Communication this summer. He explains the vision for his incredible work: “My final project at Chelsea allowed me to research and produce an interactive publication based on Phonoaesthetics, and the cross over between sound and image. The book was printed in conductive inks, and when touched allowed for varying circuits within the book to be completed and produce noise directly generated by the printed forms. A medium which reflected the books topic – the dialectic relationship between image and sound.”

More info on his website.

Two interesting websites

http://www.ecomodo.com/

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"welcome to ecomodo, the marketplace of good returns .. Lend and borrow each other's everyday objects, skills and spaces with confidence"

http://schoolofeverything.com/

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IKEA's Visual Cookbook

Swedish furniture and homeware brand IKEA have released this 140-page cookbook featuring photographs of ingredients laid out in patterns. Called Homemade is Best, the project was a collaboration between creative agency Forsman & Bodenfors, stylist Evelina Bratell and photographer Carl Kleiner.

More info on Dezeen.com

Kjen Wilkens

STATISTICAL FORTUNE TELLING

This application provides ‘predictions’ based on personal data, giving a glimpse at what might appear if we start feeding our personal data streams into predictive computer models. It connects to a users Facebook account and utilises real data to generate a personalised ‘future report’ which can then be posted back to Facebook or (in the show context) be taken away as a printout.

SENSOR POETICS

WHAT IF WE WOULD USE A WEATHER ‘CAMERA’ INSTEAD OF A PHOTO CAMERA TO CAPTURE SPECIAL MOMENTS?

Two fantastic projects by Kien Wilkens. More info here.

NEWS - Long time no blog

I haven't added anything to this blog in ages (although I have lots to write about) because we have recently moved house and currently have limited internet access.

We have moved to a space that used to be a commercial property and consists of four walls, a floor and ceiling at the moment. We plan to build the inner walls to create bedrooms within the next few weeks. I'll document our progress of the construction on this blog hopefully.

MEGA

By BLU

Mike Lemanski

http://www.mikelemanski.co.uk

Dear....

http://www.dearblankpleaseblank.com/

See it here first -