randform

no more water this time. The above image looks like the famous game pong and yes indeed I was happy to see this game again…. but this post is not (only) about pong.

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There is a nice project at Cornell called visualizing meaning, which is a down-to-earth approach to the vast field of information visualization.

For the project all 1,943 Cornell Faculty were asked to respond to the following question:

Of the many charts (graph, map, diagram, table and ‘other’) you have seen in your life, which has been the most important, remarkable, meaningful or valuable?

Signs are often context-sensitive, means they have a certain meaning only in certain contexts.

In my last posts (see e.g. here) I was speaking about the nature of garment acting as a sign or also as a symbol or icon. Here the context of a sign can imply very different meanings -even just for shoes.

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Above “devil” (thats how I called her) is my personal piece of “wearable computing”. I soldered it when I was 11 years old…so yes…this was still in the seventies.

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randform writer anuschka kutz (nuka) together with Andrea Benze of offseaworks exhibit at plan06 — Forum for Contemporary Architecture in Cologne with their project “kitchenshrine & dogcomfort” from 22.09. – 29.09.2006.

“kitchenshrine & dogcomfort” is an experiment into architecture based on living rituals.

“kitchenshrine & dogcomfort” had been exhibited in January at the University of Brighton Gallery. Images from the exhibition on Offsea’s website.

The current buzz about Brazil sueing google for obtaining user data (see e.g. washington post or AP) or this years message about China give an even more stale flavour to a technology which was discussed in a rather recent article in MITs Technology Review .

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daytars project “d-room” was originally a proposal for a rhizome commission – however it didnt make it to the rhizome commisson‘s top ten. The proposal URL was only made public for rhizome members and since january the proposal is rotting on our server. So, I thought to make it public now.
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It is allways an interesting question at what point a picture becomes a symbol, i.e. a representative for something more abstract. This is also what I found to be the most important point which I missed in John Maeda’s commentary in this weeks post. How much is an avatar a symbol for the person behind it?

In the case of a logo the symbol nature is usually easy to manifest, but e.g. in the case of characters – especially from computer games – this depends. Sometimes they are pixymbols – just think of the pac man characters. For the smiley I find this is similar.

In this context it is worthwhile to see how early character design in computer games has transformed by time. And so I stumbled over these funny “round voxel”-3D analogs of game characters by designer Jeremy Dower who did – among others – also character design for the gameboy.

-See also an old randform post about pictoplasma.
-fake (?) space invaders characters e.g. here

Usually I try to keep away from gadgets (:)) but I was really waiting for the above image to come. Tinky winky the telechumby holds a socalled chumby inside its belly – a product to be expected march 2007 for the price of approx. 150 $ according to gizmodo. Chumby seems to have a linux kernel , a WiFi hook to the internet and may thus be an alternative to Nintendo DS, who has also a linux kernel. Another interesting feature of chumby is the hookup to Adobes Flash lite, which is interesting for Flash programmers. The rumors are that the Nintendo browser (to be released Oct 6 in Europe) won’t support Flash (sofar) and the new Flash for Linux…well…needs some time.

via etienne mineur and gizmodo

speaking about virtual architectural icons in my last post, it worthwhile to mention that the american company Lichtenstein Creative Media is organizing concerts and interviews in the commercial (and expensive) virtual environment called second life. On their webpage they currently feature a virtual concert with wellknown songwriter Suzanne Vega, including a machinima of her concert. If the link is gone — here is another youtube machinima of the concert.

Also MIT professor John Maeda was there. Reflecting on his second life experience in his blog, Maeda suddenly expressed his concern for mathematicians (thats how i interpret it ;)):

At the recent SIGGRAPH, one of the most popular talks was the fellow from i>SL where he spoke about the higher “emotional bandwidth” one gets with communicating through a fully-rendered avatar versus a pitful smiley like :-). Our resident media philospopher Burak took great offense at this comment. He felt that signs/symbols were invented not because we crave for constant realism in life, but that we can get engage deeper feeling through experiencing abstractions of reality. The more abstract the better, in his mind.

And that’s where it is: “in his mind.” Where the emotional bandwidth is truly the highest and where no computers (currently) can venture. To live without reality (or even a simulation of it) and to instead be immersed in a sea of symbols and even more abstract thoughts. Seems like one can go crazy in such a world.

So let’s wait for Madonna to appear there — would relieve her may be from the pressure to do cosmetic surgery for being an icon.