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"…drawing, even at a representational level, is the construction of ideas. Therefore the conscious manipulation of ideas through the act of drawing becomes highly fruitful for a designer." More from Matt on drawing, and particular approaches aimed at unlocking drawing-as-thinking. Excellent as ever. I continue to vaguely try drawing in all workshops and for myself, and am still amazed by the number of people who, in design workshops, illustrate what they mean with sentences. For reference: I am a truly appalling draughtsman who was the despair of many an art teacher.
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Both of these are great, and express some of what I've been trying to say in recent talks far better than I've expressed myself.
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Rather good interview with MJH; covers lots of bases, carried out just before Light was published.
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Yuri Suzuki and Mark McKeague have a new design/invention firm. I like that they emphatically describe themselves as making "machines" (along with products and experiences). (Found because of Ototo).
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"If we forget the needs bit then we're just talking about users, which easily elides into audiences, which everyone takes to mean target audiences – which is a whole different kettle of ball games." Yeah, sometimes I forget about that when we – the wider we – talk about users.
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"Gor is a simple http traffic replication tool written in Go. Its main goal is to replay traffic from production servers to staging and dev environments." Handy to know about.
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"While collaborating with the geniuses at Bot & Dolly in beautiful San Francisco, Munkowitz was tasked to Design Direct a truly unique piece called BOX.. The piece was originally supposed to function as a Technology Demo, but Munkowitz and the team quickly realized it's visual potential and transformed it into a Design and Performance Piece… The resulting short film is a one-of-a-kind visual and technological achievement due to the very special combination of talent and gear behind the doors of the B&D facility…" Projection mapping and motion control all at once; very clever, sure. But it's the art direction of the whole performance (and the camera's dollybot is very much part of that) that really grabbed me – especially 'Escape'.
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""Prisms" is fully algorithmic. There are no cuts, just one continuous generative animation. All decisions (camera work, movements, formations, etc…) are made by my system's interpretation of the audio track. My work was creating the system and then curating its output or, to put it another way, I just wrote a computer algorithm, and the computer did it all."
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'“To me, the computer is just another tool,” Ms. Burns once said. “It’s like a pen'. You have to have a pen, and to know penmanship, but neither will write the book for you."' A lovely obituary, but also, what a quotation – a nice corollary to the ones I usually wheel out about literacy.
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'“To me, the computer is just another tool,” Ms. Burns once said. “It’s like a pen'. You have to have a pen, and to know penmanship, but neither will write the book for you."' A lovely obituary, but also, what a quotation – a nice corollary to the ones I usually wheel out about literacy.
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"Connecting the Twine to a WiFi network is elegant and features a lovely twist: you flip the Twine on its “back”, like a turtle, and it makes its own WiFi network available. Connect to this from your computer, and you can then give the Twine the necessary credentials to log on to your home network, and once you’re done, flip it back onto its “belly” again and it will be ready to use. I really loved this simple, physical interaction." Oh, that's lovely.
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"East London Kinetics manipulate digital and physical materials to create richly interactive experiences. We use technology to invite excitement, drama and spectacle into the world. We are designers, technologists and storytellers. We encourage your escapism." Good name, good logo, good people.
LDNIA, August 21 2013: “The Material World”
31 July 2013
I’m going to be speaking at LDNIA in August. The talk’s called The Material World, and is a prototype – or “radio edit”, if you like – of my forthcoming talk at Webdagene:
The modern designer works with more materials than ever before. Not just tangible materials, such as the web, or desktop software, or the smartphone; also, intangible ‘immaterials’ such as data, time, radio, and the network.
To design well with materials, be they tangible or not, we need to be conversant in them, acutely aware of their capabilities. How do we develop that familiarit?
Through a process of material exploration. Not just reading the documentation or making a few drawings – but feeling their grain under your fingernails. To understand the nature of materials, you can’t just look at them. You have to play with them. Tom will, through some of his own work, look at what materials are (and can be); the value of material exploration, and how to approach it; and the value of playing with materials – the value of toymaking.
Tickets are usually quite limited, but are available now. If you’re coming, it’ll be great to see you.
Cross-posted from my professional site.
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"The least important question you can ask about Engelbart is, "What did he build?" By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to admire him, to stand in awe of his achievements, to worship him as a hero. But worship isn't useful to anyone. Not you, not him.
The most important question you can ask about Engelbart is, "What world was he trying to create?" By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to create that world yourself."
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"It has some unique perspective every once in awhile, but honestly, America can be super derivative. Most of the stories have already been on The Simpsons."