Playing with Light April 19, 2006
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The former RCA-students Ortkrass, Wood and Koch – working together under the lable Random International – have been playing around with light for quite a while (the pixelroller in all its forms is well known to all of us): their latest devlopment – just presented at the Salone di Mobile in Milan – is a more poetic peace of art, again related to light and "leaving traces": the Pendant Lights
More on Random Internation at the Salone on one of my favorite blogs: WMMNA
do it yourself media April 4, 2006
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Some observations from theTAKEAWAY festival in London. Topic of this year’s festival was “DO IT YOURSELF MEDIA”, which I think is quite interesting, but which still needs more development. Or – as Armin Medosh – the opening speaker said: We need to work on the manual for DIY media. (This was based on the observation that open source only works on the following principle: “Read the fucking manual - and only then steal somebody’s time).
Karel Dudesek showed – as announced in the program – “The design of conflicts in the era of political correctness.” Karel quoted only examples from the real world, which I very much enjoyed. As the first example came from architecture – even though Karel “hates architecture”: The group SITE from NY designed a couple of projects, which are very surprising:
In this building for example, the broken corner is actually the door and slides out, when open…
Karel’s talk ended with the claim: Go There – Be There – PERSONALLY! To show, what he means by that, Karel showed some projects from his past, e.g. the “Kultur Polizei”, where they went to the documenta and arrested the director in public (actually he was quite proud to be arrested!) What a wild past…
Michael Breidenbruecker, who planned to talk on “Mainstream of Minorities”, changed his plans and talked instead about his experience building up (and selling his shares of) the company LAST FM. LAST FM is a community website based around music. Businesswise LAST FM is build on the philosophy of the “long tail” by Chris Anderson (WIRED): The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. And of course there is good money being made at the end of the tail…
So, with LAST FM Michael managed to build up such a service, which helps people finding music in this long end.
The experience Michael made were quite interesting, but even more interesting was his basic philosophy, which he was once teaching (he was Karel’s predessesor) and which he then put into reality: We are designing media, not for media!
One of LAST FM information designer, Dirk Waldik, was teaching a workshop on information mapping. He developed visualizations of the community of LAST FM and invented the term “neighborhoods” for people with similar taste. Quite interesting: he has the same academic background (Kartography) as my colleague at the FHP, Prof. Frank Heidmann. There seems to be a lot, which can be learned from maps for information visualization…Dirk shows an impressive selection of work on his website.
Talking about Information Visualization: 
Dr. Gernot Tscherteu is developing a tool, which shows how information is flowing through the web. He uses the blog-world to visualize the ways of information. What I found interesting in his talk, was that not only the web is mostly self-referrencial, but also our brain: for every brain-cell receiving information, there are more than 100.000 cells, which work with this information.
Talk in London March 31, 2006
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As I mentioned in a previous post, I am giving a talk on "Physical Interaction Design" in London at the TAKEAWAY festival for DO IT YOURSELF MEDIA. Here are the slides of my talk.
The illustrations of my talk have been created by Marek Plichta, who did a wonderful job. The image above is showing the Unvergessliche Handtasche by a former student of my university, Stefanie Koch.
LONDON IS CALLING March 16, 2006
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This month, NODE.LONDON is organizing a season of media arts with lots and lots of events and exhibitions. The Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, where I am teaching once in while, is organizing a small festival within this event called “TAKE A WAY FESSTIVAL – DO IT YOURSELF MEDIA“. The festival is organized with the DANA CENTRE at the museum of science and will take place between March 29 and 31.
I will also give a talk on this festival on Physical Interaction Design and how creative people can prototype their ideas and concepts. My talk will be on the last day, time not decided yet.
Bericht über meine Ausstellung in Tokyo auf PingMag January 12, 2006
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“Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht” am ZKM January 6, 2006
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Während der Weihnachtsferien habe ich die inspirierende Ausstellung Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht am ZKM besucht, kuratiert von ZKM-Leiter Peter Weibel und von Gregor Jansen. Diese Ausstellung zeigt eine beeindruckende Vielfalt von Lichtkunstwerken.
Es gab wenig, aber spannende Geschichten auch zu Interaktivem Licht, wie z.B. die Light-Graffiti-Box von PIPS:Lab, wo der Nutzer mit verschieden Leuchtobjekten (Taschenlampen, Lichtschwert etc.) ein Bild kreieren und in Internet stellen kann. Interessant fand ich auch die LED-Installationen von Ruth Schnell, die ein neues Sehen erfordern: eine Reihe von LEDs “blinkt” hochfrequent einzelne Worte (“schnell” und “quick”), die nur lesbar werden mit “frei schwebendem Blick, gleichsam eine Betrachtung am Objekt vorbei”. Fabrizio Plessi (siehe Bild) zeigt eine Arbeit, die sich mit dem Übergang von realer zu digitalen Welt auseinandersetzt. Schön waren auch die Schattenspiele von Joachim Fleischer (gibt nicht viel online über ihn, nur sein Buch), der die Lichtquelle bewegt und dadurch dynamische und überraschende Schattenbilder generiert.
In der Ausstellung sind eine Vielzahl von Klassikern und neueren Arbeiten, die auch ausserhalb des Kontexted “Interaction Design” spannend sind. Ausserdem finde ich das Thema “Licht als Interface” nicht unspannend und auch in diesem Sinne lohnt sich der Besuch! Wie fühlt man sich beispielsweise in einem Raum mit 12 Diskokugeln und sonst nichts…?
John Maeda in Paris January 6, 2006
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In der Foundation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris zeigt John Maeda zwei neue Arbeiten, die er extra für diese Ausstellung – seine erste Soloshow in Europa übrigens – entwickelt hat:
Nature beschäftigt sich mit “Motion Painting” und zeigt Visuals, die scheinbar auf Naturphänome beruhen. Ich fand die ästhetische Sprache dieser Arbeiten schön und inspirierend, auch die Form der Ausstellung in einem schwarzen Raum mit sieben Projektionsflächen, die ca 2 m von der Wand frei im Raum hingen, gefiel mir gut. Allerdings konnte ich den Link zur Natur in den Arbeiten nicht richtig erkennen.
In Eye’ M Hungry präsentiert John Maeda sechs interaktive Installationen, die das Konzept von Interaktivität mit “whispy and humour” Kindern näher bringen soll. Ich fand das Ganze nicht wirklich witzig und in der Auffassung von Interaktivität etwas historisch: Eine Arbeit beispielsweise bestand aus Tastatur und Projektion. Auf der Projetion konnte man drei Reihen von Broccoliköpfen sehen, die die Buchstabentastenreihen auf der Tastatur repräsentierten. Bei Tastendruck sprang dann das entsprechende Broccoli in die Luft und hüpfte aus dem Bildschirmbereich heraus…
John hat auf seiner Webseite ein kleines, recht verwackeltes Video hochgeladen, einen Walk-Through durch seine Ausstellung, den er selbst gedreht hat. Ausserdem kann man auf seiner Webseite einen kurzen Trailer von einer der Visualisierungen für Nature finden. Auf der Webseite der Cartier-Stiftung gibt es u.a. ein Interview mit Maeda, Bilder von der Ausstellung und Texte.
Insgesamt ist die Ausstellung sehenswert, vor allem wegen der Kombination von John’s Arbeiten mit den hyperrealistischen Skulpturen von Ron Mueck. Wer also in Paris ist: Nichts wie hin!
