the coolest thing i've seen all year

minority report style interface...


g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Kill your Ego: Update

whispermag, originally uploaded by donshades.

well, it seems that my Teeshirt design has been picked up by the nice people over at Whispermag, who have featured it along with Spreadshirt as site of the day.

This is my first and as yet only outing into the world of e:commerce and not 5 days later it already seems to be making headlines.... God Bless the in ter net

Typographic Synthesiser

Amazing. Thanks Iain.

Some Thinking I Did A While Ago

I Found my old little black book while moving house. No Poems this time but here's where I left off the last time I was keeping notes in it:

8 - 9 - 2004
On the Tube,
Approaching Solone Square

What is the nature of the evidential link between technology (specifically optical technologies) and self perception?

-As optical technologies and imaging techniques develop, thus the resulting feedback helps us redefine the way we see ourselves.

Eg;

invention of the x-ray image made our inner skeletal structure universally accessible. It made the concept of interlocking bones far more palpable.

Invention of the lens enabled short sighted folk to experience a world in focus.

How do Virtual Reality and 3Dimensional Avatar based games, role-plays and worlds alter the way I see myself? Is there more to the term "Residual Self-Image"; than a throwaway line in Wachowski's The Matrix?

23 - 9 - 2004
On the Tube,
Approaching Uxbridge
-So just what is this relation between what we see, and the way we see it or how we see it? Reading Blow Up; here's a good passage:

"Visual and Cognitive ergonomics are the tacit processes through which the aesthetic transformation of our perception and our subsequent cognition of the physical world and it's changing nature, affects the way a particular set of stimuli is perceived and cognized"

-Neidich, W : Blow Up - Photography, cinema, and the Brain.

I think this could boil down to the simple example of a man who has never seen in focus suddenly being given corrective lenses. He will experience a perceptive renaissance in how he experiences the world around him, based solely on his new-found aesthetic reappraisal of what he sees.

Is it taking this silly example too far if I then question the reality its self as being only that tacit interpretation of Neidich's particular set of stimuli in the first place? Here we return to the classic tree falling silently in a forest if nobody is there to hear the sound.

end note - this is getting a little silly; these days I'm interested in the techno-perceptive link, not tinpot attempts at post modern philosophical playtimes. Next:

Porn in Good Taste

ENOUGH I SAY! To the planners, producers and A/C directors who work in Interactive media, seated conveniently across from designers and art directors aplenty - there is simply no longer an excuse for stuffy diagrams, obscure charts and concentric circular diagrams which are supposed to tell us something about the nature of the industry within which we work.

Why are we are still presented with a page of Bar Charts and Pie Graphs from M.S. Excel as the "interesting" parts of presentations that are supposed to be conveying information about media which is inherently non-linear in nature.

I stand very much with Tufte on this matter of making the information representation medium suit the subject matter. At the same time I have very few great examples of interesting statistical presentations. However, I now have one Brilliant one:



via via Flo and Vi-R-us

London's Kerning

Heiss Sent this round the creative department a few days ago. It's been sitting on my desktop because I find it interesting, an information representation worthy perhaps of Mr Edward R Tuffe. If I could afford the large format poster at around £100 then I would, in the meantime I'll make do with a low-res giff on my blog... I think it's via the .
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Pulp Fictiopn Typography

This Rocks

All Hail Jan Svankmajer

Darkness Light Darkness Jan Svankmajer
Uploaded by NilbogLAND