Design It Shelter

Online collaborative design project organised by the Guggenheim Museum

Is Google for clustering?

CASS SUNSTEIN: I think that people are hardwired in two ways: first, they cluster with like-minded people and second they are curious.

If making this distinction between clustering and curious with reference to using search engines how can people find original answers to their questions?

Maybe not by searching in the realm of databases it would appear. Not just yet.
People can synthesise symbols more fluidly and arrange them into coherentl new concepts.

Or can combining unusual search terms reach relevant and original results?
The expected answer would be yes but with a low relevancy percentage so becoming more time consuming than it is worth.

Maybe then it is better to think in isolation and decide on the approach that answer the design brief rather than digging down through low rank and unrelated Google results in the hope of finding something meaningful.

Why does it matter? Well if new solutions are needed for tackling global energy use, for instance, the answers at this point in time will require original thinking, debate and then broadcasting not narrowcasting and 'googling'. Not even with Twitter Search. They won't be found in time.

Realtime Twitter Trends

Yamaha Sound Research

'Making Fun Serious'
Yamaha Design

Monocle Magazine Design Videos

Do The Tomorrow People buy clothes in Tomorrowland?

Glowing Rectangles

The medium according to Charlie Brooker


The medium according to The Onion

Intel wants the future to be TV shaped

Micro Sculptor

“It began when I was five years old,” says Willard. “I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticise me. That’s how my career as a micro-sculptor began.”
Sculptures inside the eye of a needle by Willard Wigan.

Guest speaker at TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

Hoxton FRUiTS

'The Hoxton Creeper' guided walk
Design Brief:
Set-up guided tours around Hoxton and Shoreditch PLUS
To add depth to the walk above also incorporate details online describing locations typically of interest to tourists and locals alike; Truman Brewery events, Spitalfields Market shops, references to cult TV series such as Nathan Barley set in 'Hosegate' (Shoreditch, Moorgate, Hoxton): Curtain Road ('Textile Street'), Bricklayers Arms ('Nailgun Arms'), Propaganda (Regime?), Fernandos (Ferdidnos?) etc. and notable music e.g. Blue Note, (Goldie) Hoxton Square

While conducting the walks develop blog presence similar to The Sartorialist to document Hoxton's style-pushers with photos similar in form to STREET/ FRUiTS/ TUNE.

Hoxton Notable:
21 AUG: First-time seen glittering leggings since the eighties. Can really make a come-back?

PROVISIONAL ROUTE:
Old Street Tube - Hoxton Square - Coronet Street - Charlotte Street - Rivington Street - Industrial Shoreditch - THE RIVINGTON STREET TRANSFORMER - Curtain Road - Great Eastern Street - Worship Road - Folgate Street - Shoreditch High Street - Hanbury Street - Wilkes Road - Fournier Street - Brick Lane - Princelet Street - Spellman Street - Heneage Road - Fashion Street - Spitalfields Market - Bishopsgate - St Ethelburga's - Leadenhall Street/ Market

New-Media Futurism

Anil Dash
'Chief Evangelist', Six Apart

Paul Saffo 2008: Analysis and future predictions

Artist Themes

Notable Goldie:
core themes: Love, Memory, Time
- BBC documentary, Classic Goldie, 2009

musician, artist, producer
modus operandi: sine tempore (latin:- 'without time')
Make the most of now.
innovation: use of time-stretched samples. jungle/ drum and bass genres

Notable Nellee Hooper:
Composer/ producer using modern/ digital idiom but with human emotions. (Examples? References?)
SoulIISoul, Massive Attack, Bjork

Inclusive Design

Case studies of inclusive design by the UK Design Council


Are there other fundamental areas of access and inclusive design that can be added to this list? Seems like an under-utilised area of design exploration. If design is about efficiency in problem solving, regardless of labelling, if the product does the job *better, it will be noticed for 'good' design.

WiTricity

Delivering electricity like it was wi-fi data. Shame about the name: "WiTricity".

Video-in-print

Video advertising is making its first appearance in 18 September editions of the Entertainment Weekly magazine distributed in Los Angeles and New York.
Technology by Americhip.

Design Brief:
If advertisers are prepared to develop this then why not create an even purer *environmental marketing platform - a content collecting proximity device.
Something like pushed bluetooth/wireless adverts but on a hermetic device; A video-pebble.

When you walk near hot-spots media-rich adverts will automatically be pushed onto the device. You don't care about virii as you cannot store personal data on it. You just skip, delete, replay and send with one touch. All the time it is loading many things you will not want. You don't need to see them. You filter them to categories to view if you want. Just delete and reset to wipe the memory clean.

If you are in the right-place at the right-time you can get special offers, limited editions, bonus tracks, previews etc. And the uploads can even double as digital-ticketing giving preferential treatment to owner etc

Companies spend so much on branded retail environments that perhaps this can give an added-value incentive to go back to particular shops in person or let others load-up and then relay to friends when meeting next time. There could also be differentiation between times of duplication; with these second generation copies proffering different status on the owner to the first-hand collector. A kind of Digital Media 'Tag' with history.

There needs to be a standard to ensure there is a flood of data ready to fill the pebble on every journey. Standards are unlikely to be agreed. So someone needs to go first.... Apple (-Have GPS already)? Google? Nokia?

*environmental - proximity to location can be made a premium

3D Visions

After shooting his stereoscopic Dial M For Murder in 1954, Alfred Hitchcock was unimpressed. 3D, he concluded, "was a nine-day wonder – and I came in on the ninth day".

Space Station (IMAX) would seem to be the category-killer for this cinematic form: A trip to a place only a handful of people can ever get to. Where else can compete with a journey into space? And truth be told after launch, orbiting the space-station is a rather cramped and underwhelming experience. But when you close your eyes after you can picture the memories incredibly close to having been a witness.

In terms of shot-options keeping the camera still and letting action move in front of you works best. Camera pans, zooms, and tracking all detract from the solidity of a static shot. As pictures start to blur the illusion is lost. For the same reasons fade transitions between images don't work and cause confusion. Flying over/ under/ through dont feel believable either. Hard cuts between static locations & fades to/from black; Those are the options available if you want to 'keep it real'.

Can James Cameron bring the form back to life in a digital fashion with Avatar or will this again be consigned to being little more than a marketing gimmick with limited application and only offering the illusion of artistic depth in cinematic art.

Early previews of a 15 minute teaser of Avatar are favourable and building the hype around expectations. As we come to learn however the best reviewers are your friends (apart from yourself of course). Not writers involved in the publicity machine.

Maybe Avatar will kickstart the demand for personal 3D viewers on '3D iPods' allowing immersion in sound and vision on trains and buses, bringing the 'daft punk' look to the high street, using devices similar to below:

Original image credit: Engadget

Cutting Edge of Art

Image Credit: 'Blown Away' - Maxell

Beyond the cliche of 'cutting edge'; who is looking for it and where are examples in the 21st century?
Digital technology allows millions to create and share but who cares about today's visionary art if there is any? The definition that high-art is a function of capitalism has persisted since the 1970s: value now widely accepted as being only measured by price and no longer an area for discussion on its own. Beyond technology, and fragmentation where to find the 'shock-of-the-new' art movement as described below out there? This is quite different from 'shock-for-shock's sake' which is on a sliding scale of bad-taste open to anyone prepared to face the consequences and without transformative qualities.

"Every age creates as an utopian image, a nostalgic 'rear-view' mirror-image of itself. Which puts it thoroughly out of touch with the present.

The present is the enemy. The present is only faced in any generation by the artist.

The artist is prepared to study the present as his material because it is the area of challenge to the whole sensory-life and therefore it is anti-utopian. It is a world of anti-values.

And the artist who comes into contact with the present produces an avant-garde image that is terrifying to contemporaries."

Marshall McLuhan
TV Broadcast: Mailer vs. McLuhan, The Summer Way, CBC 1968

Logo Glossary - Alphabetical

A glossary with some well known logos displayed on LogoOrange website. Includes instances of logo changes over time. Discursive rather than definitive.

Story Devices

Click for 'tv tropes' story idea generator

Setting:
Plot:
Narrative Device:
Hero:
Villain:
Character As Device:
Characterization Device:

Click for Paragraph Generator
Click for Word Alternatives
Click for Rhyming Dictionary

Defeating Deconstruction

(TIME FOR RECONSTRUCTION?)
Essentially deconstruction as a movement in fashion/ art/ design is based around frivolous skepticism, decoration and wit. Sometimes savage, sometimes bold it is still facetious.

It is tinkering around the metaphorical edges for the purpose of standing-out in the marketplace usually underpinned by flimsy if heartfelt philosophical or artistic justification.

It emerges from an historically romanticised idea of the value of the artist. And increasing fragmentation and refinement of tastes between seller and purchaser.

A deconstructive approach is one of individual idiosyncrisy where each auteur must protect their motifs.

In a culture where celebrity is constantly marketed, this is the means for individual designers to be recognised, get known, and 'become a brand'.

But if history rhymes, just as Victorian decoration now appears to be mostly folly, when people look back, the era of Deconstructive Decoration may be viewed as intellectuals vainly staring in the mirror while the house burnt down. Or maybe that is the point.

"Derrida's scepticism was directed inwardly, calling into question even the possibility of a questioning subject. This was the core of Derrida's contribution. He expressed not just the collapse of political ideologies at the end of the twentieth century, but the way that this collapse made meaning, and even the subjective agent himself, collapse into confusion."

"There is little doubt that Derrida was an erudite and learned philosopher, but his erudition was bent towards a destructive aim. In him the unreason of the age found its cunning articulator. The pernicious influence of Derrida's philosophy, underpinned by the confusion of the times, persists after him."

Between the lines

Words and symbols are imperfect. Their meaning is dynamic.
Work-out what is beneath the surface;
______________________________________

READ
______________________________________

Norman Mailer vs. Marshall McLuhan

1968 televised debate about impact of media and technology
- Mailer vs. McLuhan


The Medium is the Massage - McLuhan

Brave New World vs.1984

Design Brief: Illustrate a graphic novel or make movie faithful to the story's of either Brave New World or 1984.

VERSUS

Dystopian Visions:
Aldous Huxley vs. George Orwell (Eric Blair)
1932 vs. 1949

Film Treatments: Brave New World vs. 1984
Mustapha Mond vs. Big Brother
Hypnopedia & Medication vs. Surveillance & The Party
Soma vs. Two Minutes Hate
History is Bunk vs. NewSpeak
Pavlovian Conditioning vs. Revisionism
Savages vs. Proles
Conditioned Contentment vs. Fear
John Savage vs. Winston Smith
Defeat vs. Betrayal & Acquiescence
632 A.F. (After Ford) [equivalent to 2495 A.D.] vs. 1984 A.D.
.... vs. Thought Police
.... vs. Room 101
.... vs. Orwellian

London CCTV

Analog Style: Digital Media

Design Brief: Digital personal music-players in the form of disappearing audio formats....

"It's been out three weeks in Japan. Where's yours?"
Quote: Nathan Barley, Channel 4

In this case earphones wind-in and are stored inside the cassette casing when not in use.
Unit protected by cheap-to-replace transparent plastic cassette box during transit in rucsac/ handbag etc.
Allows for personalisation using printed inserts, stickers and indelible pens.

What You Browse Affects You

'You affect the world by what you browse'
Tim Berners-Lee

Haus Rucker Co sunglasses above are included in a book of nearly-lost-from-history architectural experiments of the 1960's entitled 'Spaced Out':
Chapter 1 - Enchanted Loom
Chapter 2 - Infinity Machines
Chapter 3 - Crash Pads
Chapter 4 - Soft City
Chapter 5 - Unsettlers
Chapter 6 - Magic Circles
Chapter 7 - Frontier Mystics

Grok 'Spaced Out' on Myspace

Track: THE FREE DESIGN - BUBBLES


Google 'Haus Rucker Co' for more images.

Is it false that a new blockbuster 3D light-show movie is in production with budget over $200 million dollars and will appear in cinemas next spring....?
In the meantime there is this epic effort for The Beatles Rockband

Typographical Terrain

Credit: To Dry For


Credit: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet (Alex Gopher)

Snaps from Sketches

More 'if drawings were photographs'

Politics as Product Marketing

Credit: Adam Curtis

'As the Design Director for Obama's 2008 campaign, Scott Thomas lead a now-historic political campaign, in which branding, design, and the web played a truly pivotal role. Likening the experience to "building an airplane in flight," Scott talks about the creative's need for triage, the crucial role of incremental evolution, and the importance of getting back to the hand and keeping things simple.'
Source: Designing the Obama Campaign Video

Notable Scott Thomas:
The concept of asset bins. i.e. a folder where you store assets that have been created in a particularly style which you can then go back to and find the closest-match for a specific application at a later date.

Always write things down and make notes. However big the project, words will form the plan of attack.

Against a Stupidity Culture

"Stupid people think it's cool.
Smart people think it's a joke. Also cool."
Rise Of The Idiots- Dan Aschcroft (C4 TV series- Nathan Barley)
Up The Resolution (Nathan Barley)
Slinky Pics (Nathan Barley)

Idiocracy movie outline
Let's get retarded - Black Eyed Peas track
T-shirt announces the stupidity access-drug of choice


Would your society be improved by 50% less or 50% more of the following?:
Alcohol consumption
CCTV and surveillance
Drug-misuse
Gossip magazines
Naff television
ET CETERA
Currently nobody is making judgments on these areas to form policies. Social Engineering is happening by default through market forces.
The consequences of 12 years of relativism and market choice can be seen on almost every street corner in Britain

"Kant, that quintessential figure of Enlightenment, argues that we don't need God or religion to tell us what is good: we can discover the moral law and our own freedom simultaneously - not in biology or some divine text but in ourselves, by dint of reason."
Source: Right Reasoning

Digerati Spoof

Folding Bikes

What is the fascination with folding bikes in recent years? Ask in bikeshops and this is where they are saying the interest is.

Is it the feeling that no locks are safe these days so if you are going to spend money on a bike you may as well ensure you can always take it with you or bring it indoors.

Is it the awkwardness a conventional bike causes when storing in a living area and a generation of people who grew up with 'Transformers - Robots in Disguise'. That magical animated transformation rarely translates well to the real world of constraints and fixed dimensions. Folding bikes however, may be the current best application for this fun principle.


Bumblebee turns into car and back again. Parked only.

Companies specialising in folding bikes


Prototype by a UK design student (above)

Visually, the photo seems nice but in styling terms the arcs between top-tube and bottom bracket seem to be missing that certain something to make this arrangement a design classic just yet. Or not? Perhaps ask a Cayce Pollard. A lot depends on how the bike rides and handles as well as folds so anyone tested it even as a prototype?

Or any other suggestions for the best bikes currently in production; beyond and including the ubiquitous Bromptom, Moulton etc. Which new and notable models are coming along under 1000 pounds...?

SUGGESTIONS:

Frugal Gems At A Quid Each

UK high street consumer trend for 2009 is a flight to value:
Replacing the nostalgic vacuum left by the closure of Woolworths, Poundland and similar stores have stepped-in and are doing more than renting the former's retail space to be part of a noticeable change in consumer behaviour.

Rather sensibly the pattern emerging in these times of household prudence is one of 'Conspicuous Saving' in contrast to earlier documented 'Conspicuous Consumption'.

Guardian Newspaper Article
- Swap one pound into products that exceed customer's expectations for that price.
- Given credibility through the 'halo effect' of offering branded products at one pound each

Video Tag

Video-recording capabilities of mobile phones and downward prices of video equipment it is possible to consider the cost of recording techniques as becoming increasingly negligible. Depending on the technique employed the resulting recordings are of sufficient quality for internet presentation and beyond.

Camera equipment is treated as expendable and filmed sequences are not precious.
What are the opportunities this gives to a filmmaker?
So, for a particular financial outlay what is the resulting haul?
Perhaps can consider approaches more similar to fishing.

One route developed from these principles could be 'Video Tag'.

Video Tag concept combines:
1 Low cost video (and audio) recorder
2 Game of 'tag'/'had'/ 'it'

The recording device is primed and a sound/image stream results from the recorder being passed from one person to the next in the same way as schoolchildren playing the game 'tag'.

A note is clearly attached asking the last person to return the recorder by phoning the filmmaker once the hard disk/ tape/ memory/ DVD/ or battery etc has run-out.

Pond Fishing
Use this experimental technique in a closed community such as college or company where the parameters can be set. This should ensure a higher rate of return of the recording equipment but may lack some spontaniety if there are group expectations about the results.

Wheelie Fishing
To increase picture stability the recorder can be attached to a trolley!

Night Fishing
As an art-based project this can be attempted in open environments where the results will probably be more varied but may capture unexpected speech, behaviour, and events. Anticipate a lot of misses. And few equipment returns.

Project using disposable cameras

Umbrella Tripod

For taking photos in the rain.
Add adjustable camera mount
to use as monopod.

Cap camera mount to
make umbrella safe in
normal use.


Standard umbrella with
camera mount
attachment on handle.