folly - the digital arts agency and charity based in England’s NorthWest - today announced the completion of the first edition of an important new project, the Digital Artists Handbook.
“The digital artist handbook has developed out of ongoing consultation with artists working with technology, which has shown a need for removing the barriers for artists to use digital tools. The project is supported by Arts Council England.”
“The artists and practitioners who participated in the first stage of writing the Handbook are: Kristina Andersen, Frank Barknecht, Tom Betts, Florian Cramer, Phil Chandler, Olga Goriunova, Kathryn Lambert, Olivier Laruelle, Thor Magnusson, Nicolas Malevé, Aymeric Mansoux, Iman Moradi, Jon Phillips, Tom Schouten, Marloes de Valk, Peter Westenberg, and Simon Yuill.”
“The Digital Artists Handbook is a new, up to date, reliable and accessible source of information that introduces artists to different tools, resources and ways of working related to digital art. The touchstone of this new compendium is free/libre open source software (FLOSS) and technologies.”
That was the question Trokia + the BBC Electric Proms asked people during the festival last October. Selected SMS / Web submitted answers were projected onto a huge wall at the festival’s headline venue the Roundhouse, Camden.
Several festivals I’ve been to over the years have displayed sms messages from the crowd on screens that often sit next to stage. It does the job but lacks any integration with the event itself, which is why the wall at the electric proms worked so well. The typography and positioning of the text itself worked really well in the space and it provided good material for people to read while they were waiting for friends or queuing at the bar.’
Yasser Rashid, BBC Senior Interaction Designer, BBC Radio and Music Interactive
Earlier when I was looking into Michel Gondry’s curation of the YouTube homepage last week I stumbled across this demonstration of the ‘Assist Sketch Understanding System’ from MIT in 2006. It’s definitely the most impressive physics engine I have come across since we saw the Soda Constructor at college! Via illustration blog drawn.
Secondly, Asi introduced me to the new visualisation layer which has been added to the video’s to introduce you to related clips, it’s accessed via the network icon when you go fullscreen. At first I thought that it was an interesting way to discover stuff, but when I clicked on a video balloon and the mind map of sorts started to grow, ‘interesting’ became ‘confusing’ very quickly. My confusion is with the outline colours of the bubbles, as there is no suggestion to why the clips are grouped by a certain colour, is it just me or is the relationships between the clips unclear?
Last night I followed up my rediscovery of Cornelius with some world wide web digging which led me to director Koichiro Tsujikawa, long-term collaborator of said music artist.
As you will see his portfolio displays a fine body of work ranging commercials, music videos, short film and tv. The music video’s he has produced compliment Cornelius’s sound perfectly, below is the excellent video he produced for ‘Fit Song’ from the album ‘Sensuous’. Amazing!
If you like what you see and hear read a brief interview with him that touches on his background and process here, and then view more video’s.
I was thinking about writing another ‘All the Senses’ post for the past week when Yacco tagged me in the current meme sweeping the blogosphere ‘My Week in Media’. So here it goes…
What I’ve read
On top of my daily ritual of blog browsing, aggregated by the lovely Google Reader, there are a couple of things that have caught my attention online this past week. Firstly the intensifying US electoral run-in, the commentary of which has been provided by the Guardian online. Secondly, Mr Nuzzaci introduced me to Time.com’s 50 Top 10 lists for 2007 - where I naturally gravitated towards the listing’s for films, the featured ‘The Lives of Others’ pictured above.
My breakfast porridge microwave blasting sessions have seen me give Creative Review, Grafik and Campaign magazines a good skimming, whilst my xmas Amazon voucher was activated and soon I will be the proud new owner of a copy of ‘The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few’.
What I’ve watched
After being seduced by the blue, yellow and red of Channel 4’s Big Food Fight my Monday night attempt at tuning into the Hugh’s Chicken run failed miserably. What started with good intentions soon resulted in Hugh being relegated to background tv, the only thing I can recall is that intensively farmed chicken’s only live for 39 days, poor little blighters!
By midweek things had picked up as a friend introduced me to BBC Three’s ‘Man Stroke Woman’ which reduced me to man tears on several occasions. The comedy theme continued with BBC2 and the excellent ‘Never Mind the Buzzcocks’ where Mr Amstel’s target this week was ex Hollyoaks stud Jeremy Edwards, afterwhich I had my first experience of the laughter riot that is Little Miss Jocelyn.
The week of watching continued with a thrifty DVD night on Friday where I watched ‘The Bourne Ultmatium’ for the thrid time in as many weeks and we also pooped back and forth courtesy of ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’. The final watch will be tonight as I have booked myself into ‘Louis Theroux: Behind Bars’, the documentary at California’s San Quentin prison.
What I’ve listened to
My brisk walks to and from the bus continue to be charmed by my festive soundscape of choice: Rufus Wainwright’s performance at Cancerigene Hall. The highlight of the week without a doubt was the rediscovery of my appreciation for the super Cornelius, who’s sound can be described as experimental and exploratory, well that’s what my recently restarted last fm widget thing told me!
I will now pass the meme baton of joy onto Joe, Asi and Iain. I will also leave you in Uncle Jack’s capable hands…
About a month or so ago, before the chaos of December arrived I was queueing this post up - a selection of 5 sensational experiences I had in the festive build up which I hope will still satisfy all your senses, even if they are well past their posting date!
1.Eastern Promises at the Rich Mix
If you haven’t seen it yet, do, it was one of the best films I saw last year for sure. A combination of tough Russian gangsters, young Eastern European girls tragically failing to make a better life for themselves in London, a midwife, a baby and the best fight scene of 2007 make this gruesome thriller led by Viggo Mortensen a stunning watch from start to finish. Be warned though, after viewing you may have violent dreams.
2. Eating great food and getting crack
At some point I paid my second visit to the mighty Great Queen St gastro pub in Covent Garden. Between the four of us we had excellent vension, burger on dripping bread and a barley, squash and mushroom risotto, all very tasty indeed! To complete our inner glow we took a stroll down the embankment towards the Tate Modern where we saw the crack before going up to level 7, where we shared four amazing desserts whilst London’s skyline became illuminated in front of our eyes.
3.James Murphy + Tom Mahoney = Fabric live 36
After a hectic electronic start to the mix (which isn’t too studio friendly late morning I’ve found) things calm down and slip into a funkadelic, disco experience that makes you want to dance sexy.
4.International Lefthanders Day
At the time I wanted this poster a lot, it’s been made with Scandinavian skill.
5.Apple iPhone
It’s not about what this first generation product can’t do, it’s all about the amazing things it can do. The touch screen interface is absolutely superb, you consume lots of stuff, you stroke it alot, it’s incredible. I have had iPhone-itous for two months and it feels great.
Good news. The lovely organisers of the Medialab Prado let me know that there is a fantastic opportunity to participate now in one of their upcoming events in Spain, titled Digital Networks and Physical Space by submitting project proposals and papers.
Its really quite an amazing opportunity as I experienced myself while I was there and Im sure if your project / paper gets accepted youll have a fantastic experience when you go there and get to meet lots of interesting people from all over the world. If your project doesnt get accepted, and youre still interested I think you can still enlist as a collaborator on one of the accepted projects.
*Medialab-Prado* issues a call to participate in the *Second
Inclusiva-net Meeting: Digital Networks and Physical Space, *directed by
*Juan Martín Prada*, that will take place *from 3 to 14 March* *2008*.
The purpose of this open participation meeting is to explore the
relationship between digital networks and physical space in the context
of the increasingly widespread use of portable technology and Web
applications in connection with the production and management of
geographic information.
Through and open call, projects to be collaboratively developed during a
production workshop and papers to be publicly presented will be selected.
Submission Deadline: *30th January * 2008
Notification of Acceptance:* 8th February* 2008
