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
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…
New T-shirt designs from Steve Nishimoto, coming soon courtesy of 2K by Gingham. When you get the urge to purchase a new tee, it’s worth consulting Nik’s new blog.
Is the theme for this years Architecture Week. Last week I attended the AW onedotzero evening event, which showcased sustainable design work from Jason Bruges Studio, XCO2 and DIY Kyoto. The showcase reinforced the need for artists and designers to produce work which is powered by renewable forms of energy, aswell as create products that support us in our efforts to reduce our consumption of non-renewables.
Jason Bruges took centre stage first, starting with a quick introduction of the studio’s work, which for me is a mixture of information design, architecture and interactive / art installations. Following the intro Jason proceeded to present a series of the studio’s projects that have explored visualising prevailing winds, which have culminated in the studio’s RIBA London and onedotzero comissioned ‘Wind to Light’ installation at the Southbank centre (pictured above). Wind to Light uses ‘500 mini wind turbines to generate power, which illuminates hundreds of mounted leds, creating firefly-like fields of light, with wind visually interpreted as electronic patterns across the installation’. It will be onsite until September, to find out more read the project blog here. Following on from Jason, XCO2 (a group of engineers and designers) also spoke about the use of renewable energies to create function and aesthetic value in their work.
Finally, Greta from DIY Kyoto (who’s name is a reponse to the Kyoto protocol) presented the Wattson, a product which simply makes your electricity usage tangible. I first read about the Wattson in the papers a while ago, but what I didn’t know about was the development of a Wattson online community. This is a place where users can register and track their electricty consumption, a place where international comparision can take place. It was also suggested, tongue in cheek on the night that a dating group could be developed in the community where users could pursue those who used attractive amounts of electricity, now that would be sexy!
It’s true to say in 2004 when I was finishing my degree the internet wasn’t so communitytastic as it is now. So today in 2007 it’s great to find 5oup, an online community for student artists, which on the surface looks like a healthy mix of graphics, fine art, interactive and illustration. Its graduation time right now and all the design blogs are featuring student portfolio’s, from those I have had a quick glance at - Mr.Robert Holmkvist’s graphic design abilites have impressed me the mostest!
I’m afraid to say it, but Dom made me jealous after his excursion to the usa to coachella.
I orignally wanted to go to ATP vs the Fans this weekend, but my buddies couldn’t get time off and to short notice.
I do fancy going to a gig like this, so I’m trying to line up going to Primavera Sound, but as usual nobodies available, so if you know anybody whos going or wants to go, give us a shout and see if we can arrange something…
This is just a quick note, one of the greatest music resources I found over a year ago seems to have disappeared! In fact Epitonic has been gone for some weeks, but I was hoping they might be tweaking with it (or something!).
The site has had a very turbulent past when it comes to the design and usability. Originally it was a standard flat easy to use site that probably needed just a spring clean when it came to graphics. But for some reason they went overboard when it came to designing the site. It looked really fresh and new, but without doubt the most painful site to use. It just didn’t work usability wise! It goes to show that usability can make or break a site.
What happens to all the data they collated, does it just get deleted, surely they have information worth money? Surely somebody could take over the project? Why not sell or release the data? Even though it look like its gone (I so wish it wasn’t!!) it was such a resource and I wish they would bring it back.
Until that happens, you’ll find me using Last fm which I’m loving, but I prefer to have lots of resources rather than just one.
Well on the world wide internet anyway. Just so you know, I have been planning and researching my forthcoming holiday to California and these sites in particular have been helpful…
71 miles
Is a site the Nunz showed me at an official Poke graphics catch up a few weeks back. It’s basically a combination of a feed mash up (eg. kayak, google maps) and good editorial to give you a rich, insightful overview to various locations in Northern California.
My Google Maps
Everyone knows how great Google Maps is, now there is the ‘My Maps’ feature. It’s been very handy for me in plotting potential hotels and getting my bearings, and if I wanted to share my findings with my travel companion and everyone in the internet galaxy the option was there for me to.
DK Travel
I never told you about DK Travel did I? This is a project we did a few months ago for the travel book publishers Dorling Kindersley. As you might expect the site has a great wealth of information on various global destinations, but the clever bit is that you can create your own travel guides, that are downloadable and fit for printing at a small cost. For a far more superior / in depth overview of the project read Tom’s post here.
Semi related to Dom’s earlier post, the Belfast chapter of Bearduary was founded in 2007 by University of Ulster lecturers Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson as part of the international Bearduary movement. They recently had a well publicised shave.. as covered on BB1 (…and Russian TV?)
Murphy and Persson (above) share a research interest in cultivating the return of the beard and are working together to spark a renewed interest in gentlemanly pursuits.
Chris Murphy pictured right, is one half of the design team working on the Glitch Book. The other half being Joe at Qubik Design.
Well on the world wide internet anyway. Just so you know, I have been planning and researching my forthcoming holiday to California and these sites in particular have been helpful…
