Archive for October, 2006
Markus Hofer
“Lichtkegel” and “Spray by Markus Hofer.
via vvork
…
Originally
from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 20, 2006, 8:29PM
20 Oddest Jobs from CareerBuilder.com
Taken from this list
18. Dice Inspector
What they do: Inspect dice used in casinos for lopsided angles, misspotting and other blemishes that could cause error when the dice are rolled for gambling purposes.
19. Ethnographer
What they do: Research and study single groups of human behavior through fieldwork, observing and questioning participants.
20. Gum Buster
What they do: Remove gum stuck to sidewalks, street benches and other unwanted areas by de-sticking the gum through a steaming process.
[Thanks, JZC]
…
Originally
from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 23, 2006, 5:42PM
Whitepaper: Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture
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Peter Morville found an interesting whitepaper by MIT’s Henry Jenkins about media education, entitled “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture” (pdf, 354 kb, 70 pages), on the website of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Learning Initiative (see also here).
Here is what Morville wrote about it:
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Originally
from Putting people first
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 23, 2006, 5:57PM
What is user experience design?
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An article on the Paradyme Solutions blog examines the term user experience design and analyses its relation to other fields, such as experience design, interaction design, information architecture, human-computer interaction, human factors engineering, usability and user interface design.
After pointing out and dissecting the overlap between these fields, the author concludes “the field of user experience design takes a broad approach to the enhancement of products, combining elements from various fields to create an optimal and well-rounded experience. This holistic methodology is often more adept at helping to reach a set of goals that encompass passive and active user interactions–goals determined both by users and the business or organisation.” (via Logic+Emotion) |
Originally
from Putting people first
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 12, 2006, 6:52AM
More on IDEO: now redesigning a law school
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“Like many businesses, law schools need a competitive edge,” writes Alison Trinidad in the Florida Times-Union.
“For the Florida Coastal School of Law, now 10 years old, part of that edge is found in its newly renovated, multimillion-dollar building on the Southside.” “To guide the transition from cramped campus to state-of-the-art law school, Florida Coastal hired IDEO, a California company that designs products, services and environments for big-name clients like Apple Computer and Polaroid. IDEO is widely known to take an innovative approach to design, employing anthropologists and psychologists to work with architects and engineers. Its philosophy, which some call experience design, takes a holistic view of a problem and uses a multidisciplinary attack to resolve it.” “IDEO couldn’t have been a better fit for Florida Coastal, which as the country’s first fully accredited for-profit law school, is pioneering in its own right. The driving idea was to look at the campus as an experience, rather than a building, and make sure the focus stayed on the students, said Peter Goplerud, dean of the law school.” |
Originally
from Putting people first
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 17, 2006, 7:05PM
After These Messages
Geared towards communications professionals, After These Messages is the perfect forum for anyone who has ever looked at an ad and thought “How can they sleep at night?” An online campaign, it allows members to review advertising and other forms of communication through both a creative and ethical lens. Once a piece of communication is reviewed, it’s placed on a New York magazine-style marketing matrix with the x-axis being “heaven/hell†and the y-axis being “hack/genius.†The free membership also entitles users to post advertisements, newspapers or magazines articles, packaging, photographs, political speeches, books and other pieces of communication for review. Members earn points for each action they take on the site which can be redeemed for After These Messages-branded swag, like a pillowcase emblazoned with the question “What did you do today?” (Also available here for $14.)
Officially launched on 25 September 2006, the site was created by Green Team, an advertising/communications agency that specializes in reaching the “Awakening Consumer, an educated, ethical, environmentally aware and economically powerful audience that uses its purchasing power to influence policy through the brands it supports.” What better way is there to push advertising professionals and the rest of us to reflect on our day so that we’ll have an answer when asked, “How do you sleep at night?”
TAGS: Advertising, Green, Internet, Social Activism,
Originally
from Cool Hunting
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 17, 2006, 11:24PM
Antarctica’s Underground Sphere-Cathedral
[Image: "Beardmore Glacier, slicing its way through the Transantarctic Mountains." Via Glaciers of the World].
Pole itself is an agglomeration of Jamesway huts, “corrugated metal tunnels” slowly blown over with snow, and the massive geodesic dome for which the city has become most famous. The dome is not precisely architectural, on the other hand: “The station is more like a raft floating on a very slow moving sea of ice two miles deep than a traditional building footed on the ground.”
It is structure imposed upon frozen hydrology: the insufficiently modeled glacial surface undergoes complicated deformations, thwarting all attempts to achieve longterm stability. It’s a kind of ice seismology.
In any case, one of the most interesting aspects of the whole thing is actually found below the city, in Pole’s so-called “sewage bulbs.” To quote at length:
- Water for the station is derived by inserting a heating element – which looks like a brass plumb bob 12 feet in diameter – 150 feet into the ice and then pumping out the meltwater. After a sphere has been hollowed out over several years, creating a bulb that bottoms out 500 feet below the surface, they move to a new area, using the old bulb to store up to a million gallons of sewage, which freezes in place – sort of. The catch is, the ice cap is moving northward toward the coast (and Rio de Janeiro) at a rate of about an inch a day, or 33 feet per year. That movement means that the tunnels are steadily compressing; as a result, they have to be reamed out every few years to maintain room for the insulated water and sewage pipes. Because each sewage bulb fills up in five to six years, they’re hoping – based on the length of the tunnel and the number of bulbs they can create off it (perhaps even seven or eight) – this project will have a forty-year lifespan. Ultimately, in about the year A.D. 120,000, the whole mess should drop off into the ocean.
Rather than sewage bulbs, however, why not use the same technique to melt spherical chambers of a new, inverted cathedral one thousand feet below the Antarctic surface, a void-maze of linked naves and side-chapels moving slowly down-valley with the glacier…? Rather than a church organ, for instance, you’d have the natural music of the ice itself, a glacial moan of augmented terrestrial pressures. The whole system could be sanctified, renamed Vatican 2, and new saints of ice could win Bible study grants to reside there, in thick parkas, reading Thomas à Kempis over three-month stays. A new religious movement – called glacial mysticism – soon results.
Unearthly, geometric, the voids of this new ecumenical church might even burn reflectively inside with the aurora australis.
[Image: The aurora borealis – yes, the Northern, not Southern, Lights. Sorry. Via NASA].
A hundred thousand years later, the cathedral reaches the sea, where its vast internal voids are broken open and revealed in the glacial cliff face. Sections of nave and pulpit can be found floating in the water, sculpted rims of prayer-domes drifting north in the smooth surfaces of icebergs. Here and there a complete chapel; elsewhere a crypt, its tombs’ chiseled inscriptions melting slowly in the sun.
Some future group of Argentine architectural students will then take a field-trip there, sketchbooks in hand, and they’ll spend two weeks back-mapping the precisely measured structure to its original, geometric clarity.
[Image: The BLDGBLOG glacial cathedral, adapted from this photo, ©Michael Van Woert/NOAA NESDIS/ORA].
Another hundred thousand years later, there’s no trace of the cathedral at all.
Originally
from BLDGBLOG
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 18, 2006, 8:44PM
Christian Jankowski: Us and Them
Inspired by juxtapositions of different worlds and subcultures, Christian Jankowski‘s conceptual work often involves non-artists such as televangelists, psychics, children, and therapists. An extension of Jankowski’s previous experiments with commercial filmmaking conventions, “Us and Them,” a seasonally-appropriate exhibit of new works including videos, film, photography and sculpture, explores the horror film genre “suggesting how cinematic visions of monstrosity and violence can also communicate broader notions of transformation, revenge, and redemption.” Angels of Revenge (2006), a video and photography series, spotlights contestants from a costume contest at a horror film conference who were invited by Jankowski to his makeshift film studio in a hotel conference room and asked to write a letter to the person in their lives who had most betrayed, harmed, or offended them. Inspired by the production of a straight-to-DVD werewolf film, Lycan Theorized (2006), is a video and sculpture piece and his 16mm silent film, Playing Frankenstein (2006), features Jankowski challenging a Frankenstein impersonator to a game of chess.
“Us and Them”
Opening reception: 21 October 2006, 6-8pm
21 October 2006-9 December 2006
The Kitchen
512 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011 map
tel. 01 212 255 5793
TAGS: Art, Conceptual, Events, Film, New York,
Originally
from Cool Hunting
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 18, 2006, 9:52PM
Paint
Following the virally renowned bouncy ball ad (and subsequent parodies), “Paint,” Sony’s latest Bravia spot, is an orgasmic choreography of rainbow-colored paint explosions. Directed by Jonathan Glazer, who’s known for his music videos, the piece took 10 days and 250 people to film and five days and 60 people to clean up.
via Josh Spear
Originally
from Cool Hunting
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 19, 2006, 12:06AM
Dyson Root 6
Using the same patented “cyclone” technology that made Dyson upright vacuums famous, the new Dyson Root 6 ($150) is a handheld tool that never looses suction, cleaning better and more hygienically by trapping dirt more effectively. With its molded plastic body—looking something like a creature-trapping gun from the prop department of Alien—it’s ergonomic and easy to use, successfully negotiating the narrowest of nooks and hard-to-reach corners.
In CH’s tests, we were impressed by the Root’s ability to clean the long hair of a sheepskin rug, the dust chamber’s convenient design (a latch releases a flap to empty directly over a garbage can), and the fun of seeing the dirt whirl around in the clear plastic bin. Other features include LED indicator lights, washable filters that never need replacing, a brush tool (with a lint extension) and a separate narrow crevice accessory. Though at times we wished for an attached light to see what we were cleaning and the battery’s charge didn’t last quite as little long as we expected (it’s lithium ion battery does charge up to three times faster than others), overall it’s an ideal device for cars, small rooms and spills where large vacuums would be inconvenient and overkill.
TAGS: Devices, Home Care, Housewares,
Originally
from Cool Hunting
by
reBlogged
by michael
on Oct 19, 2006, 3:55AM
