Following on from the Digital Architecture Conference which was 21st September, there is an exhibition on that is well worth visiting.
PHASE 2 Gallery, 8/09/09 – 2/10/09, 8 Fitzroy St, London W1T 4BJ, 9am – 6pm, ENTRY FREE
“Digital Hinterlands features a diverse range of work by some of the best recent architecture graduates from London’s Architectural Association, Bartlett, Royal College of Art, and University of Westminster. The exhibition reveals how the latest computational design and rapid manufacturing processes are providing new ways of understanding and designing space. From built models, 1:1 fragments, material experiments and installations, to interactive devices, virtual worlds and robotics, this exhibition presents the ideas of a wave of young designers, operating on the speculative hinterlands of architectural design.”
Johan Voordouw – Printed Aedicules: “The project sought to construct a library inside the scale of a book to form physical and imagined spaces on and through the page.”
Nick Szczepaniak – A Defensive Architecture: “a set of austere and stark coastal defence
towers that have multiple functions. Not only do the towers act as an
environmental protection device that serve as a warning to mankind of the
dangers that lie ahead, but they are also repositories of knowledge. The militarised towers are alive — breathing, creaking, groaning, sweating and crying”
Marilena Skavara – Adaptive Fa[ca]de: “explores the functional possibilities and performative characteristics of cellular automata (CA). In addition to the unique emergent behaviour of CA, a neural network enables a further computational layer to evolve CA behaviour to the context of its surrounding environment”
0 Comments + Tagged: architecture / exhibition / kinetic / rapid prototyping / space
So I know its slack, but here I am finally writing up my thoughts on this year’s Royal College of Art Show. That’s what you get when you travel across the country every weekend. On the whole, I have to say there weren’t as many working prototypes that as I had hoped for, but I guess that’s always the case. I guess it just never occurred to me when I was at Uni to have illustrations or mock-ups done for me. Wow that would have saved me a load of work. I could have pined away at the idea for even longer. I picked up a load of postcards to help me remember, and I’m just going through them.
Sascha Pohflepp who I know worked on Social Collider with Karsten Schmidt worked with Daisy Ginsberg produced a look at future-tech, creating a scenario where the prohibitive cost of energy has meant that the DNA of plants is re-coded to produce biological artifacts that can then be assembled into products. Each of these berry things have nozzles inside.
“Using biology for the production of consumer goods has reversed the idea of industrial standards, introducing diversity and softness into a realm that once was dominated by heavy manufacturing.”
The idea of mass-producing through farm-factories is great, to change the consumer ideal that all products should be the same would be great. I do it myself sometimes – root to the back of the shelf to look for the most pristine, untouched by human hands box of whatever. I’d love to see a more diverse and flexible approach to manufacture, and to think everything would be biodegradable too. Who’s gonna produce it in the flesh first?
Pics via Daisy Ginsberg.
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I was invited to a panel discussion last night to discuss the issues that face graduates emerging from creative degrees. It was a fascinating debate organised by Joe Turner for Street Graphic Magazine, to find out how people got where they are today, and give some advice to people just starting out. There are just too many graduates coming from creative courses around Britain! Not that that is a bad thing for us in the industry, but as a graduate you need to work so much harder to get where you want to go.
Its like that book by Paul Arden “Its not how GOOD you, it’s how GOOD you want to be”. It makes me wonder whether universities do enough. Maybe taking advice from the hyper-island model of education wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Street Graphic Magazine is getting re-launched later this year, and the team are getting together an article on this subject.
Present:
Rory, who works in The Talent Business.
Eleanor Roome, who owns Roome Consulting.
Lucy-Anne Ronayne, who is a Creative at Work Club.
Chris Boardman, who is an intern at Poke.
Michelle Bower, who is a Designer/Writer at Digit .
Phil Skinner, who is a Designer at Purpose.
0 Comments + Tagged: graduates / industry / jobs / magazine / streetgraphic
I was chuffed to have made it to the London workshop for openFrameworks organised by my pal Ruairi Glynn et al which took place on 13-14th June. I was amazed to hear at the time that there had been hundreds of applicants for this weekend, but since attending, it isn’t surprising at all. It was a fantastic way to spend your weekend. At least if you are a bit like me.
I’m really not at all experienced in C based programming. Much of my experience so far has been with AS, Java and stuff. In fact the idea of delving into lower levels of programming have always freaked me out a bit… one peek at the syntax in the classes of a friend’s Objective C iPhone App not too long ago put me off yet again.
However intimidating it might be, essentially openFrameworks exists to tame all that. It provides an easy-to-understand er… framework that wraps the awesome capability of existing C/C++ libraries into something that really isn’t hard at all.
So thanks to Memo, Joel and Marek for providing a great intro to what will possibly become my main focus as of now. Watch this space.
Image: Elly
0 Comments + Tagged: london / openframeworks / workshop
I managed to get up to Manchester for the FutureSonic festival. Officially I was there to help exhibit Bob the Lamp, but as Elly pretty much had it sorted, I had time to get involved in the talks and debates that were going on. As I previously said I found it pretty interesting, and a welcome return to open debate on the subject of technology & future. The last conference I attended was about digital media, in London, but I can’t remember what it was called and that pretty much sums it up.
Highlights for me included:
- Aaron Koblin showing his amazing data visualisation using processing, for the Radiohead music video. The most interesting part was the way the 3d laser scanning machine thing collected reams of data while Thom Yorke performed the song. Of course, Terabytes of data were moved into the actual visualisation within a few hours, the beauty of programming. He now works for Google. That’s what you get for being damn good.
- The Semantic Web and how it will supercede the web in its amazing “linked data” way… that was good.
- Making Fun Serious was an exhibition by RCA students in collaboration with Yamaha, the artifacts turned used commonplace household objects into musical instruments. See image of chair. Yes that’s me. Why not make a debut on my own site in a picture of me looking (+ acting) like Stephen Hawking. You sit in the chair, and speak into the microphone on a stick. You then use the joystick situated on the arm of the chair, to modulate, amplify and distort your noise, and it is projected through these distributed trumpet like speakers.
- Usman Haque’s Natural Fuse which I never quite got my head round, but was fascinating nevertheless. It is a network of plants and control units that monitor the energy consumption of a mains outlet, and serves as a natural circuit breaker by controlling the quantity of water given, according to the carbon footprint of the said energy used. It was commissioned for this event which also looks interesting.
I’m yet to find my notes, so perhaps I’ll add more to this over the next few days.
0 Comments + Tagged: conference / futuresonic / interaction design / manchester
Just returned from futuresonic in Manchester. Fantastic to see a digital arts festival in the UK that has reached some degree of maturity. The debates were interesting, and the exhibitions of a high standard.
Flickr photos and links from my notes coming soon.
0 Comments + Tagged: event / futuresonic / interaction design / manchester
It seems ridiculous, actually, that having been back in the ‘real’ world now for like 8 months or something, that I haven’t gotten round to doing this yet. But here I am.
I’ve been living and working in London since September 2008, and I’ve grown up a bit. Behold my website. Wonderful Wordpress. I no longer have the patience for messing about with a manual site where everything needs to be done right. I don’t know how I ever did. I’m not even that worried if I go off this design in a month. I need somewhere online that I can call home, and this is it. Hopefully it’ll be a place worth visiting in the not-too-distant-future.
Welcome.
Paul
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