WEEK 6
Week 6 is a week of doubt because it's normally the week where you're sure of what your major project will be and how it will look like. Unfortunately it's not my case... Ok I already know I'm going to deal with sound interaction but precisely how, I can't say for the moment.This week I found different kinds of projects, ones getting close of what I want to do, others completly different but still interesting and innovative:
PianoGraphique
PianoGraphique is a multimedia instrument allowing the user to create simultaneously graphic and sonorous compositions.
Each letter on the keyboard sets off a sound and an animation underneath the mouse cursor. By typing on the keyboard, pictures and sounds mix together. Various combinaisons are possible. There are different kind of music and projects the user can choose. For each one, specific animations and graphic styles have been created. For some of them, you can even record your creation and share it so that we can vote for it.
This superb project was created by Jean-Luc Lamarque in 1993 but is still impressive (it has of course been improved since these 13 years). It really gives the feeling of composing the music, of being at the same time DJ and VJ.
I particularly liked the Black Potion project.
VariaSon
VariaSon is an application I found in the great experimental ScreenVader website.
This application is a kind of pianoGraphique but more cold and less elaborate maybe because we can't choose other kinds of music than electronic, maybe because of the limited graphic style used. Anyway it's also an amazing project that I showed to Gabriel last Friday and he told me to do the same kind of project, to take inspiration of it and take it as a basis. I think I'll follow his advices.
We talked about the potential commercial issues (even if it's really not my priority for the moment and in general I think about this question after having finished a project) and gave the ideas of supplying it with headphones to people in a relaxing corner of a nightclub such like Kellys so that they can listen to the music they make, the music they like. The animations could be projected in one part of a wall of the nightclub. We could also for example create a portative keyboard that could be scratched on the arm or the thigh of the user so that he could dance while listening and creating his music.
AmazType
AmazType is an application made by tha* ltd. for Amazon so the purpose is of course to sell products such as books, videos or music.
BUT the way the items are shown is really amazing: all the products related to the word you entered superpose again and again to draw each letter of that word.
When you click on an item, it zooms to show more precisely its title and its cover and if you're interesed you can click on the link that directly sends you to the Amazon website normal page of this product so that you can buy it.
At first sight, I was a little unsettled, wondering what the real utility of this application was. I thought it was a funny impressive stuff but not more than a gadget. But after talking with some friends I understood that this was the virtual transposition of a huge real media library where you can search, check and discover all the books of an author, all the cd of a singer, all the dvd of a moviemaker, or all the items relating to a precise topic, just by seeing their covers. In that way, like in a library, you can
come to search a precise book of an author and go out with another which was disposed just behind the one you initially came for.
Mac vs PC
Here are some gifts for the nerds you are Nicklas and Chris...
These videos will certainly remind you some good moments as old men you are.
I like the credits at the end: "Recorded in January 1984 and preserved for the world by Scott Knaster".
Ok now in order Nicklas not to be jealous, I selected these two videos of another Steve, the Ballmer one, CEO of Microsoft. Another style...
The world's first-ever website
Let's continue with this little history course.http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/
TheProject.html is the address of the first website of history, in 1990 and it's Tim Berners-Lee's one (the guy only invented the web, the http and the html...).
Instructive.
Here are some additional pictures of the first browser.
How to dress like a Mac
Based on Apple's latest television ads in which Justin Long is the cool and casual personification of the Mac, this study found on www.lifeclever.com gives the exact instructions to dress like a Mac.
I particularly liked the final advices:
"To finish your Mac makeover, there’s a few more things to do:
- Stand with your hands in your pockets a lot, but keep the thumbs out
- Avoid jewelry and extra decoration. Minimal and simple is the Apple way
- If you’re a guy, facial hair is okay, but keep it trimmed and neat
- Paint your walls white
- Smirk."
Fuck, I've got the Mac attitude sometimes...
Book cuttings
Day of goodness today, here is another gift for Chris who loved the book Cuttings of Simon Starling. He was fond of all the cuttings used so I thought he would maybe be interested by this one... Ok here the cuttings don't structure the content as in the Starling one, nevertheless I found it funny and interesting. In plus, the ear is a flipbook (some typographies go out from it). It was published by AGI (International Graphic Alliance) dealing with all the works of its new members of years 2004 (in Pekin) and 2005 (in Berlin). The graphic conception was made by Jianping He.
The ZoomQuilt
Let's have a look to this pretty art project called the ZoomQuilt.
By clicking and draging up or down, it seems you can indefinitely zoom in or out the picture. In fact it loops but I really had the impression of driving a train that goes really fast in a fantastic and nightmarish environment while going deeper and deeper in the details of this picture. Impressive!
Another kind of typography
As you've talked a lot about typographies since Erik Spiekermann came, I'd like to show you another type of typography. The belgian artist Fred Eerdekens builds sculptures which take all their sense with their shadows projected, drawing the shape of letters on walls.
I find this process really inventive and poetic.
Like a flower who dies without the sun, these creations don't mean anything without a light projected properly.
More pictures here.