The Unfinished Swan

If paintball were cool, it would be in a totally white maze world with no dimensions until you splattered paint everywhere. The Unfinishd Swan is a video game currently in production.


The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

stairporn.org

a blog on stairs. i don't think i even knew i had a staircase fetish until i saw this.

Shaz Madani - works

Clicked through a notcot post showing Madani's paper art (above) and found myself poking around his portfolio. London College of Communication, St. Martin's College. you know.

Thought this was a cool project, tracking and visualizing a week's expenditures. (black pins are needs, white pins are wants.)

And this is a print promotion for the M25 Motorway in London. "On one side, the poster gives exact directions that would have to be taken to get from one side of London to the other [. ..] The reverse side reads, 'wipe away the confusion take the M25.'"

graphic office

packaging for whiteboard markers, permanent markers, hilighters, and batteries. all simple but excessively descriptive.

andreas and i were thinking about hyper-labeling the locations of things in our kitchen with huge, typographic signs. "trash." "recycling." "mugs." it would be great, but maybe not as great as office supplies are great.

India + Color

Saw the most recent Sony Bravia video:

This theme of India as a land of color comes up again in the ad campaigns for India's tourism bureau, "Incredible India," (or rather, Incredible !ndia.) here are stills from the flash banner on their site.

Andreas and I agreed: it's a cool brand identity for a country. for india, specifically.

Oblique Strategies

Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt had published four editions (in 1975, 1978, 1979 and 1996) of what they call "Oblique Strategies." It's a deck of cards with a random aphorism on each, dedicated to prodding people out of creative funks. And it is now available in iphone:

Some examples:

Use an unacceptable color.

Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics.

Fill every beat with something.

Don't stress one thing more than another.

Ask people to work against their better judgment.

Call your mother and ask her what to do.

Humanize something that is free of error.

Breathe more deeply

Do nothing for as long as possible

Use "unqualified" people.

Make a blank valuable by putting it in an excquisite frame

Faced with a choice, do both

Use fewer notes

Get your neck massaged

Remove specifics; convert to ambiguities

Remove the middle, extend the edges

Imagine the music as a series of disconnected events

Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them

Disconnect from desire

Mechanize something idiosyncratic

Do something boring

Accept advice

Pay attention to distractions

Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify.

And some unpublished ones from his diaries:

Steal a solution. (22 July)

Describe the landscape in which this belongs. (9 August)

What else is this like? (9 August)

List the qualities it has. List those you'd like. (9 August)

Instead of changing the thing, change the world around it. (9 August)

What would make this really successful? (9 August)

Who would make this really successful? (9 August)

How would you explain this to your parents? (9 August)

Try faking it. - from Stewart Brand (9 August)

What were the branch points in the evolution of this entity (20 August)

Back up a few steps. What else could you have done? (20 August)

When is it for? Who is it for? (23 August)

What do you do? Now, what do you do best? (27 August)

First work alone, then work in unusual pairs. (8 September)

What most recently impressed you? How is it similar? What can you learn from it? What could you take from it? (10 September)

Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left? (30 December)

Subway Time

I just bought this at Little Otsu on Valencia. its awesome & combines two of my passions: calendars and subway maps.

Overnewsed but Uninformed

so i don't speak german (as i learned incontestably while in berlin this summer). and thus, i had to rely on google translator to translate the page for me:

"News mediation was the beginning of our century still a few media is limited. ... With the possible anytime access to news about a variety of communication channels has a broad media landscape with a myriad of information producers and suppliers develop. For the viewer, it becomes more difficult to determine authenticity of messages. You are looking for sources to whom they can trust.

Overnewsed but Uniformed helps in the search. Sequences are described, ownership and dependencies disclosed and user behavior illustrated. Background information and the monitoring and analysis of the real message of a bridge no fall in Minneapolis convey the basis on whic the Chamber News better assess and categorize can."

from what I gather, its an infovis of the news-media industry.

can be downloaded (in german) from
www.overnewsed-but-uninformed.de