MA Digital Media Arts
I think I have spotted a Gorilla
Mar 31st
I’ve woken up with a start this morning. Not only due to the rain beating against my window but after weeks of deliberation, which has seen this latest module Network Practice allude me, by Joe I think I’ve got it!
NOTE: Sorry to my tutors: you’ll be receiving a new statement of intent this week. Late, completely revised but achievable.
I haven’t actually read the book Did You Spot The Gorilla by Richard Wiseman yet but I have been intrigued by the video (see this Telegraph article for an explanation). It’s all about discovering those hidden opportunities.
Exactly the same psychological mechanisms that cause people to miss the gorilla also make them miss unexpected but vitally important opportunities in their professional and personal lives.
Anyway, back to my morning. My personal life can be complicated and busy so I’m trying to keep things straightforward these days. Funnily enough a few months ago, ago I was writing a text to a friend asking for some copy for an exhibition we were implementing, I’d wrtitten:
“Keep it short, sweet and simple…just like me 
”. I rather liked the sound of this! A great philosophy to follow when I can sometimes over complicate things by trying too hard. In fact it’s my new mantra ‘Keep it Short Sweet and Simple’. I registered the website shortsweetsimple.co.uk and until now it’s sat unused.
So coming full circle and back to the Network Practices module I’ve decided to build upon my existing network of friends, colleagues, artists and social media contacts. I must admit, I also have a slight obsession for social media (which is why it’s so strange I’ve found it difficult to find my inspiration). With Twittering (I have 3 accounts so far and growing), blogging (I write for 4 of them), digging, stumbling, tumbling and flickring. My favourite Twitter feed is currently Mashable – the social media guide.
Using the top #trends found @Twitter I’m going to post a daily theme onto the shortsweetsimple.co.uk website/blog and invite people to create a very short sweet and simple piece of artwork to be uploaded. It could be a drawing, photo, poem, photoshop collage, anything. As long as people respond quickly and simply.
I’m feeling pretty enthused about this gorilla. I hope my tutors feel the same….
Virtual Cultures & Network Practices: Digital DNA, A Portrait
Mar 18th
Statement of Intent: Project Outline
Inspired by the development in Geo-tagging and the ability to track geographically peoples movements in the real world, made me start thinking about peoples journey’s across the web. As participants use social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, or use Google to make a web search, their visits are tracked and logged, much like a digital footprint. In fact many data visualisation projects are being developed around this type of data.
Additionally based on my interests in Interaction Design and the User Experience, I have been exploring the Gestalt theories and my research led me to the project ‘Identitat: The Gestalt of Digital Identity’ the bachelor thesis of Jonas Loh and Steffen Fiedler.
“Today almost everybody has at least one digital representation on one of the numerous social communities, like Flickr, Facebook and MySpace. We create these profiles to express ourselves, find friendship, connection and gain reputation…We don’t imagine how she or he looks like, but think of specific personal data (images, videos, texts) which we associate with that person instead. ”
In Identitat, sculptures have been produced to express how an analogue snapshot of complex digital identities can be presented. Consumerist (amazon), communication behavior (twitter), interests (delicious) and listening habits (last.fm) were saved in a custom database of eight people in order to produce the data for these sculptures.
Following on from the idea of presenting a digital identity or in the case of this project, digital DNA in an analogous format, my idea would be to represent the data collected in this project and output the visualization as an image suitable for printing onto T-shirts, canvas etc. Thus creating a very unique portrait of a person’s digital life.
Technical Authorship
Using generative code to visualize data sets I plan to experiment using Processing or possibly NodeBox to illustrate peoples responses to a simple questionnaire about their online habits as well as their real-time environment eg the time of day, their location. The image produced would therefore be different everyday.
Resulting images can be printed or saved to be used on T-Shirts, canvas or simply as a profile picture on Facebook or Twitter. I would also like to document the various images via Flickr and I also plan to use networks such as Twitter, Facebook and a blog to promote this project.
Keeping to a questionnaire format and visualising the data keeps the project simple yet effective, with some interesting images, I hope!
Other sites of inspiration:
Fluid Forms, Your Unique Designs – Be creative and help a fluid form to embody and reflect your personality, memories or dreams. Through the emotional involvement you can bring to fluid forms, you can also become the creator of emotionally engaging, personalized and truly unique gifts.
News Knitter – a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data.
Urbansphere Wearables - aims to reflect the mood of the city by utilizing the data streams of social networks as a source of fashion design. As every online inhabitant of the city becomes a part of this production, the project brings online data to the streets, creating an ongoing interaction between the real and the virtual existence of the urban life.
Social Bits – Research on artistic output of social interactions.
ToDo, Interaction Designers – some fantastic projects using generative code for product design “we focus on dialogue, exchange and community through the integration of ideas, interactivity and technology”
Virtual Revolution – Over the last 20 years the web has changed the world, but what, if anything, has it done to us? Take part in a unique experiment to discover the impact the web is having on our brains, and discover which species of web animal you are.
Social Media and Creative Flow
Feb 24th
For the Social Media and Creative Flow project, some elements are still looking pretty open ended and although the ideas are flowing, nothing is formalised for either the group Creative Flows project or my individual project. As I’ve been researching I’ve been bookmarking articles and sites of interest via Delicious.com.
Using this blog post, I’ve organised these findings into relevant section to try and organise my thoughts and inspirations on Social Networking in an attempt to solidify my research into a workable idea. Links marked with the * I found to be particularly inspiring for the forthcoming projects.
To communicate the concept, public engagement (collaboration/interactivity), data visualisation and a strong aesthetic using the exploration of colour/colour psychology have become strong themes throughout research. In order to deliver the concept augmented reality, using webcams and mobile devices to interact with the environment both on and offline are fascinating concepts that would definitely warrant further investigation for the Creative Flows project.
Collaboration
Google Chrome Logo
Google Chrome Project - Using people in the real word to submit their Google Chrome Icons to the Google Chrome Project. I like the idea of mixing real with online projects.
Creative Commons License – share, remix, reuse – legally
Wiki – “is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, for personal note taking, in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems” Source Wikipedia
Google Wiki is also simple but useful. It’s a browser sidebar that enables you to contribute and read helpful information alongside any web page.
Kollabor8 – (actual website unavailable) is a virtual gallery displaying individual sequences of digital photo-montage, an ever-evolving collaborative work of art. Exploring the transitory nature of internet content and the capacity for spontaneous creative synergy between unassociated artists, the images are displayed sequentially like threads in a forum, automatically archived and viewable as part of the process.
Swarmfest Collaborative Sketch – another collaborative visual canvas for online, distributed design: each week a popular search term is chosen to become the sketch subject. Collaborators can then vote on the opacity of the line submitted by other users.
*Wallright – is a live public painting community platform, that allows several people from around the globe to draw on a physical wall at the same time.
Digital Technology & Environment
Image by Panda Yogourt
Digital Cities: ‘Sense-able’ urban design – a Wired.co.uk article discussing the effect of digital technologies on the urban environment. I’m specifically interested in using mobile technology in the real world environment and its effect.
The digital revolution did not end up killing our cities, but neither did it leave them unaffected. A layer of networked digital elements has blanketed our environment, blending bits and atoms together in a seamless way. Sensors, cameras and microcontrollers are used ever more extensively to manage city infrastructure, optimise transportation, monitor the environment and run security applications.
*Visualizing Memory in Architecture – “While standing between the two screens, viewers will see themselves along with visual memories of that place. Continuously washing over one another in painterly portraits of individuals and the surrounding environment, these images relate past and present in uncanny ways, creating a non-linear impression of history.”
Augmented Reality
James Aliban has fantastic examples of augmented reality, as well as processing and generative art on his blog. Also check out his Augmatic website for more of his work.
*Motion Trails v01 is particularly inspiring using web cams and Processing.
Motion trails v01 from James Alliban on Vimeo.
BMW – just have a go!
Data Collection
Google Trends – compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time.
Data Visualisation
Hint FM -
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg are research scientists in IBM’s Visual Communication Lab. The two became a team in 2003 when they decided to visualize Wikipedia, leading to the “history flow” project that revealed the self-healing nature of the online encyclopedia. They are currently exploring the power of visualization as a mass medium and the social forms of data analysis it enables.
I particularly like Luscious which is a celebration of colour.
It’s Been Real WWWords Project – Stefanie Posavec explores methods of visually representing text and visualises the differences in writing styles of different authors.
Twitter Perceptions of Google Buzz – Social media monitoring and analytics company Viralheat put together this graphic that shows the initial positive response to Google Buzz on Twitter, followed by shifts in opinion based on events in the developing privacy story.
ColorSpinner – ColorSpinner is a web interface to a database of over 3000 words and their associated colors and shades using the Prism algorithm.
The colors algorithm (workname Prism) matches a color palette to any given subject. It retrieves colors for apple (which would result in soft greens, yellows and reds) with the same ease as retrieving colors for jealousy (which would result in bright yellows and sickly greens).
Generative & Interactive Art – 2D & 3D
*Processing - a programming language, development environment, and online community that since 2001 has promoted software literacy within the visual arts.
Alchemy – a way to explore and experiment with alternative ways of drawing
NodeBox – allows you to create visual output with programming code. The application targets an audience of designers, with an easy set of state commands that is both intuitive and creative.
And Finally…
Another concept I’ve come across is geo-networking. An exciting concept in social networking using digital technology and social media based on real-world patterns to “unleash your digital footstream”. Check out Wrrrl to find out more.
V&A Talk on the Digital Pioneers: ‘Chance V Control’
Feb 4th
The MA DMA students were treated to a talk at the new V&A Digital Pioneers Exhibition with Honor Beddard, last week. Digital Pioneers celebrates the impact of the computer in art in the last 50 or so years.
Digital Pioneers is one of the outcomes of The Computer Art and Technocultures Project, which is a major study of the history of Computer Art, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. As computers became more accessible after WW2, the scientists and programmers who had initially been the operators of computers have been joined by artists and designers in exploring the computers creative potential.
Homage a Paul Klee, 1965, Frieder Nake
What became apparent to me during our talk is that in the production of most digital artwork , there is a large aspect of chance vs control. Using programs, algorithms and random variables, these early pioneers were producing beautiful experimental imagery that, in my opinion, still looks fresh and quite stunning. The fascinating ‘Homage a Paul Klee’ by Frieder Nake, 1965 may look simplistic, but is one of the most elaborate pieces of algorithmic art for its day. Roman Verosko’s plotter drawings such as ‘Manchester Illuminated Turing Machine #1′, 1998, are just beautiful and well worth seeing in a gallery setting.
'Manchester Illuminated Universal Turing Machine, #1', Roman Verostko, 1998
What’s interesting is the geometric, minimal aesthetic defined initially by the limitations of the technology more than 50 years ago, is a preferred and proven aesthetic by many designers and artists working presently. A lot of work produced in Open Source programs such as Processing, or Nodebox, or simply using Photoshop alpha channels and transparency settings, features very delicate, subtle imagery.
I know in my own practice, using Photoshop I’ll have an idea of what I want to achieve but I’ll allow Photoshop to process my images in unexpected and interesting ways. Like traditional artistic methods it is the ‘happy accidents’ that can be the most exciting.
AARON Digital Print, Harold Cohen, 2003
Further more, another aspect I have enjoyed exploring the digital artists, past and present, is the link between digital and traditional art processes and ideas. Harold Cohen, a painter, began experimenting with computers in the 1960’s. He concentrated on developing a programme known as AARON to generate works of art, with very painterly results. AARON was Cohen’s way of exploring whether successful imagery, underpinned by a codified system
Artist James Faure Walker’s ‘Dark Filament’, 2007 uses a mixture of digital technology in conjunction with physically painting on the canvas. He will manipulate imagery digitally, project it onto canvas, paint, scan and rework the image. Walker’s uses this process to achieve a layered, somewhat chaotic but, again, painterly effect.
It is was really good to finally see a coherent exhibition describing the history of computer/digital art and putting it in context with today’s digital art practice. It has also whet my appetite to explore further the relationship between traditional and digital artistic processes as well as the development from art of the past and it’s influence on the digital and contemporary works of art, today.
Thoughts on Playful Interaction and Digital Inclusion
Jan 18th
At last Tuesday’s lecture with Chris Hales, Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Interactive Film at SMARTlab, we explored the idea of interactive cinema and the interactive film narrative. Analysis of audience response to many of these films formed part of his practice-based PhD ‘Rethinking the Interactive Movie’ (2006). Chris also explores the wider historical context of interactive cinema which dates back to the Kinoautomat of 1967.
Using the movie as the interface, Chris showed us some of his works including the very amusing, slapstick inspired ‘Jinxed’ which utilizes an effect for hot spots in the movie eg a slight bulge appears on the protagonist’s nose or the slippery soap, and if the user clicks on the bulge, some rather unfortunate event is triggered. Another piece, ‘12 loveliest things I know’, based on interviews with children, explores more subtle ways of linking. Chris wanted to test whether colour and movement of the objects could hint at how to proceed to the next clips. Small movements as triggers for small events and sensations are also used in his landscape pieces Sketchbook and kesä.
I found the playful element and reaction of people in the room really interesting. These somewhat ‘unsophisticated’ show reels produced by a one man band in Director and After Effects were triggering reactions and laughter within our group and engaging people. With a keen interest in experience and emotion around digital technology whilst thinking about possible research topics for my MA, this lecture whet my appetite to explore the concepts behind interactivity further.
What do we mean by interaction design? What makes for a good user experience? How can we better that experience or make it more accessible to people with disabilities for example? How can we use the digital environment and technology advantageously and perhaps therapeutically? Although innovative technologies have provided substantial benefits to society today, there are still a large number of people who cannot enjoy them due to the lack of accessibility features.
I’m really encouraged and inspired by some of the projects at SMARTlab including InterFACES which utilises assistive technology. InterFACES includes projects that look at tools for tracking eye movement as a control mechanism for communications by people with little or no other voluntary muscle movement. This imaginative use of technology has allowed James Brosnan, journalist and music fanatic, to use his laptop to jam with musicians, despite having cerebral palsy and being in a wheelchair.
I’m also still inspired by Martha Lane Fox, Digital Tzar, who spoke at Lucky Voice In Brighton a few weeks ago and the importance of bringing digital media to socially disadvantaged groups with the Race Online 2012 Campaign. Teaching has made me particularly aware of people who frankly find technology intimidating. My approach to teaching is encouraging experimentation and play which seems to frighten people at first! As a passionate advocate of technology and digital media, the importance of user centered design and and good HCI to encourage this experimentation and curiosity, I believe should be high on the list of any designer or developer working in digital media.
Following on from these ideas, another blog I have come across today is Andy Polaine’s, Playpen. Andy Polaine co-founded the award-winning new-media collective Antirom and his interests include play, interactivity and interaction design, experience and service design, creative processes and collaboration, online teaching and learning and emerging cultural technologies. He spoke at last years Flash on the Beach in Brighton about play and the interactive experience:
Over the past few years play has become a common theme in designers’ presentations. It’s no wonder – play is a pre-verbal, powerful and universal activity and is our starting point for interacting with the world around us. Play can lead to some of the most pleasurable and intuitive interactive experiences. With a plethora of interactions demanding our attention, the playful ones are the ones that will survive. It’s not for nothing that the iPhone’s icons do a little jiggle dance, after all.But why does play feel so natural and intuitive and how can we use it in interaction design? What is play and why is it so hard to pin down?
These ideas took me back to the Decode exhibition at the V&A (see my Decode blog) as well as the myriad of websites whose purpose serve no real function but allow people to simply explore, experiment and perhaps be inspired. Polaine’s blog led me to the magneticNORTH website – a fun portfolio website with a playful interface. I’ve been admittedly bah humbug about this sort of interaction design but found this website mildly additive. I shall now return to my Flash project with renewed enthusiasm.
Decode: The Importance of Interactivity
Dec 28th
As a Christmas treat I took my 7 year old son Zac to visit the Decode exhibition at the V & A in London. The V & A is one of my favourite museums and all the exhibitions I’ve seen there have always been really well executed. Kids go free and as a student the entrance fee was only £4 plus we received a beautifully designed exhibition brochure so I was pretty happy before we had even entered the exhibition space.
Decode, a collaboration between the V&A and onedotzero is showcasing the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from screen-based graphics to large-scale interactive installations. Work from familiar names in the digital field are there including Joshua Davis, John Maeda, Flight 404 and Golan Levin among many others. As Zac and I entered the darkened room and walked through a field of interactive lights that reacted to our footsteps there was much ooing and ahhing. As I stopped to admire the power and beauty of processing by artists such as Joshua Davis and CEB Reas, Zac was in his element…being able to touch things at an exhibition was obviously a huge novelty! From the touch screen ‘House of Cards’ by James Frost, to ‘Solar’ from Flight 404 which reacts to and visualises sound (not surprisingly this was particularly popular with the kids as they tried to outdo each other on the volume).
We made our way around completely engaged with the exhibits which were not only awe inspiring but beautiful too. My personal favourite is ‘Dandelion’ by Yoke which responds both visually and audibly to a hairdryer with an infrared beam installed, that you point at the screen to blow the petals away – delicate, smooth, gorgeous! In addition, ‘Oasis’ by Yunwoo Bang and Yunsil Heo inspired a playful element to the exhibition and was far more interesting than having a real fish tank (you’ll know what I mean when you visit the exhibition). In fact this exhibition was just that: ‘playful’ and as an MA Digital Media Arts student it was also ‘inspiring’ As a result Zac is now becoming quite knowledgeable in the art of Processing as I have returned home and plunged in my Processing books
Perhaps my only, very small criticisms would be the exhibition could have been sightly larger. More importantly however some of the exhibits weren’t always working which was disappointing especially when you are paying to enter the exhibition. However I would highly recommend this exhibition to not only Digital Art enthusiasts but also to parents who want to introduce their children to the wonders of computer art and its possibilities. Watching my son other people of all ages at the Decode exhibition only cemented further my opinion that the digital environment and interactivity has a huge potential to encourage learning, experimentation, playfulness and the ability to enrich our overall daily experience.
Zac and I decided to continue our interactive adventure at the Science Museum, just around the corner from the V & A, in the ‘Launchpad‘ section, a permanent and free exhibition giving children the chance to explore concepts of science and technology with hands-on exhibits. We took advantage of the free demonstrations, including a bubble show and launching a water propelled rocket. During our day at the Science Museum and the V & A, we both found things that inspired us, we both learnt a lot and most importantly we had a huge amount of fun too!
A message to the curators of all future exhibitions: engage your audience with digital technology and interactive exhibits so we can inspire and educate young minds and finally say ‘Do Touch!’
Presentation Notes…The Story So Far…
Nov 25th
Outline of initial proposal:
- The production of a professional HTML website, with biographical information and examples of work divided into relevant sections.
- An experimental section with an interactive piece developed using Adobe Flash and After Effects based on interests on the philosophy and psychology of interaction design.
- An ongoing blog with updates on processes and findings
- Sharing my work via social networking sites such as Flickr and DeviantArt
Progress
To date, viewers will find (the unfinished) website at www.georgiefurst.co.uk consisting of the sections - home, about, portfolio, experimental and contact. The website aims are:
- To appeal to a far reaching demographic but mainly to prospective employers (as part of my freelance operation) and the wider design community.
- Represent my visual style and approach.
- A digital home for commercial and personal projects as well as work in progress.
- Apply a clear concise style of navigation.
- A place to investigate further the fundamentals of interaction design.
After deliberating and frankly wasting time with the technical aspects of the web build I decided to ‘reawaken’ skills learnt in my initial Multimedia degree and build the site in HTML/CSS from scratch. This instead of using a CMS system or a Wordpress hosted site for example. This also enables me to have complete control (and understanding) over the website structure and updates.
My blog, ‘A Furst Blog’ www.georgiefurst.co.uk/blog has been setup to feel like a slightly separate entity from my main website, via Wordpress – to act as an online notebook/sketchbook. The blog allows me to be more playful since I am often posting information about industry news, inspiring artists, thoughts and information related to the MA. I feel I can more ‘expressive’ here.
Like my website the blog is currently a work in progress and requires further customisation particularly the design.
Next Steps
- Finish customising the blog
- Upload the content to the website
- Begin the experimental works in Flash & After Effects
- Add additional functionality and interactive elements
- Testing & Troubleshooting
Experimental Work
The experimental works will be built in After Effects and Flash to not only build upon my skill set but also to explore the fundamentals of interaction design and its psychology. I have been looking into the subject of the user experience in a digital environment. As a teacher I have experienced quite extreme reactions – some quite emotional – to software and websites. How can the digital environment appeal visually, be intuitive to its user whilst fulfilling its purpose and communicating to the end user?
I am also interest in creating an interactive ‘painting’. I intend to experiment further with texture, sound, code (eg actionScript or Processing) to recreate the process of creating a digital painting to recreate the ‘happy accidents’ that quite often emerge from simply taking part in the process of creating a piece of artwork.
Weekly Wrap Up
Nov 18th
Besides making Christmas lists amid the usual chaotic routine of studying, freelancing and managing the schedule of two small boys, this week has been interspersed with some other rather interesting bits and pieces. Last week saw the MADMA students learning processing with Ollie Glass. “Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions”. I was pretty excited about learning processing and the amazing results that can be achieved – if you know what you’re doing that is. However my lack of studying for 10 years and perhaps my age (!) became quite apparent as I tried to get the creative and logical parts of my brain to work in tandem. Let’s say that this part of the course is a work in progress and I’m hopeful my confidence levels will rise enough to post some of my creations at some point. One day I might be producing work like this Flock of Birds.
Friday night was spent at the Glug Brighton Meetup at The Basement for designer ‘notworking’ fun, hosted by Crush and Agency Rush. A free drink, live artwork, animation and a dj set kept the bold and the beautiful of Brighton entertained for a few hours. Live painting feels simply terrifying to someone like me who can spend an hour debating a brush stroke so I thoroughly enjoyed watching the creations take place. The Basement is a pretty good space for an event too. You can view the Glug Brighton photos from the night on their Flickr page.
Yesterday we were introduced to Semiotics and Memetics with Micheál at the Lighthouse. Thanks to Marie and Matt for the info and well done for making the presentations! Your wise words have kick-started my brain which is now working away on some new ideas for a piece.
Finally, eight weeks of teaching my new group of students at the Sussex Downs College has really motivated me as a teacher. A shaky start and initial struggles have been replaced by sparks of innovation and some really wonderful results. I feel a real sense of achievement for them and plan to keep a journal of their efforts via a Flickr group. I’m hoping to see some of their work adorning a gallery wall sometime soon…I might actually get around to posting some of tutorials at some point too.
Evolving Ideas and IxD
Oct 28th
Many thanks to Andy Field, artist in residence at Blast Theory for speaking to the MA DMA students at the Lighthouse in Brighton, yesterday. Andy is a London based artist and theatre-maker specialising in interactive experiences. Andy crosses the boundary of art and theatre and creates encounters in unusual places in unusual ways with quite unusual outcomes…Andy is also co-director of the Forest Fringe, an artist led community making space for experimentation and play at the Edinburgh Festival ‘and beyond’. Andy spoke with enthusiasm and certainly opened my mind to something quite different that involves interactive/digital media. The participatory element of his encounters are especially interesting although I have to admit at getting slightly lost and rather amused at the toy soldiers, spy camera and torch concept – perhaps that’s just a ‘boy thing’.
For me what is relevant is the interactive ‘experience’ and following on from last weeks post about my interests in art therapy and psychology, this week has seen those ideas evolve into the areas of interaction design (IxD) and HCI (human-computer interaction). Interaction design involves the relationship between people and the systems they use from computers, to mobiles, to household appliances etc. These relationships will determine a positive or negative experience for the person involved. The interaction design discipline produces products and services that satisfy specific user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.
IxD involves many principles of cognitive psychology. As a result I’ve been delving into the concepts of gestalt therapy and phenomenology, with a certain manic enthusiasm. I’ve also now discovered SxD, social interaction design. Many of our computing devices have become networked and have begun to integrate communication capabilities, applicable between users as well as users and their devices. These are thoughts in progress so more on this to follow…
In the meantime, this weeks inspiration lies with the ‘rediscovery’ of John Maeda. Searching the web and looking at various websites on my quest for IxD info, whilst clearly there is a lot of talent out there in the virtual world, there is also a lot of pointless dross. Overcomplicated flashy sites, might be clever and aesthetically pleasing but they can be nauseating and annoying too. Organising complex ideas and processes is clearly quite an art and many designers seem to lose site of the users at the end of their creations.
John Maeda addresses the complexity of simplicity in his book ‘The Laws of Simplicity‘ and as a designer makes (of what I’ve read so far) an interesting read. Briefly the ‘laws’ are as follows:
- Reduce – the simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
- Organise – organisation makes a system of many appear fewer
- Time – savings in time feel like simplicity
- Learn – knowledge makes everything simpler
- Differences – simplicity and complexity need each other
- Context – what lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
- Emotion – more emotions are better than less
- Trust – in simplicity we trust
- Failure – some things can never be simple
- The One – simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
My second inspiration this week, is the following gorgeous video (still from video above)….ahhh will I ever be able to achieve something like this?
SURFACE TRAILER from silo1 on Vimeo.
MA'zed & Confused
Oct 21st
It was with wonder and apprehension that I attended our first seminar at the Lighthouse yesterday with Michael O’Connell. We looked at and discussed Lev Manovich’s ‘The Paradoxes of Digital Photography’. I must say that I have a sense of quiet excitement as the plans and processes I have put into place to actually attend this MA have come to fruition after a quite few years of frustration. It almost feels like an indulgence.
It was the in last 5 minutes of the seminar and over the next 24 hours that I have had a prolonged ‘Eureka’ moment. We were asked to think how we would best utilise the university facilities and Brighton (if we weren’t studying for an MA and therefore didn’t have that as our motivation) and what would we do if, say, 2 years down the line, we knew we were going to have our MA’s?
My answers to these questions are motivated by my past work experience being very corporate, running my own business and also being a mum. My background has meant I’ve been very involved in deadlines, routines, meeting the needs of others and putting a lot of my own plans on hold. Therefore this MA IS an indulgence for me but positively so.
A trip to California and then my involvement with therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists both as friends and professionally coupled with my passion for the arts, inspired my fascination for psychology and art therapy. So I’m inclined to use this opportunity to experiment and work quite autobiographically, exploring the potential of digital media as therapy.
I’m about to write a 500 word proposal for our ‘Cultures of Multimedia Authoring & Web Design’ module for tomorrow. I’m still somewhat confused and I am writing this blog post as a means of ‘thinking or writing aloud’. What I’ve realised is that this MA means working on personal thoughts and ideas, which I’m finding pretty scary actually.