around the neck @ prime gallery

this group show opens next saturday, stop by if you’re around!

media lab toronto is born!

casecamp6 took place last tuesday at the century room, and was a really incredible night full of awesome cases, announcements and people. eli has really raised level of conversation and built a fantastic community around casecamp, which has now partnered with achilles media (the producers of nextMedia). congrats to all – and looking forward to the future. tom has some great notes on the evening as well!

media lab toronto also presented their inaugural project – TXTris, an interactive SMS projection where text messages sink down from the sky onto a hilarious toronto skyline made of tim horton’s boxes. congrats to patrick, gabe, michael and dory, and i can’t wait to see where this will go!!

all this useless beauty

cali balles, photo

i came across this paper* while researching for my project and prepping for the last lecture of the year before presentations, and it really highlights some of the ideas i’ve spoken about previously as well as given articulate phrasing to some really interesting connections in the relationship between craft, design and digital technology. craft and design have had a schism since the industrial revolution, when, for all intents and purposes, design was born. greg calls design ‘creation for reproduction’ – making with the direct intention of replicating, and thus requiring systems and standards to ensure exactness throughout that reproductive process. and most digital technology reflects this, presenting us with clean and simple efficiencies of form but very little humanity. i think that craft, however, embodies a bit more of our humanity as the unique experience of making by hand can’t be replicated and our tools and processes do not become extensions of ourselves, but rather interfaces in an empathetic relationship with the materials, the ideas, the user and ourselves. and beauty.

jayne wallace and mike press (the latter of whom is speaking this week in halifax at nscad university’s neocraft conference- i SO WISH i was there) express their thoughts on the role of beauty in craft, it’s approximation in design and it’s role in creating better digital technologies.

1st part of the excerpts below (2nd to follow shortly)

Beauty, we argue, plays a vital role in humanising technology and ensuring its cultural relevance… Industrial design can
employ the illusion of beauty to temper the beast of technology by providing a veneer of desire, seduction and usability. But let us not confuse eternal beauty with the passionate but fast fading blooms of desire. We enjoy the delights of the G4 Powerbook as much as the next fashion-conscious academic, but only as a well designed one night stand at the orgiastic party of our consumer culture.

moar

iLunch 6.03

Hey! we’ve been planning a really awesome event for this Friday November 16 at the Gladstone Hotel – iLunch 6.03 – (ad)ventures in mobile. there’s a great lineup of panelists, one-on-one meetings after the panel proper, and a tasty lunch! Details below, and hope to see you there!

(ps – big props to sebastien chorney and io’s mobile committee for taking the reins on this session’s program!!)

(Ad)Ventures in Mobile
Opportunities in mobile marketing: A discussion on mobile content, applications, user experiences, business models, and integrating the strategy that works for you – with special guest speakers:

* Adrienne Clapperton, Producer, BiteTV
* Gavin Newman, Executive Producer, Virgin Media Television – UK
* Andrew Osmak, Senior VP Business Development, Lavalife
* Derek van der Plaat, CEO, Jambo Mobile Solutions & Silverbirch Inc.

Moderated by:
* Claude Galipeau, Principal, The Galipeau Group

Discussion description
This iLunch session will be dedicated to exploring the future possibilities for mobile – both the content and the applications required to get content to intended market. The guest panelists will examine the medium of mobile in order for traditional content producers to get up to speed on the status quo, emerging opportunities (and numerous challenges). We will also look to other media platforms such as broadcast, broadband, music and publishing, as well as out into the social climate of society to consider unique opportunities and rate of innovation on this platform. We will ultimately focus on how to exploit the personal nature of mobile devices through content and applications to enrich the mobile experience for the end-user.

A panel of progressive members of the mobile community as well as leading thinkers and innovators in multi-platform content will use this context to discuss opportunities for Ontario mobile businesses to create these types of commercially viable applications and content for a global market.

gva’s wiigrano

my colleague greg van alstyne has been up to trouble while pursuing his msc from the integrated digital media institute at brooklyn polytechnic university.

This gestural interface prototype, completed for one of my digital media masters courses, emphasizes an intuitive and performance-friendly interaction model. I’m exploiting the physicality of Nintendo’s Wii controller by aiming to drawing out visceral, subtle, and “quasi-analogue” possibilities.

 

Thanks and shout out to Professor Joshua Goldberg, Brian MacMillan and other classmates at Integrated Digital Media Institute, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn; Masayuki Akamatsu for the aka.wiiremote Nintendo Wii Remote Handler and Les & Zoax for the Granularized Max/MSP patch.

the hack is great, and the added bonus of tweakily conducting douglas adams, among other, is pretty sweet! yay greg!!

arts & crafts revisited

***update below***

a few weeks ago i gave a talk on the arts & crafts movement that emerged during the latter part of victorian britain, from roughly 1860 to 1900, and i was taken with the similarities between now and then, in relation to the changes and/or transformation our culture has undergone over the past twenty years or so; and i think i’m still in teacher-mode, so this is a bit of a long post. while the circumstances and contexts are very different, there are arguable parallels in the nature of how people responded. lately i find myself more and more fascinated by the past incidents of massive change, thinking about what insights into the future can be gained by looking back.

bit of history…. originating a few centuries prior with the printing press, the industrial revolution took hold in the early 1800′s with the advent of mechanized innovations in the textile industry, and the mechanization of labour quickly spread to other industries and spurred the production of goods towards extraordinary volumes, creating a greater need for regulated tradeways (rail, road, canal, etc) and urban development. mass production of goods was rampant, newly established factories hired workforces in the thousands, and a new middle class of entrepreneurs and nouveau riche emerged.

by mid-century, the industrial revolution was reaching the crest of its first wave, transforming every aspect of british culture while it gained strength as a global empire. it’s critical to remember that these changes were happening for the first time ever, accelerating human life into the modern age at a pace that barely allowed time to gain vantage on the present before hurtling into the future, all the while changing the expectations of what that future might hold.

more after the jump…

el vampiro and intuition

in august i spent a couple of days in nyc, in search of conversations and connection. this post is a bit delayed, but such is the nature of being what tom calls pathologically busy. it was really fantastic to touchbase with friends and colleagues, old and new, and flow into the local velocity, and belated thanks is due to those who put up with my questions over lunch or dinner (thx scott, john, elena, baker!). nyc is one of the few places where i feel like the pace of the external environment is matched with what’s going on inside. it would more likely than not make me bonkers to stay for any extended length, but refreshing in short spurts.

i dropped by eyebeam research lab during their open studio hours and chatted with a few of the residents and fellows about what they’re up to. i highly recommend pinging them if you’re in the neighbourhood on tuesday afternoons. it’s a fantastic space, with really incredible people who are fully engaged in their work and totally open about what they want to do. amazing.

michael dila, a fellow overlapper and perpetual troublemaker, was also in the big apple that week and was kind enough to organize an nyc overlap meetup, as serendipity encouraged all those little ducks to line up. an awesome conversation with michael, dave walczyk, paul pangaro, vic lombardi and manuel toscano ensued – somewhat raucous and always inspiring.

conversation eventually turned to innovation, creativity, imagination, the strengthening relationship between business and design practice, and passion. what fuels these things? where do they come from, and what conditions encourage and cultivate them? a recurring conversation that i hope to continue having.

the gem in this conversation was this. to some degree, we are all guided by intuition, the immediate, somewhat difficult to communicate compass that shapes our behaviour in more ways than we perhaps are conscious of.

intuition is tacit knowing – it is an unmediated process of pattern recognition and a reconciliation of complexity (internal/external, systems, ideas, histories, etc, etc) that influence future perceptions and actions.

it is direct, instinctive, perceptive – a form of knowledge that can be fiendishly difficult to communicate or validate because of its resistance to analytical metrics or quantitative definitions. which i think emphasizes its importance in how we construct and share knowledge and ideas – we engage in multi-layered communication of which we’re only partly conscious, and our intuition picks up the subtleties as an unending flow of incoming signals, some strong, and some weak.

our discussion was fuelled by vampiros, the house specialty of a little place called paladar, on ludlow south of houston. perfect for fiesty conversations and exuberant autumn evenings.

el vampiro

• tequila
• hibiscus flower  nectar (bought at health food stores, fresh or brewed as tea from the dried flowers)
• ground chili
• salt

mix tequila and nectar, in proportion to evening’s intent.

rim  glass with mixture of chili and salt

enjoy!!

studio n open house

Clockwise from left: Logger – Anneke Van Bommel, Acrylic, Vinyl, Paper(2007), The Proximity of Twins – Lara McQuay, Ring – Fiona Macintyre, Sea Grapes – Carolyn Scandiffio

FYI if you’re in town September 16! my studiomates and i are hosting our semi-annual open house show the same weekend as the queen west art crawl. come and have a gander, a chat and perhaps walk away with something a little special. :)

ps: i’ll be showing the first round of work inspired by the ‘dead media’ project

To coincide with the Queen West Art Crawl,

The Girls of Studio N are hosting their Bon Voyage Sweet Summer Exhibition and Sale, in their working studio on Dovercourt (about 68 steps from Queen Street West). We are located in Studio N on the second floor.

Studio N residents will be showing recent explorations, including one-off exhibition pieces, handmade cards, drawings, sculptural interior objects, and Studio Jewellery. We will have some nibbly bits, and look forward to seeing those who can stop by to say hello and see what we’ve been up to.

Featured Artists:
Lesley Ashton
Fiona Mac Intyre
Lara Mc Quay
Carolyn Scandiffio
Michele Perras
Anneke van Bommel

Date: Sunday, September 16, 2007
Time: 12:00pm – 4:00pm
Location: 44 Dovercourt Rd @ corner of Dovercourt and Sudbury, South of Queen St. West. Studio N, 2nd Floor. Toronto, ON

Phone: 416.536.2152

if you happen to be in seoul next month…

photo thomas purves

the wonderful people at LIFT are organizing a free event to take place sept 12, 2007 in seoul, korea (venue tbd). if you happen to be there, i strongly suggest to go – it will change you. and if korea is too far or too soon, LIFT08 happens in february. congrats to laurent, nicolas and team on the launch of LIFTlabs

Join us for a night in Seoul with Adam Greenfield, Bruce Sterling and Korean architect Yoo Suk Yeon to discuss real and digital spaces.

Topic: Spaces: From Real to Digital. How technological developments in both the physical worlds and virtual environments are reshaping our buildings, our games, and soon our web browsers.

When: 12 September 2007 in Seoul, South Korea. The precise location will be announced later.

Speakers:
• Adam Greenfield will show us the opportunities and problems of living in a world where technologies pervaded the physical space.
• The upcoming hybridizations of the digital and the physical will be tackled by Bruce Sterling, who will also present what he, as a science-fiction writer and technology journalist expects.
• Korean architect Yoo Suk Yeon will then talk about the latest trends in architecture and how this hybridization is of importance.
• Virtual spaces and usage of massive multi-player platforms would also be addressed by a fourth speaker coming from the video gaming industry.

Registration: the event will be free but registration is required. To register, email your name to info@liftconference.com (a better system is coming soon).

Open Cities Registration Begins!

super exciting day! open cities registration begins!!

Open Cities came out of observations and conversations about issues that affect many of us, slowly growing into a desire to think about the kinds of questions and possibilities around what ‘open’ means and what it enables. A big kudos to Mark Kuznicki, who first looped me into the conversation. The passionate people/participants/citizens organizing Open Cities hope to facilitate

“a weekend-long web of conversation and celebration that asks: how do we collaboratively add more open to the urban landscape we share? What happens when people working on open source, public space, open content, mash up art, and open business work together? How do we make Toronto a magnet for people playing with the open meme?”

Open Cities is premised around an unconference format – participant driven with sessions unscheduled til the day of. Open Cities aspires to be the first of many, locally and internationally. If you are interested in participating, the only caveat is that both feet must be in the conversation. As well, we expect spaces to fill up rather quickly so please go and sign up asap! And huge thanks to the Centre for Social Innovation and Fort York for their generous sponsorship! And some amazing preliminary press from BoingBoing (thx cory!) and BlogTO

Pass it along. Post it! Ping it! Pay it forward!

• Open Cities
• Registration

• 23 June 9am-6pm: Open Cities unconference, Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina
• 23 June 6pm-9pm: Open Cities BBQ, Fort York
• 24 June 12pm-7pm: PS Kensington/Open Cities Collaboration, Kensington Mkt

ps- i didn’t think i’d make it to Open Cities due to a scheduling conflict, but things have cleared up. :)