The room is filling up.

Peter talks about the history of notation…

…and points out that our century-old system is still the basis for most music software today.

There are some alternative interfaces though, like Reactable.

Peter explains the MIDI protocol and its shortcomings.

Some discussions in the audience at the end of Peter’s presentation.

Notes.

More pictures from one of our guests (thanks, miss unlikely).

Yesterday we organized a workshop about design concepts for new devices (tablets, internet-enabled TVs etc). To give the participants a better idea of the device, we did a quick model of the iPad. We didn’t have any Kapa Fix at hand, so we opted for the quick and dirty version: using old cardboard boxes.

Although the “prototype” was really lo-fi, it turned out to be a great aid. To actually experience the measurements of the iPad – the width, height and thickness (not the proper weight though) – was very helpful in understanding ways to interact with the device.

Now we can’t wait to get our hands on the real thing.

The HBO Story Cube embraces the spirit of HBO telling deeper more engaging stories in innovative ways. Demonstrating that a change in perspective changes everything. The HBO Story Cube shows four sides of a single story simultaneously. Only when you’ve seen all four sides of the story will you begin to see the bigger picture.

Have a look over here. And there’s also a video installation.

The foundation was formed in an effort to promote children’s literacy by encouraging kids to dream and dream often. The foundation’s goal is to donate one book for every copy of An Awesome Book sold by Awesome World llc. Books are delivered directly and distributed to schools, hospitals, libraries, camps and shelters both domestically and worldwide.

How awesome is all that?

I got a copy of An Awesome Book for my daugther some time ago and not later than now, you should get one as well in the Awesome World Store. You can preview the full book here. And please watch the video below, or even better: go to Dallas’ website and enjoy the full-blown bouquet of awesomeness.

Awesome Book Tour from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

I was always interested in field recordings involving shifting. Not just recording a single place, but being in constant transition of surroundings. For example taking a train ride from A to B and recording my immidiate environment.

For playing back such a recording, there should be ways much more interesting than traditional linear timelines as known from regular audio players. As an experiment, I mapped the recording of a segment of my way to work on a Google Maps screenshot of that very area in Hamburg. I have drawn a black line along the rails from start to destination, and a red dot is moving along that path as the audio plays back. To make the connection between the audio material and the map really clear, I used a discrete train trip from “Dammtor”, with one stop at “Sternschanze”, going to “Holstenstrasse”. The stop is obvious, but there are also announcements in the train giving an additional hint.

This is just a simple and rough example, but I think it opens up a lot of creative possibilities to work with field recordings, or sound representation in general. I’m definitely going to incorporate such ideas into my future music releases. There’s already geotagged sound, but technology and platforms should be soon ready to let us create and (re)use even more advanced and sophisticated data somewhere between audio, time and location.

I would say I’m a big fan of street art generally. I always loved urban visual culture “hacking” the often uniform appearance and identiy of a city – from the early days of Graffiti, to the classics, to the more unusual or advanced approaches.

This morning I came by a brand new piece, drawn on the pavement with chalk. It was totally attracting my interest, but I was also struggling to actually pay attention. It wasn’t about the piece itself – it’s nothing special I’d say, apart from the fact it is trying to be interactive (when I was first passing by, the chalk crayon was perfectly placed in its circle, when I came back 3 minutes later to take the photo, I already found it a meter away, knocked over and in crumbs and I had to carefully move it back for the shot).

I think my hesitation comes from being afraid of getting pulled into some more or less clever corporate street advertising campaign. The scepticism to look at it more deeply, but mainly to take a photo or write something about street art pieces in general. Same with apparently “misused” billboards where there is “art”, or pieces that look like art instead of the common ad bills – is it a street artist, using the opportunity of empty billboards, or just another outlet for an advertising campaign, officially and legally booked by some media agency?

I do for sure not categorically reject advertisment in the urban environment, apart from 98% of it being rubbish it totally belongs to urban visual culture. But in the realms of street art in the truest sense of the word, it really leaves mixed feelings when purely commercial corporations are trying to make such an originally independent creative movement their brand ambassador.

Update: Just found this video by Antiadvertisingageny that fits in here a bit.

Ever since the rise of twitter I had mixed feelings about it. One day I’m using it with euphoria, the other day I’m questioning its purpose, its effects, its fun – or I simply don’t know what to tweet. But I also believe there are several examples where people prove how twitter –and similar new forms of communication– can be very enjoyable and useful.

It may sound odd, but most of these in my opinion interesting examples are celebrities. I really enjoyed the twittering by the band Sonic Youth while their recording sessions in the studio, turning their twitter stream into some kind of real time liner notes medium, reporting some anecdotes from right behind the mixing desk. Or the actor Greg Grunberg aka Matt Parkman and other members of the Heroes cast and crew, providing a quite synchronized and insightful coverage from the production set. In both examples, well established scenarios like linernotes written on record sleeves or bonus “behind the scenes” material known from DVD extras are being transformed into something new, and in combination with their promptness and the sense of closeness to the people you admire creating an addictive new notion of communication and interaction.

Another great example are Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. They’re not only communicating towards their hundreds of thousands of followers, but also in between the two of them – in front of the same audience. What I find fascinating about them is how many updates they’re publishing (on twitter, but also via qik, a service to share real-time video streams from your cellphone) and how accessible they are. If you ask a question, its is very likely they’re going to get back with their thoughts and opinion. Direct access to hollywood stars, a strong sense of proximity and the possibility to directly interact –and identify– with them. The feeling of getting to know remote identities personally, to virtually go through thick and thin with them.

Creating suspense.

But also the other way around: Hollywood actors, surrounded by paparazzi (or “citizen paparazzi“, the youngest form) and security people protecting them from paparazzi must feel really disconnected from all these normal people on the other side of the big screen. These new services are giving them an immediate, seemingly intimate backchannel, yet publicly available to the masses (= enough room for self-expression and -promotion). Safe and without obligation, but for sure connective. Distance bridged with personal vocabulary, thoughts and anecdotes.

Relieving tension.

I think my fascination does not literally come from twitter or qik itself (will twitter, as a brand, as a medium, or even a protocol, how many people even call it, be still around in 5 years?), but from the playful and naive (in a good way) approach to something new. Things are changing more rapidly, and it’s a chance for everybody to find their own strategy to create something new. It will take a long time until new things are going to be established, and also, it won’t be about a few big things being replaced by another handful new things. When it comes to media, or the internet in particular, the future is much more versatile. If you’re now experimenting with all these unstable and manifold additions to your current reality, chances are good you’re going to benefit from the discussion and take a major next step.

Yesterday we were talking about a possible next step for celebrities. The first phase was creating proximity and interaction with fans and therefore smartly bypassing the mainstream tabloid coverage consisting of paparazzi and yellow press editors. The next step will be fighting fire with fire. The two images in this posting are taken from Demi Moore’s twitpic account, a platform to upload and post pictures for twitter via the web or your cellphone. She was obviously annoyed by these paparazzi guys, took photos and immediately uploaded them and showed them to her followers (which at this very moment means 224,174 236,134 people).

Wouldn’t it be intriguing if hundreds of celebrities worldwide, all bothered by paparazzi wherever they move, would connect themselves and arrange a date for a flashmob where they all suddenly pull out their own cameras and take photos and videos of the paparazzi, then upload their footage to the same website and share it with millions of people?

Original picture taken by Demi Moore, posted on twitpic

The obligatory focus topic this year seems to be the internet and mobile. For that, a dedicated area called webciety has been set up. Although I think the overall concept of webciety has some strenghts, from a visual perspective it had a quite outdated feel: the hexagonal architecture, but mainly the “structure composed of a network of light beams hanging above everyone’s heads – symbolizing the Internet – which can take on any color”:

I’m pretty sure we visited webciety the wrong day, it felt quite empty and unmotivated and the conference panels we saw were not exciting enough to spend a lot of time over there.

We were quite puzzled by the megalomaniac nature of the Deutsche Telekom stand hall. They had the most compelling (and obviously most energy comsuming, hello “greenIT”) display technology I have ever seen (geekery), some seemingly-spontaneous fashion catwalk with iPhone/G1 product placement on a product presentation desk (embarrassment I) and some miserable improvisation theater in a fake living room, staged to nonchalantly mix in a huge HDTV and their IPTV Set-Top-Box product (embarrassment II).

We atually went there for the Trendforum conference program to see graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister’s talk, which we really enjoyed, although it was not all fresh if you had seen his TED talk before.

Another thing we did not want to miss was future parc, the area where researchers and universities are showing off their innovations that are going to take longer than 2-3 years to find their way into real products on real markets. And again, that got me thinking.

I’m not at all questioning the scientific dimension or meaning of the results shown. But the way they were being presented was very weak and dull. This might have to do with budgets, which are for sure not the greatest for many academic institutions that are trying to remain as independent as they can. But it seems there were just no designers involved. I’m convinced they could do a lot better without spending a fortune for design consultancy and adequate production if priorities would be shifted a bit. Technology and User Experience cannot be separated (anymore) – design can be a vehicle to make solid fundamental research results more accessible to a broader audience. It could be simply creating some exemplary “real world” scenarios instead of just showing isolated prototypes in a lab like athmosphere and surrounding. And if the idea is not making scientific research more visible to the public, why presenting on a trade fair?

To be honest, we did not spend the whole day over there – we were just not attracted and overwhelmed enough to do so. So I’m probably judging on a quite superficial level. But that’s also one of the main things that failed: getting the first impression right and make “digging deeper” mandatory for passing visitors. I was really curious to see what research in Germany has to offer in the field of robotics, but really, a semi-functional prototype fulfilling all robot stereotypes I learned as a child is putting me off. Isn’t there more to it?

It was the overall attractiveness of the different stands that I found disappointing, but also the execution of most projects shown. In most cases, the responsible people were quite nice and competent, but the ideas they were demonstrating did not wow me.

I just saw a Microsoft Research video that backed up my impression and thoughts. I might be comparing Apples to Oranges (eg. budget), and of course Microsoft are doing a quite well razzle-dazzle job – but shouldn’t it be somewhere in between lowdown and show-off when it comes to packaging future vision?

My first associations with “Microsoft” as a brand are for sure not “fresh visuals” and “innovative products”, but I think the following video fulfills its purpose quite well:

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In vino veritas. All the love we can give for a great, healthy and prosperous New Year!

I think it was around noon on the 19th, when we decided to build “a website that wraps your tweets”. We barely had a concept or visual idea, we didn’t have a name or URL and we certainly didn’t have much time. It was our last working day in the office, all of us were about to leave town. And it was only 5 days to Christmas, which is obviously the best occassion for wrapping gifts (even if they just consist of less than 140 characters).

There’s a good chance that we wouldn’t have launched it yet, if it wasn’t for that lack of time. We probably wouldn’t have started.

But somehow we pushed us into doing it and we all were extremely happy that we did. Not only because we had a really fun time doing it, but also because we learned some lessons – they aren’t new to us, but i guess you have to experience them from time to time to really believe in them:

• You can achieve way more than you can imagine, if you are focused and motivated.
and
• Don’t let perfectionism stand in your way of doing something.

Tweetwrappr is far from perfect. Was it a well thought-out concept? Nope. Was is buggy when we released it? Hell yeah. Could the design have been better? Definitely.

Still it worked better than we imagined. Within four days we had more than 8000 visits (32000 page views) and wrapped more than 500 tweets. When we started, Google didn’t know the term “tweetwrappr”. A couple of days later it returns thousand of results and even more for the alternate spelling “tweetwrapper”. And it seems that people have fun with it. We certainly have.

Now that we have launched tweetwrappr and saw its “success”, we can bring back our old habit of perfectionism to improve it step by step. Ideas for version 2.0 are already forming in our heads.

So if there is one new year’s resolution for 2009, it is: do it and do it more often. All the best for the new year.