Two robots, Vincent & Emily, are connected to each other as if deeply in love: where at the heights of romance, every motion, utterance, or external influence is shared in an acutely empathic, highly attuned ’emotional’ response:
The creation of German artists Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler and Carolin Liebl, the robots take in sound and motion data–from each other and from spectators– via sensors, which causes them to react–via gears and motors–with certain expressions. Shown in a gallery and open to the interaction of visitors, the project aims to explore the ideal of the human couple by distilling it into a more basic form. Simple lines represent bodies. Reacting to inputs replaces complicated decision-making.
Like in any relationship, miscommunication is a factor – so an intimate moment can lead to conflict, and eventual resolution. This gives a certain texture to their ‘dance of love’ that makes it hard not to anthropomorphise, or indeed relate to!
When plans for The Shard were unveiled my first thoughts were that its piercing aesthetic would be too harsh for the London skyline. But now it’s been ‘topped out’ and soon to open to the public, it’s time to get used to it.
I heard somewhere that Irvine Sellar, the property magnate behind the tower, intends for his creation to stand for more than 200 years. Well, of course it does, but this concept did the most to shift my perspective.
Imagine how this city will feel in two centuries: totally transformed, utterly modern and yet (hopefully) still uniquely London. The Shard is another step towards an exciting Future London.
To illustrate my point, here’s a video flyover showing the tower in context. Watch closely and you’ll see London’s slow climb towards a cyberpunk sky:
If I’m to make good on my resolution to blog something every single day, then I currently owe a whopping eleven blog posts.
I ought to get on with it, hadn’t I?
In the spirit of getting on with it, the new Justice video features electro-rockstars Gasparde and Xavier doing exactly that, while preparing for the release of their track ‘Audio, Video, Disco’ from the eponymous album.
The video documents the pair living and breathing their work in the studio at all stages of the track’s life cycle, from conception to critical acclaim. You’ll like it, because it’s confident, it’s awesome, and it’s very very French:
One more post by midnight… time to get on with it!
As leaders in computer animation, in terms of box-office takings, technical prowess and industry awards, it’s easy to forget that Pixar’s roots are in traditional animation: the frame by frame progression of a set of still images at speeds that trick the eye into perceiving a single moving image.
But in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, it’s hard to explain the essentials of what Pixar really do without spoiling some of the magic: as any Behind the Scenes DVD extra will show you, it’s a probably a bunch of sweaty animators slaving over their Wacom tablets for months on end.
a traditional zoetrope
So when Disney sought to showcase their acquisition (they bought Pixar back in 2006) in a couple of their resorts, they tasked Pixar with a demonstrating how animation works in a way that keeps the magic in.
What they came up with – a modern re-imagining of the zoetrope – is something to truly surprise and delight.
Take a look at this:
Lovely, isn’t it?
What caught my attention is the point animator Warren Trezevant makes:
It’s the clearest explanation of animation, because you get to see every frame of animation before your current frame […] and every frame of animation after it. Here you have the opportunity to see the tricks the animators use to make things move.
Dr. Manhattan
Thinking more deeply on this, one could consider the zoetrope’s design as illustrative of one other concept: four dimensional perception.
Unlike traditional screen-based animation, the zoetrope lends observers the ability to see ‘through time’. One can rewind or fast-forward through frames with a slight adjustment in perspective, much like Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan.
This recalls an essay I wrote applying McLuhanism to comic books, which talks around the medium’s unique ability to force a sort of cognitive leap between the panels of a page (despite speeds far lower than 30 fps).
In comics, the reader’s mind fills in the blanks, making it probably the most effective animator of all. And now that Disney owns Marvel too, perhaps we’ll see more examples of Disney playing around in the fourth dimension.
Members of the Flickr group Make Something Cool Every Day are making cool things every day, in a social experiment that looks like a lot of fun.
The group’s rules are simple:
ONE upload per day.
Each piece must not have taken longer than a day to make.
So with these in mind, here is a slideshow of their submissions, best viewed fullscreen (but it can take a while to load):
So far the group has attracted 2,972 members, who’ve contributed 33,950 unique creations. That’s 11.4 submissions in total, so it’s evident people aren’t being religious about uploading every day, but what the hell.
What I find really interesting about the group is that there is very little conversation – a lowly 97 comments in total – in the main group discussion forum. All of the chatter is around individual works of art (especially the best stuff) . This tells me that viewers and contributors are far more interested in the content than in the delivery framework. Rightly so, I think.
The lesson to learn here is that despite Flickr enjoying a highly creative user base, it is very hard to engage those users with a campaign idea (and I’m not just talking advertising). Flickr just wasn’t designed for community engagement, as I’ve learned on past advertising campaigns that have used it as a platform.
But that’s OK, because people upload great art to the site every day, and the quality of comments that they do attract far outweigh Facebook’s throwaway commentary and (largely) poor photography, any day of the week.
