Posted by George on March 25, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7926509.stm1
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Posted by George on March 25, 2009
http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/24/facebook-is-infantilising-the-human-mind/1
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Posted by George on April 25, 2009
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Posted by George on April 29, 2009
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An animation showing edits to the OpenStreetMap.org project during 2008.
"OpenStreetMap is a wiki-style map of the world and this animation displays a white flash each time a way is entered or updated. Some edits are a result of a physical local survey by a contributor with a GPS unit and taking notes, other edits are done remotely using aerial photography or out-of-copyright maps, and some are bulk imports of official data."***pagebreak***
Posted by George on April 29, 2009
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Posted by George on April 30, 2009
http://www.openstreetmap.org/1
http://www.itoworld.com/static/osmmapper2***pagebreak***
Posted by George on April 30, 2009
1
Flight density during one week between international airports. From SD Magazine [Japan]
Source: Herdeg, Walter. Graphis Diagrams. 4th Expanded ed. Zurich, Switzerland: Graphics Press Corp., 1981.
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=672***pagebreak***
Posted by George on April 30, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/jsyuyQ1bel0&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0">Path Mapping
Posted by George on August 04, 2009
Andy Woodruff at
"Just for kicks, here's everywhere I have been in my local area since the first of the year. Yeah, I know every nerd with a GPS receiver records their tracks around town, but I outnerd them by breaking it down by mode of transportation (and by doing it without GPS)."
He recorded all modes of transit. A brighter path represents more frequent travel.
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Posted by George on August 04, 2009
[youtube Su0kdgOgd8E 571 345]
Via OpenStreetMap, real existing street networks can be imported directly into the CityEngine via the .OSM [xml] file format.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on August 06, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4826265&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="571" height="457">}
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Posted by George on August 08, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/KtpZLOrijW8&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0">3D Japan
Posted by George on August 10, 2009
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Posted by George on August 11, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3156959&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="571" height="321">}
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Posted by George on August 11, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=3701252&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
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Posted by George on August 11, 2009
Cabspotting traces San Francisco's taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible. The Exploratorium has invited artists and researchers to use this information to reveal these "Invisible Dynamics."
The core of this project is the Cab Tracker. The Tracker averages the last four hours of cab routes into a ghostly image, and then draws the routes of ten in-progress cab rides over it.
The Time Lapse area of the project reveals time-varying patterns such as rush hour, traffic jams, holidays and unusual events. New projects are produced by the Exploratorium's visiting artists and also created by the larger Cabspotting community.
Fly Cab uses the open-source programming language/environment Processing to render the path of a single San Francisco cab over a period of 5 days. The cab is represented by a yellow dot, and as it moves, it leaves a white trail behind to show where it's been. The dot moves 2000 times as fast as the cab it's representing, so the five days pass in a little less than 4 minutes.
As soon as a point on the cab's trail is drawn, it starts to sink down, so that each new point on the trail is slightly higher than the point preceeding it. As the trail gets longer, it builds a 3-dimensional structure of the cab's travels through the city over time. By examining the structure you can see not only what parts of the city the cab has been visiting, but how often it vists them.
As you're watching the cab travel, you may notice occasional stutters, abrupt jumps from one part of the city to another, or long spikes that can't possibly represent a real vehicle's path. These anomalies are a different sort of map--one of the reliability of the cab's GPS receiver, whose once-a-minute reports may be blocked by the city's geographic features, scrambled by hardware malfunctions or just lost in transit.
http://www.cabspotting.org/1***pagebreak***
Posted by George on August 13, 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8193951.stm1
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Posted by George on August 24, 2009
A time-lapse animation showing courier movements across London over two days.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on August 27, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/iG9CE55wbtY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0">Abstract Earth
Posted by George on September 08, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6581276&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="571" height="321">}
Powered by Google Earth, this animation uses a blank KML overlay to abstract the conventional sattelite view. The reading of the frequency and pattern of georeferenced content is improved; popular built icons are enhanced.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on September 13, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/jANDq2Ad5H4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">The Next Web of Open, Linked Data
Posted by George on September 16, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/OM6XIICm_qo&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0">Hans Rosling on World Datasets
Posted by George on September 16, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/KVhWqwnZ1eM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0">San Marco Square from GRAIL
Posted by George on September 24, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/HrgHFDPJHXo&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
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Posted by George on September 28, 2009
David Hockney, the 71-year old English painter, has joined the digital revolution and taken to painting pictures with his iPhone.
"Having invested in the popular Apple1 device only four months ago, Hockney is hooked and has even invested in a mini wooden easel to sit his phone on. He has painted everything from flowers to landscapes. The Bradford-born artist admits to often sending friends his paintings of flowers "so they get fresh flowers" delivered which never die. He is also using the device to send by email his latest theories on the history of drawing, using images of Picasso to Rembrandt."
The full article can be read here2.
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Posted by George on October 03, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash">}
This animation is taken from the Community Photo Collections project at the University of Washington GRAIL Lab, which explores the use of large scale internet image collections for furthering research in computer vision and graphics.
See also the paper1 entitled Skeletal graphs for efficient structure from motion by Noah Snavely, Steven M. Seitz and Richard Szeliski:
"We address the problem of efficient structure from motion for large, unordered, highly redundant, and irregularly sampled photo collections, such as those found on Internet photo-sharing sites. Our approach computes a small skeletal subset of images, reconstructs the skeletal set, and adds the remaining images using pose estimation. Our technique drastically reduces the number of parameters that are considered, resulting in dramatic speedups, while provably approximating the covariance of the full set of parameters. To compute a skeletal image set, we first estimate the accuracy of two-frame reconstructions between pairs of overlapping images, then use a graph algorithm to select a subset of images that, when reconstructed, approximates the accuracy of the full set. A final bundle adjustment can then optionally be used to restore any loss of accuracy."***pagebreak***
Posted by George on October 12, 2009
1
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Posted by George on October 12, 2009
1
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Posted by George on October 12, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/gLLzV5qeKyk&hl=en&fs=1&" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
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Posted by George on October 13, 2009
The above slippy Figure Ground map of the City was made using CloudMade's Style Editor. Powered by the OpenStreetMap database, it will improve in detail, accuracy, and consistency over time. Beyond conventional cartographic representation, this method could be used to extract and visualise a combination of more analytical layers from the open source dataset.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on October 15, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/aPd1Y2e5woI&hl=en&fs=1&">Comments:
thought this may be of interest
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18036-augmented-reality-system-lets-you-see-through-walls.html#***pagebreak***
Posted by George on October 19, 2009
[WP_UnityObject src="http://unity3d.com/gallery/live-demos/players/island.unity3d" width="500" height="281"/]
Unity is a integrated authoring tool for 3D content visualisation capable of producing applications for Windows, Mac, Wii or even the iPhone. Although primarily conceived for the gaming industry, it has great potential for the distribution and experience of virtual content relating to the built environment.
Once the Unity Web-Player has been installed, the arrow keys and cursor can be used to navigate the virtual environment - in this case a demo entitled Tropical Paradise.
http://unity3d.com/unity/1***pagebreak***
Posted by George on October 20, 2009
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Posted by George on October 20, 2009
The principle aim of this primer is to demonstrate the next generation of crowd-sourced mapping and its potential not only to redefine our image of the city, but to form the basis for a new, open source, architecture and urbanism.
The secondary aim is to depict the relationship between the physical and the virtual and hint at a meeting of the two by way of augmented reality.
Beyond a purely cartographic categorisation of urban space, the recording process will not only encompass the tectonic, but the ephemeral. It will not be an exhaustive process, but a demonstration and subsequent representation, of a typical journey within the city.
The mapping will involve the recording and logging of a range of information, split into two parts: the physical and the digital. The common factor will be time as I intend to produce two films, one for each, to be shown in sync.
A real-time video sequence will be the focus. I intend to play upon the idea of an individual inhabiting the city by proposing to film the journey from the third person where the individual appears as an ‘agent’ in the urban environment. I have ordered a suitable lens but this will need careful testing as it may prove to be unsuccessful. In the event, I would instead obtain footage from a camera to imitate the perspective of the human eye. In addition I would record sound throughout the journey and make notes on ephemeral events relating to emotion and smell.
The journey will be logged via GPS to record the route spatially. Video stills and sound will be geo-tagged within the sequence as captured ‘bytes’. The digital representation is most likely to consist of layers, mapped using KML, within Google Earth. There is an open source version of google earth relating to OpenStreetMap but unfortunately it is not particularly accessible.[1]
I will need to conduct a number of pilots to ensure the combined success of the various elements. I have successfully logged a number tracks using the iPhone as a GPS receiver. Whilst it is not the most accurate device, I am keen to use it as an example in order to demonstrate the potential for scaleability. I have ordered a suitable wide-angle for the video footage but intend to begin recording as soon as possible.
The tricky part is the successful sequencing and synchronisation of the digital aspects to the physical footage. I am currently exploring this in greater detail.
A parallel film sequence with audio.
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Posted by George on October 20, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/iC56P-Ro4PY&hl=en&fs=1&">MapType
Posted by George on October 20, 2009
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Posted by George on October 21, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/iC56P-Ro4PY&hl=en&fs=1&" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
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Posted by George on October 28, 2009
{VIDEO: http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf">Pilot One
Posted by George on November 02, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7174547&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="500" height="281">}
A bit of an experiment with my conventional camera while I wait for the fish-eye lens to arrive. The overlay, which would most likely be shown in parallel, is an extraction from the raw GPS trace data of Cardiff's OpenStreetMap. The eventual goal would be to animate the actual video path. The little blips are to signify the accumulation of POI markers within the digital layer.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 02, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7193540&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
This is my second pilot which involved motion-tracking the base footage using Mocha and then rendering an image or animation on top with After Effects. It may not look like much but it took a long time to fathom. There are a couple of missed frames in places but on the whole it is pretty clean. Inspiration came from the MapType film, where a similar technique has been used to augment snippets of information, dynamically, within the city.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 02, 2009
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The original COG.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 02, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7205036&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
This animation was rendered in Google Earth and sources all raw GPS trace data from the OpenStreetMap database to date. The frequency of tracking is relatively low compared to other major cities but it would be interesting, not only to witness the aggregation and pattern of concentration over time, but also whether or not the resulting point 'cloud' data could be used to define any spatial geometry.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 02, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7352349&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="500" height="281">}
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Posted by George on November 02, 2009
Conceived back in the late sixties, Centreplan 701 was the name of a master-plan to redevelop Cardiff's city centre. Thankfully it was never realised, due in part to the 1970s property recession.
This film is my cut on the original, which was made in promotion of the scheme. Unfortunately, the sound has been lost but one could imagine a suitably optimistic voice-over speculating on future benefit.
Instead I have used this re-work to symbolise and enhance, in retrospect, the potential short-comings of such a vision. It seeks to portray the Architect as the egotistical overlord, the antithesis of which is the crux of my primer project and subsequent thesis.
I have also introduced a soundtrack: String Quartet No. 3 (Mishima) by Philip Glass.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 05, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/tDk9WTVvGw8&hl=en&fs=1&">Memorial Memory
Posted by George on November 05, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7443701&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
Another test sequence this time overlaying, rather than augmenting. The clip shows Pathe newsreel footage of a WWI memorial service circa 1932. The aim is to explore the notion of a digital sense of place - an enhancement of reality - where previously inaccessible or unknown audio/visual artefacts could be experienced in real-time to provoke new meaning.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 06, 2009
"Location data is everywhere. Cars, buses, taxis, mobile phones, cameras, and personal navigation devices all beacon their locations thanks to network-connected positioning technologies such as GPS, WiFi and cell tower triangulation. Millions of consumers and businesses use location-enabled devices for finding nearby services, locating friends & family, navigating, asset- and pet-tracking, dispatching, sports, games, and hobbies.
Recently, two market forces have caused an explosion in the number of Internet connected location-enabled devices:
A government safety initiative, E-911, mandated that all mobile phones must be locatable in case of an
emergency call.
These forces have lowered the cost of technology, ignited interest in location-enabled services, and resulted in the generation of significant amounts of historical and real-time streaming location information. Sense Networks was founded on the idea that these datasets could provide remarkable real-time insight into aggregate human activity trends.
Macrosense employs patent-pending technology to learn from these large-scale patterns of movement, and to identify distinct classes of behaviors in specific contexts, called "tribes."
Each color dot in the above visualization represents the presence of a particular nightlife tribe at a particular place and time – a type of people group who move around the city in a similar way, and visit similar places at similar times. This simplified animation shows the changing whereabouts of these tribes over the course of an evening.
Once it's known which tribes are where, by sampling the distribution of tribes at any given place and time, it's possible to understand what it means when a user is there at that place and time.
For example: rock clubs and hip-hop clubs each retain distinct tribal distributions. When a user is out at night, Citysense learns their preferred tribe distribution from time spent in these places. When that user visits another city, they see hotspots recommended on the basis of this distribution and combined with overall activity information.
Users who go to rock clubs see rock club hotspots, users who frequent hip-hop clubs see hip-hop hotspots, and those who go to both see both. The question "where is everybody like me right now?" is thus answered for these users – even in a city they've never visited before.
Simulating the real world via the use of tribes makes it possible to provide personalized services to each user without collecting personally identifiable information."
http://www.sensenetworks.com/1***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 09, 2009
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This is an example of the footage that will be shown as part of the route. It will be synchronised along with the other aspects of the sequence, elements of which will accumulate over time.
It was achieved recording a path animation in Google Earth with the recently generated 3D building layer. I have further enhanced the footage using a tilt-shift lens effect to play with the sense of scale.
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Posted by George on November 09, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7522187&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
I finally worked out how to render a 3D object (the good old teapot) in a scene using motion tracking. This test footage is a bit jittery in places but you get the idea. The next step would be to animate the content and achieve improved lighting/shadowing with the matte shadow composite.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 11, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7546764&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
This is the final test, an animated transition between the digital and the physical footage. The first frame of each sequence is geospatially referenced as a perspective within Google Earth to provide a near seamless transition.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 18, 2009
{VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7668214&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">}
This the film I presented at the Crit. It is certainly a work in progress... Frustratingly, I seemed to spend such a large amount of time learning as opposed to creating but I will continue to work on it as I am confident it will eventually come together.
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Posted by George on November 19, 2009
http://www.ucodo.com/1
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Posted by George on November 19, 2009
Sofos Ioannis from GeoSolution, a Greek software developer, has developed a utility to convert between DWG and KML. Microstation has had this functionality enabled for quite some time but it is a welcome addition for geo-referencing detailed drawing data.
http://www.geosolution.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=61***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 19, 2009
The Linked Geo Data browser and editor (available at http://linkedgeodata.org/browser1) is a facet-based browser for geo content, which uses an OLAP inspired hypercube for quickly retrieving aggregated information about any user selected area on earth from the OpenStreetMap database.
It has been developed by the The Research Group Agile Knowledge Engineering and Semantic Web (AKSW), hosted by the Department for Business-oriented Information Systems (BIS) of the Institute of Computer Science (IfI) / University of Leipzig.
"The goal of this project is to publish OSM geo data, interlink it with other data sources and provide efficient means for browsing and authoring. We aim at working as closely as possible with both the OSM and LOD communities."
There is also a paper2 entitled LinkedGeoData: Adding a Spatial Dimension to the Web of Data with the following abstract:
In order to employ the Web as a medium for data and information integration, comprehensive datasets and vocabularies are required as they enable the disambiguation and alignment of other data and information. Many real-life information integration and aggregation tasks are impossible without comprehensive background knowledge related to spatial features of the ways, structures and landscapes surrounding us. In this paper we contribute to the generation of a spatial dimension for the DataWeb by elaborating on how the collaboratively collected OpenStreetMap data can be transformed and represented adhering to the RDF data model, how this data can be interlinked with other spatial data sets, how it can be made accessible for machines according to the linked data paradigm and for humans by means of a faceted geo-data browser.
It is particularly interesting as it may contribute to the beginnings of my Thesis where data is extracted from the OSM database to intelligently inform the basis for the urban response. The most clever feature is the ability to extract data based on certain simplified search parameters.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 19, 2009
Daily OSM changeset dumps are available as KML at http://www.fxfoo.com/osm/kml/1
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Posted by George on November 25, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/A_Tc9tRoHnc&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">Links:
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Posted by George on November 25, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/sxr8oaRUq6k&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">Pachube is a web service that enables you to store, share & discover realtime sensor, energy and environment data from objects, devices & buildings around the world. Pachube is a convenient, secure & scalable platform that helps you connect to & build the 'internet of things'.
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Posted by George on November 27, 2009
Martin Ebner and Hermann Maurer from Graz University of Technology have written a paper that seeks to question, given the current trend in Web 2.0 technology, the traditional approach to learning through writing and reviewing.
The full text can be read here.1
This paper describes a follow-up Web 2.0 approach to a technology enhanced master course for students of Graz University of Technology. The lecture “Social Aspects of Information Technology” has a long tradition for using new didactical scenarios as well as modern e-Learning technologies. After using a blogosphere one year ago, this year microblog channels helped to expand the traditional lecture. Students choose (on a voluntary basis) whether they want to participate in a blogging/microblogging group instead of using conventional methods called Scientific Writer/Scientific Reviewer. This study addresses the question whether this method can change the learning outcome into a more reflective one. Furthermore, peer-reviewing groups judge the quality of essays and blog contributions. In this paper we examine if microblogging can be an appropriate technology for assisting the process. This publication comes to the conclusion that an amazing potential and a new way to work with information is opened when using microblogging. Students seem to be more engaged, reflective and critical in as much as they presented much more personal statements and opinions than years before.
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Posted by George on November 30, 2009
I recently stumbled on this short film featuring Rem Koolhaas and an unknown gentleman discussing the boundaries of architecture and urbanism. I think the narrative is wonderfully eloquent: it draws nicely upon the idea of urbanism as being 'fundamentally generous' whilst architecture remains 'fundamentally egotistical', something I tried to elaborate on in my edit of Centreplan 701.
Koolhaas also discusses the 'imagining of a number of episodes within a building or within a city and the establishment of relationships between them or the separation of relationships' and being able 'to read existing situations ... and then find within them the arguments for connecting new architectures to them'. Both threads provide an excellent starting point for my investigation: whether or not these relationships and the resulting arguments can be derived from the open-source, digital city.
The transcript:
I think we are interested in the city, we love the city, but we don't want to start from scratch.Urbanism is about creating potential; Architecture is about exploiting potential.
And what is fascinating for me now that we are involved both in architecture and urbanism is to discover that they really are totally different things; that architecture tries to define, tries to limit, tries to exclude other possibilities. If you do an architecture you are forced not only to say what this specific thing is but by saying what it is you also exclude everything it cannot be and I think that is interesting about urbanism, urbanism is just creating potential, saying this should happen, but maybe this should happen and this can also happen here so you simply make a (kind of) very compact or intense version of things that are possible, enable something and then the architect comes and takes something away from that potential you have accumulated and makes his own exclusive statement. (and so) Therefore I think that urbanism is fundamentally generous and that architecture is fundamentally egotistical in a sense.
What a script writer does is to invent a sequence or series of events and episodes and what a good script writer does is to imagine a suspenseful sequence which makes more of his material than you would otherwise think. And I think that in that sense I don't see architecture or urbanism as fundamentally an issue of design but also the imagining of a number of episodes within a building or within a city and the establishment of relationships between them or the separation of relationships between them because connections are very important but breaks are also very important, ruptures. (and so) For me the two are actually amazingly close in terms of the inner-workings of the profession.
What we are witnessing now is that there is a (kind of) much more dispersed sense of the city and that maybe the greatest city at this moment can be a city where there is a (kind of) maximum comfort and where people in a way are liberated from an overly strong and domineering identity.
We are challenging (the situation) cities in a way maybe more strongly by being able to work with the situation as it exists. I think that that is in a way our strongest force; to read existing situations ... and then find within them the arguments for connecting new architectures to them. And so this ability to read the existing situation is, I would say, a new thing in my generation but also something that is particular with our office.
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Posted by George on December 01, 2009
I recently began accumulating blog entries with the hope that the end result would be an 'open' record of my final year design thesis. As keen follower of Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLG, I am often surprised at the sheer abundance of material and how (like most blogs) only a small portion of the content is even remotely interesting to the individual.
Along with the internet and the Web 2.0 revolution, the blogging world is experiencing phenomenal growth. So while I wait for my copy of the inaugural BLDGBLG1 book2 to arrive, I thought I would briefly speculate on what it all could mean and secondly how I might set about engineering the 'blook' of the future. Regardless of the accessibility, breadth, and sheer speed the web of information affords, surely there is nothing like the hard copy...is there?
The way we consume our web-based media - a tendency to frantically flip between snippets - is clearly something we are becoming more and more accustomed to. And this behaviour is not confined to the written word: direct comparison can also be made with the enjoyment of digital music. Thom Yorke recently intimated3 that Radiohead would no longer produce in the LP format; not only for artistic reasons but also the contemporary, sporadic - 'shuffle' approach to listening. The advent of the download has fundamentally altered consumer culture.
Just what will become of our beloved, bulky, musty, downright dusty books in the advancing information age? Granted, the circulation is constantly evolving - the life and death cycle of the book is nothing new, but as the power of the web search improves and the potential of the Semantic Web (3.0) emerges could it be that our printed circulation will undergo a more radical transformation? Indeed, could books become blooks?
Of course the market is also evolving - the BLDGBLG book is certainly not the first web-to-print publication. We have already seen the introduction of On Demand Books4 who provide an in-store printer with access to a database of 3.6 million published and public-domain titles. Then there are companies such as Blurb5 and Lulu6, which are capable of printing and delivering books practically overnight. The author can even opt to share their creation with others with the most popular volumes finding their way straight to the mass market through stores such as Amazon. Is publishing doomed?
Given the acceleration and scope of web authorship, the blook clearly has a big future. The technology is certainly an interesting topic; the curation of such a document another. Could our books comprise of intelligent 'mash-ups' based on results of a given blook 'search'? Would it take the form of a compilation, derived from meta-information such as tagging, with enhanced temporally-relevant or geo-referenced content?
Or could we see the start of some absolute rubbish? The diversity of such an application is undoubtedly a good thing but one would surely question the purity of the text. Of course the original volume will always have a place - probably more the domain of the collector, akin perhaps to the tradition of vinyl in the music industry. One thing is for sure - a world without books is certainly a strange, sad prospect.
Specific to architecture, whether or not the 'Argos Catalogue' works - such as the seminal SMLXL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau (1995), KM3: Excurtions on Capacities by MVRDV (2005); even the more ridiculous Yes is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution7 by Bjarke Ingels (2009) - will become more and more prevalent as a result of this new mode of publishing, of course remains to be seen.
In terms of a feasible blook, Blog2Print8 can already provide such a service. It is undoubtedly useful, but being able to customise and achieve an original, sophisticated graphical style is some way off. I have therefore decided to set to work on my own dynamic blook transformation with the belief that an improved version can be achieved manually.
Using a PHP script I am able to filter and extract a standard HTML feed from the Information Society blog database (the default MySQL output is messy), which can in turn be fully-formatted using CSS. Click here9 for an example. The resulting text is then synchronised to a template (I will be using Blurb for now) - before the fitting of images (definitely a separate process, required for more effective representation...). All future updates to the blog are added automatically. And of course the database can be filtered meaning that different project-specific 'feeds' can be accumulated.
I am also keen to achieve an intelligent 'instant' mash-up (I imagine a good deal of editing went into the BLDGBLG Book) but this will require a lot of work and would most likely result in very systematic (and boring) representation.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on December 02, 2009
I spent most of yesterday strolling through the arcades in search of inspiration to potentially inform a site. A bit of further research led me to The Arcades Project1, a recent series of studies and events led by local artist Jennie Savage2.
Inspired by Walter Benjamin's Das Passagen-Werk [The Arcades Project], her accompanying book Depending On Time (October 2009) documents "through transcribed conversations with small businesses, shoppers, local historians, architects, town planners and developers" the period of change surrounding the colossal new development at St. Davids II, and in turn "the trajectory of consumer culture from the city’s Victorian and Edwardian arcades through to the monolithic mall".
Spatially, I have always enjoyed Cardiff's arcades and having spent most of the morning reading the book I certainly have a renewed appreciation. The following is an excerpt from the text:
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"In Royal Arcade there is a door marked 'David Morgan Works Dept.'. Through this door is Pigeon alley which connects with St. Mary Street. Above the arcades semi-derelict rooms and corridors reveal the traces of the David Morgan Department store. Below the arcades is a subterranean city of interlinked basements and corridors. Stepping off the street, the ordered logic of the city seems like a facade for the public. The scale of the city shifts, becoming a maze of corridors, doorways and oddly shaped rooms which do not mirror the known world."
My thread of inspiration from all this comes not only from the unique spatial experience - the history and delight of the Victorian arcade - but also the potential for exploring and documenting the shift in architecture derived from other factors such as ideology and economics, and the connotation with St. David's II.
The inital idea is therefore to treat the Morgan and Royal Arcade as a miniature 'city'; a concentrated environment that can be meticulously researched, monitored and analysed in both the physical and digital sense. The study would also encompass history, providing an understanding of the evolution of various aspects over time. Spatially, the Morgan and Royal Arcade complex is easily defined; it has a total of six 'gates' - entry and exit points to the surrounding world. Programmatically, the micro-city will explore a series of relationships between the existing and proposed fields: a hybridisation of physical/virtual space and event, all intelligently curated from the hypothesised, 'hyperlocal', situation-aware city.
The architectural expression could exist in a range of constructed forms from the permanent to the ephemeral, even augmented. Analogous to Jenny Savage's notion of un-'known' space I aim to play on the idea of a hidden, 'embedded' architecture - beyond the relationship between the physical and virtual - that may only be apparent to the city at certain points.
Whilst the study area would be finite, that is not to say that it is only aware of activity within. It would be important to analyse fluctuations caused by other major city events (e.g. match day) and the effect they would have on the micro condition.
The 'layers' of the potential analysis/interactions are numerous:
It is important to begin with a detailed survey to gain understanding of the existing physical space which could include many layers both apparent and hidden. It would be interesting to develop an inside-out model of the 'warren', highlighting the relationship between public and the private 'hidden' space as well as the spaces that lurk outside - above and around, beyond the lines of sight.
An further understanding would involve the accumulation of relevant historical information, of which Depending On Time is an excellent source.
A pseudo-study could include the pattern and frequency of movement through the space along with the historic programme and 'shift', given the recent birth of St. Davids II. Hour-day-week fluctuations could also inform the physical/virtual program.
Finally, a brief study of the 'macro' condition to highlight any broader event fluctuation.
I am currently reading Feints by Peter Eisenman. I particularly admire his layered compositions and understanding of the diagram...another source of inspiration for this project.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on December 03, 2009
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/GbQg6IyxZPM&hl=en_GB&fs=1&">The Dalton Gang Hideout
Posted by George on December 07, 2009
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Posted by George on December 07, 2009
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Posted by George on December 07, 2009
I have decided to park the film in its current state as I feel it would be better to add information and review as my Thesis develops... I have cut it down and worked up a couple of scenes but still feel there is some way to go. I am happy with the overall sequence, just not with the level of enhancement.
Thanks must go to Ollie O'Brien for his visualisation of the OpenStreetMap1 Milton Keynes Mapping Party2 in May last year as well as A Year of Edits3 by ITO World4. Both are licensed under the CC-BY-SA attribution.Brilliant work, it's my first visit to your site, got the link from another RSS-feed.
Thought that the city you zoomed out from was the same as the one you modelled, managed to locate Cardiff though from names on your pre analysis.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on December 08, 2009
I will be spending the next few weeks mainly focusing on the Dissertation so I thought it a useful point to summarise my thoughts thus far.
Perhaps as a response to the underlying 'shift' the city centre is undergoing with the new St. David's II development:
A remote monitoring station is set up. A series of temporary structures listen to and record the rhythm and fluctuations of the city.
The existing physical fabric is surveyed and dissected. Patterns are analysed, digital feeds aggregated. Emotions recorded, history understood.
After a time, the initial accumulation is complete. The programmatic response is released, the architectural intervention begins.
The monitoring continues: temporal relevancy is mantained, new events learned: major city events are anticipated.
The mechanism responds to market trend. New events are aggregated, unexpected possibilities are introduced according to broader supply and demand.
As the shift intensifies and the economic condition substantiates, the programme in turn responds.
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Posted by George on December 10, 2009
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Posted by George on December 18, 2009
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Ataque de Panico is a remarkable short film made by Fede Alvarez, a relatively unknown producer from Uruguay.
True to the wonder of our networked society he has just been offered a $30m contract after uploading it to YouTube.Have you watched Neil Blongkamp's precursor to district 9, Alive in Johannesburg? His presents a similar situation to that of Alvarez in terms of exemplifying the nature of networked society and the almost unlimited potential that exists as a result of its "wonders". Given the predated success of Blongkamp perhaps one of the many dangers of a society networked to the extent that ours now is, is that corporations such as Columbia Pictures (Sam Raimi's a parent company) with Alvarez and Tristar (distributors of district 9) with Blongkamp constantly seek to find "the next big thing" in a similar manner. Is there a statistic for the amount of people who get "discovered" in this manner and then discarded by the capatalistic forces that such companies represent? I wonder the impact such an experience might have on the lives of these people - whereas prior to the internet and increased societal network capabilities these people would have to seek out hollywood, hollywood through mediums such as youtube now seeks them out - youtube thus becomes the equivalent of a football scout trawling through teams of hopeful youngsters, signing them up and then traumatisingly discarding over 90% of them at will. Though this is purely speculative it is intended to hint primarily at the dangerous reality coexistint with the increased levels of "networking" and ensuing artificiality in society.
Skype conference later - perhaps 11 uk time?***pagebreak***
Posted by George on December 18, 2009
Edward Stourton tries to make sense of a decade in which history has been put on fast forward. There has been a revolution in the way we communicate, widespread alarm about the planet's very survival and a challenge to the world order. What does it mean for the way we live as we head into 2010?
[audio:http://www.insoc.co.uk/uploads/audio/Defining The Decade - A Googling We Go.mp3|titles=Defining The Decade: A Googling We Go|artists=Edward Stourton]***pagebreak***
Posted by George on January 14, 2010
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I managed to get this plan from the site manager at OscarClarke containing all of the unit names for the adjacent commercial units. Unfortunately it seems there is no detailed survey of the complex and building structure as modern works have only been concerned with interior fit-out.
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The first render of the new city model. For some reason some dodgy blue planes have appeared but overall the result is decent.
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This is the highest resolution aerial photograph available and will be useful for the next stage of urban analysis. I have stitched it together for the city centre. The traffic patterns are clearly visible (note the trail of buses adjacent to the castle) and you can just about read pedestrian density.
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This is a basic Yahoo! pipe template which is essentially a combined aggregator and filter with five input feeds. It may need to become more sophisticated depending on the level of information. Obvious inputs at this stage would probably be infrastructural like CardiffBus, National Rail, Mobile Telephony (O2/Vodafone etc.), the Millenium Stadium and Pachube but could also include 'soft' feeds like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and LastFM or MySpace for additional event listing.
Left is Louis Kahn's drawing of the traffic movements within Philadelphia, which I am interested in as a mode of study beyond a purely cartographic representation of urban space. Right is a model of Peter Eisenman's Romeo and Juliet Castles:
The program for this project was to present the dominant themes of the stories of Romeo and Juliet in architectural form at the site of the two castles. There are three important versions of the story which were taken as the basis for the architectural programme. Each narrative is characterised by three structural relationships: division (the separation of the lovers/the balcony); union (the marriage of the lovers/the church); and their dialectical relationship (the togetherness and apartness of the lovers/Juliet's tomb). The project responds to fundamental cultural changes that have taken place in the last century, by using an architectural discourse that is founded in a process called scaling.
Not quite sure about the analogy but the model is fairly spectacular.
Cedric Price's Birmingham & Midland Institute HQ. I admire his use of diagram to explain the frequency and hierarchy of programme.
Thinking ahead with regard to materials...
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Posted by George on January 20, 2010
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A film by Alex Roman1 made entirely using CG...***pagebreak***
Posted by George on January 27, 2010
Note: You may need to install the Google Earth browser plugin in order to view this post correctly. You can orbit by depressing the mouse wheel in addition to zoom and panning. A larger version is available here1.
This is an example of using Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to visualise project specific information via the Web, thus enabling a virtual spatial dimension. It is my aim to link all elements of the project in this way from process 3D massing to infrastructural analysis of the city network. I have introduced a feed from Flickr but also geometries synchronised with a Web server; both will accrue information over time. The site is highlighted in magenta.
The image above depicts Dennis Crompton's Computer City (1964) which provides inspiration towards my impending physical modelling. Beyond a more conventional representation of the surrounding urban milieu (block massing etc.) I intend to model certain aspects of the 'virtual' but physically. In addition I would like to explore the possibility of augmenting other layers of information (traffic patterns, pedestrian densities or building IP tags) within this model using a locator and software such as ARTag2.
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Posted by George on January 30, 2010
An extract from the Cabinet Office's recent news release1:
CAB 005-1020 January 2010
A major new website has been launched to the public which gives anyone who wants to use it unprecedented and free access to government data in one place.
The site called data.gov.uk contains more than 2500 sets of data from across government. All of the data is non-personal and in a format that can be reused by any individual or business to create innovative new software tools, such as applications about house prices, local amenities and services, or access to local hospitals.
Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton, worked together to launch the website.
In the run-up to today’s public launch, 2400 registered developers were given access to a preview version of the site, so they could offer feedback and start experimenting with the data.
Some of the applications developed in this preview stage include:
a video which shows traffic flows and congestion on the motorway network over the past decade
the ‘School Finder’ website which enables parents to search for schools by location and Ofsted report
a "postcode newspaper" which details the different public services in a postcode area
So that people can continue to create new products in the future, data.gov.uk will be using a new, open licence, which allows government-owned data to be freely reused by anybody.
Today's launch delivers on a major commitment in Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government which the Prime Minister announced in December.
Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, said:
“Freeing up public data will create major new opportunities for businesses. By allowing industry to use data creatively they can develop new services and generate economic value from it.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for UK firms to secure better value for money in service delivery and to develop innovative services which will help to grow the economy.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee said:
“Making public data available for re-use is about increasing accountability and transparency and letting people create new, innovative ways of using it. Government data should be a public resource. By releasing it, we can unlock new ideas for delivering public services, help communities and society work better, and let talented entrepreneurs and engineers create new businesses and services. ”
Professor Nigel Shadbolt, said:
“Today marks an important step forward in the work the Prime Minister asked us to lead. It gives data to the public and sets the groundwork for further progress. Over the next few weeks and months we will build on this by adding more functions. We are already working with departments, agencies and local authorities to release even more data all the time, and we want the release of public data to be ‘business as usual’ across public bodies as outlined in Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government.
“We are also going to increase the use of ‘Linked Data’ standards, which allows people to provide data in a way that is as flexible and easy-to-use as possible.”
Notes for Editors
Sir Tim Berners-Lee OM and Professor Nigel Shadbolt were appointed by the Prime Minister on 10 June 2009 to open up the government’s data.
Data.gov.uk launched to developers to enable them to give feedback on 30 September 2009.
The Government launched a consultation on how much mapping information to make free on 23 December last year.
The Postcode Paper [External website] was developed by the Newspaper Club is available along with the Traffic Counts [External website] which has been developed by ITO World.
Today's site is a Beta version. "Beta" is a common IT industry way of allowing people to use a website and give feedback for further development. Over 2400 people are already part of the data.gov.uk developer community and over the next few months we will continue helping them develop new, innovative uses of public data as well as adding more functionality working with departments, agencies and local authorities to release more data as promised.
Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government [Exteral website] set out the Government's overall principles for public data and a programme for the release of more data to the website over the coming months. Today's package also delivers on the commitment to integrate data from the Publications Hub for National Statistics and to release more health data.
On Tuesday John Denham, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government addressed a panel chaired by Professor Nigel Shadbolt which is looking at how to publish similar information at local government level. Some of the data released on data.gov.uk has already been incorporated into Lichfield City Council's website.
The website is available at http://data.gov.uk
Cabinet Office Press Office
22 Whitehall
London SW1A 2WH
Tel: 020 7276 1146 – Fax: 020 7276 1146
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Posted by George on February 02, 2010
Cartagen1 was created by Jeffrey Warren in the Design Ecology group at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Along with the advent of geo style sheets (GSS) it represents a significant step towards bringing the OpenStreetMap2 dataset closer to the mainstream. Just like the use of cascading style sheets (CSS) for styling web pages, GSS is a specification for designing maps. Adapted for dynamic data sources, GSS can also define changing geographic elements, display multiple datasets, and even respond to contextual tags like 'condition:poor'. Both technologies could be key in realising a dynamic urban mapping (also through locative media) beyond a purely cartographic representation of urban space.
Cartagen is a vector-based, client-side framework for rendering maps in native HTML 5. Written in JavaScript, it uses the new Canvas element to load mapping data from various sources, including OpenStreetMap. Maps are styled in GSS, a cascading stylesheet specification for geospatial information – a decision which leverages literacy in CSS to make map styling more accessible. However, GSS is a scripting language as well, making Cartagen an ideal framework for mapping dynamic data.Mobile devices and networks have made possible distributed reporting of geographic and temporal data, from unfolding natural disasters to organizing protests in real time. Cartagen allows users to integrate real time data streams and display them in novel ways. It also offers the possibility of rendering OpenStreetMap data which is not currently efficient with tile-based systems such as authorship and time data. A simple but useful example is that Cartagen can show live OpenStreetMap data - in the sense that viewers see edits occurring in real time, with no rendering load on the server.
With powerful mapping tools such as these, there is an opportunity for users to create their own maps - not just pushpins and overlays, but completely designed maps which incorporate live and changing data, and most of all maps which tell stories. Instead of a single canonical map for everyone, individuals and communities can make locally and personally relevant maps.
A similar project is CityMurmor3, which also uses the OpenStreetMap dataset. It looks interesting but the applications appear to be defunct. The following is an extract from some of the accompanying literature:
On-line newspapers, information agency, blogs and personal websites, thematic media are monitored to highlight the pattern of perceptions on the urban space. This monitoring activity leads to the creation of an atlas that will produce - in real-time - different maps based on news sources, themes, and time. The atlas allows users to understand the urban space as a function of media attention and biases and social and cultural diversity of the city itself.The goal of the project is to show how different media differently describe the urban space through the attention that is payed on each street of the city. In the hypothesis of the increasing importance of the on-line presence in contemporary society, a media geography has been generated intersecting the media scape with the geographical reality of the city.
CityMurmur aims at addressing maps and diagrams not as passive representation of realities but as tools for interpretation and action. It wants to build a time-based narration, an historical archive of media coverage of the urban space which is able to reveal some hidden dynamics useful for city policy support, critical media analysis, and sociocultural research.
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Posted by George on February 04, 2010
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Our so-called ‘information society’ is an increasingly urban society; the information age is an age where more people are living in cities than in rural areas. The dissertation seeks to explore the critical relationship between two of the most significant processes of contemporary social, economic, geographical, political and cultural change across the world: The intensifying urbanisation of the planet, and the rapid acceleration in the use and capability of Web 2.0 technology. The title, City 2.0, implies a synthesis of the two.
Specifically, what impact will new and future Web technology have on architecture and urbanism? From the Situationist International to Augmented Reality, from Archigram to the Open Source, the dissertation draws on a broad range of technical and theoretical proposition in an attempt to define a new 'standard' of urban reality.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on February 04, 2010
GeoTime Information Visualization1 is a paper by Thomas Kapler and William Wright. It was originally released in 2004 but is becoming increasingly relevant as the temporal relevancy of the Web improves. Researchers at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) have been using it successfully to visualise geo-referenced Twitter activity across London thus enabling a range of spatio-temporal analysis. The following animation was created by Urban Tick2 and is an example of their work to date. Five minutes is a little excessive but the results are interesting nonetheless.
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Posted by George on February 05, 2010
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Posted by George on February 05, 2010
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To complement the city event 'feed' architecture I am preparing a hypothetical dataset of all major city fluctuations over a single year. The main graphical output will be that of a timeline with line displacement and moving average overlay.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on February 07, 2010
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Posted by George on February 18, 2010
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Metropolis is a ten minute film by Rob Carter1. The final three minutes are shown above. The following is an extract from the narrative:
Metropolis is a quirky and very abridged history of the city of Charlotte, North Carolina. It uses stop motion video animation to physically manipulate aerial still images of the city (both real and fictional), creating a landscape in constant motion. Starting around 1755 on a Native American trading path, the viewer is presented with the building of the first house in Charlotte. From there we see the town develop through the historic dismissal of the English, to the prosperity made by the discovery of gold and the subsequent roots of the building of the multitude of churches that the city is famous for. Now the landscape turns white with cotton, and the modern city is ‘born’, with a more detailed re-creation of the economic boom and surprising architectural transformation that has occurred in the past 20 years.Charlotte is one of the fastest growing cities in the country, primarily due to the continuing influx of the banking community, resulting in an unusually fast architectural and population expansion that shows no sign of faltering despite the current economic climate. However, this new downtown Metropolis is therefore subject to the whim of the market and the interest of the giant corporations that choose to do business there. Made entirely from images printed on paper, the animation literally represents this sped up urban planners dream, but suggests the frailty of that dream, however concrete it may feel on the ground today. Ultimately the video continues the city development into an imagined hubristic future, of more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas and into a bleak environmental future. It is an extreme representation of the already serious water shortages that face many expanding American cities today; but this is less a warning, as much as a statement of our paper thin significance no matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build.
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Posted by George on February 18, 2010
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Since the last crit I have been steadily working towards a number of significant pieces notably my city feed architecture and historical timeline the results of which I hope to present soon. I am also working on the programme which seems to have gone forwards and backwards over the last week or so... The above drawing is trying to figure out how the basic spatial arrangement could work with my massing strategy and is something most people responded to in the last session.
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Posted by George on February 22, 2010
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Posted by George on February 22, 2010
This is the 200 scale white card model I have been working on. This photo shows the existing roofscape.
This photo shows the initial massing model at 200 scale. At the moment it is nothing more than a shell with a few basic moves to determine how the building might begin to sit within its context.
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Posted by George on February 22, 2010
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This is the first test at augmenting 3D geometry into my physical 200 scale model below. Excuse the quality; I had to record my own screen with a video camera in order to capture it. There are obvious limitations in this instance where adjacent buildings obstruct the tracker. The real test will be to achieve this on a city scale using my laser model as a base. This way I am able to represent my city event feed dataset and some of the other spatial analyses interactively. For the actual scheme it could be useful to illustrate more abstract elements such as the building's circulation or programme schematics. I believe you can also animate geometries which may be useful to visualise any adaptable or reconfigurable architectural elements.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on February 25, 2010
This is probably a bit of a red-herring but I have been thinking about this computational approach to schematic design and came up with the above. I have tried to define some boundaries in order to preserve the humane artistic response by suggesting that this process could occur at some point between outline and detailed design rather than be a direct driver. This could be the link between the urban and architectural scales of my Thesis as some of the defining parameters could be derived from my city feed architecture.
There is also a animation1 worth watching in part - between 01:30 and 02:30.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on February 26, 2010
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Posted by George on February 27, 2010
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Posted by George on March 01, 2010
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Posted by George on March 01, 2010
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Posted by George on March 01, 2010
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These two sheets will eventually be 'wired' together (see sketch below) to demonstrate the potential for semantic city feeds that visualise the rhythms and fluctuations of the city. With suitable annotation they will also help to illustrate the open event initiative over time; the whole idea is that these patterns help to influence and inform a new urban cross-programming.
If I am able to convert the dataset into a 3D visualisation I could then potentially augment this over the digital city network map for an interactive exhibit.
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Posted by George on March 01, 2010
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Posted by George on March 01, 2010
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Posted by George on March 03, 2010
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A bit of an interlude... I am interested in recording my design development over time; an attempt to to convey some of the 'invisible' development process work prevalent in digital design. This is a simple (therefore not particularly interesting) test piece that shows the construction of a photographic elevation over forty minutes. I will be using this primarily to record the evolution of my scheme design in 3D, the end result may or may not prove worthwhile.
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Posted by George on March 04, 2010
I am currently working up some site character studies along with material and architectural precedents in order to effectively explain my outline scheme for Monday's crit. This is a high-res photo montage of Baker's Row looking south comprising some twenty images.
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Posted by George on March 04, 2010
I have begun to explore the elements of my programme that are to integrate with certain layers of the digital city as the spatial experience of my building will be defined not only by the physical architectural language but also through the use of virtual sensory ephemera. Two venerable precedents in this respect are of course the Blur Building (2002) by Diller and Scofidio and the Philips Pavilion (1958) by Le Corbusier.
The Philips pavilion - conceived for the 1958 Expo - was designed primarily by Iannis Xenakis, a Greek architect and experimental composer. The image below is a graph of Xenakis' Metastaseis: opening glissandi which clearly references the Philips Pavilion. The audio sample beneath that is an extract.
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[audio:http://www.insoc.co.uk/uploads/audio/MetastaseisOpening.mp3]
The Philips Pavilion presented a collage liturgy for twentieth-century humankind, dependent on electricity instead of daylight and on virtual perspectives in place of terrestrial views.
[source: Marc Treib, Space Calculated in Seconds, Princeton, 1996, p. 3]
I would like to explore an architecture that enables, in part, a similar experience although it would instead draw upon 'artefacts' - both contemporary and historical - of the digital city. I investigated a similar idea with my Memorial Memory2 sequence, which was also turned into an implied augmentation for the closing seconds of my first Primer film. There is also a scene during my City 2.0 film that depicts a parade of 1932 from the British Pathe3 news archive turning the same corner in Cardiff.
Over forty years later, Diller and Scofidio's Blur Building was a unique sensory experience but it also featured technologically advanced 'brain coats' - wearable raincoats with wireless communication devices that would inform an indication of either positive or negative affinity between different visitors, through colour change and sound, depending on an individual's response to a predefined set of questions, i.e. Prince or Puccini.
I would therefore like to push this theme further by proposing that the interaction and 'affinity' could instead occur seamlessly via the Web, which isn't so far-fetched considering the advent of Web 2.0 in 2004. Information specific to a given user could be pushed and exhibited interactively from a range of user content-creation sources.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on March 04, 2010
Over forty years later, Diller and Scofidio's Blur Building was a unique sensory experience but it also featured technologically advanced 'brain coats' - wearable raincoats with wireless communication devices that would inform an indication of either positive or negative affinity between different visitors, through colour change and sound, depending on an individual's response to a predefined set of questions, i.e. Prince or Puccini.
I would therefore like to push this theme further by proposing that the interaction and 'affinity' could instead occur seamlessly via the Web, which isn't so far-fetched considering the advent of Web 2.0 in 2004. Information specific to a given user could be pushed and exhibited interactively from a range of user content-creation sources.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on March 10, 2010
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Posted by George on March 17, 2010
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Posted by George on March 17, 2010
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This animation shows the sunlight overshadowing (0400-2000h) with the proposal shown below. Admittedly it is the summer solstice but given that there is zero residential property within the immediate surroundings (the adjacent buildings are predominantly warehouses that supply Morgan arcade and the Hayes) the impact is reasonable.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on March 19, 2010
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This was a Thesis by Daniel Belcher1 for his Masters of Science in Design Computing at the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington. I particularly like the demonstration where he manipulates the heliodon which in turn modifies the scene lighting in the rendered model. It is also worth looking at his ARchitecture Hall2 project which implies a link with BIM. Impressive stuff.
I have now managed to compile the ARToolKit3 which should allow me to begin considering AR for aspects of my presentation. The only hitch is of course the interface - without a suitable viewing device or head mounted display the interaction is interesting but less meaningful.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on March 25, 2010
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A few process photos of my evolving massing model which I am modelling at 200 scale. I have been using it to test ideas from the 3D computer model before repeating the cycle again, hopefully achieving more detailed resolution in the process...***pagebreak***
Posted by George on March 25, 2010
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I began my detailed 3D model on Monday - these images show some of my progress to date. The design is by no means finalised; working at this detail is in fact beginning to pose more and more questions... This is an aerial shot taken just above the tower looking down onto the beginnings of the first storey with auditorium etc. There are three levels beneath - it is difficult to understand but I will post a section shortly.
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This is an early shot of the street facade showing the cobbled street leading into the ground floor reception area. The two stairs in the distance lead the visitor up to the auditorium and second storey rooftop platform where the formal programme and viewing galleries begin. The upturned panel that resembles a canopy (repeated along the length) hints at a 'shop-front' that can be reconfigured to manipulate the boundary with the street. Openness is key: depending on the event, the public would be encouraged to wander in. This would obviously need to incorporate some glazed elements which is something I am currently brainstorming.
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First floor sketch plan showing basic features.
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Posted by George on March 30, 2010
During my research into the interactive aspects of my thesis I stumbled across openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding. Unfortunately I am not going to have the time to delve into the actual programming but there are some interesting projects1 emerging, some better than others. I like the Audience2 (see images above) and Hand from Above3 projects.
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Posted by George on March 31, 2010
{VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/v/NCPzji_-2Oo&hl=en_GB&fs=1&">Unity Pilot
Posted by George on April 14, 2010
[WP_UnityObject src="http://insoc.co.uk/html/unity/pilot/pilot.unity3d" width="500" height="281"/]
Unity is a integrated authoring tool for 3D content visualisation capable of producing applications for Windows, Mac, Wii or even the iPhone. Although primarily conceived for the gaming industry, it has great potential for the distribution and experience of virtual content relating to the built environment.
Once the Unity Web-Player has been installed, the arrow keys and cursor can be used to navigate the virtual environment - in this case a demo scene of my evolving Thesis scheme.
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Posted by George on April 19, 2010
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I have been exploring the use of Augmented Reality (AR), a pivotal part of my Thesis in terms of experiencing both the building and the city. This is a quick demo showing a range of geometries including simple animated content, which are being tracked simultaneously. I hope to use this technique not only to represent different aspects of the scheme interactively but also to portray different layers of the digital city relevant to the story and experience of my building. The big issue now of course is the interface...George,
This is very cool, but how useful is it in practice? What can it be used for other than a presentation device and even then wouldn't a video/walkthrough/dynamic model be more useful?
Would be interested to know our thoughts and what software enabled you to do this?
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Posted by George on April 27, 2010
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Posted by George on May 12, 2010
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It may be an advert but this clip is a superb demonstration of the notion of using the virtual to enhance the physical by way of augmented reality. Such a reality may be a long way off but if achieved or curated in the right way, it has enormous potential to transform our experience and understanding of the world - from past to present and beyond. This is similar to what I was hoping to achieve in my Memorial Memory1 animation sequence.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on July 13, 2010
Layar1 is clearly leading the race in developing AR for the smartphone masses. As the number of layers approaches 1000, I would argue there has been little in the way of real interest and quality to date, but this one - developed by German programmer Marc Gardeya - certainly stands out.
German news magazine Der Spiegel recently met Gardeya and the interview can be read in full here2.I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?***pagebreak***
Posted by George on July 13, 2010
Eric Fischer1 has conducted some interesting studies of major world cities by re-mapping them according to the frequency of geo-tagged images sourced from both Flickr and Picasa. His method is not exactly clear but I assume the vector information is generated by joining a single user's individual snaps in order of sequence. The product is something of considerable beauty and may help to pre-empt the spatial extent of computing such information via programmes such as GRAIL's Building Rome in a Day2 project, as demonstrated in their animation of San Marco Square3, Rome. The image underlay is extracted from the OpenStreetMap4 dataset.
In addition Fischer has conducted a second study aimed at differentiating between photos taken by locals and tourists, which he demarcates as follows:
Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).
Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month).
Yellow points are pictures where it can't be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven't taken pictures anywhere for over a month).***pagebreak***
Posted by George on July 14, 2010
In the Air is a visualisation project which aims to make visible the microscopic and invisible agents of Madrid´s air (gases, particles, pollen, diseases, etc), to see how they perform, react and interact with the rest of the city.
I am particularly interested by this project namely due to the provocation that environmental data (not just pollution) relating to the living, breathing city could be mapped spatially - possibly even in realtime (this particular data is sourced hourly from the Ayuntamiento de Madrid1) - and viewed via the Web or through AR. Of course a real benefit would be for this to be part of the semantic city where the data can be used beyond purely visual means perhaps enabling city-wide Building Management Systems (BMS) to actively respond to changing conditions.
Developed at Visualizar'082 and directed by José Luis de Vicente3 at Medialab-Prado4, the team propose that the data feeds a physical prototype5 called a “diffuse façade,” a massive indicator of the air's components through a changing cloud that serves to "blur the architecture with the atmosphere it has invaded."
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
1. Organic colourant used for deserts
2. Urine dispensary plastic bag
3. Mini-motor +plastic pin + dispenser
4. 25L plastic tank
5. Submergible fountain pump
6. High pressure pump
7. Arduino
8. 10 units water diffusor system
9. Brumizone diffusor
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Posted by George on July 15, 2010
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Having been impressed with Google's steady introduction of their auto-generated 3D city meshes, I was equally surprised with Yell's2 offering (above), which is the first of its kind for London. Powered by C3 Technologies3 the photo-realistic 3D maps are created from aerial film footage shot from light aeroplanes, which is then merged with other film taken from ground level. Unlike Google's offering (below), this seems to produce a far more seamless effect as there is no obvious transition between aerial and plan projection. The result is a novel way to explore with the 3D map providing all sorts of otherwise unobtainable views and vistas.
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Posted by George on July 20, 2010
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The above video demonstrates use of TFL's1 new API Beta2, which fetches live departure data and places it onto a Google map in realtime. A live3 version is normally available but the API is currently down due to overwhelming demand.
The project was realised at the 2010 Science Hackday4 by Matthew Somerville5 (with support from Frances Berriman6 and James Aylett7), with station icons by Tim Diggins8. The source code is available here9.
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Posted by George on July 20, 2010
Anonymous utility buildings dot our cities, keeping the other buildings humming - but they're almost never part of the aesthetic fabric of the urban scene. Taking this into account, it is exciting to see this unique power plant clad in one square meter beautiful Delftware tiles. Designed by Dutch architecture design firm Cie1 in collaboration with artist Hugo Kaagman2, this new Combined Cycle Energy3 plant (CHP) in downtown Roombeek is an extraordinary ode to the past and a celebration of modern infrastructure. The building has been named Stadshaard (which translates to ‘city hearth’), to honor the source of the city’s light and heat.
Via: Inhabitat 4
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Posted by George on July 25, 2010
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Pedro M Cruz1 has been developing visualisations of Lisbon's traffic movements over various periods of time. I particularly like this one above, which has been somewhat abstracted, but the overall effect is visually stunning. His Empires Decline2 animation is also well worth a view as it provides a fascinating depiction of the evolution of the empire-orientated world order between the late eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
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Posted by George on August 10, 2010
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Posted by George on September 06, 2010
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Street Slide1 is a recent research project by Microsoft that allows seamless transition between the 360° panoramic 'bubbles' already familiar from photographic mapping services such as Google's Street View2 and Bing's Streetside3. Similar to the Community Photo Collections4 project at the University of Washington's GRAIL Lab5 research which has already made it to front-line software application, the system represents another leap in re-spatialising photographic data - in this case navigable 2D street elevations, enhanced with geographic and other informational references.
The following is an extract from the research paper6:
We present Street Slide, which combines the best aspects of the immersive nature of bubbles with the overview provided by multiperspective strip panoramas. We demonstrate a seamless transition between bubbles and multi-perspective panoramas. We also present a dynamic construction of the panoramas which overcomes many of the limitations of previous systems. As the user slides sideways, the multi-perspective panorama is constructed and rendered dynamically to simulate either a perspective or hyper-perspective view. This provides a strong sense of parallax, which adds to the immersion. We call this form of sliding sideways while looking at a street façade a street slide. Finally we integrate annotations and a mini-map within the user interface to provide geographic information as well additional affordances for navigation. We demonstrate our Street Slide system on a series of intersecting streets in an urban setting. We report the results of a user study, which shows that visual searching is greatly enhanced with the Street Slide interface over existing systems from Google and Bing.
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Posted by George on September 06, 2010
I have been sifting through some of the work produced in the final days of my Thesis, in a bid to catch-up and clear something of a backlog. I could not think of a better place to start than with these two posters, which were produced in an attempt to provide an introduction (non exhaustive but plain speaking) to the concept of the semantic city. The beginning of the Thesis followed my Dissertation1 City 2.0: New Urban Realities Through Open-Sourced Ubiquitous Informatics, which explored the intersection between architecture, urbanism and information communication technology in this, the Information Age.
Conceived as a new text-based language schema, City 2.0 acts as a semantic framework to the built environment enabling professional or layman alike to quite literally author the city. From cultural or historical reference to analysis and research, City 2.0 links the key paradigms of the Web 2.0 revolution (the open source, hyper-locality, user content creation etc. - factors that have already begun to revolutionise both our spatial and socio-economic relationships - to our understanding, approach towards and indeed experience of the city. One of the key elements of City 2.0 is its ability to describe geometries, events and artefacts semantically in both time and space, ready for when the temporal relevancy of the Web improves.
The covering page is speculative in extending Charles Jencks' Evolutionary Tree of Twentieth-Century Architecture (2000) as provocation for what this next century may hold in response to technological advance. The following page provides a more detailed introduction to the emerging concept of the digital city and relevant key paradigms.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on September 07, 2010
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The Haitian earthquake on 12th January 2010 was catastrophic in scale, with an estimated 230,000 deaths and 1,000,000 people made homeless. The Haitian Government estimated that 250,000 residential and 30,000 non-residential buildings had either collapsed or been severely damaged.
The ensuing response from the international community included humanitarian aid, military support personnel, medical teams and engineers. However, the scale of the disaster had caused unprecedented disruption to communication and transport systems - not to mention electrical and water infrastructures - severely hampering both rescue and aid efforts.
Within hours of the initial earthquake, satellite and aerial imagery passes of the area had been made to improve geographical knowledge in a bid to assist the wider relief effort. In the following days the data was released to the public, prompting a surge in tracing and analysis from the OpenStreetMap1 (OSM) community. The sheer speed of the response enabled OSM to provide direct support to aid workers on the ground. Large additions to the map are made with many roads (green primary, red secondary) added including the blue glowing refugee camps that begin to emerge.
The animation was produced by ITO World2, with support from Ideas In Transit3.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on September 07, 2010
With all the current hype surrounding Augmented Reality (AR) I often wonder where we stand, in terms of its overall evolution and logical conclusion. No doubt we will continue to see countless gimmicks but what will happen when we all become immune to the initial excitement and when assumed expectations cannot be met? The 'hype cycle' (a term first coined by Gartner Inc. in 1995) is a novel, yet surprisingly accurate way of explaining such a phenomenon. A new technology trigger causes a surge in expectation before peaking at over-inflation. A subsequent 'trough of disillusionment' is often accompanied by a hefty slump. Steady improvement, along a 'slope of enlightenment', then reaches a so-called 'plateau of productivity'. But what does all this mean for AR? Are we set to become disillusioned or will we be steadily englightened?
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With speculation rife and the technology in its relative infancy, realistically we are only at the very start. Of course the time frame for such a cycle could span decades or more: If we consider the Web as an example - from it's early beginnings in 1991 to the bursting of the dot-com bubble in March 2000 - it was just short of a decade. The 'trough of disillusionment' was comparatively short but the growth and success spearheaded by Web 2.0 has afforded another decade of growth, the 'plateau of productivity' now appears firm and consistent.
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In terms of AR, Google Trends may already suggest we are beginning to show signs of inflated expectation with search indicating a noticeable slowdown2. However, this phase is likely to be temporary with an improved surge yet to come: Perhaps when a lightweight portable device such as the iPad (or similar) includes a camera, we may really begin to witness a degree of innovative use, but admittedly it still leaves a lot to be desired. The other key milestone of course is the migration from hand-held device to eyewear3 or even contact lens4, the holy grail in terms of interface. This is something I explored in part during my MArch thesis though as something of a counter to a pure physical architectural manifestation, as a way of enhancing the true experience thus ensuring the technology was never an end in itself.
The hypothetical conclusion and speculative prediction of technology whilst in its infancy will always serve to enhance inflated expectation. What we don't always know is whether an imagined reality could in fact be a successful reality, obtainable during the so-called plateau of productivity. Furthermore, evolution is impossible to predict: It is quite probable that the eventual outcome will be fundamentally different than that of the expectation, if not unobtainable or even undesirable.
Two notable examples of future realities are Augmented City5 by Keiichi Matsuda6 (shown above) and Mixed Reality7 by Nokia Research8, both sensational yet completely fascinating.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on October 02, 2010
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A part of the RSA1's recent Animate2 series, social theorist David Harvey3 questions whether it is time for a new capitalism - a capitalism that could be both 'responsible, just, and humane.' With the empowering of financiers set to continue you would be forgiven for viewing the credit crunch as a mere blip in the rise of global capitalism. Harvey articulates his 'crises of capitalism' brilliantly while the accompanying animation by Cognitive Media4 adds a completely new dimension.
What remains to be seen is whether the drive towards a so-called 'new capitalism' will gather pace, given the planned austerity measures and the steady unwinding of the deficit. Unlike the widespread unrest caused by the labour versus capital imbalance of the 1970s, the only real activism (spare Athens) appeared to be the more-media-than-protestor smashing5 of an RBS6 window back in April 2009.
The full lecture by David Harvey is available here7. Robert Peston's December 2008 essay on The New Capitalism8 is also worth a read.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on October 25, 2010
"It's a real testament to how mainstream the internet has become that Hollywood has made a film about Facebook. But even an old dotcom dinosaur like me can work out that the internet has changed life beyond recognition. In Britain we are among the most sophisticated web users in the world: almost 40 million of us use the internet, 30.5 million of us are on Facebook, and 4.3 million already use Twitter.Martha Lane Fox in The Big Issue, October 2010However, 20 years since its invention, it's sometimes easy to forget the seismic shift that the internet has prompted in society, in government and in business. It's already proven every bit as revolutionary a technology as the steam engine and car were before it. It's changed how we learn, how we talk, how we earn, love and play. And it will continue to change us in ways we haven't even begun to imagine.
Yet 9.2 million of us have never been online. Of which four million are the least economically advantaged: older people, people on low incomes, those in social housing, and the unemployed. These are huge - and unacceptable - numbers."
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Posted by George on October 31, 2010
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Real Estates uses geospatial analysis to identify thousands of publicly owned abandoned sites in major US cities, imagining this distributed, vacant landscape as a new urban system. Using parametric design, a landscape proposal for each site is tailored to local conditions, optimizing thermal and hydrological performance to enhance the whole city’s ecology—and relieving burdens on existing infrastructure. Local Code’s quantifiable effects on energy usage and stormwater remediation eradicate the need for more expensive, yet invisible, sewer and electrical upgrades. In addition, the project uses citizen participation to conceive a new, more public infrastructure as well —a robust network of urban greenways with tangible benefits to the health and safety of every citizen.
via WPA 2.01
Local Code: Real Estates was a project by Nicholas de Monchaux2 and other collaborators from the College of Environmental Design3, UC Berkeley for the WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture4 exhibition organised by UCLA's cityLAB5. I am most interested in the sequence between 02:50 and 03:30 - the notion of being able to visualise in realtime a range of analytical environmental data (sourced from a network of sensors) as a way of informing the design process. I am also interested by the theme of unused public land though from the point of cataloguing and networking these spaces as opposed to the parametric design element. I am currently working on an outline City 2.0 / OpenCity specification document which I hope to publish shortly.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 06, 2010
We have reached the end of a decade and a half in which digital computation has given architects new creative opportunities to access the geometrical space opened up by post-17th-century mathematicians. The resulting new wave of interest in the relationship of mathematics to space-making has been aesthetically driven, and yet its expression has transcended the metaphorical. It has found expression from within the process of making as a new species of architecture, and has infiltrated architecture in ways that have forged radical change. What are the philosophical impulses that have led architecture to embrace mathematical thought anew?
Jane Burry is an architect and Senior Research Fellow in the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University, Melbourne and visiting Senior Research Fellow at QUT, Brisbane. She is lead author of the book The New Mathematics of Architecture, co-authored with Mark Burry, Thames & Hudson, 2010 as part of an Australian Research Council-funded project.
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Posted by George on November 29, 2010
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Something of a modern day Heath Robinson1, Niklas Roy's recent project is a complete contradiction: it is complicated and clever, yet simple and ridiculous at the same time. He has produced a whole host of interesting and entertaining projects which can be viewed via his homepage at http://www.niklasroy.com/2***pagebreak***
Posted by George on November 30, 2010
[audio:http://www.insoc.co.uk/uploads/audio/06%20Idiot.mp3]
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Posted by George on December 02, 2010
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Incidental Media is a film sketch by Dentsu London as part of their ongoing 'Making Future Magic' strategy:
Making Future Magic was partly conceived as a way to avoid making horrible use of media that makes everyone feel like Chief John Anderton. But also (and mostly) as something that would help us think about the most exciting creative possibilities opening up in a continually shifting and multiplying media landscape, where the scope of communications broadens to encompass and meld service, product and software with more traditional advertising.
The thing I most enjoy about the film is the simple notion that whilst the range and frequency of media is ever-increasing, the resulting communication should be more about personalisation and refinement. I am not sure whether some of the illustrated examples are actual realities (such as the Guardian headline or Foursquare update printed on the receipt) but these are clever yet understated ideas. Schulze describes media becoming more pervasive and 'ambiently available', alikening it to the quiet expectation of the clock in telling us the time.
Admittedly, there is something seductive about the way it is filmed; an almost perfect advert when in reality it may not be so. There is a lot to be said for the interface design, the way that subtle animation and almost retro tickerboard approach help to promote a communication that is both intelligent, seamless and tranquil.
The second film, The Journey is another take on the above this time focusing on a single train trip, which again is enhanced by subtle personal media. This time, the 'industrial archaeology of the landscape' is described using piggybacked train tickets, informing the passenger of a bygone age whilst rolling through the countryside.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on December 08, 2010
Maths, English, Geography... whatever else people think about education, it's taken for granted that children will attend classes in a range of disciplines. But what if they didn't? What if they studied just one topic - such as apples - from age six, until they graduated, as experts, aged 18? It might sound barmy, but the proposal has been put forward by a serious educationalist, Kieran Egan, of Canada's Simon Fraser University1, and it kind of makes sense, says Kate Julian.
For a start, the focus isn't nearly as narrow as it sounds. Take the child assigned to study apples: first he draws them, then he catalogues the varieties. Later he collects stories about apples (from the Garden of Eden2 to William Tell3 and Isaac Newton4) and studies why they float. The study of dust, on the other hand, could take a child from house dust to the Dust Bowl5 to the origins of the planet. It's only by studying a subject in depth, argues Egan, that children can really appreciate knowledge. And it's a method that crosses educational battle lines: traditionalists like the rigour involved, modernisers like the way it lets pupils study at their own pace. Of the 2,000 or so children studying under his method, not one has dropped out. As for parents - apparently they're enthusiastic, too. For now. "Check back in 12 years."
Kate Julian originally wrote in The Washington Post6, via The Week7 magazine.videos for kids...
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Posted by George on December 11, 2010
Created by visual artist Candas Sisman1 and inspired by the work of İlhan Koman2, F L U X is quite breathtaking. It is a virtual architecture in a contant state of morphosis, a form that transcends any manual or analogue equivalent. In a funny way, this is how I imagine an alien from outer space: a creature that somehow lives in a black hole.
İlhan Koman’s unique design approach in his form studies also inspires contemporary art works. The video installation Flux by young artist Candaş Şişman can be defined as a digital animation which is inspired from the structural features of some of İlhan Koman’s works like Pi, 3D Moebius, Whirlpool and To Infinity... A red circle, which is colored in reference to the red radiators of Ogre, is traced in a morphological transformation which re-interprets the formal approach of Koman’s works. The continuous movement sometimes connotes the formal characteristics of Pi, 3D Moebius, Whirlpool and To Infinity..., as well as the original formal interpretations of the design principles of the works . In Flux, Koman’s design process in the making of the Pi series has been treated as the emerging of a sphere from a two-dimensional circle by the principle of increasing the surface; and that simple direction is re-interpreted in digital medium. Thanks to this, in the digital animation an entirely different form serial that does not resemble Pi yet remaining its design principle can be followed through the flow of a circle to the sphere. As a conscious attitude of the artist, this work is not designed in a direct visual analogy with Koman’s works. During the animation, none of the moments of the transforming form look like Pi or 3D Moebius, however the subjective reading of Koman’s approach can be observed.
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Posted by George on December 15, 2010
An interesting concept I have been reading about recently is a that of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, which is something that appears to be championed by a British company called Zopa1 - an enterprise that derives its name from the 'zone of possible agreement' - in other words, the intellectual zone during which business parties are able to strike a deal.
Open source banking is probably a bit of a pseudo term for p2p lending but I refer to it as such because I am more interested in what the future holds, with respect to finance as a whole.
Zopa2, with its company mantra 'where everybody wins, except the fat cats', at the time of writing had a sum of £4,679,127 'available on the markets' and since its inception in 2005 has successfully completed over £100m in lending. It works by actively matching borrowers and lenders across a range of credit ratings (set relative to the perceived risk - A*, A, B, C, Y) - a bit like Betfair.com3, but of the debt markets.
The most attractive thing is that the interest rates across all credit ratings are significantly better for both parties than an equivalent retail offering. Zopa4 charge a commission5 of course but the fees pale in comparison when you consider real market rates. Overall risk is managed by the fact that each and every debt is spread automatically between fifty separate borrowing parties; in the event of default the extent of bad debt is just a fraction of the original liability.
Whilst Zopa6 cannot be classified as a bank, it is undoubtedly commercial. The question is: could banking ever become open source? Could it unwind so-called 'fat cat' culture and stem the seemingly relentless rise of the world's super-banks?
The 7th December saw (King) Eric Cantona's peaceful attempt7 to destroy the banks pass unnoticed8. There was never much of a concern as it seems the only big risk relates primarily to fear, driven by risk of collapse in an event such as a liquidity crisis. Admittedly, it was never going to work on a large enough scale to pose real threat; the fear of keeping one's life savings beneath a mattress easily outweighs the former. But what if the open source model expanded slowly: personal debt at first, then into bonds and even mortgages as more and more money is fixed between private institutions and investors, only directly.
Banking has become so incredibly complex, the deliberate and excessive over-complication of sub-prime mortgage related derivatives - to name the single major cause of the global banking collapse - the result of which (we must not forget) is now causing society far more significant problems, completely disproportionate to the actual cost to the offending institutions. The recent banking reforms will undoubtedly change that but only by so much, the system will always find a way to transcend.
The open source model fundamentally devalues a given market, it cannot therefore be applied to everything. Whilst it is both suitable and progressive for many things (I keenly await the alternative to Facebook, Diaspora9) it surely could not apply to large-scale investment banking/brokering/insurance etc. where the expertise of the profession is integral. We have the advent of microcredit10 in the developing world and the not-for-profit Charity Bank11, the UK's first not-for-profit savings and investment bank. These are surely signs of a more intelligent, de-centralised, open source, moralistic and above all social approach, but it may be a very long time before such a future becomes a reality.***pagebreak***
Posted by George on December 18, 2010
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Posted by George on December 19, 2010
I'm a fan of Google Trends1 but this goes one better. A team from Harvard led by postdoctoral fellow Jean Baptiste Michel have recently released a paper entitled the Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books2. The abstract is as follows:
We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. "Culturomics" extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.
Whereas the conventional trend analysis (based on a cumulative Web search frequency) began in 2004, the raw data is instead generated from a data mining of Google Books3, spanning from 1800 to 2000.
Below are a selection of trends I find interesting, make your own mind up on the culturomics. The Books Ngram Viewer is accessible here4.
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