January 9, 2009 at 9:49 am · Filed under Life
A while ago I became interested in a small project with tons of potential. Boxee is a solution for macs (and soon pcs) to stream content from the internet to a tv. It sounds simple enough, but it is actually a revolutionary advance in how media is distributed and consumed. Instead of being tied to cable, which limits what you can watch and when, streaming allows the user to choose what they want to watch at any given moment. Boxee also has a built in bittorrent client and gives access to all shared media on a network expanding the possibilities even further. Recently, they just released a public alpha meaning that anyone can download the program for free. I have been watching this project for months with the hope of using a (soon to be released) new mac mini as an entertainment center. Unfortunately, despite all the rumors, Apple has yet to release an upgraded mini… I guess the future can wait a few months.
November 13, 2008 at 10:24 pm · Filed under Design, Life
I happened to stumble upon an amazing site that is currently in development called daytum.com. It was created by information designer Nicholas Felton and interactive designer Ryan Case to be used as a social dashboard, but it is actually more of a personal tool that can be shared, or accessed from anywhere. The main function of the site is counting. It can help keep track of anything you can think of and highly customizable in that respect, but the beauty is in it’s simple display of the information. I can already feel myself becoming addicted to my own data (just imagine what a years worth of data can look like). I can imagine it will take extreme discipline to keep it up. Check out my Daytum!
November 7, 2008 at 9:00 am · Filed under General
Over Halloween weekend I happen to see the Swedish movie “Let The Right One In” directed by Tomas Alfredson. It is probably one of my favorite movies of 2008 because it is so haunting yet realistic for a vampire movie. The story is centered around the relationship of a 12 year old boy, Oskar, and seemingly 12 year old girl, Eli, who moves in next door with her father. The feel of the movie and relationships of the characters leaves you thinking about the film long after you have left the theater. This quality is what makes movies so amazing, and one that can leave such a lasting impression is very well done. I don’t want to spoil it by giving a synopsis of the plot, but I definitely recommend seeing it.
September 13, 2008 at 1:13 pm · Filed under General
I recently rediscovered the personal site of Jason Santa Maria, which has been completely redesigned since I was last there. What I like most about the change is that the layout of each post is customized. This gives it a very magazine-like quality that is lacking on the web today. He has also paid quite a bit of detail to typography and I would say that the bar has been set very high. It seems that there are very few designers who have the technical and typographical skill to design as well for the web as anyone in the past has done for print. I can see the attraction that permanence of the printed page brings in all it’s glory, but on the other hand it is not sustainable nor environmentally friendly (people who tell you otherwise are wrong). It’s inspiring to know that there are a few out there who are pushing design on the web. As I write this post on wordpress, it is ironic because Jason helped to design the identity and admin interface I’m currently using. Anyway, definitely check out the site and the work that he’s doing.
September 13, 2008 at 12:39 pm · Filed under Art, Design
After seeing a video of his BMW commercial, I had to write a post dedicated to Theo Jansen. A Dutch kinetic sculptor, Theo Jansen has taken a scientific approach to his art form, which relies on engineering and the evolution of design. The complexity of his creations is immense, and with so many movable parts it is almost inconceivable that they could be powered by the wind. The videos are amazing in themselves. Wired has written a very good article.
August 17, 2008 at 1:25 pm · Filed under Art, Life
The month of August has been filled with great outdoor concerts in New York and I was lucky enough to get tickets to a few of them. There really is nothing like hearing music on a clear summer night. The first was summer stage in central park with The National headlining. Plants and Animals, the first opening band, played as the sun was setting and the small gated arena started filling with people. The three guys in the band were all wearing large sunglasses and wailing away. In all of their songs the lead singer would scream into the mic, and by the end of the set, he definitely lost his voice. The second opening band was Yeasayer which was really the most interesting. They had a great eclectic sound that mixed dark british post-punk with psychedelic, middle eastern, and southern rhythms. Then, The National came on and played an amazing set. At first it seemed like they had a problem with the sound and the deep vocals of the lead singer were blown out, but it was quickly fixed. I had seen them open for The Arcade Fire and they only played a few songs off of their album Alligator. At summer stage, they played songs from all their albums and were much more animated. The lead singer smashed a small rhythm instrument and went into the crowd at one point. They also had a small horn section which enhanced the songs.
The second concert was The Black Keys at McCarren Pool in Brooklyn (which is a convenient 15 minute walk from my apartment). There were also two opening bands; the first being Love As Laughter. Apparently, another band was supposed to play, but they couldn’t at the last minute, so Love as Laughter was the replacement. I had seen them before in small venues, but I thought they were amazing at the pool. They really rocked out, and by the end of their set people around me were blown away. The next opening band, Tapes ‘n Tapes, was not nearly as good. They started with a few disjointed fast and loud songs and then played a few others that could have been someone else entirely. I was not impressed. After a little waiting, The Black Keys finally came on and were insane. The drum kit was setup on a platform on the front edge of the stage, so the crowd could really see the drummer pounding away. I couldn’t believe the sound they put out with only two people, but it was like a bomb hit they had so much energy. They played all the classics from previous albums and even translated a few from their new album, Attack and Release, sans keyboard effects. I thought the live interpretations were even better than the ones with the keyboard on the album. Overall, this was by far the best of the concerts I saw in August.
The last one was Wilco, also at McCarren Pool, which was pretty good. I had been wanting to see Wilco play since collage when I was really into them. I don’t think there was an opening band, though there could have been because I was a little late getting there. Wilco played almost 30 songs (a good mix from different albums) with two encores which I couldn’t believe. One of the funniest parts of the concert was when they got the crowd clapping to the beat of one song and somehow it got modified from the traditional clap clap to clap-clap, clap. They played so many songs, I thought it was almost too much. Overall, it was a good concert, but in my opinion not as powerful as The Black Keys or even The National concerts. This could be that my tastes have changed, or maybe it was that the crowd was entirely different at the Wilco show.
There is definitely some sort of organic science to an amazing concert, but I’m not going to attempt an elaborate analysis. I was definitely lucky to be able to experience these live concerts, because in New York the rule is: if you really want to see something, there are at least 20,000 other people thinking the same thing. (Also, scalpers aka. TicketMaster are trying to make as much money as they can off that thought). Cheers!
July 11, 2008 at 1:45 pm · Filed under General
(This is an amazing video illusrating an interview with John Lennon. Brilliant.)
I Met The Walrus
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message. (from YouTube)”
June 28, 2008 at 10:38 am · Filed under General
I tried to create something out of an aligning and scaling movie clips demo from class and successfully made the action happen on a click. Initially, I was going to try and have the movie clips mask images, but the scaling caused everything to be distorted, so instead I scaled the images first so that they expanded to full size. At least, I have played around with a lot of different functions, even if it’s not as finished as my previous homework projects. The pictures in the piece are from my collection of interesting found images. View the .swf - hw4
June 19, 2008 at 8:22 am · Filed under General
Over the past few weeks I have neglected my writing in favor of concentrating on learning Actionscript 3. On only my 3rd class, I feel like I am really understanding logic of the programing side of flash. In my latest homework I have created a series of buttons that control a robot’s arm movements, a control panel that is drag-able, an object that follows the cursor and used the drawing api when clicking and holding down the mouse. Each class I am blown away by how much easier it gets… conditional statements and variables make things extremely easy. Here is my latest homework: hw3.
June 5, 2008 at 1:20 pm · Filed under General
I finally decided to get some formal Flash training and have enlisted in an intermediate flash class at SVA. We are starting to learn the very basics of ActionScript 3 (which I had no prior knowledge of). For my first homework assignment I have used basic event listeners and a mask to create the illusion of magnification and control buttons. It’s really simple, but I decided to spend a little time to make it a fun piece that I can eventually put on my site. I am still putting the finishing touches on the piece and I will post it when it’s finished.
Update: View the .SWF (it should size to your browser window if you have the flash plugin)
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