interfaces, their buttons and the village idiot

I stared at my friend’s washing machine. It has a million buttons, a big wheel, a digital display and a pile of little red and orange lights, with the odd green thrown in. I consider myself not a complete idiot, but have little patience with domestic appliances. They are here to make our lives simpler.
So I started thinking: over the years, how many different washing machines have I used? How many laudromats? Hundreds, easily. I have moved alot. And yet, every time I use one, I must take some time to figure out how it works. Read the rest »

words on walls

Graffiti, street art, vandalism, drunken scribbles, guerrilla communication, culture jamming – call it whatever you want.

Graffiti pieces focus on form, colour, technique; it is art, it is shape and message. The scribbles or stencilwork uses words and rarely seems to bother with the finer parts of typography or texture. Read the rest »

the great flash in the sky

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bachelor thesis: a walk in the rift valley, four million years ago

So what was that bachelor thesis all about? I have had that question a few times, and now that I have room to breathe again, I will elaborate.

At the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., they have a programme that’s been going on for a number of years; The Human Origins Program. This is to bring evolution and research out there, mainly via the exhibition Hall of Human Origins. In the US, this is considered politics. I venture to say that in Europe this is considered history. So as the americans need to do sensible research, they also to a certain extent need to step carefully. Interesting, bizarre and a wee bit disturbing to me; this tip-toeing.

Scientists argue. Scientists have specialities, and some are extremely specialised in very detailed, at times small and obscure fields. Sometimes they want to share, sometimes not. Sometimes they dislike other scientists definitions, sometimes the overlap of fields can be enriching or frustrating. They work on projects, and they create the tools they need. It seems that they, for all sorts of reasons, creates their own databases; gather their data and information in forms that suits them best there and then. Not necessarily very sustainable, but if you don’t want to share your findings, well, I suppose you could have it inscribed on scrolls under your bed. Read the rest »

the bachelor years

And so three years ended. Higher education. Just as I got good at playing the game, it is over. It was a mixed kettle; these three years. Most of the courses seemed exciting on paper, and a good handful of them turned out to be dreadful. Pointless. Insulting. Yes, digital media production is a new-ish branch, and my university college a small one, but dmPro is clearly the stepchild of the IT department. A good deal of the lecturers there would rather not have us meddling in their pure, proper information technology. The sign of small minds. Read the rest »

wildlife, geeklife

I haz nut.

Work work – no time to sightseeing or go arty photographing. Little snippets, though. Read the rest »

images of no-things

Photos are not always meant to show something. Sometimes they are only there to contain shapes and colours. Sometimes, it is not a magic moment, but a play of light and an interesting composition. Could it surprise you? Read the rest »

make, break and create

We have this medium: it is free, it is flexible, it is far reaching. It is relatively new.
We should play with it. We should make things that are broken, we should break things that works. And then fix them. And then develop them. Then throw them in the bin, and go play with something else. Then build something out of broken parts and see what happens. Duct tape and superglue. Read the rest »

Born in medieval times. the bookbinder, the GPS and the e-book

I study digital media. I was born in the early 70′. I am a dinosaur. My fellow students are 15+ years younger than me – born in another era, on a different planet. We learn roughly the same things from opposite directions; we each hold an end of the stick, so to speak. But we see everything in different shades. Some things comes naturally to me; they are lost. Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot.

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Pick or guess your favourite font – sansserifs

Been awfully bad at writing, these last few months, so I start carefully with a font-post. A sans-serif is not just a sans-serif! All the trad ones are there, with some odd ones thrown in for entertaninment. I don’t get a lot of response on the fontthing, but hey – I like it. Which one is the pretty one?

Go oooon – guess!

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An award for silence

I have been given a peer-award for my blog. Linda, over at The task at hand found me a deserving recipient for the Arte Y Pico award. I am of course honoured. That someone reads what I write is flabbergasting; an award is mystifying. Read the rest »

Do I still have it?

As exam dates starts to show up on the best-before-dates on the perishables, the educational pressure cooker is heating up. Some are dropping out of some courses, some hang in there by the skin of their teeth, some stay under the comfy duvet. The wheat from the chaff, possibly, or maybe just bad judgement under strain. Doing things in media courses can be pretty stressful – there is a lot of lugging heavy equipment around, and with no hierarchy democracy is prevalent in every bit of production. Design by committee. And we all know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Useful for certain places and certain tasks, but not a versatile, esthetically pleasing object. Read the rest »

pottery. art, craft and atomic weight

I used to do pottery.
In fact, I used to be a potter. A full year full time course in Derry, learning from the eminent renaissance man, Brian McGee, and I worked for a while as a production thrower. We build and fired electric, gas, raku and wood kilns, nearly blew up the building, made a mess of glazes; getting our heads around molecular calculations, triaxial blends and the fundamentals: the periodic table and the building-blocks of the planet. Everything under your feet.
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Large things, close up –

I like textures. I like odd angles. Beautiful concrete, several hundred year old wood, steel beams. Physical, almost abstract. Everywhere. Character. Decay. Details containing the whole. Childish attention to details.

bucket
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Back to the grind – higher education, year 2

This blog was initially ment as a school related project, but I am a fickle person, it seems. There are so many other things that interests me, and expanding connections, ideas and thoughts simply seems more fitting to the blog format instead of a record of day-to-day minutiae.
Besides, I also use it as an experiment in how the Great Web works. Read the rest »