How many different washing programmes have I used in my life? Probably three. Or attempted to use. Often, I am not hundred percent sure of what combination of temperature, prewash or not, spin cycle etc the thing is actually going to do. Or what I actually “need”. What is the difference between “economy” and “quick”? When would I choose a ten degree difference in temperature? 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 or 90 degrees Celsius? And what real difference does the alternative spin cycles make? “baby clothes”? “Clinical rinse”? “Normal”? “economy”? “bio”? Do I need “prewash”?

Read The Fucking Manual, I hear you say. Seriously. I think not.

In Ireland, I was confronted with washing machines that let you adjust all manner of things, but would only use cold water, regardless of temperature chosen.

Washing clothes in our cleanliness-obsessed world is not difficult. They slosh around in some water, with some soap and possibly some fabric softener. We probably wash clothes more often than necessary; no tar, oil, sap or heavy duty filth. And yet, I am given a million options.

Granted, I am not a very domesticated animal, but the endless options are way beyond the call of duty for a pretty simple appliance.

A friend of mine have a cooker, and if the power goes for a split second, the watch starts blinking the familiar 00:00. The interesting thing is that the cooker does not work until the clock is set. How does that happen, what mad set of circumstances made him figure that out? And the guy who made the thing; what was he thinking?

This is interface design. Process and product.

I am, in a way not a fan of user testing left, right and centre. I suspect a lot of pointless user harassing are being done out there, but maybe we need to employ the village idiot to ask “why is this button here?”
Someone to break what we make, so that we can fix it.

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. It is interesting how something scribbled on a wall somewhere gets photographed and acquires yet another level of texture and meaning, in that it is yet again removed from context.

I suspect that a good deal of the ones I like the best are not written by people with deep philosophical or poetic insight (though it seems that way), but possibly by dopeheads or drunks with a pen. I will never know, and the statement can mean whatever I want it to, coloured by the grungy photograph; someone took a pic with their mobile, and for some reason uploaded it.

It is communication in a wonderfully abstract way. Sometimes funny, sometimes political, sometimes absurd. Guerrilla communication.

Huffington post Uplifting vandalism
Pictures of walls
Confessions of the university of Chicago Crescat Graffiti

Things have happened since then, and I am very happy with the technology, to the degree that it takes up large amount of my time, contains my work, and hope for a job in the inner, deeper levels of information and data handling and meaning.

(Mount Bromo, Java, Indonesia)

Today, we travel as flashpackers. Last time in Australia, in 2005, I remember it annoyed me that I had piles of cables, electronics, discs and data in my backpack. I am getting used to it. A couple of years back, I went to Damascus, and my professor wanted me to go to the souq, find a carpet-seller, and show him the (uploaded) photo he took of him a few years before. I stared at the prof in disbelief: did he think I would bring my widescreen macbook along on my holiday!?

Anyway. I remembered back to my jaunt through South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand back way yonder. Not able to read the papers or understand the news on telly, I only got glimpses of what went on in the world when I came to a large city and could buy a Newsweek. If I bothered. Or found a crumpled copy in some dusty mountain village in Sumatra. Grand and gruesome happenings in the world passed me by.

I dawdled, wandered, splashed, spluttered, lollygagged and pottered around, unaware of riots in Europe, unaware of riots down the road. I had several poste restante, and got news from Indonesia via my family. Four weeks later.

So now, we pack the internet. And in so doing, we pack our history, connections, friends and habits. And habits is the clue here. I was, back then, cut off. And in being cut off, I was forced to take part in what went on around me. At times it was tiring, at times the cultures and the demands on me was more than I liked, as a female Scandinavian travelling alone. I imagine that if I had internet back then, my 21 year-old self would be online whingeing about the locals, the annoying invasion of my personal space, the incomprehensible customs and reactions.
As it were, there was no Net, and slowly I learned to understand why things happened, learned to avoid it, live with it or enjoy it.

This is dangerous ground for me: I do not want to glorify the “good old days”. On the other hand, you could say that if I had had internet, I would have been able to connect with locals before I left; I could have googled incomprehensible cultural differences. I would have learned from that, with my fact-hungry, analytical left brain.

At one point, I became, relatively, “an old hand”. I saw people fresh of their planes, who blundered into and stamped over local customs and sensibilities. It made me cringe. Sometimes I could not explain why, other than “you don’t do that”. Right-brain stuff.

There are loss-and-gain, obviously. But the feeling of isolation; of being basically cut off (and yet part of a society) for months.. I wouldn’t mind that again. But it is not possible.

You cannot step twice into the same river.

-b

(selling goodies, Bukittingi, Sumatra, Indonesia)

(the images are all scans from my slides from back then)

I am thinking around information architecture, interaction design, human-computer interaction, infographics. You’d think that would be reasonably easy to find. Nah.

Some classify HCI under psychology, some see infographics as either arts or engineering. Some see it as information technology, but then from a programming perspective. Some see it as art, but then with crayons and brushes. Some see infographics as library studies or mathematics. Or “informatics”. In some cases, “information” is bundled with “education”, and on top of that is classes in pedagogy. With pictures of teachers and little children..

So what search terms do I use? Is this my fault, for being stupid at searching, is it that the obvious cross-field master I am looking for does not exist, or is it the relatively low-level information handling that is the problem? I cannot search for “masters degree usa information” – though this would be the lowest common denominator of what I am after. I want to work with information. Visually. Adding “visual” gives me a squillion hits in art.

At one large university I was asked to fill in a questionnaire, and doing that, I got the message that they do not accept applicants from my country… somehow, I do not believe that for a moment. It is disturbing; that the basic level of information gathering is obviously faulty: what else is not correct?

Not to mention the religious aspect. It is hard for Europeans to get their heads around universities with religious connections, connotations or allegiances. What does it actually mean? Why get religion into it? I find it a little disturbing, but suspect I don’t really know how it works.

ANSA, the association of Norwegian students abroad have a desperately outdated list of subjects. The only thing there that is vaguely related to what I am looking for is “engineering” or “art”. None of which, on their own, is anywhere near being relevant.

I have found one master programme, that seems to suit me, at one of the most prestigious universities – it was difficult to find, but once I got the pages, the information is clear and straight. But surely; I cannot rely on one application to one university, and so the hunt goes on.

There are engines. There are search engines for grad studies. They have the same problem; and I end up wading through piles and piles of irrelevant stuff. Am I “Arts and architecture”?.. not quite. “Computers and technology”? .. hmm, a little, but not entirely. Those engines do not give me courses I know exist; that tells me that not all courses are represented in those engines. Then what else is missing?

All I want is to play with complex information.

Why should that be so difficult?

after 7000 pics of utter darkness, I got this… it is at night… picture below shows the same pic without lightening. Note the lampposts and lighted windows.

I have fiddled with small motorboats with outboards and sailboats now and then, but with a few slightly dramatic exceptions it has been “sunday sailing”. The big thing has been in the back of my head for years, but a little apprehensive about my own seaworthiness, a little doubt about my own competence, finding a boat, finding a boat with good people… It sounds scary. You don’t want to be mid-atlantic, and then discover that the skipper is a suicidal maniac, and you incapacitated by seasickness with no will to live.

So when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to come along for a few days, from Germany to Denmark, there is of course only one answer; when?

When I arrived on the scene, the boat was moored on one of the million canals in Holland. “Think winter”, the capt’n said, I brought woolly beanie, gloves, raingear and a fleece. But that was the end of my pessimism. Wellies was not an option, I go barefoot longer than most. Long johns, no way. Sleepingbag for summer, a few CD’s, camera, iPad and phone fully charged.

To make a long, rather slow story short: stinking hot, glorious sunshine, deliciously sunburned, my geeky pasty skin-colour altered dramatic with outdoor days, water, wine, laughs and stories. Quaint dutch countryside (where ARE the dutch!? they say they live on top of each other, that the country is too small for six million people. I saw only quaint canal life).

The crew had a discussion about the all-important anchor dram. My argument is that it is a shot of something interesting when you leave the harbour; like a stirrup dram, before setting out. A toast for safe travels, good weather and see-you-around & godbless. Other opinions was that it is for safe arrivals. We compromised, and tried both solutions. It is important to listen to others on a small vessel, and find solutions everyone can be happy with :-)

It seems, that with time, limited access to internet, discussions take on a different hue. Small things, little wonders are discussed and ideas spun around without any real need for an answer, and the slow thought process uses different parts of the brain than when you can instantly check it out. Imagination. Flight.

Where we went is, in a way not important or ultimately interesting as such. There was very little wind, so a good deal of motoring, a good deal of canals, including the Kiel canal, that is one bizarre but ultimately boring stretch. When the locks opened in Kiel, we landed in the middle of the Kieler Woche. It was mad. Wind, sea, boats, ships everywhere: possibly the largest collection of strange vessels. Things with sails I have no name for, sails in colours, levels, floors, tiers. Vikings, phoenicians, medieval, warships, tall ships, small ships, one, two, three, four masts. Cannon ports, rowing ports, hanseatic. The smell of salt and sea wonderful, after the canal, and to see a horizon. Blue above and below.

Then there was wind, then there was sailing at last. I was a five year old in a toy shop. Happily ignorant, with a stupid grin on my face. We made our way north to Marstal. It was, admittedly, good to get out of Germany. I have had good times in Germany before, but that overhanging harbourmaster-system-ridden-small-kings-of-small-kingdoms.. well. I will not bore you with details. Besides, my German is rotten. We swapped the courtesy flag for the danish one, and toasted with aquavit when we crossed into danish waters.

It was bliss. It was fun. I got that bachelor thing out of my system and reset. Balm. It was peace, a good book, good people, laughs, stories, good food and a with a sound intake of alcohol. A little anecdote: in the lock of the Kieler canal, a dutch boat was moored to ours. We had a beer each. The dutch guy looks at us, and with slight disgust says “first beer today, yes?” or somesuch. An affirmative but untrue reply. Oh, those Norwegians! The sheer irresponsibility!

On the last leg, from Samsø to Ebeltoft, we had a little more wind. A 5-6 on Beaufords scale or thereabouts. I was happy as the proverbial pig in shit, perched in the cockpit.

Next time, I will bring a couple of good books, trival pursuit, a harmonica and sunscreen. Trust me on the sunscreen.

So now I am in Denmark, in my brothers house, reading books and blogs, dreaming. An old longing reawakened. Och. I guess I will have to try. Should you know of good people crossing to the Caribbean, please call…

To the capt’n and first fender: I am grateful to you for bringing me along.

About my seaworthiness, I still have no real idea.

(pictures here)

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.

Anyway. Working on The Human Origins Program team is Dr. Matthew Tocheri, a paleoanthropologist specialising in the evolution of the hand and foot. Part of his job is to gather data in a cross-field database. This covers several specialist fields, including paleoanthropology, archeology, vertebrae zoology, geochronology, paleoecology, paleoenvironment and of course geology. He collects data wherever he can find it, from old publications, from fellow researchers. Apparently, it has not been attempted to collect data from these related fields together in this manner before. Matthew collects, and created a database that will accept different definitions, different names and different approaches. This is an exercise in flexibility, and therefore; sustainability.
Understanding that no data is also information.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. – Einstein –

So. In the middle of this, we landed. Two computer engineering students, and one student of digital media. What could we do, and how on earth could we handle those specialist fields?!

The idea was to make a website, that would make it possible to handle these data, show relations and scope quicky and intuitively.

We drew, scribbled, and tried to get our heads around Matthews database. This is complex data with, at times, complex relations. What a field day, for a digital media student! Deep time, deep space…

This is the prototype, as it stands at the end of the project. Google maps, five timelines, and a field for data. It seems simple; it seems obvious, but the road was hard. I like to believe that to make something complex seem effortless is an art; and is the litmus test of a system like this. If you can think “of course, that is how it must be done, it is obvious” – it is the colombus’ egg. It is art, it is magic.
In reality; lots of work.

It is not easy. But it is simple. – House –

We had amazing days in Washington D.C., working with Matthew and the others in the Human Origins Program. (plenty of pictures here) It was relief, and an extreme privilege to work with solid data and talented, smart and dedicated people. The wonderful, beautiful feeling of working with real, sensible content, and not trying to sell sand in Sahara; creating designs and frameworks without content. It was mad, fab and hard work. We spend about six weeks all in all in D.C., and with the exception of one day and a hospitalisation, we worked at the museum every day. Not much sightseeing, not much fresh air. Back in Norway, we did pretty much the same…

There is a million small things to consider, building something like this. Personally, I am primarily interested in the overall structure, the architecture, the interface and the graphic design. To display scope is very important: if you’re looking for information, and you know nothing of the source, it must pretty easily show you that it might contain what you’re looking for or not. This is – as of yet – a site for students and scientists of the fields, and I think I can assume that they have a little more than a two-second attention-span. Still. Scope is absolutely essential.

This is in many ways infographics. I do obsess, though, over tiny, tiny details. The amazing privilege of being allowed to do both: play with ideas, overall structures, grand plans and gestures, and at the same time dig into tiny pixels.

An example of the detail-obsession, would be the angled text above the timeline icons. I really, really wanted them angled, and the amount of hassle and fiddling to make them, place them, and allow them to be clickable and roll-overs was unreal. Of course, as we kept inventing uses for them, I had to adjust, but it is just one example of obsessive fiddling that would easily have drowned in another project…

..and that brings me to the boys. Lars and Audun handled the programming and database part, while I obsessed with html, css, graphics, interface and structures. Bless them. Not only was it an enormous privilege to work with the anthropologists, but my team was the best. Of course they were, I hand-picked them myself ;-)

Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process. – M. C. Escher –

That I could fiddle, learn, dig and struggle with things I like, and at the same time important progress was made in other parts, was wonderful. I suspect the boys feel the same. We became a tightly knit team, and we had to talk through definitions and find a common language. We shared the dedication for the project, and nearly worked ourselves into collapse. It was hard, we all had to learn new things ourselves, we all banged fists on the table in frustration at times, but I’d do it all over again. There was plenty of compromises. And plenty of laughs. Ah, the giggles… I will miss that.

But out of the other end, came a prototype we are proud of, that others like and admire, that several people might be interested in, and I believe Matthew is happy with. We got top grades on the project, that I for one feel was the only option. It was not by far the most important thing, but feels good anyway, and the good people at the museum expected nothing less.

At the time of writing, the prototype is hosted on our servers, and only contains some of the data from the database. We hope, though, that it will go live from Smithsonian before x-mas. I am hoping they will continue to develop it; I hope we have been part of pointing out a direction.

Now, as I have finished my bachelor, new adventures beckons. If all goes well, there might be another project for the museum. I keep my fingers crossed, and take a few weeks well deserved holiday. It is summer, and I still have that indoor skin colour that I always thought was the trademark of geeks only…

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.

I have learned though. Mainly because I wanted to. It seems, you could get through a bachelor without learning much; without much ability. The system is made to get as many as possible through, degrading the meaning of a bachelor, and offending the ones who actually work their asses off. At the end of the day, it is a yes or no question whether you have a degree, not always the grades, attitude or accomplishments. We are considered sheep; bachelor students.

They say the world becomes beautiful and exciting at master level. I will find out, in about a year.

I realise the system is not made for me, though. I am fifteen years too old. Of course, there are kids that are way smarter than me, but I have experience in spotting gobshait. I suspect some lecturers get used to having 18-20 years olds that tend to accept whatever bullshit they say. Not so easy, then, with that old hag in the front row being difficult.

I’ve had fun too. The last year was hard, hard work, close to breaking point. But I found a small handful of good people, and you can do anything, if you have good people. Talent, hard work and nonsense is essential.

Pictures from those years  here

So now I am unemployed, soon to be homeless, and the world of wonderful uncertainties unfold. New adventures.

Best of all. I can get out of this place.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I haz nut.

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

hey – she’s leaving, taking nuts away..

fraternising with the IT-crowd

anyone but me seeing the beauty of the book, the running fridge geeky t-shirt and the craniums peeping out of the cupboards behind?

ashes to ashes, dust to dust (this is what we are)

pretzel nonsense. cheap thrills.

I haz nut too