Itchy fingers while watching Batman
Dieter Rams: Lessons in good design
I must admit; I know very little about design history. In school, we agreed to reject all our heroes, we would not be held down by our own comparisons with these agreed upon masters, the shakers and makers of our profession. Our own misconceptions about our skill levels or talent can rob you of your own self-worth, and we wanted to learn from the masters without losing ourselves at the same time. Time spent drooling over inspiration blogs are negatively proportionate to the time making things.
A bi-product of this, is of course that I find myself at times ignorant to the people other colleagues adore and hold up as design deities. And so, I will not pretend to have an intimate knowledge of today’s theme; Dieter Rams. I had heard of his name and knew him to have done something for Braun at some point, but that was about it. And as you can see from the videos below, I should be ashamed of myself for not being well versed in his cosmology of design. At any rate, I would like to introduce you to him, in light of a recent music album, called “music for Dieter Rams” by Jon Brooks, a work inspired by his designs.
His 10 commandments of design seems to be a good starting point for a series of print designs. I’m telling you as a way to push myself to do it, of course.
You can read more about the album at CDM, if you like.
Super-inspiration: Earthships
I recently became aware of earthships, basically a zero-emission, super-sustainable house. Or as the movement itself puts it; “An Earthship is a radically sustainable green building made with recycled materials”. The difference between this and the rest of the sustainable housing concepts, is that this is actually being built, and have been working great for twenty years now, with new technology perfecting it.
What first struck me is the looks of these houses, clearly resembling something from a Moebius panel or other sci-fi classics. Pioneered in the seventies by architect Mike Reynolds, these housing concepts are not only made by recycled materials, they are cheap to make (about $20 000), don’t require too much engineering skills to set up, and are 100% “off the grid”, meaning they don’t require to be hooked up to any outside plumbing, electricity or gas. Price is of course the biggest factor, and when building an earthship is significantly cheaper than a conventional house, there’s no doubt people will join in. Plus you save about $3 000 a year in utilities.
I can’t stop imagining possible uses of my own trade in this, I would love to work with the visual communications in this project, making it less hippie-like and more feasible for, say, a banker, to live in one. Right now you kinda have to put on some dreadlocks to be allowed in, I feel. There is no reason this system shouldn’t be spreading across the globe faster than it already is, and if living sustainable means I get to live in Yoda’s house, count me in. Now I just want to spend the whole summer drawing my dream earthship house. Imagine a whole village of those things!
There’s more information on the project at earthship.org, and lots of niceness both at the green tribe and good. There’s also a youtube channel, and some books.
F*ck you. Pay me.
Some brilliant advice here on how to handle troublesome clients, by Mike Monteiro on Creative mornings. Fellow designers. take heed! And be sure to check out some more of the great videos from the creative mornings site. (Via GSG)
Forever weightless: Verk
With myself being held up with my exam project, it’s time to give heed to some other cats. I’ve been waiting to say a few words for a little while about one of Norways best rappers, and a man I get to call my friend; Verk.
Most rappers these days take the fastest train to club bangers and radio friendly hits(not necessarily a bad thing though), but Verk manages to stay clear of all the hubbub without sacrificing a thing. He’s been doing his thing uncompromisingly for soon a decade now (if my maths are still any good), and has become, I will say, a stellar poet. And after this years concert at By:larm, even more people have started to see what this guy is about.
Chance has it he’s playing a show this very Thursday at Victoria, with a pretty interesting band constellation, too. If you like the sounds and want to hear more, go give him a thumbs up on facebook.
Project sketches so far
I’ve gotten a bit further on my exam project. If you’re new here, you can read about it here.
I’ve tried mapping some simple knobs to the playhead position of a clip, thus visualizing the position of the knob:
But that stuff is easy, and doesn’t hold any conceptual significance. What’s more interesting is that I’ve come a long way towards figuring out how to make the performance more available to the audience, and visualize what is being played live and not. I’ve come to call it “virtual artists”, meaning that additional “band members”, playing the pre-arranged parts can be projected into the performance.
At first I had the idea of making the Virtual artists based on primitive shapes, or some kind of minimalist characters of some kind. But I’m afraid it would turn the whole project into a character building workshop, since making such figures emote can be really hard. Right now I’m working on projecting “copies” of the actual artist on stage, so you’ll have one physical and several other virtual copies of the same guy, playing as a band. So this way the virtual band members will be “playing the playback” very visually, instead of hiding it, enforcing transparency and honesty in the performance.
Additionally, the virtual band members themselves can be controlled just like the music, so, as an example, one parameter on some instrument can correspond to the head rotation of one of the projections. Or anything, really.
I spent some days experimenting with 3D, making objects that move around in space, trying to see how they could interact with the physical objects. But when you have the 3D-glasses on, everything that’s not 3D gets thrown out of whack, and it can be quite hard on the eyes at length. It’s also very dependent on the audience’s position in space, to draw the picture out correctly. So now I’m trying to find ways of getting a three-dimensional effect, without all the stereoscopic humbug.
Another element with the performance I’m trying to figure out, is the table. Most electronic instruments need to sit on a table in front of the artist, like a DJ. But this table creates a distance to the audience I really don’t like.
One idea I’ve had is to break up the table into smaller squares, to create space between them. Also, setting them up diagonally towards the audience makes them a passage, not a blockage.
Through the use of fancy lights, table parts can become “invisible” during the performance, shifting focus from one part to the other. So if one of the virtual band members are playing a really nice solo, I can shut out the entire rest of the “band” for a bit. This can be done either simply by muting the lights on areas, or by using some semi-transparent materials and such, combined with light sources inside the tables themselves.
The tables can also be used as direct interface elements in the music, using cameras and projectors together to make touch sensitive areas. This way the side of the table could become a big fader for example, or the square top can switch to become a X/Y-pad in a special breakdown.
The sky is really the limit here, since I’m only making a proof of concept, and don’t have to think about budgets too much. Implementing these ideas in an actual setting making it really interactive and not pre-rendered is only a matter of code though. After my exam, I would love to take this project further, to use it in an actual setting instead of it being mainly theoretical. So scalability is key here.
I have partnered up with Njål Paulsberg for the music, so I know I’ll have some awesome tunes to work with. You might know Njål from his solo act Njaal, his band project Put Your Hands Up For Neo-Tokyo, or as key member of the super-group Young Dreams.
We are now going through tons of his old song sketches, to find something to fit the project neatly. I’m telling you, he’s got some gold on that computer of his.
What I have outlined here is basically the framework for a performance. Going forward, I’ll be working more on the what, not the how.I can barely wait.
Thanks for reading! If this triggers anything in your own head, I’ll be thrilled to hear about them in the comments, don’t be afraid to share!
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