odorous oeuvre

By leo | Published: September 4, 2008

Soap Opera is a conceptual product by sovrappensiero meant to act as a painting for the blind. A picture frame made of perfumed soap is touched with hands moistened by a sponge under the upturned corner of the frame. While offering different colors to the sighted viewer, they provide a far richer experience to the blind. More than a good example of universal design, Soap Opera is a tool that could be adapted for any visual artwork to serve a second olfactory role.

thanks to mocoloco for putting a name to this work

Posted in art, materials, perception, tangible, universal design | Comments closed

cartoon software

By leo | Published: September 3, 2008

Google’s new browser is a nice design, but I was far more impressed with the design of the cartoon explaining the motivations, design and implementation of yet another new browser. It’s worth a browse if you’re interested in how to illustrate complex design decisions, especially in graphical user interface and human-computer interaction design in general.

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re-mapping history

By leo | Published: September 2, 2008

I just finished Gavin Menzies‘ page-turner ‘1434,’ a book that proposes that a Chinese fleet visited Italy in that year and brought along with it world maps that paved the way for the European ‘Age of Exploration’ and technical documents that laid the groundwork for many Renaissance ‘inventions.’ The controversial book is largely an amateur work; Menzies relies on the unpaid contributions of dozens of researchers and hundred of contributors to his first best-seller’s web site, 1421.tv. What is refreshing about the writing style is that he is self-conscious about the uncertainty of his hypotheses; constant references are made to evidence that has yet to be found, evidence that merits further study, and hypotheses that still depend on future work to even be proposed. It speaks as much of history as about the research process. Menzies’ greatest contribution – theories aside – is the open disclosure of a research project so massive that it depends on the contributions and collaboration from thousands around the world to advance.

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alter doodles

By leo | Published: August 29, 2008

No Robots Please! is an elementary school workshop by bioengineer Alan Outten where he introduced children to alternate design concepts and prompted them to invent their own. He began by introducing images mind-altering works such as the Eames’ Powers of Ten, Auger + Loizeau’s Audio Tooth, Raby + Evans’ Meat-eating products and Vacanti’s Human ear on mouse. They then produced design sketches of their ideas, which are categorized into Super Plants, Altered Animals, Transportation, Transhumanism, Gadgets and Gizmos, Lifestyle, Personal Fabrication and Artificial Life. The workshop prompted brilliant product concepts, some of which are shown in this post. Best of all you can download the entire 313-page book free from kithkin.

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taiwan power

By leo | Published: August 28, 2008

Picture 045

Seen on the streets of Tainan City, Taiwan

Posted in art, guerilla | Comments closed

city bits

By leo | Published: August 27, 2008

Born out of the Rome Reborn project, CityEngine is a powerful tool for modeling entire cities in perfect detail. Because of its roots in art history the aims of the project are to render every building, not just the most important landmarks. Their digital model contains 200 monuments painstakingly modeled by art historians, and over 7,000 secondary buildings rendered parametrically. This ability to generate cities based on a shape grammar language is what makes the program unique, as they demonstrate in this video:

Paramteric design can be explained through this video, which shows how multiple building styles can be generated by tweaking the parameters on basic geometric primitives:

While these techniques are ideally suited to the special effects industry, they are slowly gaining clout in the architectural field where they allow an incredibly powerful way of systematically designing at any scale while ensuring consistency and favoring granularity.

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digital luck

By leo | Published: August 26, 2008

In Taiwan last week I bought this tiny, tiny USB key fashioned as a cell phone charm with a diminutive fabric sleeve meant to make it look like a good luck charm. Aside from its ridiculously small size for a 1GB memory stick (less than 1 gram, 27 x 12 x 2mm), it has a charming pretense – maybe the files contained within will have special powers?

Posted in marketing, product design | Comments closed

construction costs

By leo | Published: August 25, 2008

Gavin Lee‘s workshop group at Nightmarket ’08 produced a Flash game highlighting the social costs of destruction. Using a Wii remote, users can drive a bulldozer through a landscape, knocking down trees and houses amid satisfying sounds of demolition. After the frenzied destruction, you are awarded points based on the number of displaced people and animals. As a founder of the “suhua bakery,” the successful web-based campaign that prevented the construction of a massive highway through the pristine wilderness of Taiwan’s undeveloped east coast, Lee has taken advantage of the workshop and the ease of producing interactive games to draw attention to larger social issues by making the player a participant in the rampant destruction caused by reckless real estate developments.

Posted in art, conviviality, environment, marketing | Comments closed