randformblog on math, physics, art, and design |
Just a short link. I had registered in time for the Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign but was put on a waiting list and finally didnt hear again from the administration. As it turns out I am rather happy about this now, since it is a beautiful day outside and the major informations are and will be on we-make-money-not-art.
Kenneth Arrow and George Bush – Arrow receives the National Medal of Science, 2004
A previous randform post dealt with collective knowledges and in particular certain basic knowledges which were assumed to be connected with evolution. In the post it was asserted that collective knowledge may -among others- be hidden in the subconscious and that design/marketing may be a mean to detect something of it.
In this series of posts I haven’t yet really adressed the question of HOW a collective knowledge or preference assumes shape, but sofar rather focused on potentially involved mechanisms (maybe to be continued). And in fact the formation of collective preferences (related: the question of formation of coherence and focus) is a very, very difficult – but interesting – issue and this post here is only a first (and almost historical) glimpse into this matter.
cool or cruel tool? “zwitterpartie” (crutchstilts) – randforms medgadget 2.0 of the day.
An update to other post about color (e.g.) An interesting process of additiv color mixing is the socalled Dufaycolor process, which was e.g. used by Bauhaus Professor László Moholy-Nagy (see below Dufay Color photograph). A very recommendable book about his photographic works is the book:
Colour in Transparency – Photographic Experiments in Color, Fotographische Experimente in Farbe 1934-1946, edited by Jeannine Fiedler and Hattula Moholy-Nagy for the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, Steidl Publishers Göttingen
Hospitals are often white in white. This doesn’t help to increase visibility for viruses and bacterias, but white has (at least in some cultures) the symbolic character of purity. However the traces of visitors on white walls need not necessarily be stain, they could be graffiti or art. A famous art example are the works of Robert Rauschenberg. (-> Link for some white Rauschenberg). From Wikipedia:
The “white paintings” produced by Rauschenberg at Black Mountain in 1951, while they contain no image at all, are said to be so exceptionally blank and reflective that their surfaces respond and change in sympathy with the ambient conditions in which they are shown, “so you could almost tell how many people are in the room,” as Rauschenberg once commented.
It is a plain observation that stylish western blogs (as seen from easteastBerlin) are currently often – very white. Concerned about our statistics and some critics about our oriental webdesign, we will follow this white trend for some days and make the vest or theme of our blog purely white and observe our statistics. We take this as a kind of miniblogdesignpoll analog with this poll. Be aware that if a suburbiablog picks up a trend then this may be mainstream.
But coming to the point – todays randform suggestion for web2.0 is a tool, which allows visitors to scribble onto the pages of a blog (a blog graffiti – poesiealbum-tool) – which would make the metaphor of the blog as a white space for communication etc. maybe more tangible. It is of course possible to scribble on Flash or processing applets but these need to be embedded.
In this context one should also mention that Tims jDvi (a viewer for dvi – the output of LaTex) has the option to scribble on the dvi file, which makes e.g. collaboration on a math paper easier.
Manicone is a new work by Tim and me (daytar). It is a sketch of a humanoid form in fourdimensional space. It is also a sketch in the sense that we kept the technical realization as simple as possible, i.e. with the application there comes (sofar) no Wii remote or wand, no 3D glasses, no virtual cave like environment etc. – just mouse pointer and sliders.
The modularity of the underlying software jreality however allows in principle for all these extensions (even if Open GL doesn’t have the same transparency capabilities as Tims software viewer). A real 3D immersion in e.g. a cave-like environment with a nice input device may lead to a more direct perceptional access however it is not necessarily allways needed.
An advantage of the simplicity of the application is that it allows for putting Manicone as a Java applet or webstart application on our website (which we will do soon).
Further technical extensions are then a question of the given architectural, technical etc. circumstances. Manicone is a sketch – in any aspect but the work it took to do it.
Following a long tradition (one post long at the moment, but quite a while ago) we present more music instruments that deserve more attention (together with the reason for that):
the octobass and the subcontrabass tubax: size does matter – finally
the nano guitar: Nanotechnology is the future. Build in ’97 it took 6 years until they were able to play it (well an other model, but they sure did not want to claim that stratocasters are unplayable in contrast to flying Vs).
