The Picasso’ painting “Two characters” looked a little similar to me, when I saw it in a photobook recently, so I searched the web and noticed that some other sites also picked that up. It seems like the finder icon is strongly “inspired” by the painting. Sure it couldn’t be exact (aside from the obvious reasons) because it’s a bit too sad and depressing. But still, can u see it?
As I predicted earlier, the wave of tablets came from this year’s CES. There’s so many of them, both good and bad, that we surely can talk about a revolution in browsing. Some of them run flash, some don’t, some do it in a limited way. But the touch input will be the new browsing in the starting decade. And we should think about that while designing.
That might mean a small revolution in web design, towards a mixture of print and web styles, that are easier to grasp on tablets. Maybe “swipe to change page” mechanisms, more jQuery and Javascript, video and sound. And bigger, clear controls. We’ll see where it goes next, but since most of the internet is about consuming content, we might see a big transformation of the way in which the content is delivered. Exciting times!
We tend to go towards perfection of many kinds constantly in our lives. Technology gives us HD and megapixels for clearer images, higher sampling rates for better audio. Everything is better, faster, stronger. Or whatever.
But at the same time the rising popularity of the imperfections of the yesteryear (especially in visual and sound arts) are a thing that’s really hip today. Yeah, vintage is pretty hip, but it’s not really because of the hipsters, because most of them are way too young to feel nostalgic about these things. They kind of made it their style, but the world doesn’t follow just one group. And yet the world likes noise. The world likes vintage. The world likes slightly warmer colors in photographs, and grain, and smudged borders. Why?
As I said before, it cannot be nostalgia, because yeah, some of us (like me) remember the days of the 80′s point’n'shoot kodak’s but most of the internet now doesn’t. It cannot be just a trend too though. Why you ask ?
Well let me answer that.
A good example is with sound – you take a simple sine-wave and play it. It’s the most basic sound and it’s pretty boring. But when you add some whitenoise, and some crackles, hiss and vinyl distortion you get something far warmer, harmonic and what’s more important natural. Sure we see and hear the world mostly in HD, but we don’t want the reality to be exactly what we see and hear. Especially since it actually never is. Want proof ?
Go record a concert with your phone’s camera. The sound might be getting better with each year and each phone, but it’ll never beat being there. Even with the most pro equipment (like 20 microphones everywhere and preamps) it might sound clear but it still lacks something.
Another example – colors and noise in images. Take a simple square and paint it red. Then take another square, paint it red as well but add a small amount of noise to it. Which one looks “better” or “more natural” ?
In most cases it’s the noisy one, the imperfect one. Because the computer monitor is pretty perfect already, so everything that’s just one color (or even a gradient) looks kind of like plastic. And we don’t like plastic, right?
It’s not even about a regular texture on a color, it’s about making the color a little bit imperfect to make it more real. Because in real life if we look at a red square somewhere it won’t be 100% completely red, unless it’s printed on a glossy high quality paper and it’s not worn out in any way. But give it some time and it will look different.
Those imperfections are of course also present in the videos, with more and more artists adding noise, scratches and discoloration to their videos. And the results? Well we tend to like those videos more for some reason than the crisp and clear HD footage that’s well lit and almost resembles a plastic version of reality. The video below is of an iPhone app that let’s you record some vintage videos. If you watch it you’ll see that it can make even simple shots look nice, without anything going on in them. We’ll probably see a lot more of that vintage trend to come. Because vintage is (in our heads at least) closer to that warm reality we live in.
Unfortunately japan didn’t win the chance to organize the 2022 world cup in soccer, but their presentation is breathtaking. The amount of new technology that they’re showing is astonishing – on the fly translators, augmented reality and what’s even better a holographic representation of the main games in many other countries. Imagine that – you go to a stadium in your country and you see all the stars doing what they’re doing somewhere in Japan in real time. Well that won’t happen since Japan didn’t win and that sucks because an event like that could push the technology forward. Just watch the video
Doesn’t it always work like that? An event of a totally different kind can push the technology forward so it later can be used for many other things. Rock concerts anyone ?
Apple is pushing forward the magazine revolution by cooperating with news corp. and they want to create a tablet-only newspaper. This is revolutionary and exciting for a couple of reasons. One – right now the tablet papers are “versions” of a regular paper. This one will be completely 1′s and 0′s so less trees will die in the process. Good.
There seems to be a lot of discussion about it recently, but mostly content-wise or about their future plans – i.e. more electronic only but high quality content publications. And yet everyone seems to be missing one point – since we already kinda know how a tablet magazine should look and work in terms of visuals and interface, is it the time for an “apple style revolution” again? Will they invent a tablet newspaper interface of their own, or will they simply base it on the best ones out there (Flipboard). ?
We’ll probably see sometime mid-december. And if the interface will be new it might be a start for A LOT of change coming soon to the tablet publishing industry. Well unless it’s actually any good…
All of those comparisons between html5 and flash could give anybody but batman a headache. Good to know that someone with a sense of humor decided to make their clash a bit more “fun” than numbers, predictions and angry “thoughts on flash”. As with every technology, things have their advantages and disadvantages. And true, HTML5 is better battery-to-performance-wise, but Flash has some pretty cool tricks up it’s sleeve too. And even if the web moves away from flash video completely (which it has started to do) there will still be plenty of use for flash – gaming, “creative” showcase type websites and cartoons for which it is perfect.
The cool people at Code Computerlove decided to make a pong game (for two players) that uses FLASH to render one side of the table, and HTML5 to render the other. And they work together in harmony. Maybe it’s a hint towards the future? Huh, Steve?
You can check out the game and play it here. Enjoy!
It’s always great when charities involve artists into a cooperation that’s both creative and helpful to some. This time it’s about people arranging canned foods together to form an image or a sculpture. Hence the name “canstruction”. And since I love the idea I decided to share some “Canstructions” with you.
As soon as the iPad came out I wrote an article here that explained why I think the web should change a little bit for an oncoming wave of touch based tablet devices. Apple haters of course thought otherwise, but now we can see more and more tablets coming into the market so we need to prepare ourselves for a little different approach. Web should be more “book-like” because sites like that will be more fun for both the tablet and computer users. That means it needs to have streamlined information in such a way, that we’re not blown away by the amount of content to perceive and grasp on the first glance, yet we know that a lot of content is there and is quickly and easily accessible.
RIM has announced it’s own tablet just yesterday, there’s a SAMSUNG galaxy Tablet out already, and there’s the iPad. These three are sort of the first of the much bigger wave since every PC manufacturer is currently working on a touch based tablet. That combined with a large decline in laptop sales, might be the first sign of what laptops did to standard PC’s a couple of years back. And we need to be ready!
Well some people decided to find out and the results landed them some awards. See for yourself below:
Dictaphone Parcel from Lauri Warsta on Vimeo.
Animated short film, Royal College of Art, London, 2009
Dictaphone Parcel is an animation based on a sound recorded with a dictaphone travelling secretly inside a parcel. As the hidden recorder travels through the global mail system, from London to Helsinki, it captures the unexpected. We hear a mixture of abstract sounds, various types of transport and even discussions between the mail workers. The animation visualizes this journey by creating an imaginary documentary.Dictaphone Parcel was awarded the Passion Pictures Prize in London, in February 2010.
See their website at http://www.cargocollective.com/lauriwarsta