HOLODECK_P72

   Issue 001.03

 



     CONTENT Introduction | Potential Gems | Invitation
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Graphic Design is........the most ubiquitous of all arts.

" It responds to needs at once personal and public, embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and is informed by many disciplines including art and architecture, philosophy and ethics, literature and language, science and politics and performance. Graphic design is everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and in Bibles, on taxi receipts and on websites, on birth certificates, on the folded instructions inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of childrens' picture books.

"Designer" does not mean "artist" - though lots of people want to think it does. The job of the designer is not self expression, it's problem solving.


Graphic design is the boldly directional arrows on the street signs and the blurred, frenetic typography on the title sequence to E.R. It is hang-tags in clothing stores, postage stamps and food packaging, facist propaganda posters and brainless junk mail. Graphic design is complex combination of words and pictures, numbers and charts, photographs and illustrations that, in order to succeed, demand the clear thinking of a particularly thoughtful individual who can orchestrate these elements so that they all add up to something distinctive, or useful, or playful, or surprising, or subversive, or somehow memorable. Graphic design is a popular art and a practical art, an applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art of visualizing ideas."

-Jessica Helfand
 Jessica Helfand is a graphic designer and the author of six essays on Design and New Media and, Paul Rand, American Modernist, Distributed by Emigre.
 
 







Patrick Baltatzis
 

the chronicle

Time to converge context and content

 

Technology has since the dawn of The Human Condition been driving changes in nations, cultures and economies. Bit fueled technology only constitutes a fragment of all developed by man in order to survive but the speed at which recent developments are taking place has reached levels previously unheard of.

The technological evolution is driven by the same logic as organisms. Different technologies will naturally converge into something more intelligent, sophisticated and practical, extending the experience of man into new domains. This is the economic foundation of the day of context-creators such as telecoms, ISP:s, software developers and even traditional industrial companies.

Most certainly IP-based technology will be the motor in the economy for the years to come; businesses are already experiencing revenue gains due to the visions embedded in new technology; the players on the stockmarkets prosper from these expecations as do shareholders. Still the results show little or no evidence of tranformation of government, empowerment of citizens or more effective consumption. Focus on context-creating (building platforms, establishing standards, setting up networks, designing software etc) has in most cases an affinity to expenses. Sooner or later these expenses must be justified and balanced.

What will enable this to happen?
At the recent Hyper Island Convergenceseminar, splendidly arranged and excecuted by the Hypernauts, this topic was not covered in a clarifying way.
What will enable this to happen?


Content is substance, and substance is information and presentation of information in a format that empowers us in our work and in our personal lives, that touches us and that we incorporate in our daily habituals. Sadly enough this dimension of technology is seldom on the agenda as the talk of the day becomes more and more context-focused. I hope the context world converges with its natural counterpart - content. Without such ambitions, from both producers and consumers, the potential of technology is at most an illusion.

Patrick Baltatzis, CEO AntColony http://www.antcolony.net/  

Article reproduced here with permission from Patrick Baltatzis

HYPER ISLAND School of New Media Design


 
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The Convergence
Dharma

    inversion
    immersion
    eversion
    circuit
    space
    conversion

    more in next issue



To be launched soon
    wallpaper-online
    submethod
    purusdesign
    dub3
 
Things of the Century  
   



LEGO

TOY OF THE CENTURY...

Ole Kirk Christiansen started his Lego toy company in Denmark in 1932. Lego means 'play well' in Danish. (leg godt). Later he discovered Lego in Latin means 'to put together'. Lego bricks went on sale in the UK in 1955. The international success of Lego is now the stuff of legends. Besides the simple Duplo bricks for youngsters, the range extends to Mindstorms, where dedicated bricks have imbedded microchips to create robots which can be controlled over the Internet!



MONOPOLY
(Hasbro)
The Game of the Century
In the USA in 1933, Charles Darrow devised Monopoly. The patent was filed 31st August 1935 while the game was on sale in America. Based on an earlier game, The Landlord's Game, it was at first rejected by Parker Bros., as being too complicated to be a success. How wrong could they be! It came to the UK in 1936, made under licence by Waddingtons. Darrow died in 1967 having realised he had developed one of the most successful board games of all time.



YO YO
The Craze of the Century
Rediscovered by Frank Duncan in Los Angeles in 1929 when he saw waiters originally from the Philippines demonstrating their traditional toy. The Yo-Yo can be traced back to ancient Greece - in the Philippines it was a weapon (like a boomerang) for hunting and war until later it became a sporting item and a plaything. To promote his product, Duncan used celebrities such as Mary Pickford and Bing Crosby (who sang 'My Little Yo-Yo). In 1930 Frank Duncan brought over demonstrators to Europe to play the music halls. The craze started to spread all over the world, and seems to be frequently revived. Last year the UK toy retailers sold yo-yos worth over £30m.

Orange Colour of the Century

Garamond

The Font of the Centuary


   
         



Here is a list of potential gems.



  1) http://www.saulbass.co.uk
    This web site showcases the work of a great graphic designer. He was a contemporary of Paul Rand.

  2) http://www.napkindesign.com
    "Every design starts somewhere"
Good flash work, and while all the stuff loads, There's the 'something thy neighbor game.'

  3) http://www.coma2.com
    Great Interactive Java work. A very interesting interface.

High Bandwidth.

  4) http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/home.html
    Leonardo on-line- The International Society for the Arts, Sciences & Technology. One of the oldest and most respected Magazines for art/science explorations is under legal attack for using the word Leonardo in their title. They began as a print publication in 1968. The only links that you can visit here in the Leonardo Gallery: Light works Installation and Leonardo Special Project, for others we would have to pay.

  5) Assembler
    This is an experimental DHTML site coded entirely by hand, from scratch.

  6) http://www.digitaria.com/
    This site displays very clean site layout design (ambience). Their portfolio (http://www.digitaria.com/pages/portfolio.cfm) section has exceptional work. Look into the case studies (http://www.digitaria.com/pages/case.html) of the projects.

  7) http://media.moma.org/dot.jp/
    A series of dispatches from Japan by the curator of MOMA London, includes examples of media art and features of artists.

  8) ModernStarts                               MoMA2000
    MoMA2000 presents three major exhibition cycles that focus on distinct historical periods: 1880 to 1920 (ModernStarts), 1920 to 1960 (Making Choices), and 1960 to the present (Open Ends). Each historical cycle will be interspersed with works from other periods, creating a dialogue between various historical moments. Installed throughout the entire Museum, works in all mediums will be presented in innovative, multidisciplinary ways.

  9) http://www.grokbot.com
    An Automobile Site optimized for hi-fi connections. It spotlights scores of automotive websites, online leasing companies, parts and accessories vendors, and carmag sites. Maybe looks at what e-comm sites will be, as sound and video become more a part of browsing experience. It doesn't provide quite the answers that you want but gives a browsing experience that is new and definitely over the edge.

  10) http://www.benzedrin.de
    Some excellent projects done by these guys using DHTML and Sound.

  11) http://www.urbanexpress.co.uk
    Urbanexpress is a creative hub for voyeurs roaming the empty streets of cyberspace. It is an off-ramp onto the streets of the real. It is a travel guide to forgotten places that we see everyday, and sometimes never at all. Urbanexpress is about playful research; making apparent the hidden recesses of everyday geographies. It is about no smoking signs and lonely stairwells, pre-recorded messages and reflective glass towers. It is an escalator to underground passageways. Urbanexpress is about the glory of the mundane and a corrosive force against it. These are the fluxual aesthetics of the urban landscape...

  12) http://www.sawedoffdesign.com/versus/index.htm
    Two designers take turns providing their own interpretations of each other's work. Beginning with an original image & cycling back-and-forth between each with the product, leaving it entirely to the other designer to modify it as they wish under the time constraint of one hour. The process is repeated until one designer gives up or tires. The results are posted at this site.

  13) http://www.manhattantransfer.com
    This site emulates the colours and design simplicity of the company's branding. The graphics at the left and middle lead to the vision page that displays recent projects. No Flash, no DHTML just plain cool design. Don't forget to check out that Web Cam {http://www.manhattantransfer.com/webcam} pointing up Fifth Avenue.

  14) http://www.flashfilmfestival.com
    There are some really great flash portfolios to see here. This festival honors the best Flash web animations on earth. You can also cast a vote for one of the finalists there.

  15) Random Access Memory
    Random Access Memory is "a [public] backup archive for your personal memories, for recollections important or trivial". Users are encouraged to use the site spontaneously, adding memories as they spring to mind. A fascinating collection of stolen moments or just another vehicle for nostalgia?

  16) Engage.net
    Engage.net presents a selection of Internet projects that are centrally concerned with photography, that makes use of the distributed structure of the Net and that exploit the particularities of the medium: its global accessibility, communication facilities, and its ability to construct new forms of public awareness. Following the theme of the biennial, 'Engagement', the selection focuses on projects that have a social, cultural or political intention. They illustrate the possibilities of combining the medium of photography with that of the Internet, and they are exemplary for an effective application of inter-medial strategies. Engage.net is a project by V2_Organisation for the Fotobiennale Rotterdam 2000, 1 April - 7 May.

  17) Art Entertainment Network
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/
    Art Entertainment Network (AEN) is an online exhibition from the Walker Art Center of more than 40 Web-based projects that exploit the convergence of media on the Internet in order to explode the boundaries between art and entertainment-- and daily (online) life. All these projects are designed to be viewed, experienced, participated in, and played with online-from Natalie Bookchin's video game like "The Intruder" to participatory projects such as Mark Napier's "(c)bots" to new forms of narrative such as Auriea Harvey's "An Anatomy" to Ken Goldberg and Bob Farzin's mysterious "web cam", "Dislocation of Intimacy."

  18) SFMOMA- E-space
    "As the museum of modern art confronts the reality of works produced in digital media, it must meet yet another challenge to the integrity and logic of its method of presenting art. Throughout the past century, the museum's traditional role as the framer of single and valuable objects has been challenged by artists who embrace technologies of mass reproduction, who appreciate everyday objects, or who create ephemeral work. Consequently, the institution has had to continually find new means of maintaining its control, value and identity. If we accept the idea that a museum is an institution that enhances and, some might even say, creates art by framing objects and images, then the museum must respond to the installation, performance, and digital artists who demand new ways of framing their work."

-Aaron Betsky, SFMOMA curator of architecture, design, and digital projects.

  19) Digital Innovators
 
  Examination: health science

  Exploration: natural history

  Imagination: art Immersion

  Entertainment: Sports
What do the sea floor and cyberspace, the imagination and the inside of the human eye share in common? Each are frontiers for ground breaking innovations in digital photography. Digital innovation showcases the achievements of four visionary "wired" photographers who take photography to the digital frontier as they explore diverse dimensions of our world and human experience.

"Technology opens many different pathways. We have always talked about capturing the moment. Now that is on a new level. Digital Photography is quick, easy, and has a global reach."

-C. Smith, president, Digital and Applied Imaging & SVP, Eastman Kodak Company.

  20)) Technology to Follow
    http://www-eu.philips.com/connected/
Connected Planet: Scenarios for a new market place. How do we communicate in the future? Slowly, but surely, we will see more technology embedded into the objects of our everyday existence, freeing designers from the restrictions dictated until now by technology. It is an evolutionary process; of which connected pl@net is only the latest step. To share our insights with you we have made 3 videos of our first designs.

Are they plausible?
Are they preferable?
Are they viable?
Are they sustainable?


Watch the three VIVO movies here, they represent 3 future convergence scenarios.
It is better if you see this site in IE4 or 5, as this will get the VIVO player for you quickly.

See other themes at
The Philips Theme Library

----------------------------------------------------

http://www.vmail-kids.com/

http://www.vchat-chat.com/

There's more to communication than picking up the telephone or using plain-old email - see for yourself at our special video mail website for kids. Packed with stories, ideas, games and competitions - it shows just how easy making a video mail is. All you need is a PC video camera to produce a funky pop video to email to your friends, or two send birthday greetings to friends and family on the other side of the globe.

----------------------------------------------------

http://www.nokia.com/snowboard/future_dreams.html
How about a phone that listens to you, won't mind a shower, and plays music on those long rides on the chairlift? We asked wired snowboarders to dream about the future.

----------------------------------------------------

http://www.ericsson.com/WAP/benefits/

WAP services can be of great help in many situations. But it's probably not until you find yourself in a situation where you want certain information fast that you realize its true value. This comic strip shows you some of the benefits of WAP.

  21) Fun
    TelePresence / TeleRobotic Control. TelePresence / TeleRobotic Control a robot via Internet The TeleZone offers you the possibility of having a robot build architectonic structures. Construct a virtual model of your ideas with the Construction Tool on the TELEZONE website and have your ideas turn to reality. Follow the performance of your actions live from your own terminal.


     


                   If you have missed any...
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  Tata Interactive Systems Last Updated 11th April 2000