Russell Davies

a bit of a blur

 

Asi Sharabi has written a true thing on his blog, basically saying that Interesting was good, but all a bit of a blur. It's true. People say that every year. Probably more so this year because we crammed so many talks in. Fortunately though, we have the internet as a coping strategy, and bits and pieces of the blur are solidifying and taking shape around the web. Asi's presentation is here, for instance. And Alby Reid's piece about Nuclear Power is here. 

(Do you remember those Atomkraft? Nein Danke stickers you used to see in the 70s and 80s. Yellow, with a little smiley red sun/explosion thing in the middle. Someone should do some Atomkraft Ja Bitte stickers. I'd buy some of them. - Oh, perhaps they already have. - )

There's also Josie Fraser's talk about Psychological Violence in Girl's Comics and Tim Duckett's talk about Morse Code. I'll stick others up as they pop up. Please let me know if I miss anyone.

I was also delighted to read Cait's thoughts about it all, especially about 'female geekiness'. I think she's dead right; there was a note struck in those talks which I've not seen at many conferences before. Hurrah.

Anyway, like I say, eventually I'll hopefully link to everything that's out there, and slow the blur down a bit for you.

And big thanks to everyone for coming. You played your part perfectly...

london does not, in fact, kill me

Flickr have launched this excellent new feature called Galleries, which lets you curate a little set of other people's pictures. I heard about this just as I was looking at the above video by Matt and the phrase 'London Kills Me' popped into my head. So I made a gallery, called it that and went looking for pictures that seemed to fit with that title. They're not hard to find. And now there's a few (very nice) comments on the gallery saying, in effect, yes indeedy, London is crap isn't it?

Which isn't what I think at all. And I'm not a fan of the very bleakism I seem to have perpetrated.

So I made another gallery, "London Thrills Me (Still)" and stuck some pictures in there too. And even to my rose-tinted eyes it's not as good. Nice pictures, but less of a story, too postcardy. That's the problem with 'art'; it feeds on darkness. Misery seems significant whereas happiness always seems superficial. Ah well.

UPBEAT UPDATE: James has done a much better Good London gallery.

miniatur wunderland

I found myself in Hamburg yesterday, with a couple of hours to spare, so, naturally I went to the Miniatur Wunderland. It is a magnificent place, run with a spendidly geeky sense of service.

They restrict the number of people who can come in at any one time - so everyone gets a better experience, which means there are sometimes queues. But their Waiting Time Forecast pages, tells you very specifically when they expect those queues to be so you can avoid them. Brilliant.

Good rules - especially the last one.

And they did a few simple things which made all the difference to the Miniature World experience.

There were many opportunities to press buttons and make stuff happen. Getting that irresistible spooky action at a distance' buzz.

That 'press a button and make something happen in the distance' urge is so primal I always wonder why more people don't design for it. I guess Interaction Designers find it boring to design, though the rest of us can't get enough of it.

The lighting cycled between day and night every 20 minutes or so. Meaning the value of all the displays was instantly and easily doubled - beautiful in the light, beautiful in the dark.

Of course, being proper modellers they didn't just switch the lights on and off, they created dawn and dusk via the elegant deployment of different coloured strips.

And they thought about the long zoom. The place is huge, room after room of lay-out, but there's always some little detail or moment to notice.

And some of it is just beautiful.

It got me thinking about LyddleEnd2050 again. Now that Interesting's done I need to get a venue or something organised for that.

mc interesting

Roo's done his becoming-traditional round-up of yesterday's shenanigans. But I just wanted to express my thanks to the four MCs / comperes for the day; who did the hard job of filling in for the unpredictable amount of time it took us to get everyone going, and who kept the energy levels up very nicely. So big thanks to Dave, James, Matt and Ken. You're all very kind.

(picture courtesy of Roo)

interesting running order

Let's face it, I've probably missed someone off the list again. But hopefully not. Anyway, here's a rough running list. I think I've accommodated everyone's desire to talk at the same time as everyone else. But if you feel you're in the wrong place please let me know.

models versus cartoons

More dConstruct ramifications.

A couple of the presentations (from Nathan & Chris and from Brian) made the very plausible point that there's some sort of dialogue between the visions of the future offered in science fiction and those which get designed by designers. It's a conversation that's been going on in some quarters for years, my favourite exposition being this from Julian Bleeker.

Reasonably enough, Brian talked about the cultural influences he'd felt growing up - including the flying-car visions of The Jetsons. Which led Matt Jones to point out on twitter that many of us hadn't grown up with The Jetsons, we'd grown-up with Thunderbirds. I'll confess to pouncing on this a bit, because I thought it'd make a good gag in my presentation. But the more I thought about it the more it seemed worth thinking about it.

If it's reasonable to suppose that the fiction and images you absorb as a child influence the design choices you make as an adult (and I think it is) then it's also reasonable to think about how different cultural stuff might influence those choices.

And if you're a designer who grew up in the UK in the 70s or 80s then you were probably more infected by the 3D models and greebbled textures of Gerry Anderson's crew than the flat 2D and bright colours of Hanna Barbera. Maybe that's reflected in the stuff that gets built. Little Jonny Ives was probably glued to Thunderbirds and Space 1999, maybe that meant something.

I certainly think that might make a certain generation of British designer more inclined towards the ambition and tinkering of post-digital thinking, rather than the shininess and surface of screens. Thunderbirds was, above all, Engineering Fiction. (Though Warren Ellis makes a very convincing case that it was also morally uplifting Rescue Fiction.) We've already discussed how deeply the model-makers of Slough influenced movie-visions, perhaps we should give them credit beyond that.

interesting tickets and things

Things keep occurring to me that I need to organise for Interesting. Which is ON SATURDAY. Crumbs.

1. I made a wiki so people who can't come can exchange tickets with people who want to come. It's here.

2. You won't be getting any physical tickets. You need to print out the confirmation from eventbrite and bring it along. Before you email me saying you haven't got your confirmation please check all your email addresses including that Hotmail one you've forgotten about.

3. Don't forget. We'll be providing no food. Just tea and instant coffee. And you'll need to bring your own mug for the tea. There are lots of cafes in the area, or bring a picnic. Last year lots of people brought cakes to share, that was nice.

4. As before, doors will open at 9, we will start at 10. I think we'll be done about 5ish.

Hope that all makes sense. As other things I've forgotten occur to me I'll stick them on here and on the @interesting twitter doodah.

useless data machines

More excellent dConstruct fallout and collisions*; Robin Hunicke's presentation introduced us to Bruno Munari's Useless Machines, which are rather wonderful (and reminded me of this slow project conversation).

Then, this evening, this post from Tom Carden introduced me to some Data Art which has overtly made Art the point, not the Data, and pointed to the local definitional difficulties going on in Data Viz land.

It made me hope that someone will soon invent some Useless Data Machines which will be as pointless and delightful as Munari's Macchine Inutili. I'd like that.

*fallout and collisions in a good way. I spent ages trying to think of a positive word for both, couldn't do it.

prickles and goo

A kind mention from Lloyd reminded me that it's four days since my last confession and I needed to recommence blogging activities. Again. Fortunately dConstruct was ace at the weekend and gave me much food for thought. I can't write it all up now, but August showed us all this video and I can share that easily. So I have.

acoustic toys part one

This is extraordinarily good. Via the Sound And Music newsletter/sampler thing. This Sound In Context documentary looks worth watching too.