broome: ideas & executions

40 Years Ago...

2009-07-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." — Neil Armstrong

This just in from Miami..

2009-06-22T12:44:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, I have not been posting a hell of a lot on this site as of late, let alone posts that push the endless music marketing that flows into my inBox everyday. But this is definitely worth sharing.

Mayday have just released an EP for free download called Technology and it is damn good. Think new-album Gnarls Barkley or Outkast at their best. The stand out track on first listen is Crossroads & Avenues, a hard driving, psychedelic soul/hiphop piece that evolves into what can only be described as beatbox drum n bass. Catchy stuff that pulls no punches. Check it out.

Art I Pass By - The Return

2009-05-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

After a brief hiatus, the Art I Pass By series returns for the summer with this beautiful series found at Pender and Cambie.

The New York Times' River of News

2009-05-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

In adapting new mediums, there is always a period where the shape of the old form is mirrored in the new form's space. For example, an early television ad looked like this. Radio had simply repositioned itself in front of a camera. It took years for advertisers to fully realize what could be achieved on the small screen. Nearly half a century later, the highly polished 30 second spot that those early sponsor announcements had evolved into would make the jump online with little change –aside from a taking advantage of more lenient regulations– when internet video came of age. Even today, the "best" viral ads still follow the tried and true format.

In a similar pattern, the online newspaper has always adapted the traditional layout of its printed cousin. The better rags have introduced interactive components and with the onset of blogging, there has been, for better or worse , the ability for reader comments. But the overall structure has remained intact. Meanwhile, sites such as Facebook, Friend Feed, Twitter and, of course, the all-powerful RSS feed have turned our mode of consuming information from categorized columns into a constantly updating flow.

Today, the New York Times, in what is being heralded by the likes of Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) and Dave Winer (@davewiner) as a watershed moment, introduces the Times Wire, an at-a-glance view of the paper's latest content, in reverse chronological order without any other weighting or sorting. As Winer states, "They're now presenting their news flow as a flow. Gone is the pretense that news on the Internet works like news on paper. Welcome to the NY Times river of news".

RSS has been with us for 10 years now. And unlike a number of other trends and technologies, it has survived and thrived and essentially become the backbone for the current information revolution. After a decade, one might ask of the NY Times shift in format "So what?" or "Why did it take so long?". Or, to the more discerning observer, it is a moment to make note: of both the validation of the new form and the prevailing relevance of one of the older forms' greatest champions.

The Work of Neill Blomkamp #1

2009-05-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

"Yellow" for Adidas' Adicolor campaign.

CONNECT! Marketing in the Social Media Era: The Book

2009-04-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Be the first on your block to own CONNECT! Marketing in the Social Media Era a book that gives 100 marketers 400 words each to discuss how social media has impacted the way that brands connect with consumers.

I had the honour of not only being a contributor but also of designing the cover which, with the help of the keen photographic eye of Leigh Peterson, turned out quite decent.

Best of all it is for a good cause: all profits will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. So order your copy today.

Where the Wild Things Are Trailer

2009-03-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

It may be the defining position that this book had in my childhood. Or it might be a result of the fact that rumours of this Spike Jonze project have been piquing my interest for what seems like half a decade. Or perhaps I have simply been caught up in the momentum of the Arcade Fire soundtrack. But it took the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are to break me out of my tumbleweed blogging silence. Enjoy.

The Hardcore Continuum

2009-03-03T20:12:00.000-08:00

Simon Reynolds is an English music critic who began writing about the UK's electronic music scene for Wire Magazine back in 1992. This month is the magazine's 300th edition and to mark the occasion, the editors have released a 7-part series of Reynolds' work through the years under the title "The Hardcore Continuum" that begins by profiling Hardcore Rave and moves on through Jungle, Drum 'n' Bass and Hard Step to Grime and the Dubstep breaks of the last few years.

The series is remarkable for its immediacy, as a record of a specific time and place in a musical genre that "abolishes narrative" all the while juxtaposed with the more overarching critically theoretical approach with which Reynolds approaches his subject. As he states in the introduction, "It was only in 1999, with the sixth piece ... that I really became conscious that for several years I’d been documenting a continuum of musical culture that emerged out of the British rave scene."

Fascinating stuff. But if the above series leaves you wanting more, check out Reynolds' lecture on the Hardcore Continuum at FACT Liverpool featuring a discussion with Mark 'K-Punk' Fisher.

Recycled Words

2009-02-26T11:51:00.000-08:00

"Like an archeologist I hunt for the words that speak to me with new meaning. Intuitively, one word at a time, they turn into a kind of haiku or philosophical poetry that I can call my own.

"At some unpredictable point along the way, in my mind, the images start to invent themselves. Using colored vellums, graphite and or India ink to highlight or obscure my words; I create the image of that invention. Though I strive to make each document visually engaging I find it is the words that I value most."

—Will Ashford's Recycled Words
(via coudal)

The No Stats All Star

2009-02-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

This weekend's NY Times magazine features a brilliant article by Michael Lewis that takes a look at the career of NBA forward Shane Battier, a player who on paper appears unremarkable: a low scorer with few rebounds or blocks to his name. But upon deeper investigation, by stepping outside of the normal stats and figures and looking at more abstract reports on player performance, what becomes remarkably clear is this one indisputable fact: when Battier is on the court, not only does his team play much better, but the opposing team plays much worse.

What Lewis determines through his article is that Battier is an unselfish player in a game that creates endless opportunities for selfish behaviour. He compares the game of basketball to that of baseball where, in contrast, the decision that is best for the single player is almost always best for the team. In basketball however, there is a far less defined path en route to scoring points. Decisions are made constantly fed more by ego than by strategy, more by contractual expectations than by rationale.

Battier plays a different game, one based on a sharp attention to detail, a cerebral understanding of opponents' behavior and a strict adherence to process. His decisions on the court are not influenced by anything outside of this process. He will ask not to start if it means that he will be on court more often against the player that he most needs to guard. The blocks he makes happen before the player he is guarding raises the ball above his shoulders and therefore do not statistically count. He will work tirelessly to keep a superstar like Kobe Bryant out of his shooting zone all evening with the knowledge that when the game is over, all his work will be lost in the statistics: Bryant will still be the game's leading scorer; but it will have taken him twice at many shots to get there.

This all got me thinking about how such a process could benefit the way that the teams that I work with interact. How many decisions are made every day in the design world for reasons outside of that strict adherence to process? How does ego or the simple need to "be billable" affect our behaviour? More importantly, how can I as an individual act unselfishly in order to improve the overall performance of my team?

Then and now...the CCTV Building in Beijing

2009-02-09T21:09:00.000-08:00

"…the headquarters of CCTV, the Chinese television network, by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture—a building which I had thought was going to be a pretentious piece of structural exhibitionism—turned out to be a compelling and exciting piece of structural exhibitionism."

–Paul Goldberger, The New Yorker

"Word has it that the building is close to explosion. Whole thing pretty much toast, all in all."

–@DavidFeng

"ceci c'est ne pas une canard" or, the many ducks in my daughter's life

2009-02-03T20:59:00.000-08:00

"Here we explore whether children can generalize in both directions. Specifically, can children apply a label learned for a real object to a picture of the object, and vice versa? Our interests were twofold. First, are there differences in infants’ generalization of a label from object to picture versus from picture to object? Second, what impact, if any, does pictorial realism have on infants’ ability to generalize between pictures and real objects?"

From a study entitled "Infants’ Generalization of Information between Picture Books and the Real World" by Megan Bloom, Patricia Ganea,. and Judy DeLoache

"Doing a double take, one realizes that, of course, this is not a pipe; it's a picture of a pipe. Our philosophe is able to detect some significance in this precious banality, for does not Magritte's statement that the painting is not a pipe disturb the very illusion of presence that ''realistic'' representation pretends to effect? Perhaps the statement also curls in on itself to say, 'This sentence is not a pipe.' "

From Flint Schier's Review of Michael Foucault's "This is not a pipe" for the New York Times

"In two studies, 9-month-old infants were shown a video of a series of stationary and moving objects. The infants directed the same kinds of behaviors toward objects on a video monitor as children of this age in earlier research directed toward color photographs: They hit at and attempted to grasp the items depicted on the screen. As with pictures, a decline in manual behaviors and an increase in pointing and vocalizing toward the video were found with 15- and 19-month-olds. These results support the notion that very young children must learn about the dual nature of depictions (that pictures are both objects in themselves and representations of something else) and the typical ways in which adults respond to such symbols."

From a study entitled "Video Verité: Infants’ manual investigation of objects on video", Sophia L. Pierroutsakos and Georgene L. Troseth

"The first type of symbolic object infants and young children master is pictures. No symbols seem simpler to adults, but … infants initially find pictures perplexing. The problem stems from the duality inherent in all symbolic objects: they are real in and of themselves and, at the same time, representations of something else."

From Mindful of Symbols, by Judy S. DeLoache, Scientific American

Foodists.ca

2009-01-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

Starting in '09, along with my sporadic duties on this blog posting about design, art and culture, I will also be sporadically contributing to a new site that focusses on another one of my passions: food. The Foodists describes itself as "a collective of like-minded food worshipers. We breathe and sleep in order to eat and drink."

Seeing as I don't get out all that much these days what with the new family and all, I am planning on posting recipes that reflect the type of meals that I make on an average night, when I'm knackkered from work, my daughter needs to go to bed but I am still determined to sit the wife and I down to a damn fine meal. But the site as a whole covers all things gastronomically related and boasts an eclectic list of contributors. So check out foodists.ca and bon appetit.

DK's True Blood Titles Pt.2

2008-12-22T20:01:00.001-08:00

Following up on last week's post about Digital Kitchen's title sequence for HBO's True Blood, DK producer Morgan Henry provides some background for the creative process:

"With regards to "Wrong Eyed Jesus"- it was indeed a source of inspiration. Along with several other documentaries of the south and several that focused on Pentecostalism. We also had on our team a designer/photographer who grew up in the south and his photos from the region served as a great source of inspiration and authenticity. The umbrella for all this imagery was of course our mission to create a sequence that was appropriate to the series- to that end we spent a lot of time watching and rewatching the pilot, reading the series of books that the series was based on and developing a narrative response.

"True Blood is, as I'm sure you've seen, is a heady mix of sex, violence, taboo, humor, religion and mysticism. To introduce the viewers to a taste of that, we shot the majority of the imagery to be specific to the sequence. To be clear- there is no footage from "Wrong Eyed Jesus" in our piece, there are a handful of stock shots- mostly of wildlife and archival. The team here shot the rest mostly in Louisiana, with some shots in Chicago and others here in Seattle."

DK's True Blood Titles

2008-12-17T21:13:00.000-08:00

Just started getting into True Blood, Alan Ball's latest HBO series about a telepathic waitress in Bon Temps, Louisiana who falls in love with a vampire. Like Ball's previous project, Six Feet Under, the title sequence was created by the talented team over at Digital Kitchen and presents a perverse montage of imagery that perfectly captures the juxtaposition of sinister and spiritual underlying the American South. Better still is the "True Blood Featurette" that links from the same page which I can only assume is a director's cut of the more twisted material that was collected for the project.

UPDATE: I was showing these clips to my friend Doug today and he directed me to some additional "disturbing deep south fun" from the documentaries Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus (which we both concluded was a primary influence for the DK title sequence, some footage seeming to be directly lifted from this film) and The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia of which I can find very little in terms of footage online but did find a gallery of the photographs on which the film was based. Disturbing fun indeed.

The Amen Break

2008-12-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

In 1969, soul music group The Winstons released the single "Color Him Father" which would go on to reach number 2 on the R&B charts and number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and win them a Grammy Award in 1970 for Best R&B song.

However what is most remarkable about this record comes from the song on the B-side, "Amen, Brother", specifically a six second drum break in the middle of the tune that has since become one of the most heavily sampled drum breaks in the course of electronic music and played a foundational role in the evolution of hip hop, jungle and breakbeat genres.

Nate Harrison provides a brilliant look into what has come to be known as "The Amen Break".

Colour Palettes in Film and TV

2008-12-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

A current obsession of mine is the use of strictly defined colour palettes in films and television shows. Ironically this recent interest comes as a result of a late 90's TV drama called "Once and Again" that my wife Jane has been watching repeats of on the PVR while she nurses our daughter. The thing is, I can always tell the show from the distinctly grey colour palette that runs through the majority of the scenes. Lighting, costume, and decor all contribute to this effect that is punctuated by out-of-scene reflections by the characters that are filmed in black and white. I find it all strangely curious especially when I consider that this monochromatic character of the program is what makes it seem boring and unremarkable to me.

Anyway I hope to explore this idea further in future posts. In the meantime, my research into this area has turned up Alan Woo's Pie project which contrasts and compares the colour palettes of movies by running a Processing script that captures each frame of the movie and creates a 'pie chart' of the colours contained within.

On Infrastructural Domesticity

2008-12-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Whether or not this is even true – after all, I never think truth is the point in stories like this – ... the idea of appropriating a construction crane as a new form of domestic space – a kind of parasitic sub-structure attached to the very thing it's helped to construct ... is totally awesome;"

-BldgBlog

"You say its your birthday.."

2008-11-18T10:50:00.000-08:00

In Tribute to the Beatle's White Album 40th anniversary, PopMatters is celebrating the milestone with a five day, song-by-song, side-by-LP side breakdown of what Tony Palmer, in The Observer, summed up at the time of its release by stating: "if there is still any doubt that Lennon and McCartney are the greatest songwriters since Schubert, then...[The White Album]...should surely see the last vestiges of cultural snobbery and bourgeois prejudice swept away in a deluge of joyful music making. . . ."

Lost In Glimmering Shadows

2008-11-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

Romanywg's photoset of Faile's Lost in Glimmering Shadows show in London.

By the content of his character

2008-11-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

""With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

-MLK

"It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.
It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America."

-Barack Obama

Of All Ordinary Human Life

2008-10-31T21:12:00.001-07:00

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life it would be like hearing the grass grow and squirrel's heartbeat and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."

- George Eliot, Middlemarch

Posted with LifeCast

.謀

2008-10-28T09:35:00.000-07:00

Started following .謀's photostream on Flickr when he started following me but I have been obsessed with his work ever since with its strange bleached out nostalgia-like feel. Enjoy.

The Mad Men Ripple

2008-10-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

Mark Simonson's critical analysis of Mad Men typography.

Mad Men illustrated by Dyna Moe.

The Mad Men Guide to New York.

I'm being followed by Betty Draper: Mad Men on Twitter.

Real Mad Men at Wired, Business Week, and the New York Post.

Anachronisms.

Imaginary Forces' Mark Gardner and Steve Fuller on the title sequence design and its homage to Saul Bass.

The drinks...

and the Draper's kitchen.