broome: ideas & executions

Supercollider 140

2009-11-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

"When Dan [Stowell] started tweeting snippets of SuperCollider code he expected a lot of "throwaway waffle" but collated also a bunch of really interesting things...Many of these pieces are actually generative, so if you re-run the source code (the track titles) you get a new piece of music."

—Susanna Glaser at The Mire
writing about the live coding music project Supercollider140, 22 pieces by artists from around the world, each piece created with just 140 characters of code.

Chris Ware's Halloween Cover for New Yorker

2009-10-27T14:30:00.000-07:00

This link is blazing across the internets like wild fire but thought it worth posting here: yet another timely and beautiful New Yorker cover by Chris Ware.

Speaking at Interesting Vancouver

2009-10-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

The 2nd installment of Interesting Vancouver is taking place this Friday, October 23rd at The Vancouver Rowing Club. Those of us who attended last year were treated to one of the most refreshing and inspiring gatherings that you could hope to experience. This was ultimately due to the fact that the evening was not centered around any particular industry, nor was it trying to get us to upgrade anything, jump on bandwagons or subscribe to hidden agendas. As Brett McFarlane, the founder of IV, states, it is “a multi-disciplinary conference that seeks to impart new knowledge, things you’ve never known, or thought about. Open up parallel thinking ports. Activate parts of your brain that for even the brainiest person may have been neglected or unexplored.”

This year, I will be one of the speakers. I am currently putting together a presentation titled "Mindful Eating: The Biography of a Single Bite" that I have been touting as a somewhat rambling diatribe on travel, buddhism, eating local, slaughterhouses and Oreo cookies. Or something like that. Also on the bill are fellow Foodists Eagranie Yuh, aka The Well Tempered Chocolatier, who will be speaking about her passion for sweet things and Jer Thorpe who will no doubt be blowing minds with his data visualizations.

Check out the IV site over the course of the week as the list of speakers and eclectic range of topics is revealed. After the buzz of last year’s event I suspect that tickets will be going fast so get them while you can. And we’ll see you on the 23rd!

A Weird Random Thing

2009-10-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

The calls start coming in on Thursday. Wrong numbers — or so it seems at first. All of them are from the United States. All of them looking for the same person: Tony Johnson. Upon answering the 3rd or 4th call, from Rhode Island, the voice on the other end is that of a frail and elderly woman and I ask her what specifically she is calling about. She reveals that she has received a letter in the mail from Citiwide Bank in Nevada with an enclosed cheque for $3853.00. In order to authorize the cheque, she was instructed to call the bank's claim manager Tony Johnson at the phone number provided.

"And that phone number once again is..." I ask, already knowing what she is going to say. She repeats back my own phone number.

"I'm sorry, but not only were you given the wrong number but I think that letter is a scam."

"I think you are right." She replies and we hang up.

And so it has continued. Around 6AM Pacific Time, my phone will start buzzing every 20 minutes or so for the rest of the day. 19 missed calls this morning from across the States: Arizona, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York. I check my voicemail every few hours. It is always the same story repeated one after the other. I feel strangely voyeuristic, as though given a brief audio snapshot into the lives of people with whom I would otherwise never have crossed paths. I can only guess that I am connecting with America's most naive, perhaps her most desperate. Lots of older people; plenty of thick smalltown drawls; a man who asks for assistance "cuz I can't read so good"; another man who just keeps yelling "HELLO?" into my message box. I picture these people sitting in their homes, in their trailers perhaps, ubiquitous cliches of the American lower class inevitably flashing through my head as they cradle their phones against their shoulders, holding their cheques up in front of them like beacons of hope, convincing themselves that it is a sign from God, that in these desperate and trying times this is the break that they have been looking for.

At the same time, I picture "Tony Johnson", who to his credit must have put a fair amount of time and perhaps even a significant startup investment into this scam -- creating convincingly branded bank letterhead, envelopes and cheques; copywriting for all of the documents; acquisition of some form of database; and then the actual trans-American mail out -- I picture him sitting in his apartment, staring at his phone and wondering why the hell it hasn't started ringing. I wonder when he will discover the typo. I wonder if he has a boss.

Meanwhile, I am randomly caught in the middle of these two worlds. I call the police, mainly to assure that my connection to this mail fraud case is not going to result in swat teams smashing through my living room window. The officer assures me that she thinks I am safe. The phone company informs me that they are not able to block calls from the US. In fact, my only options are to block all calls or to get a new phone number, neither of which are all that appealing. So I decide to ride it out for a few more days in the hopes that the initial surge will die down. Afterall, how many dupes can there be in America?

a photography that is 'unfinished'

2009-10-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

"I'm more interested in a photography that is 'unfinished' - a photography that is suggestive and can trigger a conversation or dialogue. There are pictures that are closed, finished, to which there is no way in."

—Paolo Pellegrin

Great Counterculture Logos - Part 11

2009-09-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

While there are many references on the web stating that the Death's Head insignia was designed by long time "Frisco" Hells Angels President Frank Sadliek, Sadliek himself claims this is untrue. The image which appears on the membership card, as well as other Hells Angels ephemera, was drawn in 1953 by a man whose real name is lost or unknown, but was known to those at the time as "Sundown". Frank had the original printer's negative from which the "Frisco" Hells Angels membership cards were offset printed. This may be the reason for the attribution. The logo seems to have been inspired by the insignias of the 552nd Medium Bomber Squadron and the 85th Fighter Squadron from WWII (pictured above).

The Collected Links of Raymond Pettibon - #3

2009-09-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

From over at Art:21

The Human Variable

2009-08-31T23:41:00.000-07:00

I was chatting with an architect friend of mine on the weekend — as we watched our one-year-old daughters unleash havoc upon the playground — about the social component of architecture, that as an architect you are responsible for creating an environment and that your design ultimately has a direct affect on how how people interact within it. He related to me two scenarios: The first one was of a courthouse that was rebuilt and after some time in the new building, it was noted that there were less instances of cases getting sorted out pre-trial, and so, as a result, the courts themselves were much busier. What was theorized was that the lobby of the old courthouse had been adorned with Neoclassical columns allowing for the attorneys from the two sides of a case to step aside and make discreet last minute negotiations that had thus avoided the need to stand before the judge. The new facility, with its cleaner more open entrance way, did not accommodate for such exchanges and therefore more people were doomed to have their day in court.

The 2nd example he gave was of a multi-disciplined research facility. The different departments had been originally quite segregated with separate entrance ways and staircases. But the new design featured a central staircase that all personnel used to access their labs. What began to happen was that researchers from different fields would run into each other coming and going from their days and, in the discussion that ensued, interdisciplinary connections and discoveries were suddenly being made that had previously gone completely unnoticed.

In thinking of these two scenarios this evening and how, just as in architecture, as web designers we can put up unintended barriers to information, or create unpredicted niche communities or a tool that gets used for an unforeseen purpose. What always needs to be accounted for is the human variable and despite all the efforts of content strategists and usability engineers, the main secret weapon in creating a successful website will always be flexibility and a willingness to adapt to your users' needs.

Hive Photos

2009-08-19T08:26:00.001-07:00

"We worked together like bees -- each doing our little bit, apart from the others, but producing something greater and, ultimately, understood by none of us individually"

(via @GreatDismal)

Trailer for new documentary "William S. Burroughs: A Man Within"

2009-08-18T14:37:00.001-07:00

“I’m transcribing a movie, a film that I see in my mind as best I can in words.” – William S. Bouroughs

(via Quiet Earth)

The Collected Works of Neill Blomkamp

2009-08-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

Even the most cursory glance through director Neill Blomkamp's early personal projects and advertising work unearths the visual and thematic roots of his first feature film District 9. In fact, "Alive in Joburg" is literally the short film upon which D9 is based. Dig around some more, through the Tetra Val short, the Nike Crab ad or the 'Yellow' spot for Adidas and it becomes apparent that there is a consistent "world" being explored in all of his work, at once familiar and extraordinary.

In anticipation of D9's official opening tomorrow, I've compiled a YouTube Playlist of Blomkamp's work that includes his Vancouver Film School demo reel and a couple of early music videos that prove that even the most brilliant artists have to start somewhere...

One other short film that is also worth checking out that is not on YouTube is "Tempbot", a lighter, though perhaps equally bleak take on the robot theme that exists throughout Blomkamp's work. Enjoy.

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.

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."