Webb, Jones and Timo are working on some sales. There is a Uinta project which doesn’t have a name yet, which Joe, Alex and Denise are working on. Me, Alice and Nick and working on Berg Cloud’s cloud. Andy is celebrating the end of Chinese New Year by talking power supplies. Timo and Jack are working on filming something.

There is temporarily no Simon, and Kari is away on Maternity leave now. Helen is therefore now in full time mode. There has been no hiccough in the transfer.

Everyone is working on many more things than mentioned here. You probably have a list like it. This is what the first week of February feels like.

Robot readable world from Timo on Vimeo.

As robots begin to inhabit the world alongside us, how do they see and gather meaning from our streets, cities, media and from us? The robot-readable world is one of the themes that the studio has been preoccupied by recently. Matt Jones talked about it last year:

“The things we are about to share our environment with are born themselves out of a domestication of inexpensive computation, the ‘Fractional AI’ and ‘Big Maths for trivial things’ that Matt Webb has spoken about.

and

‘Making Things See’ could be the the beginning of a ‘light-switch’ moment for everyday things with behaviour hacked-into them. For things with fractional AI, fractional agency – to be given a fractional sense of their environment.

This film uses found-footage from computer vision research to explore how machines are making sense of the world. And from a very high-level and non-expert viewing, it seems very true that machines have a tiny, fractional view of our environment, that sometimes echoes our own human vision, and sometimes doesn’t.

For a long time I have been struck by just how beautiful the visual expressions of machine vision can be. In many research papers and Siggraph experiments that float through our inboxes, there are moments with extraordinary visual qualities, probably quite separate from and unintended by the original research. Something about the crackly, jittery but yet often organic, insect-like or human quality of a robot’s interpetation of the world. It often looks unstable and unsure, and occasionally mechanically certain and accurate.

Of the film Warren Ellis says:

“Imagine it as, perhaps, the infant days of a young machine intelligence.”

The Robot-Readable World is pre-Cambrian at the moment, but machine vision is becoming a design material alongside metals, plastics and immaterials. It’s something we need to develop understandings and approaches to, as we begin to design, build and shape the senses of our new artificial companions.

Much of our fascination with this has been fuelled by James George’s beautiful experiments, Kevin Slavin’s lucid unpacking of algorithms and the work (above) by Adam Harvey developing a literacy within computer vision. Shynola are also headed in interesting directions with their production diary for the upcoming Red Men film, often crossing over with James Bridle’s excellent ongoing research into the aesthetics of contemporary life. And then there is the work of Harun Farocki in his Eye / Machine series that unpacks human-machine distinctions through collected visual material.

As a sidenote, this has reminded me that I was long ago inspired by Paul Bush’s ‘Rumour of true things’ which is ‘constructed entirely from transient images – including computer games, weapons testing, production line monitoring and marriage agency tapes’ and a ”A remarkable anthropological portrait of a society obsessed with imaging itself.’. This found-footage tactic is fascinating: the process of gathering and selecting footage is an interesting R&D exercise, and cutting it all together reveals new meanings and concepts. Something to investigate, as a method of research and communication.

I think this is roughly who’s working with who.

This week is mainly: a Uinta workshop, Little Printer progressing, Kari’s final day before maternity leave and Helen’s first full day, sales sales sales.

The new studio is bigger,

and (I noticed when I got back from travelling in the US for most of January) weirdly quiet. It’s as if people don’t know what to do in all the space. Then when one person goes into the kitchen – the kitchen is teeny weeny, the size of a broom cupboard – two or three more people pile in and there’s a kitchen party. In the last couple of weeks it’s been getting gradually noisier as we settle in. A welcome improvement.

Nick’s gone out to get a few coffees. Good-o. Caffeine please!

Jones sent around the slightly terrifying ‘math blind AI that teaches itself basic number sense’. He also pointed out this article from Don Norman on AI:

The point is that AI is now powerful enough to be commonplace. Not only does it assist in such mundane tasks as restaurant selection, but it helps out in critical safety situations such as military applications, the control of industrial equipment, and driving.

Timo found this discussion on the ethnography of robots.

After reading the Steve Jobs biography this came as no shock, but this post on Apple’s attention to detail with packaging is a good read, and something we’re going to be obsessing over as a studio in the coming months.

There was also a lot of discussion over Ubuntu’s new interface, dismissing menu bars for a launcher style UI:

In our continuing quest to invent a reason to buy a quadcopter to fly around the beams of our new office ceiling all day, Alice sent around this clip of an autonomous flying tracking robot:

We’ve had a lot of incredible pictures of the solar storm flying around. This is a good one:

This is another good one:

And on a similar note this timelapse video of the Yosemite National Park is worth a watch.

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Via Tom Armitage we found this knitted waveform scarf of the amen break by Andrew Salomone:

Which also revealed the ‘Recursive Cosby Jumper‘:

And the ‘Bitmap balaclava‘:

That’s it for this week. Here’s a picture of a tiny smiling pig. Enjoy your weekends.

A good plane based number this week. The DFS 346 was a German rocket powered swept wing aeroplane, completed and flown in the Soviet Union after World War II. The Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master is a military transonic trainer aircraft, based on the Yak-130. I’ll pretend you all knew that anyway though.

Our fearless leader Matt Webb has returned from 3 weeks in the US, with considerable jetlag, and tales from CES. He’s been taking Little Printer on a whistlestop tour all over the country, so will be unpacking meetings this week when his head is back on UK time.

Simon’s doing his usual incredible balancing act between making sure our client work is running smoothly, keeping all aspects of Little Printer and BERG Cloud on track, and managing the last few bits of new office sorting out. He’s also sorting through job applications (there’s still time to apply if you’re interested, we’re closing applications this coming Friday the 27th). It’s Kari’s last full week in the studio before she heads off on maternity leave, so she’s training Helen up on the last handful of bits. We’ll miss her!

The majority of the office are still pressing ahead with all aspects of Little Printer and BERG Cloud. Andy and Jack are working on the hardware and the industrial design. I’ve been doing a bit of design work for the shell, and working on the sales and out of box experience for when we launch. Andy’s sitting at his new soldering desk with a load of new circuit boards. Alice did tell me what she was working on, but all I wrote down next to her name was ‘moving’. Based on what she’s shown us at Friday demos for the last couple of weeks though, it’s pretty mind boggling and very exciting. James is similarly working on different but again very exciting backend stuff for Little Printer, as well as working on the IA for the mobile website with Denise, who displayed an impressively vast Illustrator document on Friday covered in wireframes. She’s also manning the BERG Cloud CS desk with Simon and Kari. Nick and Phil are as always working on the real backbone of the entire system, with a lot of brief writing and organisation of meetings.

Joe is putting the final touches to his Uinta work which is looking and sounding brilliant. Both him and Jones were in the recording studio yesterday.

Jack is mostly on the industrial design and manufacturing of Little Printer, but is also having a few catchups with Webb and Jones, and working with Timo on the final stretch of a bit of Uinta work. Timo’s doing a little bit of filming, a little bit of editing, and is also talking at the Design of Understanding this Friday. Matt Jones is on some Uinta project work, a few sales meetings, and is getting his hair cut tomorrow.

That’s pretty much it for week 346, fuelled by the 1.125kg of Haribo we’ve consumed as an office in under 2 days, and with the soundtrack of Pinch’s Fabriclive 61 mix, which I entirely recommend.

There’s something completely delightful about this. As I watched it slide down the roof I found myself thinking – ‘Ha! nice, but lucky’. As I watched the rest of the video, I thought it was less luck, and more that the crow was having fun.

There’s some discussion about it here. I thought this was interesting:

‘… when humans look at a crow doing something human-like, they have a very hard time not seeing themselves as the crow.”

It reminds me of Hello Little Fella, where people see human faces in — as Wikipedia puts it — ‘vague and random stimulus’. Turns out there’s a word for that, and it’s Pareidolia. There’s also a word for the loss of this ability, ‘Prosopagnosia’. It’s taking a huge amount of strength not to fall down a Wikipedia worm hole right now, but the links are there if you have more time. (Chuck Close, a painter of hyperrealistic portraits has prosopagnosia. Apperceptive prosopagnosia is particularly interesting.)

Anyway, to continue.

Alex shared a link to a beautiful 360 degree panorama from the Shard at dusk, and this periscope rifle. I hope the two are unrelated.

After some time out of the office, Matt Jones has been on a link-sharing roll this week. There’s an open source espresso machine (which came via Jennifer Magnolfi), and a piece entitled “The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be”, by BERG friend Jamais Cascio, discussing the problems of future technology prediction.

There was also this Sinclair advert from 1983, and a rather spectacular advert for a dishwasher — a question of which Matt asks: “Is this the best advert ever? Lady fighter pilots, jetpack robot transforming baby bjorn dishwashers and coffee…”

Nick sent us this link of a 3d printing machine that works with concrete. It’s beautiful to watch…

And Alex also shared this link of a record player that plays slices of wood…

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

And that’s all for now. Early links this week – so enjoy the rest of the day, and have a great weekend.

We’re almost fully settled into the new space. There’s a bit more painting to be done, some insulation to be pumped into the roof and a large delivery of teabags on order. We’ve worked out most of the major issues – like where to go for lunch, but it has to be said, certain BERGians are missing the coffee hut. I’ve yet to see anyone come back with coffee and look happy about it.

Matthew is still in the USA, where he’s been since the beginning of the year, he should be back soon. Jack is not 100% well, and so has been in and out of the office, trying not to infect us all. When he’s not in quarantine he’s working on the physical aspects of Little Printer with Andy. This involves mechanics and graphics, a mix we’re rather enjoying.

James is back in the office for the first time this year. He’s working on some behind the scenes Little Printer tech with Alice. Nick and Phil are working on a bit of refactoring too, but both of them seem rather cheerful about it. Alex and I are also working on Little Printer – a mix of things from packaging ideas, to IA. I’m also trying to keep on top of the feedback we’ve been receiving (there’s been a lot of it, and people have been lovely, thank you).

Joe and Timo have both been working on two separate projects for Uinta.. The end is in sight for the work Joe has been doing – and it’s looking beautiful. It requires some voice over work from Jones, which should be entertaining. Timo is working on editing, directing and interviewing for the film he’s making. We saw some work in progress last week and it’s everything we were hoping for – magic included.

Kari has been helping to get Helen all settled in. She’s also been battling with studio and finance admin. Simon has been here there and every where, organising the last bits of the studio, getting the timesheets in for last year (no, pressure, Nick) and sorting through job applications.

And I think that’s it.

Matt Jones sent us a link to this blog entry about the portrayal of Mars as a communist utopia in Russian popular culture. It’s worth having a look for the images if nothing else.

Also via Jones came a link to the new BMW Art Car designed by Jeff Koons which Jones described as “well new aesthetic“:

Joe sent us a link to this BBC News story about Sesame Street teaming up with Microsoft and using the Kinect to create “two-way television”.

Nick sent a link to this video of dynamic face remapping which is both fascinating and quite creepy:

Face Substitution from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

Simon sent us a link to PINOKY which looks like it might be fun to play with for all of about 15 minutes:

Finally, via our friend and former BERG colleague Tom Armitage we discovered Fingle, the iPad game based around the thrill of touching someone else’s fingers:

Fingle Gameplay Trailer from Game Oven Studios on Vimeo.

That’s it for this last week’s links! Enjoy your week!

Week 344 in the BERG studio has a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. Joe rejoined the studio (back from the US trip with Jones & Webb) on Tuesday. Jones stayed in the US for a couple of extra days but has just arrived back in the studio, straight from the airport. What can I say, he is hardcore. Webb was at CES in Las Vegas yesterday (we can’t wait to get his report) and continues his US mini-tour in San Francisco today. James Darling is still on a tropical beach somewhere. Other BERG folk have been out to see GPs and osteos, track down packages, run various errands, etc. At the same time, we’ve had a number of visits from clients/partners and also have several contractors spending time in the studio this week. So it’s still felt like the busy, buzzing hub that it usually is.

Let me say a quick word about two people who have been mentioned in passing in previous weeknotes without much other explanation as to who they are. Phil Wright is a contractor who has been helping us out with the development of Little Printer since April of last year. He spends most days in the studio and has his own desk and everything, so although he remains on contract status, he feels like part of the regular BERG team. Helen Rogers joined us for two afternoons a week at the beginning of December to start training to take over for me as our Studio Manager when I go on maternity leave at the beginning of February. From this week she’s up to four afternoons a week, and from the start of February, she’ll be four full days a week. It’s been a treat to work with her thus far as she is super clever and catches onto everything so quickly. It’s nice knowing that the studio will be in very competent hands when I step away in a few weeks. Watch for more info about her to show up in the Studio section of the website soon!

As for the rest of the BERGians, this week Simon is doing some rounding off of project costs for 2011 and looking at capacity planning for 2012, leading some workshops on the continued development and future of Little Printer, coordinating various bits of Uinta projects that we have on the go, and working through the final issues that still need to be resolved in the new studio. In case you missed it, he also posted adverts for two new positions that we’re looking to hire for. If you’re interested in working for BERG, please do have a look to see if either of those describes you!

Nick has been working on the technical architecture for BERG Cloud, thinking about chips and font rendering for Little Printer and doing some work on the Suwappu app.

Joe has been catching up on what he missed being out for a week and getting his feet back under him. He’s mainly working on integrating animation in a couple of Uinta projects.

Denise is still very generously handling most of the enquiries that come in about BERG Cloud and Little Printer. She’s also continuing work on the UI and IA for the internet side of Little Printer.

Alex has the fun job of developing the brief for the Little Printer packaging and unboxing experience. He’s still doing some work on Uinta this week and is also helping to make the new studio a happier, more accommodating place with a functional doorbell and signage.

Alice is also involved in the font rendering work for Little Printer and is doing some early stage investigative work into dev tools for people who want to create their own publications for Little Printer.

Timo is working on a Uinta animation brief and is also doing some shooting for a 90 second test pilot. I’m sure more will be revealed about that in good time, but it’s potentially pretty exciting.

Andy is making good use of our CitySpring courier account, sending various components hither and yon. He’s also having conversations about what should be printed on the back of Little Printer. I suppose most people don’t really think too much about the copy on the back of their electronics, but it turns out it’s pretty important.

As for me, I have been doing all the usual financial admin, trying to wrap up some last bits of business around moving studio, ordering office supplies, handling all the general (i.e. non-Little Printer or BERG Cloud) enquiries that come in to the studio, etc. Today I get to teach Helen how to run the quarterly VAT return. (Exciting stuff, eh?) And I’ve been getting kicked in the ribs (from the inside) pretty much the whole time I’ve been typing this. Maybe that second cup of tea wasn’t such a great idea after all…

We’re looking to expand the studio a little more as we begin 2012.

BERG is a thirteen-strong design studio at present, made up of a mixture of multi-skilled designers and creative technologists researching and developing media and technology. We also have a super team of extras who help us out. There’s more about our work here.

We’re beginning the search for a couple of new people to join us!

Firstly a Business Development Manager, part time. This person will manage our pipeline of upcoming consultancy work, finding and shaping new projects, working with existing clients and finding new ones with whom BERG can do exciting work.

Secondly – another Project Manager. You’ll be working across a few of our internal projects like Little Printer and BERG Cloud as well as client projects, ensuring things run smoothly and efficiently in the studio.

If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, then you can download the full job descriptions.

To apply, please send your CV with a covering note in to info@berglondon.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!