Machine Knitting Trip Part 2: Knitting

The 2 day intensive machine knitting course at the Textile Arts Center in Carroll Gardens was incredibly informative.The instructor, Mandy Kordal, Really knew her stuff, using a combination of demos and one on one instruction to make sure everyone was able to grasp the basics.

Machine Knitting Trip Part 1: Shopping

Last weekend, I took a very sudden vacation to New York City to take a machine knitting class at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn.

A while ago a generous person gave me a knitting machine to use, but after a year of improperly installed sponge bars and jammed carriages, I knew that I needed help. I found a knitting machine class on tumblr and found that it was relatively easy to get to. Immediately, I found that my mother wanted to share a hotel room to reduce the commute time and so we made plans.

It's time we Met

For those of you who live near the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the phrase is familiar. The ad campaign from 2009-10 showed people and art from the collection interacting. I'm a little late on my entry, but here it is.

Notice anything? I have heard that fans of Harry Potter wear robes to book signings, Trekkies wear uniforms to cons, and sports fans obviously wear team colors for their outings. When I heard that Carlton was on display, I just had to go see it (him?), and when I went to see it, I had to wear my fan sweater.

This is me emulating the cantilevered shelves. I tried to think of a more clever pose but couldn't. Anyhow, by taking this cheesy picture, I can ensure that the internet knows that I'm a big enough designerd to dress up for museum trips.

extra nerd cred for anyone who outdoes me by wearing the infamous Eames leg brace to somewhere showing or selling bent ply furniture.

Future of stuff

I actually don't feel like saying much about this, but I'm due for a post.

Slime mold experiment and a makerbot hooked up to a kinect on the same table

The Future of Stuff was a fun mini conference about.. you know what. I learned a few interesting things from the speakers even though I had heard a few of them (Mary Huang and Aminimal studio) only a few weeks ago.

Alex Hornstein talked about his interest in how independent designers make successful products, showing a few case studies. How exciting to hear about the logobot which is a physical robot version of the turtle in logo and spikerbox which is an at home neurobiology kit.  He was really excited about products which brought the cost of traditionally expensive machines to an affordable price.


Jessica Rosenkrantz & Jesse Louis-Rosenberg spoke about the Nervous System aesthetic and their generative design philosophy.

Graphic designer Richard The showed some examples of his work. It was interesting to see logos which used interactivity to reinforce concepts. He also showed a few examples of parametrically generated graphics which were used as constantly changing but recognizable logos.

I was especially interested with what the final speaker, Marius Watz, had to say about coding and parametric art and design. It's better that you go look him up because my summary of his presentation won't be as interesting as his own words.

Mostly I learned that programming is something that I should probably learn.  oh, and that Lasersaur is working to make affordable laser cutters a reality.

Talk to Me

I went today to see the Talk to Me exhibit at MoMA. There was a lot of interesting content and commentary about the integration of technology into everyday life and how we interact with it. Ranging from concepts and predictions to widely used designs, most of the content of the show seemed to be a direct response to Anthony Dunne's Hertzian Tales. I thought I wrote about Hertzian Tales, but it seems that I didn't. It was about the need for empathy and philosophy in the design of electronics. Its a really interesting book - a bit dry, but you should read it.

Anyway, a lot of the content focused on the ability of electronic objects to alter perspectives, augment reality, and to create emotional responses. The subtitle of the show is "Design and communication between people and objects" which is, I guess, a good way of explaining the theme of the show. The general feeling that I got from it was that people just want to get personal with inanimate objects, whether that means artificial affection from an iPad app or pointing out the coldness of sending an email. We are human and we now expect experiences that are more human.

There were scannable codes on all of the museum tags, which makes me realize how amazingly innovative those guided tour headsets were when they first came out. Now we can scan so many things to get more info, but that idea seems to have originated in a gallery setting. A lot of the displays required headphones, which I don't like, so I only listened to some. Surrounded by so many interactive technologies, headphones hanging on hooks looked even less inviting than they usually do. There was so much to take in that I wouldn't have been able to listen to everything anyway.

The most interesting part of the exhibit was the interactions that people had with the displays.

The first piece in the show was a projection of an app called Talking Carl. There was an iPad where you could interact with the character on the touch screen. A little boy saw someone touching the screen and ran up to try it himself. His mother stopped him. She yelled "don't touch the exhibit." The boy said he saw someone else do it but she still said no. I went up to the screen, gestured the character to do a flip, and said "its interactive."  She let the boy play with the screen and thanked me, I don't know if she was being sincere. I think this experience shows the difference between generations and their reaction to technology. To someone who grew up without touchscreens everywhere, a screen in a museum still means "art, do not touch," but for someone who only knows a back lit rectangle as an icon of interactivity, they know what to do.

Another funny scene was the metro card vending machine, on display for the exhibit to show interface design at its finest. It was fully functional, dispensing cards and everything. People kept going up to it to see what it did. They would touch the screen and look confused when it did what it was expected to do. Some even asked the guard what it was for and whether it was part of the exhibit.  If good design is in fact invisible, congrats to the designer - not even the tourists found it noteworthy.

So, this review is getting really long. I will be going back to see the show again when I can spend more time. I will then write about it again with some more thoughtful and designey comments about the experience. Also next time I will show up with a charged phone for a more complete experience.

Yeah, if you go, charge your phone. And you should go.

The NYAFF has started!

For the past few years, I have been going to the New York Asian film festival to see crazy Japanese splatter films. This year I decided to go for something a bit less strange: the opening night Screening of Milocrorze: A Love Story.
 The movie is really complex in terms of plot, and so I am not going to try to summarize it. Instead I want to mention that the visuals for the film were excellently expressive and appropriate. They made it easy to differentiate between the three main characters (all played by Takayuki Yamada) and storylines. The above picture shows the pastel world of the young Ovreneli Vreneligare. The visuals are kind of a combination of a childs drawing, 90s photo manipulation, and a rainbow.

Suddenly, there is a change of style and the setting changes to a pseudo-retro game show. The overall feeling is 70s sleaze, kind of like if Austin Powers was set in japan, but a lot funnier. The character of Besson Kumagai is so terribly obnoxious with his backup dancers, platform shoes, and hair bowtie. This middle part seems to be mostly a comedy, but is just as visually thorough as the first love story. The characters wear afro wigs and body suits, striped turtlenecks, and have a vintage style that sits on the edge of ugly and cool. There are fewer after effects type animations, and there is no more glitter.

The story segues into an ancient (or current?) scene, set in a gambling parlor. the noble Tamon seems to have transported himself back in time to find his lost lover. Everything is black, white, and shades of red. It is hard to think of the connection between the three stories (visually, there is none) besides the love story in all sections. There is a really amazing fight scene that seems to go on forever (in a good way). It was shot with special high speed cameras that capture gravity or the seeming lack of it in a novel way.

There are tatami flying everywhere.

So that is what I did yesterday. I saw one of the most visually interesting films I have ever seen. You should see it because i cant really describe how cool it was.

A thought on the train

I was on the train today watching all of the commuters use their entertainment devices.

The man sitting next to me played air hockey on his iphone (4).
I contemplated the balance between optimal aesthetics and efficiency.

What would things look like if there were no such thing as beauty?

If I were more interested in my appearance would I have fashionable electronics?

If I had fashionable electronics with distracting games would I ever have asked these questions, or would I have been too distracted to think?