:||digital kitchen||:

this is an wip article for Physicall Computing classes lectured by Tom Igoe.
As I couldn´t manage to spend an entire day doing this assignment I did my observations during my daily routine (train travels, smoking outside the buildings..)

this is an wip article for Physivall Computing classes lectured by Tom Igoe.
As I couldn´t manage to spend an entire day doing this assignment I did my observations during my daily routine (train travels, smoking outside the buildings..)

day 1::

-E- Train
(11:15AM)
girl listening iPod + using cellphone (reading msg's??) ::
no visual or tactile contact with iPod. Visual contact with cellphone with some inbetween pauses but always grabbing it.
duration: aprox.10'

-E- Train
(11:28AM)
girl listening walkman(!!!) ::
always grabbing it; listening (aprox.4') + changing settings (rewind?forward?) (aprox.30'') + listening (aprox.4')

-E- Train
(11:30AM)
boy listening iPod + changing settings (clickwheel=volume?) (aprox.10'')

-E- Train
(11:32AM)
girl listening iPod + changing settings (?) (aprox.1') + listening

-E- Train
(11:38AM)
playing PSP (aprox.8') + as soon he quits PSP grabs cellphone (aprox.30') - while all this always listening music (iPod?)

-E- Train
(11:39AM)
girl using cellphone (reading msg? settings?) (aprox.3')

-E- Train
(11:28AM)
boy listening iPod + changing settings (aprox.10'')

Broadway (outside Tisch's building)
(12:08)
UPS driver in truck using UPS delivery interface (aprox.40') overlaped with cellphone talking (3') and wrting down in UPS interface(1')

Broadway (outside Tisch's building)
(12:12)
boy smoking and listening to iPod + changing settings (aprox.20'')

As i was outside Tisch's building smoking though most of the time I couldn´t see anyone working with the object's interfaces I managed to count the number of interfaces being used (iPod vs. cellphones).
this observation lasted for 4'-5'
iPods - music players = 28
cellphones = 15
both = 1 (passing by girl using one headphone in one ear and talking to cellphone!!)

Posted by rux at 03:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

soo.. after a week of blueish greys looks it was time to get this blog more beautifull, and (irony) now it certainly is!
When I started redesigning it I had not a clue where to go.. I certainly knew I wanted it to be clean and usable but was kind of bored of color schemes searching and experimentation and also really missing some design and color theory and principles..
As the time goes by and doesn´t stop (especially in nyc, where it seems like an ultra sound jetplane) the pressure was building on me and (i didn´t really wanted to do it but..) I started browsing the blogosphere world.

soo.. after a week of blueish greys looks it was time to get this blog more beautifull, and (irony) now it certainly is!
When I started redesigning it I had not a clue where to go.. I certainly knew I wanted it to be clean and usable but was kind of bored of color schemes searching and experimentation and also really missing some design and color theory and principles..
As the time goes by and doesn´t stop (especially in nyc, where it seems like an ultra sound jetplane) the pressure was building on me and (i didn´t really wanted to do it but..) I started browsing the blogosphere world.
One thing that really annoys me is that it is a standard (and how i fight those!) but on the other hand it also gave the power to people with a minimum web knowledge to build their own sites and especially: their own media!
here's how the old blogger homepage looks like (it's a classic!)::

so I just decided to subvert their own look and use it for my own journal, imitating their old homepage color schemes and redoing their "b" logo to my own "r" logo! heheeheh!
Then I created a color table with "blogger"'s color styles::

After that I was imaginaning myself saying that it was soo easy.. though it wasn´t that hard i really lost lots of time understanding the .css file and getting everything straight.
I used some tricks to edit the CSS using firefox developper tools to edit the .css file while updating the blog in realtime (ok.. almost!).
after that looong tweaking time the aesthetic was done and everything was in their right places,
but then I found a bug in my design: when the user opens the entry full text the banner text jumps to the front of the logo.. still haven´t find the css bit of it..
so the work will be kept in progress: tags are missing (and i miss them!) and some exploration of movable type's plugins will be done in the future (if I finally understand how to install them!).
Conclusions?? though the blog platform is appealing for a quick website creation and content update its tweakings aren´t that easy or fast as i thought them to be..
Though the blog is usable (or it seems so) it looks to pretty.. not my kind of style I think.. I liked the idea of making it so similar that people wouldn´t even notice the difference in the logo and so creating some kind of perversion, but the looks is tooo clean!
(..i think I still hate blogs...)

Posted by rux at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The first time i read that new I though it was amazing and everytime I think about it I like it even more!
let me explain, the discs aren´t filled with nothing and they're not empty too: they contain a key-code giving access to their buyers to download the music and extra artworks from the internet. This way, are the users also the builders of this product?!

The first time i read that new I though it was amazing and everytime I think about it I like it even more!
let me explain, the discs aren´t filled with nothing and they're not empty too: they contain a key-code giving access to their buyers to download the music and extra artworks from the internet. This way, are the users also the builders of this product?! You may say yes!
The artists give freedom to their listeners to choose all or some of their sequentially released creations and burn them into the physicall side of their piece. The user has the final choice power and more than that has the power to create something (even if not totally) unique and to get their "hands dirty" assembling "their own" The Residents album!

Does it seem senseless?!
Throughtout the history of the world wide web and its relations with the music creation and industry music has never been the same. Lets take a peek in (not so far way) history:
Precious user-friendly and colaborative ideas have been used by David Bowie (1999) in the creation of "his" songs allowing his fans to participate and collaborate in the ceation of lyrics, rehearsals, studio recordings and mixing, "premiéring" 360º camera webcast technologies to share these proccesses with the mundane web user.
Metallica were never the same after violently sueing Napster (2000) for allowing users to download illegally their musics and instead of selling more and wining a battle against "evil pirates" they sold less and lost a lot of their fans and listeners (lots of them "voluntarily" banned by Napter).
Communities have been created using the web as basis for their interaction and distribution of their contents, many of them (if not the most) for free; taking an action against the music industry monopoly of taste and choice and distribution (e.g. www.micromusic.net).
By the year 2000 the creation of CreativeCommons platform gave (and still gives) authors the legal power to share for free or not their creations and to be respected for that, allowing artists collaborations and interchange of samples and ideas.
Most of the sells of music are now done by the online music stores: on its first day Apple's itunes music store sold the equivalent of 6 months of all sellings from online music stores, by 2005 it surpassed the sellings of traditional music shops.

In a world where the information has become the power and digital media has become omnipresent, to buy a physicall format of your favourite media just to have it on your shelves is making less sense each day, and even if it is not, it is happennig as everyone can see from the sales reports of online music stores and ubiquous mp3players.

Neverthelless, this digital media formats are also keeping us far from the cult of having the representative physicall object and :
as Paul Levinson said "The more information we get, the more we need of physicall reality".

Posted by rux at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... run downstairs, get inside the car, doors close behind! Safe?! Gazes become suspicious, my eyes inspect every move.. never-ending passing stations, eyes run over all faces searching for confort receiveing more fear.
Last-minute call gets me out of train, doors close behind... final relief...
...hands over my bag, not mines!

Posted by rux at 11:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)