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More pixel work from the ancient times, when I forged interaction design on a 128K Mac ...

In early 1985 I began work on a next generation computer design. Painstakingly constructed from foamcore. The full design project covered every aspect of the computer's interface, utilized a tiltable and fold-down flatpanel monitor, a physical interface of hand controls designed for game-console-level speed of use, and an OS/GUI and software concept for SmartBuilding management and Call Center. This computer was designed to empower the lobby receptionist with godlike powers of speed, access, and control!

The Graphical User Interface was developed in MacPaint, and printed out as a sequential series of software screenshots that I had loaded into a pocket on the model's display screen area. To demonstrate how the interface worked, I could pull out one screen, revealing the next one behind it.

I was completely isolated, a year out of design school, working part time in a record store basement in a bad part of Kansas City, coming home to this old house that I shared with two other people, and working on this model and software design into the wee hours. My roommates thought I was crazy and obsessed... Interface? The hell?

But I knew that interaction design was the future. My future!
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/29/2000 7:09:16 PM

The human beans at Kaliber10000 (an awesome site if ever there was one) were so cool to blog a link to the great Japanese designband, Delaware! I thought maybe I should put something up of interest to pixel fans, in case some surfed by...

Someone recently wrote to ask me about the process I went through to create the Rietveldt House icon for IconTown. I decided to post the development file, showing how I'd configured the 3D CAD model of the house to a view I wanted, converted it to IconTown's isometric perspective, and then pixeled it into iconhood. It's now part of an online collection of various icon sets I've created over the past decade.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/28/2000 6:02:21 PM

I can't wait for Delaware's new CD, Artoon, to come out in early 2001.

This new single from it, Bitmap, just may prove a smash hit with the kids in the pixel set. Click the night away!
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/27/2000 7:21:44 PM

An acquaintance once had me try these Japanese eye drops, Pure. I'd describe them to you as Altoids™ for your eyeballs. "To make your eyes vivid" indeed!

She had another oddly shaped, but cute little bottle from Sante Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., that was even stronger still. I can't remember exactly what its name was, but I'm pretty certain it was one of these.

Woah, lookout! This isn't the other one I'd tried, but Sante fx NEO, definitely scares me the most! You won't find these on your local drugstore shelf, though, unless you happen to live in Japan. Evidently American eyes just can't be allowed to have this much excitement.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/25/2000 3:57:44 PM

About seven years ago when at a conference in Boston, I came across a most amazing collection of videos produced by The Geometry Center - The University of Minnesota's Center for the Computation and Visualization of Geometric Structures. While most people might suspect that animation videos from such a source might be dry and uninteresting, I found them among the most profoundly amazing and intriguing things I've ever seen.

Not Knot is a guided tour into computer-animated hyperbolic space. It proceeds from the world of knots to their complementary spaces -- what's not a knot. Profound theorems of recent mathematics show that most knot complements carry the structure of hyperbolic geometry, a geometry in which the sum of the three angles of a triangle is always less than 180 degrees. The video flys you through exotic hyperbolic spaces like this Borromean Ring Complement Manifold.

You can also check out this small preview image of a Hyperbolic Space Tiled with Right-angled Dodecahedrons (also available as a 5.8Mb 1536x1536 TIFF file). This makes pretty spectacular wallpaper for your monitor.

The second video is titled Inside Out and is a very interesting study of the turning of a sphere inside out, while adhering to a number of mathematical rules (here's access to the script, along with images). Modern mathematicians are now using high resolution, animated "video proofs" to deal with complex, dynamic, and hyperdimensional equations. The computer animations in Outside In show that a sphere can be turned inside out by means of smooth motions and self-intersections. This discovery was made by Steve Smale in 1957, and illustrated in 1966 in Scientific American. The computer-animated video is combined with a narrated explanation, and while perhaps still puzzling, should still be accessible to any lay person with some interest in mathematics. The video ends with an animation of Bill Thurston's "corrugations" method of turning the sphere inside out. The presentation makes clever use of familiar concepts such as train tracks, belts, smiles, and frowns.

Another video offered is The Shape of Space, but I've not seen that one. The page on it has some interesting images, though.

Several people to whom I've shown these videos, ranging from mathematicians, to artists, to writers, have sat spellbound with their mouths agape while watching. One friend, after watching Not Knot, remarked that it was like some form of mystical lesson in hyperspace projected back to us from the future. Of course he was just about one machine elf away from a trip to McKenna's hyperspace to begin with.

I hope someday these videos are reissued on DVD. I'd love to watch a whole series on mathematics and geometry done in this style of presentation.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/24/2000 8:23:37 PM

Yves Béhar is an awesome designer who runs fuseproject, a product design studio in San Francisco's SouthPark. I met Yves recently when fuseproject did some great design for a company I'm an investor in and interaction designer for. I've recently learned that fuseproject has been awarded 4 GOOD DESIGN Awards!

Space Scent Perfume Bottle, 2000
  Manufacturer: spaceprojekt, San Francisco
HP Pavilion 2000, 2000
  Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard Company, Cupertino
SF Moma Future Shoe Project, 2000
  Manufacturer: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Philou Hair Cosmetics Product Line, 2000
  Manufacturer: Philou, San Francisco

GOOD DESIGN is one of the oldest and most important design competitions worldwide. All 4 projects will be on exhibit at the Chicago Athenaeum and in the Museum's Permanent Design Collection sometime in 2001.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/20/2000 8:14:02 PM

Before they go and dash the poor old Mir space station into the Pacific Ocean, let's take a moment to appreciate its stark machinic beauty (Mir Seen From Shuttle small / large), (Over Earth small / large), (Over Tasman Sea small / large), (Over Cook Strait small / large), (Closeup of Mir small / large), (Mir in Space (small / large); (Mir's Docking Port small / large).

Luckily we'll still have the new International Space Station, though it's got a ways to go before it looks anything like these impressive conceptual renderings.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/19/2000 9:58:16 PM

Canadian painter, Aaron Marshall's work is a mixture of spaceage, tiki, robot kitsch. Like this astrogrrrl zooming around on a BombPop, Transmissions From Venus. He's currently having a joint show, with Lisa Petrucci at Kirsten Anderson's Seattle gallery, Roq la Rue.

This quality surfing courtesy of Exquisite Corpse contributor and image collector, Dr. Menlo.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/16/2000 10:31:22 PM

I think I just had a genuine post-everything dinner this evening. While working late at the office, I took a break to nuke a ConAgra-manufactured dinner, Healthy Choice Beef Tips Portabello. Whilst feasting upon this splendid repast, I cast about the net a bit. Looking at some of the 3D-rendered scenes at the Persistance of Vision raytracer gallery. POV-Ray is an Open Source, 3D graphics tool. It can be downloaded for free in Windows 95/98/NT, DOS, the Macintosh, i86 Linux, SunOS, and Amiga formats.

There are a number of really striking renderings gathered together there, including a stunning model of Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine created by Douglas Eichenberg. Here's the amazingly high-tech original 1842 whitepaper on the Analytical Engine.

I happened upon this 3D rendered scene of dinnertime in a Viking long house, and opened it up on my screen. Staring at the long house scene on my flatpanel while I sat eating a nuclear-age meal was definitely a Happy Mutant Experience.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/15/2000 11:54:32 PM

Longing for a relaxing holiday in Jamaica, but only have a few minutes during your lunch break? Heh heh heh, no problem mon. The interactive steel pan at PanJava will let you recreate the sounds. Click and hold while you drag your cursor around, or click on each area separately. You can also record yourself, or play from a collection of steel tunes. (Spleef not included)
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/14/2000 11:08:19 PM

It's 6:45pm Standard Pacific Time, do you know where your satellite is? This may be one of the coolest Java thingamajigs I've ever played with on the web. It's a dynamically-updated, realtime interactive map of 500 satellites in Earth's orbit. You can resize the screen, Spin the whole model around in space, adjust the update rate, click on individual satellites to see their name and orbit, check out ground paths and more. I especially like how you can see the clear ring of geosynchronous satellites, orbiting in fixed positions exactly 22,241 miles (35,786 kilometers) over the Earth's equator. Link tip courtesy of my bud, Scott.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/13/2000 6:45:07 PM

A few weeks back I had an opportunity to see an incredible one-man performance entitled, "R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE," playing in San Francisco through December 3, 2000 at the George Coates Performance Works. Written by D.W. Jacobs and performed by Ron Campbell, it's being produced by Foghouse. Campbell plays an unbelievably convincing Fuller, pacing around a spartan stage set, weaving his life story in and around an unfolding thread of rich and remarkable truths. It's sometimes frenetic, sometimes pensive, funny, engaging, thoughtful, and astonishing. Fuller, who died in 1983, was truly a one-of-a-kind genius of still-underappreciated scale.

Bucky has always been one of my greatest inspirations and heroes. Fifteen years ago, after studying his writing and models of synergetic geometry, I began building tensegrity spheres and have subsequently incorporated many of his ideas into my design work.

Here's a 2.1Mb stop-motion animation I made of three of my tensegrity spheres, Ballet du Buckminster, using the VideoCAMworks software I designed for Kensington.

There's a wide and growing variety of Fuller-related sites on the web, including The Buckminster Fuller Institute. Do your ol' noggin a favor and go check them out today!
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/11/2000 4:09:16 PM

My new fave band is Delaware, a spazcore skiffle combo from the isles of Nippon (please to prepare yourself for groovy sideways scrolling, gaijin-san). I'm not sure what I love most, their charmingly cheapass music or their jaggy character-based pixelmurals. I was gonna suggest a couple of my favorite cuts, but then while listening to them all loop in an MP3 playlist, I decided it's really best just to grab them all if you have a few minutes. You won't be sorry!

I Wanna Be Your Star is like a shiny pantsuited pornstar crooner held captive by the remaining Beatles on Pluto.
World Peace reminds me of the Velvet Underground as interpreted by a colony of naked mole rats (the lyrics give me more hope for this monkey planet than anything I've read or heard in years).
Too Much Thinking Is Not Enough Thinking is a smart rythym 'n blues jam for the Sanrio set.
Let's Go! Human Being reminds me of a cross between Tom Verlaine and those faux hippie bands that used to show up on Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies.
Bank? or Punk? is what the spawn of Devo might produce if they cheeked their Ritalin.
Blue Guitar makes me want to swig sake in a lonesome boxcar.
I Bake A Pie is a fruit-sweetened rockabilly classic with one of those parental lyrics warning stickers.
You know, it's really just too damned bad both Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison broke on through before they got a chance to hear Delaware's two-headed mutant cover of Fire and Light My Fire.
And after all this I was truly surprised at this heartfelt tribute to the Rolling Stones' Lady Jane, Rock and Roll, which forever cinched my love for this cool band.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/9/2000 10:23:41 PM

Ever since I watched Godfrey Reggio's mesmerizing, wordless, Philip Glass-scored film, Koyaanisquatsi in the early 1980s, I've been fascinated with the patterns that arise in traffic. I recently came upon Bill Beaty's interesting Traffic Waves site which features a number of theories and experiments regarding the patterns found in jams and bottlenecks.

In addition to .gif animations, Beaty, who lives in Seattle, tells about a number of experiments he's conducted, including allowing space to build up in front of his car as he approaches a jam in order to "feed space into the jam" thereby cutting off the source of its standing wave. This "kills the jam" while slightly slowing down the traffic behind his car (this is why you might see highway patrol moving slowly down the freeway at times. They're also "feeding space into a jam" up ahead. I'd always wondered what was behind that behavior, and know I know!). He also describes a merging method that if understood and followed by more drivers would greatly increase the speed of traffic moving past a bottleneck. All around brilliant thought! We should all follow his lead!
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/8/2000 9:35:38 PM

I love a hoax. Especially an enlightening hoax, and that's what physicist Alan Sokal pulled off in 1996 when he managed to get an essay entitled, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" published in the trendy academic journal, Social Text. With dense prose, a liberal salting of pomo jargon, and quotes from social theory's heavyweights including, Jacques Lacan, Donna Haraway, and Gilles Deleuze, Sokal argued that gravity was a fiction that had been socially constructed, and that science was unable to see this due to ideological blinders.

Hee hee!

Social Text, of course, took the bait like a hungry bass.

Coinciding with its publishing, Sokal revealed the hoax in Lingua Franca in a piece entitled "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies," touching off a heated, sometimes hilarious and eventually very insightful discourse between scientists, social theorists, scientists, and writers. The entire episode is captured in the pages of a book, THE SOKAL HOAX: The Sham That Shook The Academy, which collects the original paper, the piece revealing the hoax, the bitter and defensive responses, accusations, retorts, angry op-eds, email, and then some very thoughtful insights and discourse. One of the most enlightening and thought-provoking books I've read.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/6/2000 11:55:24 PM

Java-based A-Life continues to evolve. Floys (which look to me like they really oughta be called "spoyms") are similar to Craig Reynold's 3D Boids and Alex Vulliamy's Flies, but are territorial carnivores! (as opposed to simpler robot herbivores) Using the various parameter controls, you can interactively introduce "strangers" into the space and the flock of Floys will attack and eat them!

There are three types of Floys: Regular Floys, iFloys (where each Floy can have its own genetic trait), and eFloys (that can evolve). Floys embody a number of new factors, including the abilities to relate to one's flock and to strangers, and rules governing why it's best to be the first Floy to eat the stranger.

Even more amazing, is an application program for creating complex, predatory A-Life, Framsticks. (Frames/MIDI on site base) Created by Polish researchers, Maciej Komosinski and Szymon Ulatowski, Framstick creatures can be endowed with "senses" and in certain setups are capable of evolution. Framsticks have been used to create or evolve everything from crawlers to walkers to jellyfish to swimmers to hopping spiders! Check out all the numerous and beautiful images and movies.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/4/2000 2:11:32 PM

Everyone knows Charles Mingus was one hell of a jazz bassist. But how many know that he penned a guide on toilet training cats?!
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/3/2000 11:03:50 PM

Let's watch some more Japanese television commercials!

First up, an odd, but peppy little musical tribute to the toilet room freshener, Shoushu Pot .

Here's a commercial for a Japanese beer with a German-sounding name - Braü . And for a bit more cultural foo, let's throw in a Beatles soundtrack, m'kay?

In this ad, a Japanese family actually appears to pray to the God of MacaDonaldo's*. Their reverent supplication is then rewarded with lower prices in some sorta divine flash of light. Alright!

What better way to sell mayonnaise than to get a model in a red dress to go cyberbowling in a virtual alley while the Beach Boys sing When The Saints Go Marching In, huh ? (UFO included)

Okay, I'm baffled by this one for Asahi Super Malt. It's a gorgeously shot commercial but then you realize that the music is Puff The Magic Dragon, which would be strange enough, but the peoples' drinking is accompanied by somewhat subsonic swallowing noises !

These two Nissin Cup Noodle commercials run back to back. They both have landing crafts or columns of western army guys wearing woks for helmets and singing the pork and vegetable noodle soup marching songs. The war involves cannons and artillery that fire the key pork and vegetable ingredients into the soup .

*The Japanese have apparently Italianized the name, McDonalds.
- posted by JIMWICh on 11/1/2000 9:48:05 PM

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