Archive for March, 2010
Shoes that make everyone the same height
Woa, awesome project, from way back in 1997. Making shoes to make everyone level. What are the social behaviors now…
“Berlin-based artist Hans Hemmert (famous for his work with balloons) threw a party where guests wore shoe-extenders to make them all the same height of 2 meters. Aside from bringing the partygoers all to a common eye level (and eliminating the awkward postures of party talk between the tall and the short), the gathering is lent an infographic nature by the shoes: all made from blue foam, the person’s real height is read in the visual uniformity of the sole instead of at the head—like a walking bar graph.
This (completely underpublished) project, entitled “Level,†is from 1997, produced for the Personal Absurdities show at the Galerie Gebauer Berlin. Finding it now, in 2010, I can’t help but read it as a design event, getting directly at the basic qualities that shape our interactions with others—what does it mean when we all share one height?
Hans Hemmert is part of the art collective Inges Idee. Check out their site for more amazing projects in public space.â€
Best. Daily Show. Ever? Jon Stewart parodies Glenn Beck
Best. Daily Show. Ever? Jon Stewart opened his show Thursday night with a 15-minute parody of Fox News host Glenn Beck, lamenting what it means to be a progressive and capturing the exaggerated mannerisms of Beck to a 'T,' even donning the reading glasses that dangle down to the middle of his face.
"I'm glad you tuned in to today's show," Stewart opened. "It's an important one. One that you and your family can't afford to miss. Oh, you could miss it, but if you miss it... you'll die."
The video screen behind Stewart starts with a clip of Beck in a heated diatribe on progressivism. "Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is destroying our Constitution," Beck groans, adding, "Progressives want to control every aspect of your life."
"I didn't know that's what I wanted, but I guess I want to control every aspect of your life," Stewart rejoins. His sentences are broken with periods of exaggerated 'Beck' mannerisms. "As a progressive I might say I think it's a good idea for an agency to monitor pollution," he continues. "But I guess what I really mean is it's in the state's interest that we be allowed to put a chip in your head that tells you when you can masturbate."
"Total control," Stewart says, echoing Beck. "In my America, nobody tells people when they can masturbate!"
The studio audience roars throughout the 15-minute skit, which appears below.
The following video is courtesy of Comedy Central and originally aired on Thursday, March 18, 2010:
Newborn Babies Now Crawling in Infographical Data
"This is a baby generating data in a neonatal ward", according to the latest commercial by IBM. It did remind me that I will need to interpret the visualization of my newborn daughter as soon as I come home today. Now, if we only could synchronize our time-varying trends at night and have less outliers, all would be well...
"The team built custom code that translates spreadsheets of raw numerical data -- derived, in the case of 'Data Baby', from a newborn's respiratory, heart rate, blood pressure, EKG, oxygen saturation, and temperature readings -- into motion paths that move and evolve design elements organically across image sequences. In the spot, patterns gently float up in-frame, seemingly from the surface of a newborn baby resting in a neonatal ward. Ethereal CG life patterns, fractal-like shapes and other visual expressions flow upwards to form a stylized mobile that is captured as a reflection in the baby's eye. These beautiful design elements warmly envelop the baby, delivering an authentic visual representation of the myriad pieces of data made available to doctors with the help of IBM technology." More detailed information at Motion Theory and Pitch Engine.
This, and a few more commercials in the same line of reasoning, are available below. Be sure not to miss the funny behind-the-screens documentary (.mov) of the Data Baby commercial.
Via Motionographer and Fast Company.
Thnkx Peter!
YouTube: Viacom secretly posted its videos even as they sued us for not taking down Viacom videos
Broadcast Yourself (via /.)For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.
Given Viacom's own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.
(Image: Kara Swisher and Philippe Dauman, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Joi's photostream)
- YouTube user data must be turned over to Viacom, judge rules ...
- Ontario Privacy Commissioner to Google: Fight the Viacom/YouTube ...
- Viacom terrorizes YouTube with bullshit DMCA notices
- EFF sues Viacom over YouTube takedown of Colbert parody
- Viacom: privacy-hating hypocrites
- YouTube/Google sued by Viacom for a billion bucks
- Infringing Viacom claims copyright infringement
The Most Self-Explanatory Painting In Human History [Concept Art]
It's Batman. With a lightsaber. Fighting a shark. Don't ask why this is happening. It just is. This tableau is pure id. I want this image to flash before my eyelids before I fall asleep each night. [via Nerdcore]
The Vivienda 19 House by A-cero
Spanish architects A-cero have sent us their latest completed project, a house in the “La Finca†development in Pozuelo de Alarcon (Madrid).
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Description from A-cero:
The structure of this new house is made of clear volumes, straight lines and simples shapes. The house’s front is made of marble travertino and there are many windows in it. Both elements give a lot of lightness to the house.
It has a 1.600 m2 surface and three floors (basement, ground and high floor). The structure adapts itself to the slope ( 4000 m2) where the house is. The garage and service spaces are in the basement, while the most public spaces (lounge, dining room, living room …) are in the first floor. Bedrooms and more private rooms are in the high floor. A-cero has designed also a 80 m2 spectacular and geometric swimming pool. It harmonizes with the clean architecture of this A-cero project.
Visit the A-cero website – here.
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In This Horror Movie, the Call Comes From Inside the Theater [Interactivity]
