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TomTom vs the London Underground
Says Speedy, Write a 100 word critique on tom tom as opposed to your love of the london map
. Well ok, (it’s a diagram not a map, by the way) here we go:
The London Underground system runs to a set schedule; in order to intersect with a train you have to be in the right space at the right time. The diagram will show you the space, but time has been separated out into a timetable. With TomTom, the view moves with you; tracking your movements live, from satellites in space and giving you a constantly updated ETA.
The TomTom gives you a view of the space you are in, but in some kind of myopic tunnel vision (with a slightly threatening Australian accent, at that). The diagram does gives you an overview of the whole system, you can plan to go from A to B and see both represented on the diagram at once.
Typography and code
For the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about (and talking about, and waving my arms about) typography and how it affects space. Especially Helvetica. Now it’s time to think about making something, so I’m turning the idea and around and looking at how space could affect type.
Chris showed me one of his projects called I-Beam where he negotiated with different groups of creatives (architects, dancers and dyslexics) to design their own typeface. He asked me what kind of typeface a programmer would make, and I had a strange feeling that I already knew the answer to that one. Here’s an R from the Peter Cho’s Typeface composed of pie segments:
{50, 310, 310, 50, 40, 185, 200, 107, 133, 180}
Computer typefaces and made up of a set of points, which are stored as numbers. So all you need to make a typeface (as a programmer) is some numbers and an idea. My idea, is to make a typeface that is affected by a space. And I know a space with a lot of numbers in it. I’m going to use the Arch-OS system in Portland Square to generate a typeface from the live data coming out of the building.
Chris pointed out that if the typeface were just generated the once, it would be frozen in time, and that would be a bit rubbish. So the idea is to update the typeface as the data changes and have the font files updated on the system automatically, so every time you came back to your dissertation, the typography would have changed.
mscapefest 07 at HP Labs
Just got back from mscapefest at the HP Labs in Bristol. It was a two day event about locative media and the mscape platform, which uses GPS and mobile devices to create digital ‘mediascapes’ that are layered over the real world. Also a good chance for some networking (I got three business cards, three!) and free buffet. The teriyaki beef was excellent.
It was a good couple of days, but I’m far too tired to say anything intelligent at this point. Instead, I’ve put together some Match of the Day style extended highlights, delivered via the understated elegance of the unordered list:
- Pervasive gaming; using GPS (and other technologies) to create locative games that can be played away from the screen. It set my ARG senses tingling. Included a very quick example of how to make a game in mscape, which looked far easier than it probably is.
- Audio for locative media; recording and planning methods for engaging people in locative media, without freaking them out (unless you want to freak them out). Binaural microphones sound cool — you stick them in your ears and they record stereo as you’d hear it — and Duncan Speakman, who was running the workshop, reported ‘great success’ with using sub bass audio. He made a woman cry.
- Teriyaki beef; seriously, there was a chocolate fountain and everything.
- Beyond GPS; extending the mscape platform through the use of other sensors. The focus was on proximity sensors (for location fixes when GPS is not available, i.e. indoors) but other sensors including galvanic skin response were mentioned.
- Collaborative mapping; a talk by Steve Coast about OpenStreetMap, which is to maps as Wikipedia is to enclycopedias. Very interesting talk (he’s a good presenter) with lots to think about. And they’ve found quite a lot of the copyright traps on the proprietary maps, there’s one in Bristol called ‘Lye Close’ which is great; the ‘official’ maps have fictional placed on them whilst the wiki map is apparently still lacking a ‘Mordur.’
- mediascape in the dark; we went out to the Watershed in Bristol and then wandered around in a park with some PDAs trying out a few pieces. We found bats and elephants and about twenty metres worth of GPS jitter.
Fin. I must sleep.
Eve online, the flying in circles simulator
During a bout of insomnia the other night, I decided to take a look at eve online. For, you know, research purposes. I didn’t have much fun though because, unfortunately, somewhere during the process of creating their massively multi-player online sci-fi universe, the game designers forgot to add any video game into it. As far as I can tell, the game consists of:
- Fighting; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at another ship with your blaster ray
- Mining; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at a massive rock with your mining ray
- Salvaging; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at a shipwreck with your salvage ray
- Computer hacking; watching your ship fly in circles while shooting at a computer with your computer hacking ray
- Deliveries; watching your ship fly itself while… actually this one doesn’t involve ray guns
The game does have a couple of things going for it. Firstly, in the future everyone will apparently use Icelandic Króna as the galactic currency, which is cool. Secondly, it looks quite nice.
Dissertations are tricky
I’ve spent the weekend with my brow furrowed (furrowed, I say!) rewriting the abstract of my dissertation. The new title, which I’m sure will change at least one more time, is:
The London Underground diagram is to London, as [blank] is to the World Wide Web.
As I tried to explain to the guys this morning, the dissertation is about interactions with ‘objects’ — digital or otherwise — and how our strategies for dealing with those objects affects our experience. Which is to say, it’s still about how awesome the London Underground diagram is.
Project triangle
The project triangle places my work in the area I think I’m working in, and positions it relative to other work that I’m going to steal appropriate bits from. Michel Gondry and Liam Lynch aren’t on there, but they sort of sit just outside of the bottom right corner.
Time paradox
We watched the film Déjà Vu (under the pretext that it would be useful to help us think about space) and ended up having a massive argument about time travel afterwards. There was actual shouting. Spoiler time…
Denzel Washington’s character goes back in time to prevent something that happened four days ago and manages to get himself killed in the process. By saving the day though, he gives himself no reason to go back in time in four days time to stop it from happening. Which is where it gets confusing. The film mentions branching realities, and Luke is happy with that explanation. Adam and me however, have a problem with it. The problem is that one reality causes the other to exist, and the reality that is created prevents the previous from happening. At which point a time paradox causes the universe to explode.
It’s all explained in this helpful diagram (which is a recreation of the one I drew at the time).
Helvetica neue
Only just noticed; they changed the R. It’s slightly less phallic!
Precedent presentation
Talked for a few minutes about my current thinkings on Helvetica and Space to a group of slightly confused / hideously hungover first years. It went alright; they didn’t really know what the hell I was going on about, but that’s ok. I made a rather nice keynote presentation for the occasion, of which you download a pdf version if you are so inclined. You won’t be get the nice transistion effects though, so just shut your eyes and think of Steve Jobs instead.
The hunch I’ve been having is that type, especially Helvetica, can have an effect on space as much as a person can; in the right context. The fact the capital R allegedly looks like a penis isn’t particularly relevant, but it makes for a good slide.
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