How do you get kids excited about becoming inventors?

[via VSL]

Trifecta of Perfection: Radiohead's "House of Cards" Video

Khoi IM'd me very matter-of-factly the other day, "Hey have you seen the Google-Radiohead thing?" Being the totally uncool person that I am, I hadn't, and of course, I clicked his embedded link and what I saw resulted in the last 48 hours of deep pause. What I experienced in Radiohead's new "House of Cards" video simply blindsided me on so many levels.

I would call myself a marginal Radiohead fan at best, but this song and this video made me think about them in a whole new light. There has been much buzz around Google's involvement, the impressive technology behind the effects, the unusual pairing of GOOG and Radiohead (but it makes sense though since Radiohead so gets the Internet, thus becoming the Internet's darling rebels), the strength of Radiohead's recent album in general. Initially, I watched the video a few times, gawking; decided I needed more and downloaded the hi-res version, read every word about it (both on Google Code and Radiohead's site) watched the "making of" companion piece, messed around with the interactive Google Code version, bought the .mp4 version of the song on iTunes, even downloaded the fullscreen screensaver. I did everything that was asked of me, following the PR script to a T. I was a good-geek.

Eventually, what it led to, which I am assuming was by design (even if it weren't it doesn't matter), was total immersion into the video itself. By my most conservative estimation, I've watched the video probably 70 or so times this weekend, sometimes actively, sometimes having the video run in the background, listening to the track while I did other stuff on my computer and off. But why on earth would I compulsively loop the video if I weren't actually watching it? Good question. I guess I just wanted to always know it was playing, to know that it was "alive" and always near me. I even took it to bed with me, looping fullscreen on my iPhone (being able to "hold" a video experience in your hand, liberated, decontextualized..is just cool beyond words).

Upon reflection, I realize that my appreciation for it gradually went deeper than the initial coolness of it. I started thinking about it in the way I think about any work of art, and not simply as another notable example of diversionary entertainment. Asking myself questions about the translation of intention to execution, taking a critical look at the meaning behind the words, separating the music from the visuals and experiencing either on it own (try it, watch the video with sound turned off), pondering the nature of the technology used to create all the amazing effects. Then I realized something: I began thinking of this "House of Cards" video as a legitimate work of art. Why is this significant? Can't you call just about any music and music video works of art? Well, no. I have always loved music videos, and even worked for a few years with a video production company producing lots of short-format entertainment experiences (mostly house and hip-hop). It was a blast.

No, this Radiohead video is a perfect storm in a way that I've never seen one in a music video - a trifecta of perfection. One, the music arrangement itself, so soulfully earnest, halting and haunting, elegantly restrained, a departure from typical Radiohead fare. Two, the bold appropriation of one medium (lidar laser scanning, data visualization) and perverse application of it to another. Three, the rich subtext of the lyrics - a literal interpretation of the lyrics is about the experience of unrequited love, the pining for someone trapped in a meaningless relationship, references to Ang Lee's "Ice Storm" and its plodding expose into the experimentation with social mores in laissez faire suburban America. But what about the subtext...?

I went on a few lyrics sites (needed to, I find Thom Yorke's Orbison-esque voice hard to parse) and discovered a wealth of opinions from Radiohead fans around the world about what the lyrics meant. I am admittedly one of those people who likes to read movie reviews after I see something, especially when I can't rightly articulate myself why I liked or disliked something. I would say categorically established fan opinion agreed the song was about love, but a few voices made compelling arguments that the song was about....capitalism. Pretty cool because this is an important theme for me of late. Whether or not you are in a visual or textual medium, metaphor can be powerful especially if used deftly. I honestly think all the song's references are indeed metaphors for the illusory structures that we experience in capitalist society, and the song concerns itself with our own state of being in an environment that is tenuously anchored in symbols and a relativistic moral framework...a framework as solid as a "house of cards". 

The song's refrain, "Denial, denial, denial" repeatedly echoing Radiohead's pretty explicit statement that we as a society just don't have a clue that all that is solid in modernity, really just continually melts into air. And this metaphor is rendered in a not so metaphorical way in the video's many scene cuts to a mundane ranch house suburb, houses quite literally disintegrating into digital dust, blown away by virtual wind.

So, readers, please forgive my naive indulgence into a critical analysis of a pop-culture artifact (as I am hardly an art or music critic), and forgive me for looking deeper into something beyond the myriad "cool-factors" by which it is being peddled to the public. I just want to write this: Radiohead's "House of Cards" video is as close to perfect (the trifecta of form, meaning, and technique pushing conventional boundaries, bonded together into something coherent, incomplete if separated), as anything can get. 

It's just so beautiful on so many levels. 

[Updated: infosthetics likens it to Colder's "To the Music" video - good tune, cool effects, but not the same animal at all, not even close.]

I got my moo.com cards today!

Moo.com kicks ass. Great company, great product, great user experience overall. I used to have the stick-of-chewing-gum minicards, but after we changed our address, decided to try out the new larger format business cards. Nice. For $21.99 they feel great, nice finish, very thick, printing quality is razor sharp, cool holder. The $7.99 acrylic holder is a pretty nice piece of kit.

Louise Nevelson of Words

 
Bonnie was having fun with wordle today. I think Ms. Nevelson would approve.
 

Squarespace V5

My blogging service recently upgraded to version 5, so I've been messing around with all the new features. If you happen to experience schizophrenic design here, that is why - I am tinkering like crazy. Their admin and edit tools are pretty amazing in V5. Some of the best AJAX I've ever seen. Sure, there are plenty of free services out there (and I use Wordpress), but for a totally hosted solution (I don't have to install anything on my ISP servers) it's pretty impressive. The design theme today harkens back to my i/o360 days.

The Development of Designer-Humans

I am no child development expert by any stretch of the imagination, but because I am a parent of a 21-month old I must pay attention to how she is developing against lots and lots of established research and professional opinions. I discovered an interactive timeline from Talaris Institute whose mission it is "to improve the social, emotional, and cognitive development of children from prenatal to age 5." Of course, being a designer, I appreciated the way the timeline was constructed, and I quickly learned that Willow is on target in all areas of her development with the exception of language. Though she is babbling and communicating willfully, her vocabulary is not where this chart says it should be; she has about 10 recognizable pre-words, this timeline says she should have a working comprehension and use of 200. There are probably a number of factors leading to this, like the fact that she spent her first year exposed only to Mandarin, and the fact that I tend to speak super-fast and truncate my words in an annoying (to Bonnie) "Gong-speak" that probably doesn't help Willow's comprehension of English.  We'll keep a close eye on this, though. Hmm. We really hope her recent seizure isn't a factor....gulp.

Anyway, reading through the numerous milestones featured in this handy timeline, I tried to remember my own childhood development, but of course, couldn't really recall much of anything (I do remember liking to crawl around chasing cockroaches, but that wasn't mentioned here, not sure why). It did get me thinking about how it is that I developed into a designer (and not something else), and this timeline offers many clues as to the things we all evolve in the early years, but things specific to designers are notable in that what forms in most all people obviously develops more acutely for designers (yes, you can extrapolate to other creative disciplines, of course - in this case I am mostly interested in design as a visually and compositionally intensive vocation).

Here's a summary of things I culled from this timeline that are, in my non-scientific and at times tongue-in-cheek opinion, most relevant (but not necessarily unique) to the development of this strange kinesthetically-advanced class of people I belong to called "designer-humans". It is interesting to me that many of these things are still developing in me, even at age 41...

SOCIAL

• Readily shows disgust (birth - 3 months)
  
• Becomes interested in mirror images (4 - 7 months)
• Shows evidence of empathy (18 - 24 months)
• Starts to display feelings of envy (18 - 24 months)
• Objects to big changes in routine (24 - 35 months)
• Begins to negotiate solutions to conflicts (36 - 48 months)
• More likely to agree to rules (48 - 59 months)

COGNITIVE

• Can relate what they feel with what they see (birth - 3 months)
• Recognizes that objects remain the same size and shape even if they are distant (birth - 5 months)
• Struggles to get objects that are out of reach (3 - 6 months)
• Can perform simple addition and subtraction exercises (5 - 10 months)
• Can distinguish between two vs. three objects (9 - 12 months)
• Begins to sort shapes and colors (17 - 24 months)
• Capable of completing puzzles with three or four pieces (26 - 36 months)
• Can make mechanical kinds of toys "work" (28 - 36 months)
• Increasingly inventive fantasy play (36 - 48 months)
• Capable of approaching problems from a single perspective (38 - 48 months)
• Can correctly name some colors (40 - 48 months)
• Realizes other people can have inaccurate perceptions of the world (48 - 57 months)
• Realizes that people may have different visual views of the same object (48 - 58 months)

LANGUAGE

• Can correctly identify a picture with its spoken name (14 - 24 months)
• Understands the concept of “same” and “different” (39 - 48 months)
• Capable of telling stories (43 - 48 months)
• Speaks in complex sentences (51 - 59 months)
• Tells longer stories (52 - 59 months)

MOTOR

• Grasps and shakes hand toys (1 - 4 months)
• May begin to copy some capital letters (41 - 48 months)
• Use of thumb and forefinger to explore objects, turn knobs and dials, etc. (10 - 20 months)
• Capable of copying simple horizontal lines and vertical lines and building towers (14 - 24 months)
• Can scribble with a crayon (16 - 20 months)
• Can make on own vertical, horizontal and circular strokes with pen or crayon (25 - 36 months)
• Copies triangles, squares and other geometric patterns (49 - 59 months)

Updated: This morning, Bonnie was so kind as to share an interview with the Architecture Dean of IIT Donna Robertson, on the Miesian design education pedagogy, which I didn't know anything about:

In the classic Miesian format, you didn’t design a building until the fourth year of your undergraduate education. The first year was devoted to developing visual literacy and craft; the second year to constructing with brick and wood; the third year, steel and concrete. Then the fourth and fifth years were focused on building design. I am interested in teaching construction technology through studio––the central tenet of Mies’s principles—but I want to be sure that any time a student is asked to produce a building form, he or she can take design into consideration.

Interface as Haiku

I. The essential nature of the Japanese poetic form hokku (or haiku), is brevity in expression, expansiveness in meaning, following a strict structure of "beats" (5-7-5) or, more accurately in Japanese, morae. It is a sparse form that I have always admired, dabbled in, and respect deeply for its restraint. A good haiku's diminutive presence on a page betrays the intimate immensity experienced by the reader. The number and ways an haiku can be interpreted because of its inherent sparseness is not knowable.

II. The essential nature of a user interface (in computing parlance) is utilitarian simplicity in offering a user just the right amount of informational cues to guide her to the next appropriate task or action. There are no fixed forms or structures in the creation of a user interface, though many have attempted to codify it. Ultimately, a good user interface feels invisible, as it should be no more than a subtle signpost, a gentle touch, a wink and a knowing smile. A user interface is defined by its roots in utility. If it indeed does anything other than efficient guiding, then other external factors are at play. Play is the process by which delight is achieved. Sometimes user interfaces can be delightful if we are lucky.

III. There are as many definitions for art as there are artifacts, artists, interpreters, critics, collectors, and there are very many. It is intriguing to contemplate the myriad structures and forms that art can take, but it is even more intriguing to attempt to map art's utility expressed through these many forms and modes of expression. The function of art can be understood as "non-motivated" and "motivated". An easy way to understand this dichotomy is to think of art that is experienced as purely sensual, something like experiencing a private opened letter found on a sidewalk versus art that is the person physically confronting you because you picked up her letter off the sidewalk. "Non-motivated" art lives in the question mark. "Motivated" art lives in the exclamation mark. My beloved wife Bonnie says that art "is the creation and experience of an alternate universe, perfect within the imperfection of imagined boundaries."

------

My long lost friend, otherworldly computer graphics genius, Paul Haeberli appeared in my inbox tonight. He shared the above video, which he made, and a vague reference that it could be the basis for research into tactile, fluid interfaces. After the fourth time I watched it, I concluded that Paul may be right enough, but I resist the "motivation" - his modest video simply suffices as an interface haiku, a different kind of "non-motivated" utility-less interface experience, not something less than a "real-world applied" interface, but something beyond it. Anything beyond the grasp of the gravitas of human concern is quite simply, mystery. Without mystery, there are no questions. Beautiful questions.

Below is Paul. Man as haiku.

Cyberspace: (Incremental) Steps

^{today's piclens session on my mac - a virtual videowall google search on none other than "nam jun paik"}

Today's the day of futuristic interfaces (see also Aurora, previous post) and I also came across piclens (via dep), a browser plug-in that allows you to browse hundreds, thousands of images full screen via various web feeds or hookups to Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, and others.

Installation was a snap and it's kind of a blast to use. I introduced it to my 20 month old daughter Willow, who is always looking for a reason to play around with my Mac (she absolutely loves tinkering around with Expose and Spaces, and she knows the key command to launch Quicklook from the many icons on my desktop - I don't even know how to do that). That being said, she is captivated by all the dynamic scaling and movement on my big 30" monitor. With piclens, she squealed like she was on a rollercoaster. She liked watching youtube videostreams in this infinite videowall-informationscape, and I can't blame her. It's fun, immersive, fast, and arguably, useful. It runs just fine on my medium-performance Nvidia 7600GT, smooth as silk, stable (refreshingly so).

It got me thinking. Way back in 1990 thereabouts when I was an architecture student at UT Austin, I took a seminar with Michael Benedikt on "cyberspace". At that time, William Gibson's Neuromancer captivated just about everyone's imagination, and this seminar was my first immersion (no pun intended) into the possibilities of the kinds of architectures that could be born from visualization and interacting with information. He published a book based on the proceedings from the first conference on cyberspace called Cyberspace: First Steps, and I even have a project in it called "DigiSubNavSim", a hypothetical virtual information space used by Navy submarine drivers to visualize sonar signals as they plod blindly through the ocean's blackness. I was obsessed for a while with giving form to the inherently invisible.

Fast forward 18 years (eeks I'm old) and we have Web 2.0, Crysis, PS3, 8-core processors and Nvidia GPU computing for the mainstream (SGI is irrelevant in mainstream computing), broadband in every home, mature IP protocols, billions of web pages, trillions of indexed words and images, real-time collaboration, VoIP, etc etc. I asked Micheal a few years ago, "So, like, when will cyberspace happen?" He said, "10 more years, grasshopper." Aren't we kinda here, and doesn't piclens begin to point to something that just starts to resemble the many visions we talked about in that seminar? However, on reflection, "just starts" really means "is just barely scratching at". But there certainly is the right confluence of technologies and social-readiness....I am getting a little tickle in my belly.

There has been much celebrated work and experimentation in the 3D visualization space, virtual reality, (do you remember Microsoft's V-Chat?) etc, and we have really gobsmackingly sophisticated 3D gaming entertainment, but none of these manifestations is quite what I would deem "cyberspace" worthy of Gibson's vision which was immersive, useful, data-driven. And the most important attribute of all -- consensual. Even the celebrated (if not hyped) work from the MIT Media Lab in the early-90's was rarified demo software at best, running on only the most powerful computers of the day, the only users being the designer-programmers themselves and no one else, by virtue of the fact they were all visionary maquettes, ambitious implications. Consensual in this sense means everyone uses it, knows how to use it...it is ubiquitous, fully adopted, utterly un-self-conscious, perhaps mundane (like the web is now). piclens is a free plugin for Firefox. Was "cyberspace" ever going to be a "desktop" environment? We all thought so at the time. Maybe cyberspace really, truly, is simply a meta-layer on top of everything, a parasitic overlay sucking the good from the host that is the cumulative work of thousands, maybe millions of people. Maybe this is how anything at all comes to be, always building on top of something else, ad infinitum.

Some quick observations about piclens:

• Is it fully immersive? No. There isn't full 360 degrees of freedom. They've constrained it for a reason.
  
• What's the significance of cooliris (piclens' birthing company) being a Kleiner Perkins portfolio company? Probably hugely significant. And I think it's cool that the #1 VC in Silicon Valley is geeking out on this.
• Can you actually do anything other than browse this mega-video wall? No. But maybe that's enough for now. Willow's happy with it.
  
• Is it social? No. But it just takes imagination to make it so, I think. It's not a technology limitation.
• What's the significance of Mozilla having a role in both Aurora and piclens? Huge. I think commercial entities are too risk-averse to try shit like this.
  

Here are some good quotes from Benedikt and Gibson, in case you haven't read either of them:

From William Gibson's Neuromancer: Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...

From Michael Benedikt's Cyberspace: First Steps: Cyberspace: A new universe, a parallel universe created and sustained by the world's computers and communication lines. A world in which the global traffic of knowledge, secrets, measurements, indicators, entertainments, and alter-human agency takes on form: sights, sounds, presences never seen on the surface of the earth blossoming in a vast electronic night. [...]

Cyberspace: Its corridors form wherever electricity runs with intelligence. Its chambers bloom wherever data gathers and is stored. Its depths increase with every image or word or number, with every addition, every contribution, of fact or thought. Its horizons recede in every direction; it breathes larger, it complexifies, it embraces and involves. Billowing, glittering, humming, coursing, a Borgesian library, a city; intimate, immense, firm, liquid, recognizable and unrecognizable at once.

I'm pretty psyched to see this new stuff both real and hypothetical (Aurora, piclens) echoing visions that got me so excited about new experiential frontiers, but I had all but abandoned a long, long time ago. Are we closer? In the end, can life imitate art?