Björk: Biophilia 12:18

 

 

There once was a time people just bought a 45rpm single if they wanted to buy some music. Well, that’s not going to fly anymore. Today, you need to maneuver crystals around the universe if you want to hear some music. At least for Björk’s…

 

 

(Found via SubmarineChannel)

Magick: Marco Tempest 10:34

 

 

Now here is something we’ve not had before on Monsieur Bandit: a magician! Marco Tempest does old fashioned magic tricks but with a twist: using modern day gadgets and technology (in this case:  three iPods).

 

 

In the following video Tempest talks about his passion for magic and you’ll surely notice that you could easily replace the word “magic” with the word “art” in many cases. Or “magician” with “designer”, “writer” or “artist”,… Are not all these things variations on the idea of “storytelling”…?

He also talks about something which seems a very strange concept at first: open source magic.

Check him out…

 

MARCO TEMPEST – OPEN SOURCE MAGIC from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.

 

More on Marco Tempest at marcotempest.com

(Found via CreateDigitalMotion)

India Block Printing 15:30

 

 

It’s all in the rhythm, apparently…

 

 

 

(Found via Happy Mundane)

Font Generator Prototyp-O 13:10

 

 

A web-application, built on the Processing language (see: processing.org ) by a student from the “Arts Décoratifs” in Strazbourg,  Yannick Mathey, intended to design letterforms. Explaining it would take far too long. Just take a look at the video to see how fiddling with the different parameters changes the attributes of the letters.

 

 

Yannick explains (in the comments on the Vimeo-pages) that of course he didn’t intend to replace the type designer, yet his app is designed to facilitate experimentation. For every parameter markers are set up to indicate trespassing the rules of what is commonly considered good design, yet the markers are also there to be crossed, opening up the possibilities to generate extraordinary forms.

 

 

If you are interested in following the development of the app, you can subscribe to a newsletter on byte-foundry.com or you can follow @bytefoundry on twitter.

If you speak French, you can read an extensive interview with Yannick Mathey on CG-Blog, where I found this.

(And if you didn’t know: CG-Blog also did a rather nice interview with yours truly, a while ago, which is also available in English. Go check it out! )

Paul the Clumsy Robot Artist 11:09

 

 

Patrick Tresset is a scientist/engineer/artist who built a robot who can draw portraits.  In this day an age, we’ve come to a point where something like that isn’t all that surprising. Cute. A robot who can draw…

The interesting part, however, is that he deliberately programmed the robot to draw kind of clumsy. Why? In an interview with Co.Design he explains:

 

"I try to make robotic installations that touch people. I believe that a robot that slightly fails is more interesting, more touching -- it encourages empathy in the viewer."

 

Isn’t it strange, that the closer we seem to get to some kind of “perfection” (being able to build ever more precise machines, for example), the more we seem to cling onto this notion that imperfect somehow stands for “more human” and is therefor desirable? “Old” technologies, like letterpress printing or vinyl records are ever more popular. A cinema that doesn’t use digital projectors but relies on actual human beings in the projectionist booth, seems like a place where you would like to go an watch an old detective movie, on a mild summer evening, after a walk alongside the river, no?

Hey, I’m not saying this is silly. I’m just as susceptible to all this as anyone.

We’re all bloody Romantics, that’s what we are…

Now let’s watch a robot draw a portrait.

 

 

 

More Info here at the Aikon Project.

(Found via Co.Design)

Everything is a Remix 19:04

 

 

The latest installment in this documentary series is out. Very interesting stuff. If you haven’t seen the previous two parts you can do so here. You’ll also find tons of links to references and sampled material on that site, so be sure to check it out.

 

 

 

Find more info on Everythingisaremix.info

Nokia Pure Typeface Video 12:20

 

 

I saw this video on a Monday morning and even then I couldn’t be fooled by it… Sure, it’s probably a nice typeface, but was it absolutely necessary to jump on board of the “letterpress-revival” just to pretend to be (here comes the magic word)  “authentic”. Ooooh, we are so “authentic”. Look at us!

Please.

 

 

I’m getting a bit tired of “authentic”. Can’t somebody claim to be fake for a change?

 

The video was made by Build. The typeface created by Dalton Maag. The letterpress run by paekakarikipress.

(Found via Fubiz)

M ss ng Murphy 10:53

 

Mister James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem talks about the impact of technology on musical discovery and the future of taste…

 

 

(Found via The Casual Optimist)

4CP: Color Process Erotica 10:29

 

 

Yes: erotica! And no, I’m not kidding. I think these picture are extremely sensuous. And I think the people behind the 4CP-site have the same idea. Listen to this:

 

  Dots emit radiation. As you get closer to them, they begin to vibrate and pulse. Moving closer still, the color separations become dramatically separate: Solids become very solid and the black ink holds together, while the CMY dots fly apart. Foreground and background, positive and negative space, reverse unexpectedly. Orange, green, brown, and fake gray give up their secrets, and the basic building blocks of a universe reveal themselves. Unstable molecules, built of primary colored atoms, buzz at different frequencies. Vectors of visual force, experienced implicitly at original size, become intense. Behind everything is wood pulp paper, a still deeper layer of creation, with its own unstable properties.

 

So at 4CP you’ll find nothing but single panels or even parts of panels, taken from old comic books. Comics from the days of “cheap paper, cheap printing, and four-color separations that could not hide their limitations.”

 

Gone are the page, the frame, the plot, and localized contextual meaning. What remain are the color process and what are generally called the “details” of comic book art. These are the two lowest items on the totem pole of comic book value – poor reproduction and the least important, most static elements of the art itself. Our proposition is that these elements are important and aesthetically compelling.

 

Take a look at the following examples and when properly aroused, spent some time at 4cp.posterous.com.

 

 

You can read more about the ideas behind 4CP in the essay "In defense of dots" by John Hilgart. (Recommended, by the way. Fine piece of writing…)

.

2019: A Future Imagined 11:37

I guess I must be in my SciFi-mode these days… As a sequel to the previous post, this is a short film on Visual Futurist Syd Mead, the concept designer behind Blade Runner, Alien and Tron. He talks about life in 2019, the nature of imagination and what it takes to be a designer…

And he makes a fine old school futuristic car illustration while he’s at it.

 

2019: A Future Imagined from Flat-12 on Vimeo.

 

(Found via Co.Design)

The Wobbulator 18:52

This device was originally made by video artist Nam June Paik and video engineer Shuya Abe in the 1970’s. It’s some kind of an analog video processor, aka a thing to make cool images on ye old tv-set. Oh, I’m not even going to begin trying to explain all this. It’s way over my head.

If you want more info, check out the Create Digital Motion-blog where I found it, or the Vimeo page of Blair Neal who made the video.

 

The Wobbulator from blair neal on Vimeo.

Should designers learn code? 11:29

A short interview with Daniel Shiffman, professor at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and writer of "Learning Processing".

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions. Initially developed to serve as a software sketchbook and to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context, Processing also has evolved into a tool for generating finished professional work. Today, there are tens of thousands of students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists who use Processing for learning, prototyping, and production.

For more on Processing, go to http://processing.org.

 

Daniel Shiffman : Computational Design from Etapes on Vimeo.

Nanophysical 18:27

 

 

This 65 meters long and 2.5 meters high wall piece was made by Ludivine Lechat and Tom De Smedt for IMEC (European Institute for Nanotechnology) using NodeBox software (and Adobe Illustrator).

 

 

NodeBox is Open Source software, developed by Frederik De Blesser and Tom De Smedt from the Experimental Media Group of the St. Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp, Belgium.

The NodeBox-site says:

NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a PDF or a QuickTime movie.

 

NodeBox is free and well-documented.NodeBox allows you to create visual output with programming code. The application targets an audience of designers, with an easy set of state commands that is both intuitive and creative. It is essentially a learning environment and an automation tool.

If you want to know more about NodeBox, go check out the site...

There is also a NodeBox2 for Windows, but this is still in beta. Look for it here.

To learn more about the Nanophysical project, visit the NodeBox gallery here. It is all very complicated (read: I don’t understand a word of it), but it does result in nice pictures. Some more examples…

 

S+G(5): ReactableMobile 10:45

 

 

 

 

Do you remember our post on the Reactable from a while ago? A big table with lights and graphical symbols and objects to make music with… Sure you do! You remember how you thought “I want one!”, don’t you? Well, that was difficult then. It was huge and it was expensive. Bjork had one. The Icelandic brat…

But now, life just got better: ReactableMobile is here. It plays on your Ipad. Yeej!

Check it out…

 

More info? Visit the Reactable-site.

 

(Found via PixelSumo)

GraffitiMarkupLanguage 12:06

Say what?

 

Graffiti Markup Language (.gml) is a universal, XML based, open file format designed to store graffiti motion data (x and y coordinates and time). The format is designed to maximize readability and ease of implementation, even for hobbyist programmers, artists and graffiti writers. Popular applications currently implementing GML include Graffiti Analysis and EyeWriter. Beyond storing data, a main goal of GML is to spark interest surrounding the importance (and fun) of open data and introduce open source collaborations to new communities. GML is intended to be a simple bridge between ink and code, promoting collaborations between graffiti writers and hackers. GML is today’s new digital standard for tomorrow’s vandals.

 

Yeah, I know…. You need some visuals with that…

 

GraffitiMarkupLanguage.com (Trailer) from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

 

For more info and videos, check out graffitimarkuplanguage.com

David A Smith: Sign Artist 12:35

Hand crafted reverse glass signs, decorative silvered and gilded mirrors,… A unique behind-the-scenes look into the working methods and techniques of one of the few remaining traditional glass artists…

 

David A Smith - Sign Artist from Danny Cooke on Vimeo.

 

 (Found via The Donut Project)

Sound+Graphics(4): Seaquence 11:11

My apologies to the regular readers of Monsieur Bandit. It’s been a while since my last conf… ahum…post. Life got in the way. Nasty thing, life. You know…

Today Monsieur Bandit is back with a fourth installment in the sound + graphics series. You might remember the last one (check it out here), the “Tonematrix”, a virtual sequencer, something resembling a monome, and lots of fun to play with.

This one is quite similar, but more elaborate. And again, it looks like a great thing for people like me, who know absolutely zip-all about music but still would like to play.(I’ve got a very sad story about how my musical aptitude got crushed in kindergarten. Remind me to tell it one day…),

The “Seaquence” adopts a biological metaphor: it allows you to create musical life-forms in a virtual petri-dish, and combine them into pretty convincing compositions. It is hopeless to try and explain it with words, so please check out this video for an introduction and then head over to http://seaquence.org where you can play with the actual thing!

Try and get not too addicted…

 

Seaquence Demo from Daniel Massey on Vimeo.

 

(Found via Co.Design)

SMSlingshot 12:48

It’s stupid. I know…

 

SMSlingshot from FILE PRIX LUX on Vimeo.

 

Check out VR Urban at www.vrurban.org

Tech: James Powderly 13:24

He is called a Robot Master, an Open Source Provocateur and a super hybrid engineer designer. James Powderly co-founded (with Evan Roth) Graffiti Research Lab and F.A.T. (Free Art & Technology). He invented the LED throwies, the L.A.S.E.R  Tag and the EyeWriter Project.

Oh, just watch the video… All this is going to take hours to explain otherwise…

 

The Creators Project Meets James Powderly from Creators Project on Vimeo.

www.thecreatorsproject.com is very much worth a visit if you want to check out all the modern day artists, DJ’s, musicians, architects, designers, etc…, etc…. You’re still here? Tssss….

Battle Graphic 11:35

Now doesn’t this look interesting? You get two teams of digital artists, give them a theme to work on and have them come up with something great and beautiful, live in front of an audience, by projecting their work on two big screens. Add drinks, dj’s, pretty people and ambiance and livestream the thing across the web, so the whole world can see what you’re doing.

(and with this for explanation you’ll pretty much be able to understand what’s going on in this French video)

 

Battle Graphique Promo from Savic Pavlé on Vimeo.

 

Now instead of photoshop-wizards, I could imagine doing the same with all kinds of graphic-people, no? Typographers making a poster, comic-artists making, well, a comic, perhaps even animators? I don’t know… What do you think?

For further inspiration, check out the Battlegraphic site (in French).

(Found via Artskills)