I’ve just got home, but my mind is still wondering on all the visual input it has been submitted today! It’s as if a part of my brain has just been upgraded to the speedy lane! It’s still wondering on fluid animations, particle simulations, typography, colors, dynamics…
Offf’s first day was impressive! And the funniest thing is that it all started the minute I parked my car! I was running late and didn’t even bothered to check the exact street of it, so I ended up arriving without a clue of the Offf’s venue place (exact) location! Once I got out from the parking lot and onto the street something remarkable happened, I noticed how some people in the plaza were moving towards a particularly tiny street, I decided to follow and this was the image that stayed with me until now of the very beginning… can quite explain but all people moving towards a same destination, impelled by a common desire (reach Offf as soon as possible got imprinted in my mind as one of those compelling moments.
The first few minutes/hour didn’t go as expected, the sound was poorly distributed and at some point I could only feel that I was in class with Charlie Brown. Thankfully the day was just about to start and I certainly wasn’t ready for what would come next.
I’ll just take a few seconds to write a bit about some of my personal highlights of the day:
TYPEFACES PANEL - got a lesson about typography like I’ve hopping to get for a long, looooong time…
ERIC NATZKE - Eric’s presentation was the one who got me into the mood, I had barely arrived, got a few things from the typographic panel, and then BOOM… Eric started showing of his particles generators, than ribbons and waves and although my belly was begging for food my eyes and mind were drowning video compositions of generative art, amazing. I recorded two small videos from his presentation ending video:
Simply mind blowing!
JOSHUA DAVIS - a true case where the rumour doesn’t reach any close to the man. Joshua is an amazing and engaging speaker and even after all the nice things I had heard about him and his work, I confess I had a great time during is presentation and after an hour I was definitly begging for more! Joshua work is inspiring and some of the gold rules with which he ended his presentation are still echoing on the back of my mind.
The Mercadillo idea is amazing and I’m even surprised how I hadn’t seen it in other kind-of/alike events. Managed to spend some money and regret for not having more with me at the time. Spoted a Buddha Machine’s and a great 1976 t-shirt that I hope to get tomorrow…
I’ve been working on a presentation about a special aspect of interface design: the need for PLAY! Boring interfaces don’t go far! And we as Humans have this inner desire for play so the more engaging a service/site is the better especially on the web where our attention span is so scarce!
Although the hard core of the presentation content is done (I’ve made a demo of it at Tecnonov last Saturday), and I’ll be posting it online in a couple of days, but the thing is that I would love to enrich it with a lot of good and bad examples of interface design! My Request for Help here is precisely for that, I would love to hear from your most loved or hated interface designs that you have to work everyday! Please drop me an email with a screenshot and why you actually that particular ’strong’ feeling about it! I promise to give full acknowledge of each submission if it actually makes it to final presentation!
This image and the idea behind it, it’s simply AMAZING! Just read along and tell me if you don’t agree!
The Torino Colors project aims to change the way we navigate a city, the image i’ve reproduced here is the colored map for the Torino city in Italy. The idea behind it is very simple:
STEP 1: pick a color for each region of your town. STEP 2: paint all the city appliances and structures (like trash bins, light posts, sign holders, etc.) with the corresponding color…
With a little twist and it’s here that this idea really get interesting!
STEP 3: As soon as you start moving in any direction, you add some blending to starting color, or simply put, when you walk in any certain direction towards another part of the city, the color will react to your movement and start to blend with the color selected for the region where you’re headed.
This way you can always know where you’re headed! Pure genius hein?
If you’d like to know a bit more, and can read italian I strongly suggest that you check their site. In particular have a look at the official press-release and the Google Earth KML file
Some of Leonel Moura’s works have made it to the covers of this years MIT Artificial Life magazine. The first one is out and features one of his works from the ‘Swarm Paintings‘ series.
Leonel is one of my favorite ‘Geek’ artist and so it’s expectable that I believe he is a man ahead of our time (and especially ahead of our country). Leonel gets to be my favorite simply because he manages to combine two things I really love: Artificial Intelligence & Robotics.
One of the things that really fascinates me on his works is the fact that he doesn’t simply combines them, he actually helps us visualize and feel the products of such combination, what he calls ‘Symbiotic Art‘. His works aren’t just something we get to see on a computer screen, they’re for real: real live sized canvas full of colors!
If you manage to take some time off in Lisbon I strongly recommend taking some time to check Leonel ARTe gallery in downtown Lisbon, if you’re not around you can always browse thru is portfolio and get a glimpse of his works.
I’ve just got home, but my mind is still wondering on all the visual input it has been submitted today! It’s as if a part of my brain has just been upgraded to the speedy lane! It’s still wondering on fluid animations, particle simulations, typography, colors, dynamics… 
got imprinted in my mind as one of those compelling moments. 
