When I was asked to sign up for a "convergence module" back in December, I didn't have a clue what this was supposed to be. The 4 week and 6 credits module had a number of sub-modules to choose from. I picked an interesting sounding module entitled "Geo Visuals". It was run by the "Scientific Visualisation" course and apparently was about visualisations of geographic data. It sounded intriguing, so I signed up. Now this module had kept me busy for 4 weeks and I'm pleased with the result.The whole module was basically about interdisciplinary design practice ie. students of the whole department of design could try out fields that are outside of their usual area of specialism. The module was accompanied by a number of lectures held by international guests from other universities and the from industry. The lectures were concerned with convergence in the widest sense, ranging from convergence design to convergence of disciplines or convergence of media etc. Within the different sub-moduls or courses we could choose a specific project, team up with other students or come up with our own project. The outcomes were presented to the whole department and also uploaded to a blog so everyone could check out what the other students were doing.I teamed up with an Interaction Design/Game Design student and chose to work on a live brief for the project "BiodiverCity", a national research project that involves the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, the University of Berne and the Urban Ecology & Wildlife Research Group. The aim was to visualise research data connected to a recent study of biodiversity in urban spaces.The final result was presented as a video sequence to the whole department of design and followed by an apero, as you might expect. Yes, free beer and wine from the uni to celebrate students hard work and success. Kind of what they tried once last semester, when they offered us chocolate—just for adults.*It was a very enjoyable module and I met a bunch of new people from disciplines that I previously didn't know much about but I'm glad that I had the chance to get to know them.And what exactly we did in this project, will be published here soon.
* I'm not complaining about the chocolates at all but maybe suggesting that a social event, where people automatically start discussing what was good or not so good, seems be the cleverer incentive.
I have received my ticket for tweakfest and know what I'm going to do this weekend:«interFaces» conference
At tweakfest 09 - the networking and information platform for the digital avant-garde, the theme of the conference is interfaces such as that between man and machine and between reality and virtuality. Creative artists, designers, researchers, communicators and managers are invited to join the futuristic discussions on Friday the 24th of April 2009 at the Technopark in Zurich, Switzerland. Be inspired and meet the leading International and Swiss thinkers on how our digital life will look like in the future from a cultural, scientific, communicative and business point of view.
The line-up looks very promising:
- Keynote - Ian Pearson: “A Trip to the Future”
- Demo - Nam Do: Your Mind controls Virtual Worlds
- Moshe Rappoport: IBM Global Innovation and Technology Outlook
- Demo - Oliver Goh: Intelligent Shared Spaces, Building Worlds without Boundaries
- Lecture: Alfonso von Wunschheim, CEO local.ch presents Online Advertising in Hyperlocality
- Demo - Iñaki Vázquez: Ambient Intelligence and the “Internet of Things”
- Lecture - Leo Keller: Web 3.0 and Semantic Web Interfaces
- Lecture - Gerhard M. Buurman: Intersection between Design, Art and Technology
- Lecture: Monika Fleischmann: Wohin mit der Medienkunst?
There´s also a number of exhibitions, performances and workshops and I'm stupidly excited about this.
Where else in the world would they let you off work to see a giant snowman burn with a load of horsemen gallopping around it? Every year in April, the traditional guilds of Zurich demonstrate how good they are through parades, throwing candies and buns and the burning of the Böögg, a plastic snowman representing the winter. This is also Zurich´s most popular weatherman as the explosion of its head indicates the prospective quality of the summer to come. Afterwards, Zurich´s left and hippie scene takes over and barbecues their sausages and cheese over the remainders of Mr ex-winter.This is obviously a very vague outline of the event but since I'm extremely busy at the moment, I hope that images illustrate it sufficiently. If you want to know more, I recommend the website of the fest www.sechselaeuten.ch. Just so much: the head, filled with explosives, gave way to an ok summer after roughly 12 minutes.
A click on the Pic takes you to my photos of the Sächsilüüte.
Sometimes you have to treat yourself. So despite the looming deadlines, I took the morning off and joined a trip to the Frey chocolate factory. Frey is one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in Switzerland, they produce mainly for Migros but also for Marks & Spencers in the UK. With a loot of three and a half kilograms of chocolate in my bag I returned to uni in the afternoon, feeling a bit dizzy after eating as much of the Swiss speciality as I could.
While I'm still digging through sources and texts on the impact of commercial contexts on creative practice for my current essay (any tips?), designing an installation to visualise quantitative information of a national survey of biodiversity in urban spaces for my recent project in the scientific visualisation module (any suggestions?), eating a 30cm tall easter bunny made of white chocolate and all the other things that you do at Easter, I noticed by chance that my book "How to Make a Paper Hat" is available on Amazon now and will be printed and shipped on demand. Alternatively you can go to your local book shop and order the book by its ISBN 1409260461. Am I a published designer now? Happy Easter anyway!
Don't hyphenate st, because it hurts them. That´s a rule of thumb we learned in primary school and in German it rhymes. About combining the two letters however, we learned relatively little. Some designers seem to show off their typography skills or at least their interest by doing so. Whether or not using the st ligature is appropriate or even pretty—who knows? When we proposed our storybox logo, we got criticised for using the ligature just for the style. However, we decided after due consideration that it supports the idea of the brand and offers an added aesthetic value. Looking at the logo of Lucerne Festival though, I don't understand what the aesthetic value is here.
The logo caught my eye because in my opinion the ligature is used very inappropriately here. The logo is set in Quadraat bold and uses only uppercase letters. I only know of lowercase ligatures though, so what I see here is some sort of hybrid glyph. The two uppercase R and N were probably merged to get a smoother flow. I just wonder why in the middle of the word they combined the uppercase S with a lowercase t by drawing a very strange looking ring above it. Not least since the rule is not to use ligatures across syllables and festival is hyphenated fes|ti|val in German as well as in English. Is it all about the style in the end?But Lucerners are special anyway. I learnt that last weekend, when I took a closer look at the idyllic little town. While Zurich is rather a busy place, in Lucerne you can find the slow Swiss stereotype. Amazing how different the culture is an hour further into the country. From Lucerne it´s also easy enough to get to Engelberg, a small snow sports resort in the middle of the alps. So Matt (who was visiting) and I could enjoy sun and snow at the same time and even spend a night in prison. But have a look at the photos.
In addition: The thing about the ligature wouldn't be that unusual if it wasn't designed by the noone less than Meta Design. They explain it as a "perfect analogy to the legato ties in musical notation". Well, I don't know ... this wasn't exactly what crossed my mind when I first saw it. But perhaps I'm just not the target audience.The whole thing can be read here.
