Early tests for an application that controls a lighting sculpture by Studio Drift.
The application is designed with a sequencer or synthesizer in mind, giving the user a feeling of control without killing the element of surprise that embodies the installation.
Currently on show in Dubai.

+ Studio Drift

Caspar Lam and YuJune Park of Synoptic Office create diverse and great work. It is typographic, interactive and tangible and they appear comfortable with a broad spectrum of different media.
The latest addition to their portfolio is an apparently laser cut monospaced font that gets its shape from the number of times the letter is used in the text in which it sits.
This meta typographic approach results in a beautiful wooden typographic landscape.

+ View Alphabet Topography

Saw the new video by M.I.A. this weekend and was intrigued by the image and the setting. Did the absolute minimal amount of research to find out who directed it and came across the name of french director Romain Gavras who previously shot videos for Justice.
The gritty French banlieu atmosphere is palpable in all of his work, surprisingly even in his commercial work for Adidas, which resembles a standard sports commercial but has a form of believability that is rare in such commercials.

+ Watch his work on Vimeo

With the disappearance of analog media as the main way to contain music a lot has been gained. Quality, quantity and accessibility have all improved in the process of digitalization but it is obvious that some of the romance got lost in the process.
Not just the tactility and smell of a dusty record is something you lack in digital recordings but the visual indication of how far along you are in the album or track you are listening to had a clinical make-over. An album is now a list, and a scrub bar indicates the progression. None of those representations are however directly related to the music as say a groove and needle are related to the music they play.

At STRP I saw the work of old-classmate Mariska de Groot, who is doing a performance piece with spinning plastic discs with printed patterns on it and optical eyes that read these patterns and convert them to sound called “Light Synth”.

So today I came across two projects on CreativeApplications that use this same principal and that are both worth sharing.

The first one is “Years” by Bartholomäus Traubeck that connects the shape of the annual rings in a slice of tree to various parts of piano music.

The second work is called Soundmachines by Berlin based studio The Product for Volkswagen.


View:
+ Light Synth
+ Years
+ Soundmachines

Did a search for BASF and came across their tapes.
I used to love these cassettes, the graphics made them stand out for me, since audio quality and cassette tape don’t mix. And still, the fading out of physical carriers of content is in some way a loss.

While periodically working on a single line plotter font for the last few weeks and exploring the possibilities of x-y axis machines such as plotters, CNC mills, laser cutters etc. I thought about a small tattoo plotter that you could mount to an limb and let it have it’s way. Nice idea but I am not brave or skilled in robotics enough to pull that off.
Luckily Nikolaus Passath was, and did so 10 years ago with his project Kurt. He has an awesome portfolio of wondrous installations and projects, be shure to check it out.

+ Project Kurt
+ Nikolaus Passath | Portfolio

Series of land art / light projection Jim Sanborn made halfway the 90’s.
Love the scale and the long shutterspeed in the images.

Another interesting work is Kryptos a sculpture made for the CIA building in Langley which features 4 encrypted texts, thee of which have been solved.

Fun to use and well executed map that shows how a musical genres are born.
I had fun scrobbling through time.

+ Visit website