MIt P3000 arbeite ich an einem “Blogger Reachout” um den Iconist in die deutsche Blogosphäre zu bringen. Am Dienstag abend hatten die Iconistmacher zu einer kleinen Runde ins Hotel de Rome geladen, zu dem wir unter anderem auch Julia (LesMads), Clemens (Ignant), Silke (Netzpiloten), Theresa (Flanellaparell) und Sachar (Massenpublikum) begrüßen konnten. Man konnte das Magazin ausprobieren, mit der Redaktion plaudern, Champagner trinken und sich lifestylig fühlen. Auf den Punkt brachte Inga Griese, Chefredakteurin des Iconist, in ihrer Begrüßungsrede den Lifestylejournalismus als “nicht zwingend nötig, aber wahnsinnig schön.”

The campaign will be lasting at least during 2010 and consists of several events and online documentation and interaction. First, there will be three so-called “workspaces” in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, starting tonight in Berlin. Artists are invited to shape their vision of customizing reality and to present them to an audience which hopefully interacts with the created pieces. The artists, like e.g. Kim Köster, Klub7, Tracknfield or Balestra Berlin create a room filled with pieces which exist, shine or interact with the people. All of the artists have a background of creating art in a modern, reflecting and urban way in a sense of technology and interaction. Tonight, there will be a breadbaking experiment, lifesound recordings and lots of visual approaches to shaping urban environments. Check out some impressions from the preparations:

My role in the campaign is and was to find ways for interaction, preparation and documentation online, including a community for artists, social media profiles like Flickr, YouTube and the Urban Blog urban.becks.de. Together with Silk relations, Coma and the Beck’s team we put together lots of ideas which will become reality in the next 14 months. Follow @becksurban on Twitter to get updates and get the Urban Blog RSS. The blog is curated by Nilzenburger and will feature a ton of writers who will put together their vision of urban reality today.

MyLifestyleblog has a good overview in German about Beck’s Urban Experiences too.

Next weekend, a bunch of friends of mine will organize the atoms&bits Camp, a weekend full of making, doing, questioning and understanding. It’s part of the Atoms & Bits festival, a decentralized event that stretches over 10 days (September 18-27th), taking place in different locations from Berlin to Brooklyn, from Munich to Montreal.

atoms&bits Camp is one of the central points of the a&b Festival. Around 400 participants will meet to discuss, plan projects, and to network. Borrowing from the Barcamp format, all participants will actively engage in the event; the presentations (“sessions”) are interactive and created by the participants themselves. In the open “Barcamp” area, participants will organize completely free sessions. Moreover, the 5 central themes of atoms&bits Festival will be addressed and discussed in designated and curated rooms. Spatial proximity and thematic ties will ensure intensive crossover among these topics.

Join us and be party of a creative party! For now, go ahead and join the A&B mixxt network! It’s free!

Dachten sich auch Anne und Tobi, als sie endlich die schöne Domain driftwood.de, die Tobi schon länger inne hatte als Adresse für ihren Blog Driftwood zu nutzen begannen. Und so ähnlich wie Pärchen auf dem Flohmarkt zusammen die schönsten Stände haben (er die Schallplatten, sie die Kleidchen), so verhält es sich auch hier. Schöne Dinge kommen zusammen, wenn Tobi über Musik und Anne über Mode schreibt.

Letztere hat dabei einen schönen do-it-yourself-Ansatz: Bewusst geht sie mit den Hypes in den Modeblogs um und kommt auf viele Möglichkeiten, den letzten Schrei mit einfachen Mitteln selbst herzustellen. Z.B. Schulterpolster selber zu machen oder ein Kleid von Kick mit Nadel und Faden zu drapieren so dass es Dries van Noten mäßig daher kommt.

Außerdem freue ich mich schon sehr auf die von Tobi persönlich angekündigten DJ Mixe und sonstige Elektronik-Musik-Tipps. Der Mann ist nämlich ein äußerst fähiger DJ.

AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.

You can try it too! Print this and go here and be amazed!

It’s done by James Aliban, an artist-developer-scientist who likes to experiment and build stuff with all sorts of hardware and flash. Here is how to build a multitouch screen very easily on your own. And he has many more examples.

(via Michael)

Update: Thanks to Konrad here is another augmented reality example by GE

After three days of intense blogging, live blogging(!), there should be a little resumée. Must be a personal one, naturally, although I aim to grasp some of that spirit hopefully many people sensed in these days of Digital, Life, Design 09.

In the position of being confronted with so many ideas, witted people, diverse subjects, opinions, trends and conversations I felt intectually challenged almost all the time. Plus, trying to find my own “art of live blogging” I was in a constant state of concentration, in search of the essence of the panels I focused on to cover. Now I feel tired and inspired, with the “Black swan” beside my bed and “What would Google do” on my desk. And with many images still in mind that make it hard just to say “DLD was awesome!”. But it certainly was.

We had economics, design, psychology, neurobiology, architecture, technology, education, fashion, music.. DLD was so diverse and at the same time deep in concern of the arguments of the people and mostly entertaining by the performance. And this inspirationally broad deepness certainly had effects on the talks in the hallway which I personal did not have. Because I had to blog. Because I was honoured to blog!

My thanks go to the whole team, all those fast and motivated people who made this conference so smooth, so you would not notice the organization, just the flow. And especially to my blogger colleagues Nicole, Oliver and Andrea. We came up with some nice techniques to cover people’s talk with live writing which include Google Docs, hand signs, twitter search, mobile photo uploads and the help of people who plug the laptops, know about details, give comments.
So thank you all, team, speakers, participants and especially to the cute coffee machine in the team room.

Before I go and polish my posts and clean up all the typos, here are my personal Top9::

9. With the Zuckerberg appearance I found the controversial twitter conversation as interesting as what was said on stage.
8. The Varsavsky – Obermann talk
7. Simplicity (mostly)
6. Fashion
5. The paddle symphony
4. Internet politics
3. Reflection on a crisis
2. The robots!
1. Predictably Irrational

And here are fotos! We love fotos. (all Flickr pics tagged with dld09)

In september, Café Solvey opened finally and we instantly became friends with Solvey and her family who run the place. It’s warm and cosy, with very old porcelain, self-made cake, soft armchairs, a kids corner with toys and a fake, yet very well done chemin. And when Solvey asked me to help her out with a website I could not say no. Jimdo was the system of choice to build it fast and easy and when I see now that Solvey herself (who is not a big fan of these “computer things”) edits the events on her page and adds products, I know it was the right decision – Jimdo obviously easy to use. And I earned myself a couple of coffees, breakfasts and cakes!

Take a look at Solvey’s website, more importantly, visit the café if you are around and leave a comment in the guestbook!

Opening it, I found two cans connected by a thread just like one of those tin can telephones kids connect their rooms over the street with. Also, a Noise Conspiracy cd and a nice handwritten letter, inviting me to either a Babyshambles or a Noise Conspiracy concert.

Since Babyshambles are cancelled (what a surprise..) I guess, I’ll go for Noise Conspiracy on January 19th.

Opening the cans, I found one of them filled with earplugs and other stuff which turned out to be a bluetooth headset, namely a Jawbone.

I am not only impressed by the effort of this campaign; which also got coverage on other blogs like Lumma.de or blog.telefon.de but also by the product.

It looks nice, the descriptions are comprehensive. It connected easily and fast with the iphone, I just managed the first phonecall with it and the speech quality is good and everything works well. Besides, it comes with a charging unit and several eargear in different sizes.

Good product, good idea.

Create a job and service profile, connect with others, make offers and earn money.

Hm, so what does that mean? Basically what you can with the little Arduino board is easily bring lots of input in and turn it into certain outputs. Sounds easy and maybe trivial but really is not. Because Arduino can process many different signals and trigger many different outputs. Kiss a door and it opens. Step close to a mirror and a video starts playing with the mirror talking to you. Turn TV picture into LED-signals. Connect it to the Wii and In general one might say it’s very nerdy and looks a little unready still. But it’s definetly the start into a development of selfbuilt robots and machines.

Below are some video examples. I particularly like the TV to LED part because it’s kind of what a friend and I did for a party once. We put 16 toilet paper rolls covered with translucent paper in fornt a tv and thus reduced the pictures to a 16×16 pixel screen. We taped it to video and had a nice party light installation. The posted below is slightly more elegant but, really, less charming.

Arduino introduction by Make magazine editors Joe Grand and Bre Pettis

Turn a video into simple LED output

A little robot controlled via the Wii nunchuck

Produziert wurde dieses interaktive Musikvideo von der Webproduktionsschmiede Kubikfoto, die noch einige andere tolle Projekte im Netz haben, die sich mit klickbaren Foto- Videowelten beschäftigen – oft mit einem schön morbiden Touch.

KIZ - ein Haus in Neuruppin

Indiegames says: “Use the left or right cursor keys to match colors. Forty-two levels are included, though most players might not find the gameplay enticing enough to hold their interest for that long.”

Via Debug and Netzpolitik’s Twitter.

Check out my articles about multitouch displays and the Monome Midi Controller.

As André Michelle, one of the developers writes: “The underlying audio engine is based on dynamic digital signal processing to provide very complex audio compositing in Flash. The graphical user interface is based on an unlimited sized desktop to layout your choosen devices as you wish to operate.” And here is another post by Joa, one of the flash developers.
David (Echolot.tumblr) has some more insights about how the whole Hobnox thing is going to continue.

Register now on Hobnox to be part of the closed Beta (including audio tool, live streaming and community features), starting from 1st of march – after that date, betatesting will only be possible via invitations by registered users!

Und wer für Heiligabend noch so einen richtig schön verspulten Minimal Techhouse-Mix braucht, sollte sich mal diesen Projekt Afterhour Mix besorgen:
Download audio file (bohemiaz-chanuka.mp3)

Download the Projekt Afterhour Bohemiaz Chanuka Mix

Here, via Roberdo I found an interesting introduction about Jazzmutants newest creation, the Dexxter. But with its ever growing bigger options, it’ll be even harder to make the best out of it. But I so much want to TOUCH one of these sexy things some day!

Check out the other articles about multi-touch interaction displays!

Example picture taken from the Brandnew-blog

The “before – after” effect is not only curious and interesting for plastic surgery but also for corporate design. Questions and answers about what has changed, why and how, give not only experts a good background but also provide the enthusiastic design amateur with useful insights about the use of colors and forms and what effect they might have on the public image of an organization.

Brandnew is a new and well done blog about just this subject by UnderConsideration, a network of web savvy designers, founded by the Mexicans Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit who reside in Brooklyn, NYC now and with many contributors from the US and Canada.

Plus, they have these cute little chicks as their logo and heraldic animal..

[via ich.mir.mich]

“Mit dem Ende unserer Ausbildung im Juni 2007 veranstaltet Grafik28 eine dreiwöchige Abschlussausstellung in der Galerie Neurotitan in Berlin Mitte. Präsentiert werden Arbeiten der 28 Absolventen aus den Bereichen Typografie, Corporate Design, Multimedia, Illustration und Fotografie.”

From 23:00h there will be an aftershow-party in the club “Eschloraque” beneath the gallery.

Listen to this. It’s the result of an interactive installation residing at Potsdamer Platz at the moment, celebrating Mannheim’s 400th birthday. The city in Germany’s southwest is structured in squares, with streets without names but with letters and numbers. Very Bauhaus indeed. It’s also famous for its pop academy so there’s several associations to the so called “sound of the squares” installation:

“Einzelne Soundelemente des Jubiläumssongs MEINEWELT sind im Klanglabor gespeichert und können im Würfel zu einer individuellen Interpretation arrangiert werden. Jeder Gast von „Klang der Quadrate“, der seine eigene Version kreiert hat, bekommt einen kleinen Würfel mit auf den Weg, der einen Code trägt. Über diesen Code kann der eigene Mix von MEINEWELT später auf www.klangderquadrate.de angehört, herunter geladen und verschickt werden. Auf diese Weise entsteht der Jubiläumssong innerhalb von „Klang der Quadrate“ ständig neu, und es kommt zu einem kreativen Dialog zwischen Mannheim, seiner Musik und allen, die den „Klang der Quadrate“ erleben.”

Webcams gibt es übrigens auch und man kann sich alle hochgeladenen Kreationen anhören.

Examples for logos with descending dots, taken from Logolounge

Vivid logos were found by the logo blog: An example for a vivid logo,
taken from Logoblog

A chiseled structure becoming alive is the London 2012 brand that was revealed yesterday. An image movie shows how the logo becomes part of the environment and while the aesthetics of the logo are a matter of taste and I think the idea is pretty unusual and, ehm, edgy, the movie is kind of scary.
London Olypmpics 2012 logo
It might represent the competitive character of the games and the fight to find the best. It might also visualize the mental effects of doping, who knows.

[via Cherryflava]