Two-handed multi-touch goes mainstream

Looptastic HD for iPad

One wonderful effect of the iPad release is that it has made multi-touch computing mainstream. If you want to argue that the iPhone accomplished this, fine. But the iPad unleashes a world of possibility due simply to the size of the multi-touch screen. We now have a platform that allows two-handed multi-touch interactions. The possibilities are thrilling.

Bill Buxton, writing about the history of multi-touch systems makes a memorable comparison. Multi-touch, he says, allows us to: Read the rest of this entry »

Annotation: Roll Um Easy

Here’s an older video that I found recently in my archives. I made this one about Little Feat’s wonderful Roll Um Easy. Annotation: Roll Um Easy

Covers, and considering the familiar

Song covers, good and bad, expose something new in the familiar. The pleasure is that you’re never sure what will be exposed. Something about the original song or the original arrangement? Maybe the lyrics are better than you thought, or much worse. That the covering artist is a genius? An idiot? A cover gives you a new way to hear into the song, stripping away the particulars of the arrangments and performance so that you can discover the essence at the core.

This morning on Cover Lay Down I discovered a set of Tom Petty covers that were full of what a yoga teacher might call “new information.” Free Falling, that genius arena sing-along is, lyrically anyway, as empty as it’s characters:

“She’s a good girl, loves her momma, loves Jesus, and America too.”

So what made the original so effective? What was it about that chorus that made you want to meet 50,000 of your closest friends at Busch Stadium on a summer night so you could all admit how lost you are? This cover strips away Petty’s performance and arrangements, and you realize that’s where the genius lived–in the distinctive roaming bass line moving underneath that plaintive lead vocal, in the exquisite balance between bass, strumming guitar, and Tom’s vocal, and in all that empty space in the middle: that’s where we come in–all 50,000 of us are invited to sing background. And Tom really sells that vocal: he’s lost, you buy it.

So what were the Kings of Convenience thinking with that earnest reading? The song isn’t strong enough on it’s own: it doesn’t stand up to their Simon and Garfunkel preciousness. Despite that, the audience sings along anyway–they must be remembering the original–and almost rescue the experience.

But earnest works for Dawn Landes’s cover of Won’t Back Down. Tom works the successful side of familiar with the lyrics on this one:

“Hey baby, there ain’t no easy way out
Hey I will stand my ground
and I won’t back down.”

It’s a resolute truth, spoken simply, and Landes’s understatement highlights the strength of the words. Compare that to David Baerwald, whose vocal goes from polished phony drama to weird phony growling. All the ornamentation conveys one thing: you’re lying. Leave the ornamentation aside, find the essence, and express that.

William Kentridge

If you want to give a really great gift to someone who has been laid off or is out of work, give that person a museum membership. A friend recently gave me a membership to MoMA, and I’ve been really enjoying it.

Detail from Kentridge's "7 Fragments for Georges Melies"

Yesterday afternoon, I went to see the William Kentridge exhibit there. Kentridge combines drawing, collage, animation and video to wonderful effect. I was particularly struck by the freedom and apparent casual treatment of materials: charcoal, ink splash, torn paper, lo-fi video. The craft and creative process is so present in the experience of watching the work. In one installation, 7 Fragments for Georges Melies,  a set of projected animated films show Kentridge at work making and unmaking images using ink, coffee, charcoal, paper and his body. The video runs forward and backward, images emerge from the brush and then are consumed by the rag and vice versa.

Every person doing creative work knows that the act of starting can feel like an overwhelming hurdle to cross. In “7 Fragments…” the process seems to never stop, never end. The image is always present, and always not, in the same instant.

This Boy Likes to Watch Trucks

Overlooking the construction of Brooklyn Bridge Park

This morning, I stopped for a few minutes on the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, and was delighted to see the trucks moving earth for the new Brooklyn Bridge Park. The helicopters and ferries landing in lower Manhattan just added spice.

I like watching trucks. I don’t know why, but I’ve never outgrown my fascination.

Noel Sickles

Today’s enthusiasm: the illustrator Noel Sickles, who became famous for writing and drawing the Scorchy Smith strip in the mid-30′s.

Other wonderful examples on Michael Lark’s blog, and on GoofButton.

Is the purpose of cities to create human well-being?

It never occured to me to wonder if a city could have a goal.

And yet in retrospect, it seems the obvious first question to consider if one were to approach the design of urban environments. It should have been obvious to me anyway, given that my background in interaction design is grounded in a method called goal-directed design, a method that seeks to first to identify the goals of any artifact or system to be designed. And yet it was an eye-opener to me to read this piece on Daily Good about the revitalization of Bogata, Colombia.

Enrique Peñalosa, the Mayor of Bogota, speaking on the subject of the urban revitalization projects that he’s undertaken during his term, is quoted as saying,

“If we in the Third World measure our success or failure as a society in terms of income, we would have to classify ourselves as losers until the end of time,” declares Peñalosa. “So with our limited resources, we have to invent other ways to measure success. This might mean that all kids have access to sports facilities, libraries, parks, schools, nurseries.”

Extending that idea later in the piece, the analyst David Burwell of  Project for Public Spaces describes Peñalosa’s perspective: “He views cities as being planned for a purpose—to create human well-being.”

Full article here: Can We Design Cities For Happiness?

At the Farmer’s Market

Yesterday was one of those early spring days when the sunshine and the warm weather brings everyone out of the house.

Marina Abramovic

I spent a little time yesterday at the Marina Abramovic show at MoMa. The show was moving and surpising to me: one does not often have permission to stare at another person as if they are an object. And maybe this permission is inherent in all performance, but it was particularly palpable in this show.

Image by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

As nude performers stood facing each other in a doorway, people stared, considered, and dared one another to pass through the space between them. I watched a group of middle-aged women pass through, one by one, high-fiving each other and giggling as they reached the other side.

In a moving installation called Luminosity, a nude woman displays herself on a pedastal high on a gallery wall, framed by a rectangle of white light, her arms splayed Christ-like. Her position, displayed as art object on the wall rather than within the visitor’s space, made looking the easy and obvious response. It was a fascinating contrast with the the performers on the gallery floor–a study in the subtle rules that govern looking.