the installation involved a series of new pieces that hung suspended in the air, juxtaposed against the provocative photography of Melanie Bonajo and Anne de Vries.

playful to wear and playful to gaze upon, KIND’s knitwork easily makes the transition from fashion to fine art.

using fantastic materials like agora wool and cashmere to offer the wearer with something worthy to wrap up in, the motifs and colors make the garments appeasing to most of the senses.

the exhibition at KKOUTLET is over but you can still be kind to yourself and get a piece of kindness. the sample sale continues so drop the the gallery and hold up a sweater to yourself in the mirror.

This thursday KKOUTLET will have their first ever show, debuting for the first time in London, the quirky, fun, conceptual and always luxurious knitwear of KIND.

Things have been a buzz here in preparation for the event. Besides planning the opening, Karin and i are helping with the installation of the show as curators. Working with KIND and the nice girls at Haynes, we hope to bring some thursday night excitement to the normally drab Hoxton Sq. “lets go sit in the park and drink beer” nightlife.

Also planned for the opening is a sample sale and i am excited to get me some of KIND’s amazing garments. hope they have a few of the elephant armed sweaters left…

If you are in the neighbourhood, come down to KKOUTLET this thursday and check out the opening. did i mention there will be free booze?

what was most interesting to me was the paths of development undertaken by each student and their works. it amazes me how much an idea can change dramatically through the process of production, my project being no different. what started out as research into the phenomenon of boredom and purposeless play has turned into a collaborative project developing a realtime, visual storytelling tool for the video, installation and performance artist.

my project. those words no longer are relevant to the project i presented that day. almost a passing thought for the uses of multitouch technology outside the exhibition and museum world, StutterBox has become a project so far removed from the original idea that authorship should be duly credited to the following people:

Jan Berkel:

Jan’s background is in network engineering but now he prefers to develop software to network** other people. He works at Trampoline Systems, a London-based startup building a new generation of enterprise social software. Jan enjoys arguing about (and implementing) the software architecture for StutterBox together with Martin.

Crystal Campbell:

Multidisciplinary designer specializing in cross-platform multidisciplinary projects. As a member of Rosebud&Grumpers she has been pioneering VJing as a live performance tool for narrative, blending unconventional, traditional and modern equipment and methods. Crystal is the usability consultant for StutterBox.

Martin Dittus:

Studied International Media and Computing at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany, then moved from a comfortable life of slacking to a busy schedule as a software developer at Last.fm in London, UK where he handles large data sets in a variety of contexts. Does data visualizations on the side, some of which were featured on infosthetics.com and visualcomplexity.com. Martin is a software developer for StutterBox.

Adam Krause:

Industrial designer born and trained in Toronto, Canada. Completed his BDes in Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art & Design, he has worked for Canada’s National Ballet School and Phoenix Animation in Toronto, and has had success as a freelance web and industrial designer. Adam is the hardware designer and builder of the StutterBox table and Tangibles.

Alright… all these thoughts, all these people, but what the heck is it?

STUTTERBOX is a transdisciplinary platform to tell stories with. Its aim is to be impulsive and participatory, and provides a “no man’s land” between author and audience, in which the very act of narration becomes one with the performance.
Orchestration of a performance happens on multiple levels. The table itself hosts a horizontal surface in which a large display is contained. The display not only shows the user and audience an outcome of a narrative, but also acts as the instrument interface which users play so that a story may unfold.

Counterpart to the virtual narrative environment is a physical condition. In order to manipulate aspects contained within the surface of the display table, real-life, three dimensional objects must be used. These “Tangibles” house fiduciary symbols that act as triggers which activate elements that appear on the display. Tangibles can be any object so long as they contain a fiduciary symbol. This means that physical props arranged on the surface of the table can narrate a story in parallel and even interact with one another in real-time, affecting the virtual narrative displayed in the table. This synchronicity between virtual and tangible is an essential part to the interaction in STUTTERBOX.

When a person places a Tangible on the table, it activates elements of the narrative that are either characters or environments. Other Tangibles can be placed on the surface to effect the mood and disposition of each element. Not only does each element of the narrative act in accordance to the whim of the author, but they are also programmed to be generative. Combinations of characters, environments and disposition Tangibles produce new forms of output, each element building upon another in a semantic fashion.

STUTTERBOX effectively blurs the dichotomous relationship between author and audience. Both author and audience of the story constructed on STUTTERBOX become subject to each others influence, which in turn affects the story in unexpected and dynamic ways.

For the concept abstract document please download the pdf.

the project is defined by three key elements. these elements are the hardware design, the software design, and the usability and performative aspects. each element is highly reliant on the other, and i really have no idea how i would have gotten this far if it wasn’t for the excellent, dedicated and incredible people i am collaborating with.

in terms of software and usability, Jan and Martin; our dynamic duo of software developers, spent the weekend setting up the essential underpinnings and infrastructure of the Stutterbox interface. working with our user Crystal; who is a talented designer, video performance artist and fellow MACPNE colleague, we continued to iron out the metaphors we will use for the interface and address the critiques and suggestions raised during the course of its development and production.

at the moment we are trying to blend the VJ workspace with the actual performance output display. by making a hybrid interface between workspace and output, Crystal will be able to construct her performance narratives in the same area where the story would unfold for the audience. this somehow reminds me of the process of making graffiti, as in graffiti the inspiration, workspace and gallery end up being the same place. as graffiti artists make the urban environment all three places at once, so should our multitouch interface.

regarding hardware, Adam and i are now at the stage of putting everything together we made in the woodshop last week. Adam is my oldest friend (we’ve been friends for something like 15 years!) who came over from toronto via berlin to help me out. he happens to be a talented industrial designer and it shows in the craftmanship of the design and construction of the table. it really is well (if not over!) built.

in order for us the have full, 24h access to the table, we have moved much of the hardware to KKOUTLET so we can continue building without the encumbrance of closing times and security guards, which we were running into working at CSM. at the moment we are around 75 percent done with the construction, and hope to begin to drop in the electronics by wednesday.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

other then it being an utterly boring and mind-numbingly mundane back-and-forth of the usual lies and malarky so akin to people of their stature (read: politicians), i was curious about the vocabulary they used. reducing the debate to weighted lists, patterns such as favorite words, key issues, etc. can be derived and speculated on. take a look for yourself and come to your own conclusions of deceit and conspiracy. i for one will not be voting for either of them, namely because i am not a US citizen and have been cursed with the nationality of being Canadian, where nation wide healthcare is forced upon its population so widely and ruthlessly that you may have heard about it in popular culture.

Clinton

Obama

i almost feel that the mirror is a better webpage then the original for various reasons. first of all, the wordpress hosted service is free, although laugingsquid has been fantastic so far in terms of value, uptime and support. the built-in theme on the mirror is much more clean and intuitive to use then the custom gridview theme i am using for my primary site. too much control makes me want to customize villainous.biz and i end up cramming as much info into it as i can, which i am beginning to think is a mistake as access to content should be paramount.

in any case i will keep both weblogs, maybe because of sheer vanity. if you have a preference let me know

after coming back from a friends’ birthday, karin, adam and i found ourselves standing outside camden station, just beyond the camden lock, watching blooms of smoke hit the sky. we had to make a lengthy detour to get home. looking at my phone when i reached my bed, i realized that i missed an sms from the neighbors. all it said was “camden is on fire!“.

Namdaemun gate in Seoul, South Corea is the oldest piece of history in the country. i have been working on a project with the city involving the ancient city walls, and the south gate once marked the entrance to the old city. recently opened to the public again, its burning marks a major blow to the historical commodity of the culture and nation. this also forces us who are working on the project to rethink the relevance of our proposals after such a tragic event.

no matter how far we have progressed, no matter how far technologically has advanced, no matter how morally enlightened we may become, fire always wins.

Once again proving the need for good, free parties in east London, kesselskramer stirred it up nicely this past friday night with nothing less then an old school house party at the opening event of KK OUTLET. What could be described as the “victorian cottage” to the agency’s deconsecrated church headquarters in Amsterdam (no seriously, it’s a church, which is why it’s not in parenthesis), KK OUTLET is store, gallery and office rolled into one. this three-prong smorgesboard of kung fu style provides new synergies between disciplines and practices, to offer unique solutions for unique briefs and clients.

Seoul already pays much attention to lighting within the city, although projects seem to be lucid and playful now, a citywide plan or theme could provide continuity and strong identity. the first example of program for city lighting is alexanderplatz in berlin, where the ccc has been known to do their blinkenlights project:

next up is the SPOTS media facade in berlin, potsdamerplatz:

also on continental europe, rotterdam’s kpn building:

Green-Spaces

here’s a look at singapore. notice its concentration of green space in the heart of the city.

london’s green spaces are also mostly concentrated into key areas.

this differs compared to the cities of muenster and naarden, where green-space becomes a gesture of the former city wall within the urban planning.

this layout provides accessibility to green-spaces by a wider radius of city dwellers. If Seoul would adopt this continental european urban planning trend, It could provide for the city a common cross-section of park-space that links districts with automobile-alternative access. People could bike and walk from district to district within the park ring. An electric tram system or maglev train would be cool too…

Green-space within the city is freed from privileged neighborhoods and becomes accessible by all points of the city. for tourists and locals alike, it would activate the city wall as a monumental geographical feature for way-finding within the inner city.

its been about a month now and i have finally digested my recent trip to Korea (and have also finally digested that last korean meal). what can i say about my experiences in seoul? in all honesty i was very much overwhelmed with the entire journey, and probably took so long to write this because i didn’t know where to begin. now that i think about it, i would say it’s about hopeless for me to encapsulate the time i had there, so i will just post an email i sent to an old friend:

i have to say that seoul and korean peeps and korean culture has really blown me away. i was only in seoul for a week, but had the most amazing, most memorable time. other then the usual starstruck wanderings, i really feel that seoul is a place in mid blossom. we went down for a project regarding re-branding the city and are contracted to help it along part of its 15 year plan to change it into a knowledge economy. my minuscule bit of a tiny part of a small section of a grand scheme involves designing experiences for tourists that include the old seoul city walls and gates.

i see many parallels between korea and germany before reunification and this is most apparent in the people. there is something so inherently strong about being korean, but the split has offered two very diverging paths between one peoples, i think i saw some korean cinema on the plane about it. paired with such a sudden and rapid growth in south korea, the culture has been so engineered and is in need of conceptual thinking within its design process. an empty space breeds room for innovation and creativity, and i believe seoul has the void, resources and potential to engineer its own renaissance.

seoul is built on the scale akin to berlin but bigger, just waiting for people to come live the city. sure there is traffic like any city, but there is a feeling of space when you’re on the pedestrian level. seoul’s highest and lowest geographical points offer so much.

one day the grad students from IDAS took us up to the top of one of the many mountains that surround seoul, in a DMZ where the north gate and blue house resided. we were told some funny story about the women who would come out here in full moon to bask in the light for fertility and the men that would stand around the gate singing songs trying to court them (i wouldn’t know where to begin nor would be competent to even talk about korean gender politics).

and the food! korean food is my super-fav now! every night we ate like japanese businessmen, from bbq to traditional dinners, drinking soju and bamboo wine like water (and some milky, slightly fizzy from the fermentation, cool rice wine), going to karaoke and hiphop/r&b clubs and window shopping at 4 am in the morning at dongdaemun sitting in little tent cities of street vender’s, eating dumplings. on the last night we sat in our studio and ate cake and smoked mackerel using chopsticks and sipped on egg broth while downing soju till the morning to catch a plane. one of my colleagues lost his passport while on his way to the airport (so he says ;-P) and had to stay a few more days by himself; our contact at the school brought him out to a sauna as absolution (lucky devil).

for some images of Seoul take a look at my flickr album here.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

the projects were pretty interesting, and it’s good to see that most of the projects are developing quite nicely. people seem to have solidified their concepts and there appears to be an end in sight!

some of the projects included a psycho-geographical atlas, a ceramic tile that gets worn away with the passage of people to reveal evolving content, the future of outdoor media, emergency shelters that are customizable to the typology of refugee, an allegorically immersive museum installation of baroque carriages for the pope, a user-design led participatory show, an engaging workshop that reaches out to the muslim communities in london, an urban installation that addresses the feeling of danger and security in hackney, a workshop that gets artists and architects to understand how to collaborate, an edible garden, and many, many other insightful projects.

and my project? i will hopefully get to work with some inspiring people to develop a grassroots oriented, multitouch interface. if you are interested, here is the link to a pdf of my presentation.

probably the last excuse for posting inconsistently this year, i would like to now redirect your attention to another weblog i am working on with karin. it exists solely for our final research project for our MA course that will hopefully culminate with our successful graduation by the middle of next year and explores the phenomenon of boredom.

due to my focus on, well frankly, my focus on not screwing my final year of grad school, i will be contributing most of my meandering thoughts to the boring blog and less so on villainous.biz. hope you wont be too disappointed on missing practically nothing, but maybe you will find our grad project to be of some distraction while i get my act together.

thanks for hanging in there,

smallcaps

on order for us to digest the massively huge amount of data that AMO has produced over the years, we came up with a simple but effective way to quantify the ideas, concepts, themes and typologies. here is a short video that we produced during our first week of research. enjoy!

how do i quantify the value of this last month? so soon the pang of summer will be upon us. as is in most states of change, this spring has been a torrential series of mountains and valleys; no doubt that king pendopoo himself need prove to one and all our (in)significance, as we walk the precarious landscape of the long now.

of all the events that can change the course of life in any given direction, some stand out as president, its true significance only apparent to some. the first was known to me back in march. karin, alex and i received news from OMA in rotterdam that we were to join them for the summer as an intern “dream team” for the thinktank section of the company called AMO. since that time, i have been steadily gearing myself towards our eventual move to rotterdam to participate in arguably, one of the most exciting firms in architecture/urban planing today.

meanwhile, with the new spark that collaborative strategies offered, karin, alex and i did some great work with violeta houbenova and niki lampaski for the Argent/kings cross regeneration in the city of london. while working on this project, i soon re-realized the importance of the virtual domain and its blurring of perception and paradigm. as the real and virtual became unified, so do our online experiences collide with real life making our lifestyle that much more intangible, the two complimenting one another more and more by the nanosecond. this project was so well received that the director of my MA course in london has decided that the project is worth pursuing farther. this good news of course, excited me. along with our joint internship with OMAMO, i felt as if everything i have learned up to this point was being harnessed and directed towards a bright future.

then my grandma in singapore passed away. it wasn’t unexpected, as she was sick already for quite some time, yet it is truly miraculous what she has achieved in her lifetime, with the cultivation of such an amazing and loving family that spans the globe. as matriarch of our widespread clan, she was our living ancestor from a time when life was very different and proved to us the invaluable skill of adaptation. my relationship with her was sparse but never temporal - i would say timeless. i will miss her very much but know that her legacy will persevere in the people she has affected in her lifetime.

and not only did i loose my grandma this month but i lost my OMA as well. just last week karin, alex and i received a letter from OMA stating that they could not find an appropriate project for us (but we suspect it was actually for visa reasons). this unfortunate turn of events completely disrupted my plans for the summer, already giving notice to our landlord that we would leave our flat in london, not to mention losing the dream of working for a company that so inspires such as OMA. my collegue Myrto put it quite bluntly to me; as a young architect, from OMA, there is no where else to go but down.

not knowing what to do next, i reached out to my friend and mentor Dan Hill, of cityofsound.com and monocle magazine fame. he was the first person i turned to and his help and advice has been spot on and extremely supportive. seeing more in me then i have wisdom to even notice, he has taught me the genius of personal experience. after talking to him i pulled myself together and began to rearrange my outlook of the future. he also kindly posted on his enlightening weblog about karin, alex and me, even in the midst of organizing Postopolis! in NYC. because of his invaluable input and the inspiration of just witnessing his own practice, i realized the immense work and passion that one has to endure to be happy with what they do.

this morning i set out to find a new place to live since i am about to be homeless on the 6th of june. when walking out of the finsbury park tube station, i noticed that alex was trying to call me so i took a seat on the curb and gave him a call. he frantically conveyed to me that OMA wrote back and said they wanted us, after all. then i asked myself, how can this month get anymore thrilling?

j.

QR code can be read by most modern camera phones. you can grab the software from here, and start generating codes here. what’s fun is that you can load it up with all sorts of info and also has some pretty dope applications.

for instance, you can have a phone directly sms any number upon acquiring a positive scan. you can load rss feed addresses so that you can aggregate information such as flickr photostreams, gmail and podcasts. you can also use it to leave simple text messages or numbers. the more info within the code, the more complex and dense the pattern becomes.

being a relatively old system, i am sure that people have been using it in graffiti and urban art. it is most definitely being used in the advertising sector and there are even design firms that specialize in integrating QR code into communicative design.

karin and i were toying the other day about using QR Code as blueprints for urban planing. imagine scanning QR code in google earth of entire city blocks and getting links to concise information directly to your mobile phone. well.. just a thought. if it has already been implemented then please post a link.

i have incorporated QR code into my weblog on the sidebar. with a flick o’ the wrist, you can have my contact details automagically upload directly into your phone. pretty sweet at the bar, if it was tattooed somewhere accessible.

the brief for this particular project involved generating sustainable and lasting dwell time within Granary Square, which happens to be the largest area of contingent public space in Kings Cross. this space is also important because it will link public, private, business and residential areas all together. i should probably also mention that Granary Square is situated directly in front of the site of the new Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design building which will finally bring all 4 campuses together under one roof.

The purpose of our proposal is to generate emotional durability within the social-geographic community known as Kings Cross Centre, focusing on the office worker and the cyber-slacking generation. Our proposal is a hybrid community building system consisting of three elements that are developed to engage members of the Kings Cross populace.

In order to generate sustainable desire to participate in the initiative, the proposal uses two easily accessible digital platforms that are facilitated with an essential third physical layer. The first digital platform is packaged in the form of a web-based, online community using Web 2.0 concepts. The second digital platform is packaged within the widely accessible platform of digital mobile phone technology to provide a personal, “always on”, portable interface device. we looked at accelerometer technology and other emerging technologies that would facilitate more intuitive game-play.

some other inspirational research included the Pacmanhattan geo-centric game:

Both digital platforms are used as interface to the physical “playground” of Kings Cross Centre for interaction with the various games and social networking systems. think Web 2.0 + Nintendo Wii + mobile phones using a physically real and unique space (Granary Square / Kings Cross Centre) as playing field; kinda like a giant Dance Dance Revolution game, er something…

imagine office workers getting a little exercise in the morning before work by playing a short game in the square with their phone:

or spending their lunch break virtual fishing with their phones by the canal:

and then meeting in the evening to play dating games or larger, league tournaments:

in terms of learning outcomes, the great thing about this final project is that we were not limited by technology when it came to proposing our ideas. we worked together quite smoothly which was proof that karin, alex and i could collaborate together successfully.

i hope this is a sign for things to come when the three of us collaborate together again for our up-coming joint internship at the Office For Metropolitan Architecture this summer in rotterdam.

for another perspective from one of our tutors, please check out his blog entry about the project here.