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A highly detailed illustrated map of Italy and its foods. By Antoine Corbineau.

A highly detailed illustrated map of Italy and its foods. By Antoine Corbineau.

My post on aesthetic sustainability finished with the following question: Is aesthetic sustainability only a matter of creating minimalistic, “clean” objects that you never get tired of looking at? Or can an aesthetically sustainable object also be an object that is so complex that you never feel like you are done with it?
This is what I intend to discuss in in this post.

There are a lot of things that we take for granted when perceiving the world; e.g. that tables have cold, smooth surfaces, that trousers have two legs, that a finger ring is round, that a chair has four legs, that a jacket is wearable, that a hat is worn on the head, that you can drink from a cup. And when confronted with objects that challenge those expectations, we are forced to momentarily stop up and consider, what is going on.

In philosophical writings on aesthetics, there is a division between the beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful is connected to the symmetrical, harmonic, well proportioned expression. Beauty causes sensuous delight.
The sublime on the other hand concerns the fact that pleasure can also arise when being confronted with complexity, chaos, darkness, ugliness… Not in a comforting kind of way, but in a “wow, what’s going?!” kind of way. The sublime experience is about breaking the comfort zone, about being challenged.

In a sense you could say that the sublime expression is the ultimate aesthetic sustainability; the complexity makes each encounter with the object an unusual experience. It never becomes uninteresting or indifferent. I feel that way about Meret Oppenheim’s fury cup called Object from 1936 (first image in this post).

The sublime aesthetic experience is a mind expanding experience. Or even an educational one. After the encounter with an object that challenges your expectations, you move on knowing that a jacket, a chair, a table, a pair of trousers can be so much more or different than what you expect.

The sublime expression is not constant in the sense that I discussed in my previous post. It is very individual, what is considered complex and challenging. The sublime expression is connected to comfort zone breaking.

Marc Newson designs the new modern classic camera

Designed by Marc Newson, the K-01 from Pentax is the most photogenic camera I’ve seen in awhile. Until now, the design-driven segment of mid to high-end cameras has been dominated by vintage-inspired units like the gorgeous Fuji X Series. Newson’s signature style distinguishes the K-01 from the rest with a design that’s simultaneously modern, classic and timeless.

Newson always incorporates thoughtful proportions. In this case, he not only worked with Pentax on the camera body, but also on the 40mm F2.8 kit lens that comes with it. The pancake lens is impossibly thin, measuring in at .36 inches—just enough room for a manual focus ring, and that's about it. The K-01 uses the standard K-mount so it's compatible with every lens Pentax has made over the years. Removing the viewfinder and the mirror from the equation also gave Newson more creative flexibility.

The K-01 is not only a beautiful object, it’s also a powerhouse of a camera packed with high-performance features. The large APS-C sized CMOS sensor captures 16 megapixels for exceptional image quality and also supports full 1080p HD video capture. The heft of the camera and sound of the mechanical shutter lend a tactile quality that combined with the 3 inch high-res LCD screen make taking pictures a joy.

Fans of Newson will appreciate his signature on the bottom of the camera body and the use of his favorite shade of yellow on the rubberized grips. For those less bold, there are black and white and all black versions available.

The Pentax K-01 will begin shipping in March for $900 with the 40mm kit lens or for $750 for the body alone.

Statt passiven könnten aktive Elastomere die Schwingungen von Systemen dämpfen oder ganz ausgleichen – am Fraunhofer Institut lBF arbeitet man daran.

Take this cleverly designed table from the wall to the floor with one simple motion

Hand-built in Providence, RI, Snappy Tables provide a simple solution to compact living spaces. Founder Dean Robinson crafts each petite table from bamboo, plastic or or maple Europly, adding a convenient handle to the lightweight frame for a portable, easy-to-pack piece of furniture. The handle also serves as the starting point for unfolding the clever table, which easily swings open and rests on its legs as its name suggests. The typically plain surface also offers up an array of ways to get creative with customized, bright and punchy graphics. Plus, there’s something about the pared down silhouette that makes us think the style will endure as a new kind of classic.

We spotted the line at the New York Gift Fair, in advance of their upcoming release. The tables—which work well in a kid's playroom or as a side table in a small apartment—will sell for $200-300. See more information, including an animated step-by-step breakdown of how the easy piece works, and keep an eye on their widespread distribution by visiting the Snappy Tables website.

Touchfoil is a proprietary technology that is designed to turn any large area of glass—a retail display window was their inspiration—into a "huge interactive surface that behaves just like the latest tablet devices." The transparent film can be fitted (or retrofitted) to the inside or underside of any nonmetallic surface to transform it into a touchscreen.

Cambridge, UK-based materials specialists Visualplanet have been refining their flagship product for over a decade now: since the initial release in 2003, "thousands of touchfoils™ have been successfully installed worldwide in public spaces; such as premium brand retail shop windows, office reception areas, bus shelters, street kiosks, tourist information booths and even bathroom mirrors."

Last week saw the launch of their latest product…

(more…)

Touchfoil is a proprietary technology that is designed to turn any large area of glass—a retail display window was their inspiration—into a "huge interactive surface that behaves just like the latest tablet devices." The transparent film can be fitted (or retrofitted) to the inside or underside of any nonmetallic surface to transform it into a touchscreen.

Cambridge, UK-based materials specialists Visualplanet have been refining their flagship product for over a decade now: since the initial release in 2003, "thousands of touchfoils™ have been successfully installed worldwide in public spaces; such as premium brand retail shop windows, office reception areas, bus shelters, street kiosks, tourist information booths and even bathroom mirrors."

Last week saw the launch of their latest product…

(more…)

Kern & Burn is an online and print publication that curates discussions, interviews and essays about design entrepreneurship

A 1923 critique of everything that’s wrong with media today.

Recently, The New York Times asked me to weigh in on SOPA. Partly under the pressure of an impossibly short notice, and partly because I was hesitant to reduce such a complex problem to the slim word limit, I didn’t go into what makes SOPA just one manifestation of a deeper, wider, much more worrisome issue, which is this: so long as we have a monetization model of information that prioritizes the wrong stakeholders — advertisers over readers — we will always cater to the business interests of the former, not the intellectual interests of the latter. SOPA exists because we have failed to create an information economy in which editorial integrity and reader experience are the only currencies of media merit. Instead, we have a value system based on advertising metrics, and the reason for this can be traced to our chronic tendency to fit old forms to new media — the funding model for media and journalism today is a near-exact replica of the funding model of early newspapers.

Last week, David Skok over at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab unearthed a 1923 essay titled “Our Changing Journalism” (original text below) by Bruce Bliven, former managing editor of The New York Globe and eventual editor of The New Republic. In it, Bliven exquisitely encapsulates the brokenness of this media model, as reflected in the newspaper industry of the era, identifying eight deformities of journalism that map onto some of their contemporary equivalents — SEO-centric headlines a la Huffington Post, linkbait infographics, click-grubbing slideshows — with astounding accuracy. Among them:

…a steady tendency to condense newspaper articles into mere tabloid summaries. This is due to the great increase in the physical volume of advertising, and the desire to hold down the bulk of the paper.”

This, of course, is a perfect summation of the strategy behind today’s content farms, as well as the increasingly prevalent and increasingly worrisome practice of over-aggregation. (Something I myself frequently grapple with as Brain Pickings articles are regurgitated by the Huffington Post and others of the same ilk.)

…a wider and wider use of syndicated material, so that newspapers all over the partially identical from day to day in their contents. This is true not only of telegraphic news, obtained from one of the three great news-gathering associations, but also of ‘feature’ articles, drawings, even editorials.”

The homogenization of curiosity is something that keeps me up at night, as does the thickening of the filter bubble, from mainstream churnalism to smaller and niche publications’s propensity for regurgitating MetaFilter or Reddit headlines — our modern-day newswires.

…the great invested capital and earning power of a successful paper to-day. Because of this fact — the result of the increase in advertising — ownership has slipped out of the hands of the editor, whose type of mind is rarely compatible with large business dealings, and has passed to that of wealthy individuals or corporations. This means that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the editorial attitude of the paper reflects the natural conservatism of these ‘capitalistic’ owners, or is of a wishy-washy type which takes no vigorous stance on any subject.”

…and…

…[newspapers'] race for added sales is reflected editorially in the production of journals which more and more represent, not an editor’s notion of a good paper, but a circulation manager’s notion of a good seller.”

This, precisely, is the fundamental folly of media today. (And is the reason why, for the past six years, I’ve been running Brain Pickings as a donation-funded, advertising-free, and thus unconcerned with “circulation” — or, in modern terms, pageviews — editorial project.)

Whether it’s Hollywood, as in the case of SOPA, or the pageview overlords, as in the case of content farms and over-aggregators, today’s “circulation managers” still dictate the editorial direction and vision for most of the information we consume. Until we, as an information culture in general and as media producers in particular, figure out a way to reinstate the editor as the visionary and the reader as the stakeholder, the Internet will remain a dismal landscape for intelligent, compelling media.

Excerpt from Bliven’s essay follows.

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With Fashion Weeks around the globe drumming up much fanfare it’s nice to take a step back from the glitz and glamour of those perched on the catwalk front row, and think about the designers.

The industry is devoutly 2D - especially the haute couture of the most desirable labels, being more art than garment - so steps into designing through 3D tools has been a slow one. Last December Dassault Systèmes launched its Fashion Lab, and the engineering software company had previously been working tirelessly with mass consumer brands such as Under Armor in introducing 3D into apparel design.

This year sees a more unlikely source of 3D design influence coming from the games industry, with Marvellous Designer 2.

From what we can tell from the limited information that has accompanied its UK launch by resellers bluegfx, it is a straightforward games character dresser that can be used with most professional rendering programmes to give incredibly lifelike and detailed movement. It seems similar to a few other niche products, however, from its list of ongoing developments, there is nothing to stop it from being a tool to quickly take 2D designs quickly into a realistically assessable 3D model.

We’re contacting them for more information, so till then get practising your air-kisses and champagne quaffing.

marvelousdesigner.com

Le photographe français Fabrice Wittner propose la série “Enlightened Souls”. Autour d’un voyage au Vietnam, ce dernier utilise des pochoirs de lumière, donnant ainsi des visuels très réussis de jour comme de nuit. Plus d’image dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Chinese Paintings Photography
• Hyperreal Paintings
• Restructure Series

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How will our future change with technology? Designers and developers gathered last week to answer this question at WebVisions in New York City. Presentations and workshops during this 3-day conference explored the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy. Workshops centered on embracing new technology, designing for the user and collaboration.

Much of the focus in the area of Interaction Design centered on responsive design and mobile first. None of this is new to the field, but new techniques were taught in workshops. Jason Grigsby and Lyza Danger Gardner gave an in-depth workshop on designing and developing for devices and how to build in a future friendly manner. They believe that everything will be interconnected in our future, from your internet-connected refrigerator to your app-loaded car dashboard. By designing a flexible system now, our content will adapt itself to future devices. Participants explored device APIs, CSS3 media queries, responsive web design, and PhoneGap. The workshop was heavy in technical jargon but they always brought it back to how a development methodology can directly affect the user experience.

As the field of User Experience (UX) grows many UX designers are still trying to define it. Whitney Hess, an independent UX consultant, guided us through her principles of experience design coupled with current examples to help us visualize each principle in practice. Hess used Wanderfly.com to exemplify her third principle, Limit Distractions. The Wanderfly home page is minimal with large icons to navigate to your destination. The tenth principle was the most compelling, Make a Good First Impression. “A website is analogous to your a first impression of a person. You want people to make you feel comfortable when you first meet them,” she explained. She pointed to Vimeo as one of the best first-time user experiences. When a user visits the site for the first time a message asks, “Welcome, you’re new aren’t you?” This casual language guides you in like a friendly doorman.

(more…)

One thing Apple has taught us over the past decade is that there can be such a thing as “mass cool”.

Originally, cool was found in niches and pockets and sub-cultures, cool was divisive and it sorted people out; there’s were cool things and then the stuff that everyone else had, which was mass.

Somehow Apple managed to make it’s cool accessible to everyone that’s probably the single most important factor behind its incredible growth,

Nike has been a partner with Apple for a while and obviously learned a great deal along the way. In the period of their working relationship on Nike+, the athletic giant has learned a fair bit about the allure of technology and the next iteration, Nike Fuel seems to be an interesting consolidation of learning experiences.

What interests me most me most about the idea is how equalizing it is- instead of splitting active individuals into camps according to discipline, the world is one and it has a universal currency which is even branded- “Nike Fuel”. It seems so accessible and easy- I can see grandmothers using it with their grandchildren- the cool band being the bond that they share.

Suddenly, I have a vision of participating with my peers and also comparing myself to the greats- the possibilities and application of this data both social and beyond are pretty infinite. I can see televised basketball games with Fuel data running on a ticker, I can see challenges between athletes across different sports- the list goes on and that’s not even considering the opportunity to drive consumers directly to product.

With all the benefits that are heading Nike’s way, the darn thing should be free, but they are smart enough to charge $150 for the privilege of you giving them your precious athletic data.

Fuel is the latest iteration and build on the already iconic Nike+, which still is the “go to”case study that defines brand utility and it’s been around for years and we don’t yet
really have anything comparable from anyone else, what are brands waiting for?

Small startup launches prototype & packaging for wooden iPhone replacement panel. More info including an interview after the jump!

South Korea’s Pantech plans to add gesture-recognition functions to its mobile phones.

The maker of Android and messaging phones plans to use Kinect-like gesture technology from Israel’s eyeSight Mobile Technologies. Pantech plans to include the technology in its Vega LTE series of phones due to hit the market in November.

The folks at eyeSight say that touch input is impractical at times, like when driving or wearing gloves. The gestures can answer calls or play music. Of course, voice activation can handle the same kinds of tasks that gesture controls can handle.

Microsoft developed its Kinect motion-sensing system for the Xbox 360 using in-house development and technology from PrimeSense and 3DV Systems. It also acquired Canesta and licensed patents from GestureTek.

The video is nice in that it demonstrates why you might want to answer a phone with a non-touch gesture, by swiping the air over the phone, if your hands are messy. But the odds of that happening are so low that it makes no sense to add extra cost to a phone just to cover that kind of possibility. File this one under technology for technology’s sake.

Filed under: mobile

The rise of the iPad (and, to a lesser degree, other tablets) has led to myriad new kinds of apps that are flourishing. And, as someone who still enjoys flipping through a good Dr. Seuss book from time to time, there are few trends I enjoy more than the rich, interactive children’s books that are catching on.

These books typically feature music, sound effects, some animation, and other nifty niceties that make books more fun for kids to play with (and can also supplement learning). And there are plenty of people out there who can pen and illustrate a good book, but don’t know much about programming in Objective C. That’s where TC Disrupt finalist Moglue comes in: it lets just about anyone create children’s books, using a simple and straightforward UI.

Obviously your book isn’t going to look amazing if you’re not so good at drawing, but for all of those artists looking to make the jump to the tablet — or anyone who wants to craft a custom story book with family photos for their kids — this seems perfect. Text and images can be dragged and dropped onto the screen, then animated using one of many different effects.

These apps are built using clients available for Mac and Windows, and can be ‘one-click’ published to iOS and Android. The builder is free to use, and Moglue will make money via a rev-share for users who publish their books.

For a look at how the app works, check out the video above.