Fortnotes for March 27th, 2016
I'm smooshing the last couple of weeks into one here to close up the one-week latency I've managed to create for myself. Also, it's looking like this coming week will be pretty busy so I want to get in sync ahead of that.
A few nice things happening already. I've managed to hook up the team working on our VR installation for Tribeca with some contacts at SubPac; we'll be using their tactile backpacks to add physical rumbles to the experience. I worked with SubPac on a prototype immersive theatre show a couple of years ago, so it's nice to be able to make that connection again.
The tellybox UI project percolates. Looks like we'll be doing some user research (although I still don't like the term 'user' in this context) and workshops over the next couple of months.
Finally, I started a little prototype for a spoken interface to Radiodan. Early days yet, but it looks promising. The trick will not necessarily be in how clever the tech is, but how well I design the conversation flow to be not-awful. More anon.
To cross the streams a little: I wrote my inaugural IRFS weeknotes in this fortnight!
I've been researching VR & 360 here and there since starting the new job, and I'm starting to reach some conclusions and form some hypotheses. I've got a couple of longer-form posts brewing where I'll go into more detail, but the tl;dr is: I think that experiences designed around a user and are fundamentally about how that user relates to the space around them could learn a lot from theatre. This is an artform which has been all about storytelling in space for hundreds of years! Some tricks being missed, and some areas ripe for experimentation.
Still all about the new arrival, unsurprisingly. These were Max's sixth and seventh weeks on the planet, during which time he learned to smile, gained yet more weight and has been through at least two 'difficult phases'. It's like bits of his sensorium are incrementally ratcheting up, which means he gets more engaged and active in the world and then totally overwhelmed by these new chunks of his perception. Understandable really, given that he's starting an entire consciousness from scratch.
A pleasant trip to a Scandinavian street festival in Rotherhithe, timed to match the Spring Fair at the Finnish Church. I had no idea that Rotherhithe had a Scandinavian district, but there it is, between the Norwegian and Finnish churches. London's port history showing its bones.
Pastcards is a little side-project I began a couple of years ago, based on two observations. First, that social photography renders photographs temporary and ephemeral in a way that's totally opposed to how photographs existed before. Second, that it's nice to get nice things in the post. I wrote more about my motives and hopes for the project last October, when it launched to the public.
I'm really happy with it. I think it generates nice things, people seem to enjoy getting the cards and I'm probably more pleased with myself than I should be that I've managed to keep it going: it hit its fifth posting day this month.
It is, however, also a bit of a victim of my inability to do marketing (previously). This is partially deliberate; I didn't (and still don't) want it to grow uncontrollably and become too large an overhead to run. I'd rather it stayed a manageable size, at least for now. Hobby, rather than hockey-stick growth-hacked startup. It does need to be a bit bigger than it is now in order to properly pay its way though. The best suggestion I've had so far is to implement prepay vouchers, and then give a few away to carefully-chosen Instagrammers. Which is a good suggestion! It does require implementing a new feature though, and side-project hacking time is in short supply at the moment. Hopefully I can find time to get it done soon.
I'd also like to start talking about the project at arty/designy meetups, and on a few blogs, so if anyone's got suggestions I'm all ears.
(Look At How Great @debcha's Brain Is Edition)
Two of the most interesting things I read about this fortnight came from a couple of consecutive installments of Deb Chachra's newsletter.
Anish Kapoor Angers Artists by Seizing Exclusive Rights to 'Blackest Black' Pigment
This whole newsletter is very good, but the bit about structural colour and how it works especially so. You should probably just go and read it.
Exhibit: The Entropy Archives
every sixty seconds, the National Institute of Standards and Technology broadcasts a 512-bit random number, like the world's most confusing speaking clock. Each random number also hashes the previous random number they broadcast, making it extremely difficult to falsify.
Remember those high-tech clock radios we used to be able to get that were synchronised over the air? The signal for those in the UK was broadcast from Rugby, in the Midlands. I grew up near there, and every time we drove past I'd look out of the windows at the field of masts and think about the time signals propagating out to all those clock radios.
This is like a brilliant, grown-up cypherpunk version of that. I love that it exists.
The wonderfully-written Edgelands by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts. Broadly, it's about rediscovering overlooked bits of the contemporary British landscape: industrial estates, gravel pits, mobile phone masts. I'm highlighting good bits all over the place, a habit that has definitely drifted into my dead-tree reading from my Kindle use.
The very lovely Vigils by Richard J Birkin. If you listen to one track, listen to Moonbathing: a piece of music that drives shafts of light through your day and stops you in your tracks.
Quite a bit happening this coming week – I'm going up to Manchester to meet some of my new colleagues in R&D's North Lab, and I'll be going to the FutureEverything conference at the end of the week. This is also Max's first big trip away, which is exciting! Also, it'll be my 34th birthday. Also also, we complete purchase of a house! +1000 Late Capitalism Points to us! I'm already picking out typefaces for the door number.
