I’m taking deep breaths right now. First, Canon announced the game-changing 5d Mark II, and now RED just went official with its modular DSMC (Digital Stills and Motion Camera) System. I won’t dive too far into the mouth watering details, but shooting video at 261 megapixels with a 6×17cm sensor is nothing to gloss over. Should be a good xmas this year 
Friend of Fluid, Kiel Johnson, is having an opening tonight at NYC’s Nancy Margolis Gallery. For those of you that can’t make the opening, the exhibition continues through December 20th.
Here’s an interesting article outlining not only the role the internet played in the 2008 U.S. election cycle, but the clear advantage Obama had in using technology to connect to his audience.
SoCal art fans should definitely head down to the Orange County Museum of Art for the 2008 California Biennial. The so-called “tour de force” of the exhibit is an animatronic sculpture by Daniel J. Martinez, which was built and programmed by my good friend (and fellow SACI alumn) Peter Clarke.
Here’s a nice description of the piece in action:
Dressed in white pants and white shirt, with close-cropped hair and facial stubble, the figure appears deranged. Its eyes are rolled back, its teeth bared. A chunky, hip-hop-style silver belt buckle spells out the name “Ishmael.” At regular intervals, the reclining robot comes to mechanical life. An arm flops. A leg kicks. The head rolls forward and the torso twitches. When the flailing body parts hit the raised floor, it acts like a loud drum. The herky-jerky motion gets steadily more forceful, sometimes exposing the mechanical works beneath the floor that propel the man. The escalating racket is a cross between percussive music and a machine gun. It’s exciting, but there’s also a sense of relief when the figure finally pipes down and goes limp, returning to its static, soundless state.
I was fortunate enough to see the sculpture at various stages during the process, but I find these images documenting an extremely early stage of development to be some of the most haunting interesting.
My friend Travis Millard just finished an extensive collaboration with Burton for their 2009 product line. They took a playful and bold illustrative approach to their packaging and hang tags, which contrasts well with the techy graphics. Look for some of Travis’ brilliant illustrated details on Burton’s site as well.
Those of you in New York should definitely check out Banksy’s latest project “The Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill” in Greenwich Village. The installation is a mock pet supply shop, filled with animatronic creatures like a rabbit applying make up, chicken nuggets feeding at a trough, and would-be creatures like fish sticks swimming in a tank.
More info here.
Photos courtesy of Wooster Collective.
Justin Jackson — of one of my staple science podcasts “This Week in Science” — provided a few eye opening ways to visualize exactly how big a number 700,000,000,000 really is.
The 700 billion dollar corporate donation given out by our very generous federal government is, scientifically speaking, approximately equivalent to…
191 dollars for every mile between the Sun and planet formerly known as Pluto.
155 dollars for every year the planet earth has existed.
140 dollars for every year the sun is expected to continue shining.
More than 2 dollars for every star in the milky way galaxy.
2300 dollars for every American alive, regardless of age.
100 dollars for every human being alive anywhere on the planet today.
7 dollars for every human being that has ever lived on the planet at any time ever in the history of homo sapiens.
More than 2 dollars for every penny that has ever been minted by the US treasury.
7 pennies for every cell in the average human body.
If carefully stacked in pennies, the pennies would reach a height of 69 million miles, which would be enough reach the planet mars and continue for another 21 million miles into space. In the other direction the stack would pass both inner planets and reach more than two thirds of the distance to the sun.
Justin’s excellent examples also reminded me of an episode of Science Friday earlier this year with David M. Schwartz who brilliantly provided ways to visualize the number one trillion (1,000,000,000,000). Good times.
How design can save democracy is an excellent (yet still flawed in my opinion) demonstration of better ballot design created for the New York Times by AIGA’s Ric Grefé and Jessica Friedman Hewitt.
It’s amazing that after encountering countless issues with voting ballots, even the most basic design fundamentals (like oh, say “clear page design”) still aren’t in the vocabulary of our government officials. The US is full of communication experts and graphic designers who would be more than happy to resolve the problem, yet no one seems able to cut through the politics to address this as a non-partisan design issue.
Somehow, clear communication was addressed for nutrition labels, so why not ballots? It’s not rocket science.
