hyponeiria

I usually do not blog casual design studio portfolio sites and so, however, the portfolio site of Modernista is hillarious. Everything is on web 2.0, site is just an invisible interface. It is just a gateway and it is a good evidence to show how social services are powerful today.

two weeks ago, I have been to Amsterdam for a short visit. Actually the reason of my travel was installing our newsknitter sweaters exhibition into a fashionshop gallery called concrete image store. The shop is quite nice and innovative, they sell good urban style clothes (also some toys) for young people. They have also separeted the half of the room for exhibitions. Long story short, a must see stop in Amsterdam.

Not only the shop that impressed me in Netherlands but also the curator team of our exhibition,<TAG> based in Den Haag, was very nice. We had a long chat about political situation in europe, which I find it is getting more and more importance every day, as well as information visualization and its future. As expected, our long talk ended with a lot Palm beers in a bar. To be honest, I am a bit surprised that how I did not notice <TAG> earlier, because they are quite actively organizing exhibitions and publishing magazines on information visualization topic. However, it is better to know late than never, they recently published the 5th annual tag magazine related to the last exhibition called ‘Eco Aesthetics:Monitoring Ecological Data and Patterns of Human Consumption’. You may read the statement by the curators on exhibition and see some pictures from our exhibition space. Hoping to visit <TAG> and Netherlands soon again…

A few weeks ago Burak Arikan has released his new project called MYPOCKET on turbulence. He described the project as:

MYPOCKET discloses the artist’s personal financial records to the world by exploring and revealing essential patterns in the daily transactions of his bank account. These are the records that we usually keep secret, whereas financial institutions intensively analyze them to score our credibility. Archived on the site, the artist’s two years of spending history is analyzed by the custom software to predict future spending; these predictions sometimes determine his future choices, creating a system in which both the software and the artist adapt to one another. Influenced by today’s techno-cultural milieu, MYPOCKET presents a hybrid interface to a living physical/digital process.

Other than the visualization of this huge amount of data, for me the most attractive part of the project is the prediction feed section. It is so obvious that, it’s not so easy to calculate the prediction of humans; however, in the feed we are able to see that the software is managing to make some succesfull predictions after a long time later. So my ultimate question at this point is if Burak runs this feed for 10 years will this prediction system increase its success rate or not? We have already figured out that AI is not going to work in the near future -at least in the way that we always imagined- so, at this point the main tendancy in the media/data art/science fields is more and more turning to this predictions and analyzation algorithms/computations. It is hard for me to answer the question yet, however, I must admit that I do not expect to see so much successfull predictions from computers. I guess, I am a person who still believes the magical irrationality and the tricks of human minds that makes our life much more complex and beautiful. I hope Burak runs and even updates the project for a long time, so I will get the answer of my question.

You may also find a very well written article about the project on dügümküme. Unfortunately it is only in turkish.

Our data visualisation project with Ebru Kurbak, newsknitter, is going to be a part of the ‘Seamless‘ fashion show in Boston. The show scheduled to 30th January and it covers a wide collection of fashion projects related to technology. Unfortunately it is not a free show however you may purchase the tickets on the seamless website if you are interested. You may also check newsknitter website or see some pictures on flickr.

Twoninedotsix is a colobrative photography project and photographic documentary of Efe Mert Kaya and Maurizio Braggiotti. Efe is a visual communication design student in Istanbul Bilgi University and Maurizio is a photography and video student in the same school.(left to right : Efe , Maurizio)

twoninedotsix.com is a free photo archive project of my two former students from Istanbul. They have quite good amount of photos that has taken in different places by different cameras. Colors, compositions, content, everything looks very nice! By the way what the hell is 29.6?

Today, I received a message from my friend who works for Trollbäck company. He told me that they changed their website. Trollbäck is a NYC based motion graphics company which has a bunch of coll and elegant works. And the new website is just working, the simplicity, the clever interaction and easy to use navigation are the things that we are looking forward to see on the web. I also liked the implementation of tag system into a portfolio site, our minds are changing nowdays, we started to beleive that tags are much more better than categories. Greetings to Trollbäck!

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

The poster of the movie (you see above), so called, “Meet the cast” released. It is 27″ x 40″, litho printed and costs $20. It is designed by Experimental Jetset.

There is a new project from MW2MW called Gothamberg. MW2MW is a collaboration between Marek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg. Started in 1997, both artists work independently but come together on long term projects such as Apartment, Wonderwalker, Thinking Machine and Noplace. Regarding the project of Gothamberg:

Everyone who has lived in an apartment has a story to tell. Gothamberg is a place to read, interact and exchange stories of lives in apartment buildings. Together, these tales of sounds and smells, lobbies and bathrooms, laundry room gossip and unexpected favors form a single collective building, Gothamberg. Their experiences form the elliptical threads of inhabitation, a mnemonic quality expressing something of the shared nature of dwelling.

Other than this one, for my personal taste their history flow was one of the greatest projects in information visualization area.

The image above is a piece from project called “very low quality jpgs” by fake is the new real.

Other than this one, there is a bunch of clever ideas for small projects realized by them(?) such as “symbolic alphabet” and “subways at scale” etc. I am not sure whether they are a group or a single person, however, I really loved the ideas and application of them on the web. Please share with us if you know something more on them.

Small map of portion of Antartica showing loss of land and sea based ice.

The infogprahics above from the famous documentary film, ‘An Inconvinient Truth‘. The movie itself explains a very important topic, so called, global warming. It is highly recommended to watch the movie as a designer, as an inhabitant of the earth. You may find the detailed information regarding the movie at this website. And It is possible to see all of those beatiful infographics collection on Flickr!

As a final note; besides all of good and important facts the movie introduces; there are some hidden messages and publicity on behalf of Al gore and USA, which I don’t like in a way.