Laptops & Looms 2014, notes.

Here are the things I wrote down at Laptops & Looms 2 — direct quotes and indirect notes. Sadly, I missed the third day with no-doubt excellent thoughts and demos of things from Lou, Adrian, Tom A, other good brains:

Lars & Theo (Skrekkøgle):
– communicating finish
– international quality control
– changing scale from prototype to product: α to ß
– falling between hobby level and big industrial quantities

Mosse Sjaastad:
– “learning through the skin”
– change perception of 5 minutes; old and new understandings

Lars:
– “a cuckoo clock for short-term memory.”

Nick Hand:
– “when setting type, you think about it more”
– process of thinking – engaging with negative space
– PROCESS IS THINKING
– “A mobile career” – identifying skills through appearances

John Willshire:
– “Design for one problem”
– Pictures are a common language
– “Make with what is at hand” » design for necessity
– the making is the narrative is the product
– you can’t patent a story

Louise Downe:
– “the internet is regional”

Alice Bartlett:
– “it doesn’t mean anything if a computer can smell things.”

Henry Cooke:
– an interest in things that are replacing analog things
– ephemerality of timelines – breaking the loops of things; disappears into the ether
– JUDGES NOTABILITY and creates a memento
– LUMPY EVENTS
– Tying you to a time in a way that just scrolling doesn’t
– Vague enough to allow people to fill in the gaps

Brett MacFarlane:
– Fix the basics
– Lateralism / Diversity / Monoculture

George Oates:
– Cultural heritage design and service
– making archives more accessible » think about the archives first
– “How many things do you have?”
– EXPLICIT NOTES TO THE FUTURE
– metadata for the physical objects
– mindful of how you describe digital materials
– ADDITIONAL CONTEXTS and multiple voices

George also spoke about an exciting project that at the moment is her “tiny, tiny fantasy” and can’t be mentioned. 

The two days felt like we have started to pass through the retrospective fetishism of object/print for object/print sake. People are now creating/making webthings as a point of purpose because those things fulfil a need, rather than a want or empty shelf where the George Foreman grill once was. It may be that we are leaving the gimmicky web behind and maturing.  

There were other things said — that I didn’t write those down is no indication of how much I valued them — around flow, focus, purpose, service, respect, problems/solving, the network and conducting. Smarter people will elaborate on those, I hope.

Of course, the main part of the thing took place amongst the trams, cable cars, Swedish knives, the fish, the chips, the ice creams. Many ice creams. Thanks to all that came, and particularly Matt and Russell for wanting to make people leave London for some traditional shambles in the East Midlands. 

Ugle: The Networked Owl.

Einar and Jørn from Voy have finally made a video to explain and demonstrate Ugle: the networked owl.

In their own words:

Ugle is a wooden owl that can be controlled over the internet with an iPhone application. It lets you send colour-messages from your phone to your home. When you change the position of the colors on the owl on the screen, the physical owl turns its head to the chosen color. It is a decorative personal message system where the household has to decide what the colours mean.

— Hoot hoot! A new Ugle film, Voy

I bring up Ugle quite a lot, in talks, in conversation, in day-to-day life. It’s the perfect example of the kind of products that people should be designing for the home — networked but not screaming network, undemanding, ambiently conveying meaning. The meaning is constructed between the people that use it, rather than being dictated by the object.

It is designed for natural tendencies, casual observation, rather than trying to create a new behaviour.

Too many products that come out of the Internet of Things end up putting utility above beauty, whereas it can be both. Ugle demonstrates that it’s possible to have a domestic, networked object that is functional and pleasing to look at (see also the Good Night Lamp by Alex D-S).

Ugle is calm, ambient, networked and beautiful, and that’s what our homes need.

Watch:

 

Lovely.

Me to play.

On occasion, it is good to recall this tale told by Nagg in Beckett’s Endgame:

An Englishman, needing a pair of striped trousers in a hurry for the New Year festivities, goes to his tailor who takes his measurements.

“That’s the lot, come back in four days, I’ll have it ready.”

Good. Four days later.

“So sorry, come back in a week, I’ve made a mess of the seat.” 

Good, that’s all right, a neat seat can be very ticklish. A week later.

“Frightfully sorry, come back in ten days, I’ve made a hash of the crotch.”

Good, can’t be helped, a snug crotch is always a teaser. Ten days later.

“Dreadfully sorry, come back in a fortnight, I’ve made a balls of the fly.”

Good, at a pinch, a smart fly is a stiff proposition.

To make it short, the bluebells are blowing and he bollockses the buttonholes.

“God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it’s indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!”

“But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look—

—at the world—

and look—

—at my TROUSERS!”

Instagram and Other People’s Shopping Lists.

Since October last year, Instagram has ruled my photograph taking. It’s done what Flickr should have done and what twitpic, yfrog and the like thought they were doing — a simple, single-purpose photo sharing mobile app.

It gets a lot of flak from people moaning about the use of filters, but that misses the point of what it really is. Like criticising twitter for people’s spellings. As a social space, it’s probably my favourite at the moment. It reminds me of the early days of twitter – the days when you followed a fairly small, but diverse, group of people. When you shared ideas – occasionally what was for lunch – and didn’t have to worry about blocking all the SEO spammers or niche retail outlets from Kentucky, or people shouting for attention.

Post Future-O-Matic.

A year ago, Russell posted his sketch for the Future-o-Matic Theory Maker.

Future-o-Matic; Russell Davies.

I think at the moment, there is little need for any column except the second one. I have noticed quite a lot of Peak Slow and Post Long recently. These are mostly as attempts to mediate content overload, such as the trend towards #longreads in blog posts and Russell’s own reshaping of Interesting this year.

Of course, the Big Dark is never far away.