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Blog posts from July 2011

Week 317

Week 317 weeknotes were published a day late, due to Tuesday being dedicated to the launch of SVK, a comic book which was BERG’s first publication. Two bottles of Cava were consumed on that Tuesday evening, as the team gathered around a monitor displaying a special app written to track SVK’s consumption.

The app they were watching had been written with Alice’s new Ruby on Rails skills, gained while developing the application, previously known as Flagstaff, now named Shuush. Shuush was released to the public later that week.

As Tom Stuart, Matt Jones and Alex Jarvis listened to the mario coin noise of the app, they pondered over the last bits of feedback and tweaking of Dimensions 2 before it was used by client.

The largest project of the week for BERG was Chaco, which had absorbed Andy, Joe, Jack, Alex and Nick this week, and had shown some pretty exciting things at the previous week’s Friday demo.

Weminuche made unglamorous but functional leaps forward, which involved meetings attended by Jack, Denise, Alex, Andy, Nick and James. These meetings were chaired by Simon, who discovered a new way of using post-it notes which would stay with him for the rest of his career.

Various importing processes for Schooloscope were re-ignited for their occasional use, ready to update its opinion of the current educational landscape in Britain.

Week 317 was preceded over by Simon and processed by Matthew Webb.

SVK is go for launch

SVK cover

We’ve been working on making a comic with Warren Ellis and Matt Brooker.

Today we’re super pleased to announce it’s available, and the store is now open at http://getsvk.com.

SVK

It’s something we’ve really enjoyed bringing into the world – and we hope you enjoy it too.

“I thoroughly enjoyed SVK, which either in spite or because of its concision is somehow Dickensian, and while quite thoroughly dark, is also quite touching. Memorable. And couldn’t be done as well, or even be born, in any other medium at all” – William Gibson, author of Zero History, Spook Country, Neuromancer etc., in his foreword for SVK.

SVK

SVK

SVK

Friday links: instrumentation, smelly robots and love stories

A glut of interesting stuff on the studio list this week.

Matt Jones sent round an intro to Biophilia, Björk’s new multimedia project. As you’d expect from the small Icelandic bundle of re-invention, her new work is a departure from her previous oeuvre; Biophilia isn’t just an album, it’ll be accompanied by ten iPad apps. Her tour isn’t simply a tour. Starting with the Manchester International Festival, she’ll be continuing with a number of residencies across the world involving live performances and workshops.

Yesterday I watched the making of her new iPad-controllable celeste, the Gameleste. I love it, especially the little burst of Bach’s Invention No. 13 in A minor on organ in the middle:

The Gameleste – a custom instrument for Björk from Andy McCreeth on Vimeo.

Next door, RIG have been pumping out Robyn this morning [“I’ve got some news for you / Fembots have feelings too“], which seemed fitting as Matt Jones sent round Kevin Grennan‘s work The Smell of Control: Fear, Focus, Trust from this year’s graduate show of Design Interactions at RCA. It explores the blurring lines between robot and human interaction.

“The contrast between the physical anti-anthropomorphic nature of the machines and the olfactory anthropomorphism highlights the absurd nature of the trickery at play in all anthropomorphism”


Robot with sweat gland, from The Smell of Control

Mr Jones also sent round this genre mashup video. If only Amazon really sold a choose-your-own-adventure plot device button to sex up the weekend.

Plot Device from Red Giant on Vimeo.

Timo and Alex had their interest piqued by Nizo, which promises to bring Super 8 film goodness to the iPhone. I like the scrolling effect on their homepage. A nice way of tease-introducing the features which the app will contain.

Terminator 2 is twenty years old on Sunday. This stop-motion tribute is totally mesmerising:

Splitscreen: A Love Story was filmed entirely on a Nokia N8 and sent round the studio by Denise. Nicely shot, and not without a healthy dollop of romance-cheese.

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

Happy weekending!

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