I’ll be in NYC briefly next week, and while I have a couple of meetings planned I still have some free time to meet if you’d like to discuss working with BERG on product design and development projects or perhaps even working with BERG Cloud. Email me at mj@berglondon.com to see if we can organise something!
I’ll also be speaking at Studio-X on Monday evening, April 30th as part of their “Breaking Out and Breaking-In” series of events. Hopefully see you there!
For the first link, there’s something happening right now, live on the web: “On-site interactive installation tracks people moving in the space and broadcasts their motion onto the web, their movements visualised in realtime in web browsers around the world. Web viewers can watch, or further interact with the generative graphics.” I’m not sure how long it will be running, so check it out, or look at the screenshot below.
Aanand did this lovely flickr photo compositor using HTML canvas.
Ikea are getting into home electronics.
“Hachures are an old way of representing relief on a map. They usually look a bit like this, and they’re usually hand-drawn”
And, not on the list, nor BERG related, but Jamie McKelvie made a video his Jam. I’m in love with it.
It is, just about, week 358. Last night we were dancing for Matt Jones’ birthday. Simon has just brought in bacon sandwiches for everyone.
The week has been, like the weather, changeable. Right now it is sunny, so I am writing the week notes now. On Tuesday, when we have our all-hands catch up, it was not sunny, and there were only 7 of us in the studio, so this week’s list is not comprehensive.
Alex, among lots of other things, is wrapping up (geddit?) the packaging work for Little Printer. Simon and Andy went to Leatherhead for some reason. Denise has been doing all sorts of Little Printer stuff, bar a short break to do some D&AD judging. Matt W is working on Sinawava (as is Joe), a workshop and sales. He’s also went to Milan design fair to show off Little Printer. Alice and I are working on Berg Cloud internals. Andy is doing circuit designs. And…
Jack is back! He’s working in the afternoons, currently mainly with Joe on Sinawava. It’s good to have him back.
This is the sort of week you look back on fondly. It was a hard week, but worth it. And the dancing helped.
The project we ran in the spring with the Goldsmiths Design BA course was not ‘live’ in the sense that there was a commercial client’s needs informing the project, but it was an approximation of the approach that we take in the studio when we are working with clients around new product generation and design consultancy.
It was also an evolution of a brief that we have run before at SVA in New York with Durrell Bishop – but with the luxury of having much more time to get into it.
Our brief was in two parts – representing techniques that we use in the early stages of projects.
The first half: “Death To Fiction” stems from our love for deconstructing technologies, particularly cheap everyday ones to find new opportunities.
It’s a direct influence from Durrell – and techniques he used while teaching Schulze, Joe Malia and others at the RCA – and also something that is very familiar to many craftspeople – having at least some knowledge of a lot of different materials and techniques that can then inform deeper investigation, or enable more confident leaps of invention later on in the process. It also owes a lot to our friend Matt Cottam‘s “What is a Switch?” brief that he’s run at RISD, Umea, CIID and Aho…
We asked the students to engage with everyday technology and manufactured, designed goods as if it were nature.
“The Anthropocene” has been proposed by ecologists, geologists and geographers to describe the epoch marked by the domination of human influence on the Earth’s systems – seams of plastic kettles and Tesco “Bags For Life” will be discovered in millions of years time by the distant ancestors of Tony Robinson’s Time Team.
There is no split between nature and technology in the anthropocene. So, we ask – what happens if you approach technology with the enthusiasm and curiosity of the amateur naturalist of old – the gentlemen and women who trotted the globe in the last few centuries with sturdy boots, travel trunks and butterfly nets – hunting, collecting, studying, dissecting, breeding and harnessing the nature around them?
The students did not disappoint.
Like latter-day Linneans, or a troop of post-digital Deptford Darwins – they headed off into New Cross and took the poundstretchers and discount DIY stores as their Galapagos.
After two weeks I returned to see what they had done and was blown-away.
Chewing-gum, Alarm-clocks, key-finders, locks, etch-a-sketches, speakers, headphones, lighters, wind-up toys and more – had all been pulled-apart, scrutinised, labelled, diagrammed, tortured, tested, reconstructed…
And – perhaps most importantly I had the feeling they had not only been understood, but the invention around communicating what they had learnt displayed a confidence in this ‘new nature’ that I felt would really stand them in good stead for the next part of the project, and also future projects.
It was all great work, and lots of work – the smile didn’t leave my face for at least a week – but a few projects stood out for me.
Charlotte’s investigations of disposable cameras, Helen’s thought-provoking examination of pregnancy tests, Tom’s paper speakers (which he promised had worked!), Simon’s unholy pairings of pedometers and drills, Liboni and Adam’s thorough dissections of ultrasonic keyfinders and the brilliant effort to understand how quartz crystal regulate time by baking their own crystal, wiring it to a multimeter and whacking it with a hammer!
Hefin Jones’ deconstruction of the MagnaDoodle, and his (dramatic, hairdryer-centric) reconstruction of it’s workings was a particularly fine effort.
The second half of the brief asked the students to assess the insights and opportunities they had from their material exploration and begin to combine them, and place them in a product context – inventing new products, services, devices, rituals, experiences.
We’ve run this process with students before in a brief we call “Hopeful Monsters”, which begins with a kind of ‘exquisite corpse’ mixing and breeding of devices, affordances, capabilities, materials and contexts to spur invention.
We’d pinched that drawing technique way back in 2007 for Olinda from Matt Ward, head of the design course at Goldsmiths so it only seemed fitting that he would lead that activity in a workshop in the second phase of the brief.
The students organised themselves in teams for this part of the brief, and produced some lovely varied work – what was particularly pleasing to me was that they appeared to remain nimble and experimental in this phase of the project, not seizing upon a big idea then dogmatically trying to build it, but allowing the process of making inform the way to achieve the goals they set themselves.
We closed the project with an afternoon of presentations at The Gopher Hole (thanks to Ossie and Beatrice for making that happen!) where the teams presented back their concepts. All the teams had documented their research for the project as they went online, and many opted to explain their inventions in short films.
Here’s a selection:
A special mention to the ‘Roads Mata’ team, who for me really went the extra-mile in creating something that was believably-buildable and desirable – to the extent that I think my main feedback to them was they should get on KickStarter…
There were sparks of lovely invention throughout all the student groups – some teams had more trouble recognising them than others, but as Linus Pauling once said “To have a good idea you have to have a lot of ideas”, and that certainly wasn’t a problem.
I wonder what everyone would have come up with if we had a slightly longer second design phase to the project, or introduced a more constrained brief goal to design for. It might have enabled some of the teams to close in on something either through iteration or constraint.
Next time!
As it was I hope that the methods that the brief introduce stay with the group, and that the curiosity, energy and ability to think through making that they obviously all have grows in confidence and output through the coming years.
They will be a force to be reckoned with if so.
It’s Friday 13th, and at the time of writing, all is well. There will be thirteen of us around the table for demos later on though, and if the Last Supper or Norse myths are anything to go by, Wikipedia doesn’t fancy our chances. Better get on with Friday links while I still can.
Simon started the week off with the Hackday Manifesto. A handy list of things to think about if you’re organising a hack day. (One of the more memorable hack days I attended got struck by lightening. It sent the building into panic mode and large vents opened in the roof as the rain fell on our laptops. It’s not on the list, but try to avoid that if you can.)
Nick sent around this video of a robot…
…And Alex spotted a ham boning robot in the related links.
Andy, shocked to find that ‘it’s not all internet of things and albums on Kick Starter’, shared a link to the Sisters of the Lattice: Mystical Conjoined Twins Tour + Film, and Alex got us back on track with Pebble, an E-paper watch for iPhone and Android.
I enjoyed this lovely use of ASCII on Twitter, spotted via @mildlydiverting. Use the J key to go forward, and K to reverse.
MW returned from the USA to share these optical illusions with us, and MJ finished up with texts from dogs.
That’s all for now – we’re just discussing boiling a can of condensed milk for four hours, so I’d better go.
Checking back in the archives, my last weeknotes were for week 345, back in January. Just like 345, 357 is also a sphenic number; a positive integer which is the product of three distinct prime numbers. And just like week 345, this week also sees Matthew in the USA. Coincidence? Undoubtedly – I’ve seen his calendar and I don’t think he’s got time to plan around the sphenics, but if you’re curious, I’ll double check on his return.
We had a bank holiday in the UK yesterday, and so this is a short week. Here’s what everyone is planning for the next 4 days…
MJ and Joe are working on Sinawava this week – perhaps with a bit of input from me. There’s much to get done before a review on Friday and a ‘what next?’ decision next monday.
Alex, Alice and James are working together on Chuska, getting things ready for review on Thursday. There’s been a lot of conceptual work so far, this week sees rapid prototypes and things to play with, which is always good.
Nick and Phil will be working on Little Printer – and I’ll be ‘helping’ by presenting them with the mother of all flowcharts for things too long-winded to explain here. I hope it makes sense to them though, because I’m really excited to see what happens next.
Timo has run away to Norway for a while, which leaves the studio a little sad. I’m keeping his memory alive by stealing his mug which happens to be the biggest in the studio. He’ll be working on Silverton – again with a bit of input from me too.
Andy is out of the studio today but in for the rest of the week, and working on Little Printer. Everything he’s doing involves abbreviations, things written in initials and companies with the word Tech or Tek in their name.
Simon is working across all the projects we have on the go at the moment, from Little Printer through to every client project. He’s busy either planning or wrapping up work, and sorting out invoices with Helen.
And I think that’s everyone – time to get started.
There’s been lots of exciting things circulating the studio this week; bacon butties, choccies, beer, the usual, but with the most notable of all being the simply delectable mango, courtesy of our Simon (and I think Sainsburys – good work guys). All the edible things aside, here’s some bits for you to enjoy.
A solar powered calculator preparing to take on the world.
What life was like in the swinging sixties.
The robot company bought by Amazon… Simply astounding.
An article about why you can’t stop throwing those birds.
The future of comics?
And finally… the biggest Creme Egg you’ve ever seen. (Bigger than a kettle):
Happy Easter all.
IT’S NEARLY EASTER which means chocolate (and beers) for all. So, in preparation of the short week (and beers), everyone at BERG is suitably busy and the studio is buzzing.
This week, Silverton continues with a bit of filmmaking from Timo and Joe alongside other bits with Denise and Matt Jones. Timo is also putting together some words for Chuska whilst mentally preparing for some exciting weeks ahead.
Alex, Alice and James are working their socks off juggling being creatively brilliant for Chuska, whilst each having their own BERG Cloud bits to do to ensure it’s coming along nicely. Denise is also working with Alex on Little Printer to get the packaging looking beautiful.
Nick is stitching together his crytographic layers (I’m not even sure what that means but I think it involves coding ’til his fingers drop off), and getting down to some problem solving.
Andy a.k.a. Busy BERG Barringer Bee is living up to his name and, in true Andy style, is pulling together lots of bits of everything Little Printer related.
Matt Jones and Matt Webb are off to a surprise workshop and engaging with future work proposals before Wednesday, when Jones is booked in for a talk, and Thursday when Webb is off to Vegas to win some money… I mean, attend an awards ceremony.
Vanessa is settling in nicely and, alongside helping Andy speak Irish, is putting together some case studies for us whilst helping Webb, Jones and Simon with proposals. Simon is also spending some time this week cracking on with an exciting Little Printer mini-project.
This is an exciting week for myself as it’s first time on the blog and thus into the world of BERG online. I’m also only in 2 days this week, so have lots to do in little time. Adieu.
Will Wiles, the Deputy Editor of the design magazine Icon, asked us recently to contribute to a special issue on Mobiles Phones alongside James Bridle, Kazys Varnelis, Marko Ahtisaari and Will Self, among others.
I wrote a short piece on smartphones as ‘companion species’, that reflects a lot of ongoing themes and discussions in the studio around designing the behaviour of sensate devices with ‘fractional intelligence‘.
They see the world differently to us, picking up on things we miss.
They adapt to us, our routines. They look to us for attention, guidance and sustenance. We imagine what they are thinking, and vice-versa.
Dogs? Or smartphones?
Mobile devices (can we still call them phones?) are being packed full of sensors, processing power. They are animated by ever-more-sophisticated software, dedicated to understanding the world around them (in terms of advances in computer vision and context-awareness) and understanding us (speech recognition and adaptive ‘agent’ software such as Apple’s ‘Siri’)
They are moving – somewhat awkwardly – from being our tools to becoming our newest companion species.
Donna Haraway, theorist on our transformation into cyborgs, published ‘The Companion Species Manifesto’ in 2003. It addresses the relationship between domestic dogs and humans, but there is much in there to inspire designers of smartphones, apps and agents.
“Cyborgs and companion species each bring together the human and non-human, the organic and technological, carbon and silicon, freedom and structure, history and myth, the rich and the poor, the state and the subject, diversity and depletion, modernity and postmodernity, and nature and culture in unexpected ways.”
Using inspirations from theory such as Haraway, and fiction – such as Philip Pullman’s ‘Daemons’ from his ‘Dark Materials’ books – we can perhaps imagine a near-future that is richer and weirder than the current share-everything-all-the-time/total-gamified-personal-productivity obsessions of silicon valley.
A future of digital daemons would be one of close relationships with software that learned and acted intuitively – perhaps inscrutably at first, but with a maxim of ‘do no harm, with maximum charm’.
Intel’s Genevieve Bell recently spoke of the importance of designing relationships with – and crucially, between our technologies – so that we not in the centre of an arms-race of ever-more-complex 1-to-1 interactions with our phones, tablets and apps. She memorably quoted a research subject that likened her collection of digital devices to a ‘needy backpack of baby birds’
Much better to have one faithful, puppy-smart daemon device, working at our side to round everything (and every thing) up and relate what it senses to us?
At BERG we are fond of quoting MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks – who said that fifty years of sustained work by the brightest and the best in artificial intelligence would get us things that were ‘smart as puppies’ if we’re lucky.
This seems like a fine goal to us, rather than creating uncanny, flawed and frustrating analogues of human intelligence and interactions – such as Siri, or if we cast our minds back a decade – Microsoft’s ‘Clippy’.
This future might also free the form of our devices – from glowing rectangles that suck our attention from the world, to subtler physical avatars representing our companions – things that listen, watch, speak – to us and for us.
Our companion species as are likely to inhabit the biomimetic descendants of the Nike fuelband or the now-mundane bluetooth headsets as Ive’s perfectionist slabs of glass and alloy.
Also, companion species might be shared, as a family pet is now – bound to home and hearth rather than the predominant 1-to-1 ‘personal computing’ paradigm of the last 40 years or so.
What forms might these ‘household spirits’ take? Nest’s smart thermostat has pursued the Ives/Rams route of tasteful (if ironically, cold) elegance, whereas our own Little Printer takes a rather different approach…
There will be more diverse responses to these new categories of digital/physical extensions to ourselves, our homes, cars and cities. Which is as it should be.
I hope it triggers explosion of form and interaction beyond the glowing touchscreen hegemony. The advent of ‘digital companion species’ should be a cambrian moment for design.
It’s Friday, and this is being hastily penned after a particularly good Friday Demos, so here we go!
Alice linked to this explanation of Sim City’s new simulation engine.
Alex has been having fun with Flixel, and sent us all this image.
Denise sent us all a link to this, simply saying “The sound of the Internet. Lovely piece by Giles”.
I sent a link through to yet another amazing Boston Dynamics robot in the making.
Matt Jones linked to a PBS article which details where News Corp makes its money, which also ties in nicely with the recent Panorama documentary on Pay TV hacking in the UK.
We’re wrapping things up in the studio after an impromptu Youtube party, and are off for a well deserved pint. Have a good weekend!
October 28, 2013
October 14, 2013
September 24, 2013
September 17, 2013
September 10, 2013