psychogeographic

oh yeah, this was a good idea to be part of this walk. so yesterday at 5pm we walked through the city center of nottingham with a group of approx. 20 people, using a different city map. it's quiete hard to explain how this maps works. it has a lot of lines on it and names of places are not really located on the right position.
but it was kind of funny to walk around the city with a group of people that had immense maps in their hands and draw from time to time 'meaningless' phrases on the asphalt.


we followed a given route on this card from the broadway cinema to the main station.
but it was more like that there were phrases given like 'in possesion of a barclays bank account card' and for the next stop 'owner of a vodaphone mobile phone contract'. the task then was to find a connection given on this map between these two location. a connection might be for example that you should be able to know your first and surname to open an bank account or to make a contract for your mobile phone.
there were more than one connection possible. we picked out one, and wrote it one the asphalt anywhere between this two places.
after two hours walking very slow i was frozen to the marrow. i like to exaggerate, but i really enjoyed this cappuccion at the main station in the end.

after this walk, the trampoline festival was about to start back at the broadway cinema with several screenings and art whatever exihibitions?
i really hate being on my own, so i was very glad that Jon took part in this walk too, and wanted to go to the trampoline festival afterwards.

so when we came back the cinema was very busy. and it seemed that nobody knows whats the timetable for the evening. so jon and i were like running from a to b over c to a and b again. down in the studio we where shortlt before takin part in an interactive project that draws neon coloured lines on the wall *smilez*
people get a mobile device, walk around the city for a bit, and on this wall in the studio a line appears almost in real-time and shows the route they are walking.
because of too many difficulties with the timetable respectively the different information we got from different people, we misses to take part in this interactive-neon-lines-drawing-project.

but we saw an interesting screening with four or five different 'shortmovies' oder rather 'documentations'. for example a guy trying to make pictures of a government building. the first guard allowed him to take pictures after having a little discussion for what purpose. a second guard forbid him to take any pictures from any street, sights, perspectives of this buildings.
this was kind of interesting. two people, working for the governement, having the same job but telling different things. the reason for this forbiddance was: the buildings are sensitive. nice!

all-time favourite!

SPP + Broadway = Confusion -> Wonderful Film

the task for this weeks tutorial was to go into the broadway cinema and find a piece of art which we should present.
so i went into the broadway cinema, expecting something like an exhibition and needed a few minutes to discover that there is nothing like that, except of a little screen in the hall showing supposably some digital art. i was a little bit confused. and i was a bit worry about what to talk about then in the tutorial.
i just took every flyer i found with me and decided to have a closer look at home. i had this closer look but couldn't get anything out of it.
but i decided to take advantage of this special student/sunday offer in the broadway cinema to watch a movie for 3,50. uhhhhh, and this was a very good decision: the darjeeling limited by wes anderson. what a fantastic, beautiful and gorgeous film.


i talked to deborah yesterday in the tutorial about my confusion with the piece of art and the little screen. it was kind of strange for her too. after finding out that there's the trampoline festival at this weekend i made kind of an agreement with deborah that i will have a look at this psychogeographic walk through nottingham with heath bunting on thursday.
i just found out that this walk is limited to 17 people and it is advisable to book the tickets in advance. so i will have a look tomorrow if there is still one ticket left. otherwise i will have to the festival on friday or saturday as it is scheduled for the whole weekend.

the laws of simplicity

so, i started reading in one of my books from Maeda. design by numbers actually needs you to have a laptop besides you to start immedeatly programming some artworks.
althoug i already have some experience with processing i decided to start reading the other one.
laws of simplicity has less then 100 sheets and is very easy to read not least because it so well structured. maeda illustrates 10 laws and 3 keys of simplicity illustrated with well-known examples so that it is easy to follow him.
of course, those are not laws everyown has to follow now, for me it's more like a very good advice from a person with a lot of knowledge and experiences.


The first law -reduce- deals with how to reduce functionality. Maeda says: 'The simplest way to achieve simplicity is trough thoughtful reduction'. he confronts the two questions 'how simple can you make it?' with 'how complex does it have to be?'. the most of the items he is discussing i feel familiar with. it is like i always tried to act in this way or heard about this ways reaching simplicity, but having a book like a reference that deals with this topic in a written way is very effective to develop my own knowledge.

beauty overwhelms mess

i've been to the city centre on sunday and discovered a very nice shop: ikea for the rich. such beauty and simplcity in all their products. of course, too expensive. but i found something that inspired me to be a more ideal student: little notebooks in A5 for £0,75 and 30 sheets.
because all the sheets with my notes i have taken since yet are a complete mess. some sheets are fretted for little shopping lists i made, some sheets have a content from three different lectures on itself with a list of the bands i need to check out for a possible concert... and so on.
the whole way home i was very keen to write in this nice little notebooks. and i'm happy now and much more motivated to go to the next lectures and write everything in it!

First Interaction Design Session

i just found one of the pictures we took when we had our first interaction design session with roma. in this session we went through the city campus and took pictures from things that we thought interact in any kind with the human being. there is one picture which is really interesting. dan took this picture and when you have a closer look you can see me in the two mirrors.

My Books

For having a look on my bibliography, please click here.
i really would like to talk about two of them:

the first book from Tom DeMarco - Deadline i had to read for a course last year. the course was about project management and called 'media engineering'. it was a very interesting course which gave me a lot. the main items where about project management, how to start a project, talking about the different software life-cycles and approaches, doing some cost-estimation and things like that.
the professor told us to read this book as a companion for this course. this book is a novel and deals with a fictional story about a software development team. DeMarco illustrates the principles and outright absurdities that affect the productivity of this team. the main character Mr. Tompkins is hired as the manager for this project. he has to deal with an incredible huge staff of developers and to divide them into groups. there are six different products that have to be produced and he wants to combine this chance of having a lot of people with a kind of test of the different project management principles.
he decides to divide the staff into 18 different teams. that means three groups for every product. but the times are of different sizes and they have to use different methods. they all compete against each other and against an impossible deadline.
at the end of nearly every second or third chapter in this book, Mr. Tompkins writes the most importants things, recently learned, down in a book. those headwords combined with the fictional story that uses real software and management approaches the book offers a lot of very useful and interesting information.
i really enjoyed reading this book, although i dont read many books and sometimes have to force myself.

the second book is a little bit more heavier and needs a lot of cenctration and brain work.
i did a course about programming pictures with processing. this is a very nice tool to produce very nice artworks. the professor recommended many books during this course. books from John Maeda, Joseph Weizenbaum, ... and all those authors that fits into this topic. sometimes he gave us little extracts from certain parts of one book. he did this with this german book 'Sieben Wunder der Informatik' by Juraj Hromkovic. im afraid that this book is just available in german but the translation of the title would be something like 'Seven Miracles of Computer Science'. in its nine chapters the books deals with topics like algorithm, endlessness in an algebraical way, computability, computational complexity theory, coincidence as source of efficiency in algorithm, calculate with DNA molecules and quantum calculator. i know this topics sounds very abhorrent. and they are definetly not easy to understant but Juraj Hromkovic deals with very nice examples. for example he tries to describe the functionality of an algorithm with a recipe of baking a cake. i always had problems to understand all this well-phrased and didactic definitions of those kind of terms. but when i read this extract, the professor gave to us, about algorithm and how to bake a cake i was so excited, surprised and amazed by the manner he explained it. and it was the first time i really understand what a algorithm is and how it works in general.
without paying a lot attention to the price of 21quids, which is quiet a lot for me as a student, i bought this book the same day and i never regreted it.

totally flashed by the last web application lecture, i ordered two books of john maeda at amazon for very cheap prices. a very passionate professor in germany recommended this guy and especially the book 'design by numbers' before to me. so having like the second hint on thursday i just thought, dont care about your money or what ever.
today we did some very addictive excercises in our interaction design session: the tile machine.