Space Trek

A Tumblr blog of images from the original Star Trek series showing "the quiet despair of the Starship Enterprise." An interesting collection of mostly uninhabited scenes (some with people unengaged with the viewer) that include many portals that connect to an unseen, inaccessible, or perhaps dangerous space beyond the confines of a space inhabited by us the viewers. Some of the despair comes from this lack of mobility, some from loneliness, and perhaps some from the sharp lighting on hard surfaces.

Something about the lack of detail in the ship makes the outer space it moves through seem more vast and the crew more vulnerable and alone. Is the craft defined by the territory it moves through, or does the territory define how we understand the ship?

Inhabiting 'Ma'

Nice project that allows inhabitation of a space inbetween territories under highway overpasses.
-Riley

Signs of Hope

Just sometimes when you think the world has gone mad, a few small signs restore faith in our society.

I live in one of the neighbourhoods of London which was hit hard by riots earlier this week. The area saw substantial damage to local shops which were looted and in some cases, torched. A reporter for Sky News, who also lives in the neighborhood, managed to capture on his iPhone, video footage of some of the frenzied attacks on the local betting shop - it went viral.

But in the immediate aftermath, as MDF boards were put up where glass fronts of shops had been, graffiti began to emerge. But not in the sense of spray can vandalism. Rather this was hand-rendered messages which made visible the feelings of a community defiant against such attacks and wanting to show support for local retailers and residents whose shops and homes had been destroyed. Soon, the shop owners themselves showed their gratitude by hanging signs alongside saying 'thanks' to the community.

So for the next few days at least I'll be looking at a situation where the shop fronts are message boards. People are still visiting the hoardings with their felt tip pens and spray can paints to leave their mark. This is vernacular communication at its most spontaneous and most inspiring.

Local cooking school and food shop.
Shop front as message board.
Message from one community to another.
Message of 'thanks'. Posted by Teal

Wind powered information

A great example by Ned Kahn on how to display information on a building that communicates realtime information about the conditions of a place. Powered by the subject of the information it is communicating. Very nice.
Riley

'Things' and what they say

I've got this fascination for 'things'. Not just any old 'thing', but objects which say something about a culture and, in turn, about national identity. Although I have lived in the UK for some time, I still stumble upon 'things' that appear foreign, if not jarring to me. For example, anything to do with souvenirs or memorabilia about the Royal Family. The events of this year have meant an increase in new objects linked to the wedding of Kate and William. It wasn't only the tourists who rushed out to purchase mugs with pre-wedding photographs of the couple smiling, and afterwards images of that now famous kiss.

Garden gnomes are also a particular British oddity. Like with the Royal Family, gnomes share in a history of fairy tales. They are small human-like creatures which live underground and share a striking similarity to the Disney characters as protrayed in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Gnomes took up residence in the gardens of British homes as lawn ornaments after World War II, first in terracotta clay then, in the 1960s, in plastic. Nowadays you can also buy unfinished gnomes and paint them yourself leading to an inevitable use of gaudy colours and even in a greater sense of surrealism.

None of these things seem odd at all to the British natives, but what of the American fairy tales expressed in objects?

When a place goes away

Sometimes a beloved place is lost (destroyed), and it was such a good place that it even though it wasn't good enough to remain being used, people will memorialize it. This place was a part of the community for several years, and was removed in favor of a parking lot, then remembered with a plaque.

User intervention

A credit card swipe terminal with user modification. The clerk explained to me that people kept choosing the wrong screen button. Something about credit versus enter. The user fix covers up the confusing button.

A related story, at an iSchool discussion last year, a PhD student was complaining about how his users kept making the same mistakes with his interface. I sheepishly suggested that maybe the problem was with the design. He hadn't considered that...