Articles review (4)

The Secret oF Happiness

The Secret of Happiness from Maria Popova on Vimeo.

Multimedia Spotlight: Vocal Improvisation Animated

By Maria Popova

How a laptop and a highway play together, or what geometry has to do with music.

the link http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/category/multimedia/

http://www.theturn.tv/ ---> and the original website of the artist Fredo Viola.

Improvisation 2 from Fredo Viola on Vimeo.

A more experimental way to approach the new media possibilities and opportunities which maybe closer to art rather than design or communication, but otherwise creativity is encouraged and I think this website and video are a great inspiration for people who are interested in. Personally whenever I have this opportunity I feel excited like a kid who is discovering the first toys.

Futility Paints Utility: Wikipedia Reproduced

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2009/06/11/printed-wikipedia/

A smart way to express the importance of digital information in comparison to the analog one : going the other way : instead of replacing the analog with digital , pick an example (Wikipedia) and produce it in analog form. As mentioned in the article "the project is a testament to the digital convenience we’ve come to take for granted."

The project was an idea of a student named Rob Matthews and its name is Wikipedia reproduction project — a 5,000-page tome containing all of Wikipedia’s featu(red) articles.
The question was "what happens if the same immense pool of information (wikipedia) were available, only in a much less user-friendly format?"

American family's web photo ends up as Czech advertisement

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/11/smith-family-photo-czech-advertisement

Even though I am an huge internet fan I still have concerns about online safety especially with whatever relates to pictures' copyrights. This story is about a family picture that randomly ended up from a blog to an ad in the Czech Republic.The mother of the picture describes this incident as "Interesting. Bizarre. Flattering, I suppose. But quite creepy."I would say can be indeed flattering but mostly creepy. Because this picture was an acceptable one. But how do you control where and when you will find one of your pictures?

An interesting excerpt of the article is the following : "The smiley Smiths have now gone global. The site has registered 180,000 hits but Danielle writes that she is blocking the small percentage "who are commenting only to say that a member of my family (or all of us) are ugly". Sounds a little arrogant comment to me and maybe a little blinded by the popularity that this sudden fame provoked.


HISTORY MAP




http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/EMPIRE17.swf

When I first saw this map (apart from the fact that Greece is covered by most of the empires) I thought that would be a great example of how to teach history at schools.
History is considered as one of the most boring classes (at least in my country) and I think this an example of how there are way to make it more interesting and appealing to students through visualization of the information and interactivity.


EXPERIMENTAL AND KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY

I think this new "fashion" of using the letters and words as visuals is really effective. I realized that I am caught by the words in a way I do not need descriptive visuals or at least I don't feel like they are missing. I also feel like I pay more attention in the context of the dialogue and I am more focused in realizing what is being said and what that means without getting distracted by another visual narrative I have to follow as well. It feels like there is the quality of the radio where you do not the person behind the voice, and at the same time the typefaces and sizes and colors do not lack any of the mood of the piece.
(either it is dialogue from movie or a musical piece visualization).












Banksy's secret exhibition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8094839.stm




World Statistics updated in real time

http://www.worldometers.info/fr/

Statistics updated in real time. An interesting website showing in real time important statistics as births, deaths statistics about new media. I found it convincing as it is helps you realize the numbers that when they are still may not look that real. The ones that were really exciting were the ones of blog posting and e-mail correspondence.