Digital Interfaces in the Real World

These were illustrations of idea I had had for using digital interfaces in new contexts. Specifically in areas where it avoided a question. I had be struck by a couple of points that Tom Igoe had made in his book Making Things Talk. He was referring to the way interfaces should be designed to keep the user in the loop and understanding the process that was going on. If it was common for a pregnant lady to wear a loading screen, or a sleeping person to show a buffering bar. I also tried to represent the idea of a real world colour picker in the video below.

Exploring Choice

Through an exploration of negative intervention for brief developement. I arrived at an area that was interesting to me which was that a negative impact can affect the number of choices available, which can have a positive impact. This brief can lead to explorations of how we can navigate (or possibly remove) the choices of modern life. The video was designed to represent the noise of modern life.

Little Book

A booklet I've made to collect the results of my survey of the pubs in New Cross. I was surveying them to understand the impact of the heavy snow day in February earlier this year. It is part of a project to understand if positives can come from a negative impact.

Screen Printed t-shirt.

I decided to learn some screen printing technique as the chance presented itself. This was done using two photographically exposed screens and two colours.

Me being a grown up!

As part of tinker.it at designers_block, here's me attempting to fit into the adult world.

Post-its!

Part of the beginning of the process of finding a brief to work on this year. Each person came up with ninety ideas and we mixed and order them to generate a range of briefs. There is a sample one below.
















































Quote:
Oscar Wilde: "To me beauty is the wonder of all wonders, it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances."

Background:
A theme that was common in the collected ideas, was the idea of ugly design. It brings up a number of debates around the idea of aesthetics and the subjectivity of beauty. Oscar Wilde spent most of his life extolling the virtues of beauty and the aesthetic movement. His first novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey is almost entirely dedicated to this discussion. In this brief we want you first to connect with this debate and understand what beauty means to different people and in different contexts. Then react to your research to make something that can fit within your definition of ugly.

Project Definition:
Design something ugly! This maybe a service, an intervention, an object or a graphic, the most important thing is that you engage with the issue of what it means to be ugly and find an angle that allows you to generate an outcome.

Deliverables:
During the eight days we would hope to see a few days spent researching and understanding ugliness, with the aim of arriving at your own definition (this need not be a complete definition, but a starting point), then this should enable you to spend a week making your final outcome as unutterably ugly, as possible.

French Band: The Yupps

I did a little photography for a French band from Metz called The Yupps, whilst I was there. They sang in English and were good. I think they are coming to England soon to play in Brighton and London.

Food Day

This morning I finally got round to doing a few things that I had been meaning to do all summer. Primarily, visit Smithfields meat market to look at high quality produce at wholesale prices. I got there early (5.45 to be precise) and it was every bit as extensive as I hoped. It clearly isn't aimed at small customers like me, but it's very easy to buy in small amounts. I got chicken livers, braising steak, black pudding, sausages and duck breast. The prices are all very decent (sausages £4 for 1.5Kg, chicken livers £2 Kg) and the quality seems superb. I can't remember eating such good sausages, and at around £1 per lb, they are priced like 10 years ago. However the best moment of the morning came when I was searching for bread at London Bridge, nowhere was open at 7am, so I decided to knock on the door of a wholesale bakers called Tivicos. I asked if he could sell me a loaf of bread, he asked me what size I wanted (i said biggest!), then ran off and got me one, stuffing it in an old flour sack. Then when I tried to pay him he refused! Which made it hands down my favourite flavour of food, free!


From there I headed back home (via Bermondsey Antiques Market) and was on Wickham Road by 8am, Exactly 3 hours after leaving. Once there I set about cooking some of those sausages, which were excellent.


Then faffed around cleaning the kitchen and got out my newish coffee machine and persuaded it to make easily its nicest latte so far. Perhaps the double cream helped! I just got back from buying Mushrooms so chicken liver pate should be coming soon.

The Chicken Liver pate is complete. The livers were great, not much preparation needed. I made two flavours (as you can see). One is Mushroom and Parsley, the other is Thyme. The thyme one is a bit disappointing, somehow the soft flavour doesn't really compliment the richness of the livers, perhaps it needed lemon. I can always add it when its eaten. The mushroom one tastes great though. Seems to be a really strong combination. Anyway, here are the picture of that.



Next I'll relax for a moment before starting on the beef and black-eye bean casserole. Perhaps I'll even open the bottle of Bordeaux that I brought back from France with a slice or two of Alsace jambon.



The stew is done, I'm tired. Simon is here to pass judgement and he says its ok. Tough judge!



Yeah, it was nice. Now the left over cheese.

Robot Animation

A little animation that I put together whilst working at Tinker.it.

tinker.it at designers_block

The last few weeks have been really busy. Just got back from a very fun time in France (essentially to eat, but with the appearance of working). Now I'm over at designers block with tinker.it, working on the hyper push project. We've been getting some really good responses and its been fun. Here are some pictures and take a look at any of the links above to find out more.

A few more Lutherie Images

A couple more from France.

Tools-Lutherie

Working in a French Violin makers for an interactive "how to" experience/cd. I'm making the section and tools at the moment.

Discarded Idea

This idea was rejected in the end, but had a lot of potential. The concept was based on inkblots swelling, as yoga focuses on energy coming outwards from the core.

3 yoga ideas

Part of a project for Island Yoga. There were three proposed routes. One based on print shapes and textures using a yoga mat, another that stemmed from the hibiscus flower that is common in Hawaiian paterns and textures and the third which was gestural forms based on yoga positions. There was a lot of experimentation in the process.

Kin work.

My wall of work at kin. I really liked this system of producing work and publishing it to the wall, then reviewing and refining, discarding as necessary. It means nothing gets lost of forgotten and there is a good chance to review and contemplate things. This will definitely become part of my practice.

New Front Page

New front page for my website, bgbarker.com

Teasers

Some imagery that I made in my work for Tinker.it!. Can't say too much more.

Ted Global Notes.

Sketched notes from the ted global live stream at Wieden and Kennedy the other day. Trying a more visual approach to note taking.

9.00-5.00 Design

**POSTPONED DUE TO GOOD WEATHER**

This project is born from a number of ideas. The first was a desire to work on my self made brief of exploring potential (see image below for full brief). It is also from a desire to better understand the design process; can it become something very strict and mechanically, with rigorously imposed deadlines and advancement points. I feel the typical response is to think of it as something very organic and "felt" but is this just a lazy attitude hidden behind the so very powerful notion of "creative process".

I was also thinking about design in the work environment, and how it seems that most design studios never manage to maintain consistent working hours, and if they would be more productive places if they did.

On a personal level, although I am often hard working, I have a tendency to give up as soon as things get hard, so I wanted to set a brief where that was simply not an option, and if I fail with an idea, I try something else.

So below there is also a schedule, I have built in an extra hour at lunch time to publish what I have discovered upto that point, so my day is technically 9-6, although the hour from 1 until 2 is to be considered as invisible. I will be as strict as possible with time keeping.

Any feedback on the schedule/ brief/ etc is welcome and if anyone wants to get involved either helping me, doing their own 9-5 using my brief or setting their own brief then please do come along. All the Wickham Road facilities are available for use, there is loads of space and the doors are open. (I might even provide lunch!) Ring, tweet, etc.



Schedule to come

Some ruminations on the internet and the birth of time travel.

As humans of the twenty first century we are forming an intricate and almost seamless virtual representation of our world as it is now. Every human is like a node, recording and documenting their time and place and uploading it to the network to form a virtual representation; a digital collage of the now. Whether it is visual, aural or text based, we have an endless compendium.
Imagine a man sat in a room in front of a large screen, five hundred years from now. Using sophisticated searches he asks to see Curtain Road, London July 15th 2009 10am. Every video, photo, update and blog is checked for relevance and presented to him, he spins the clock forward 2 hours, the search engine refines and re-presents. The wealth and breath of information available to him would bring him very close to a complete sense of place and time. But more pertinently, in his current life, he is so accustomed to this virtual world that the experience is not diminished by being disembodied.
In effect we are building the ‘real world’ of the future here at the birth of the network, and in that world we are defining the rules. By building the world(s) of the future, we are choosing to embed time travel as a given. Google street view already shows us the potential to explore previously physical spaces, how often will they re-photograph and archive planet earth, making it layered not only by space, but also by time?
To put it another way, imagine a person from before the twentieth century, being put into the same space, given the same detailed information and then try convincing him that he didn’t transcend time.
So it seems almost facile to say that our perceptions change and prevent us from seeing what humans have created. Time travel is upon us, just not as predicted; we won’t need worm holes and particle acceleration where we’re going.

Typographic Posters

My sister (Rachael) is about to begin a residency in Holland as part of an art collective and she wanted some suggestions for a poster. These were what I made. Links to the place and final poster to come.