I haven’t written in a long time. September 6, 2012 was the date I posted my last entry. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading constantly and getting excited about the nerdiest/techiest (AKA coolest) stuff out there, just haven’t been putting pen to paper…or fingers to keyboard (at least not in the context of a Word document).  In a grand attempt to revive this blog and remind Google that this site is in fact the most relevant search result for the query “laurel marcus” (much harder than it sounds, my name has some serious competition!), I bring you my first blog post of 2013.

I get such a kick out of seeing art that incorporates digital in really creative, out-of-the-box ways. Things like digitizing paintings so that tilting the picture frame causes the objects in the picture to respond as though gravity has an effect on them. Or a camera ball that captures panoramic photos when the ball is thrown. I’ve found that the “digital art” ideas that I respond to most positively somehow interpret a universal feeling/idea/struggle that resonates with anyone at the exact moment of impact. It doesn’t take a genius, or even a real appreciation of art, to understand exactly what the artist is depicting. It is art at its most accessible.

When I first saw a picture of Italian architect Ferruccio Laviani’s “Good Vibrations” wooden cabinet, I instinctively squinted and drew a half-foot closer to my computer screen. Is this for real? Or is my computer broken? How is that…what?

Good Vibrations Cabinet by Ferruccio Lavianni

I welcome your own reactions below. Especially if you found this totally normal, I want to hear from you…

This painstakingly detailed wooden cabinet appears to be in the midst of time traveling from 15^th century Europe through Willy Wonka’s TV room and froze mid-journey as the result of a computer glitch.

Seeing this picture on your computer screen is like a jolt to the brain. Without skipping a beat, your mind goes to “RED FLAG! BROKEN COMPUTER!” And then you draw closer to the screen and realize good ol’ Ferruccio just played a little prank on you.  Imagine seeing this cabinet in real life, where your brain doesn’t even have the excuse of looking at a computer screen to have that automatic “red flag” reaction.

With our digitally-adapted brains, we have been so conditioned to react a certain way to stimuli like computer glitches that we have these reactions even when they don’t contextually make sense. If you saw this cabinet in person, your mind for even half a second would likely still go to, “UGH, something is wrong with my computer”… in the absence of a computer. Even seeing this image on a computer, and knowing that the rest of the computer screen is perfectly fine, our minds still jump to that semi-panic mentality.

I love how this piece almost mocks our dependency on digital technology. The image of a computer glitch, that everyone who has ever watched TV or played a video game can instantly relate to, is so recognizable that even in the context of a wooden cabinet, even if just for half a second, we still squirm.

Ferruccio, you got me.

Other sources:http://www.psfk.com/2013/03/digital-glitch-cabinet.html

There’s one experience shared among all computer users, regardless of race, gender, location, browser preference or position in the Mac vs. PC rivalry. This experience causes your heart rate to skyrocket and your stomach to drop. Nausea kicks in when you think how quickly things progressed from a-okay to “WHY IS LIFE DEALING ME THIS GIANT VAT OF LEMONS?!” You feel a panic attack on the rise, and suddenly all you can think about is the mass of digital photos, videos, term papers, and resume files that you never backed up.

You just spilled water/coffee/soda/[insert name of gross energy drink here] on your computer.

There’s no recovering.

Paper towels are doing nothing.

COMMENCE PANIC MODE.

I’ve had more than a few near-accidents with my water bottle or mug of coffee almost tipping over and flooding onto my computer. As any computer user can attest, it’s one of the top five worst feelings that a human being can experience. You cram paper towel after paper towel into the crevices of your keyboard, hoping that the ratio of towel to visible computer surface will increase the odds of salvaging your computer. Your usual logic has been replaced with vehement religious prayer, directed at any greater being that you think will listen.

It’s times like these that make the waterproof keyboard from Logitech seem like a gift from the computer gods themselves. This washable keyboard is submergible in up to 11 inches of water (take THAT, water bottle demons). Bonus points for the laser printed and UV coated keys that prevent the key text from fading. With the washable keyboard, Logitech has proven itself worthy of a brand name that I can only assume is a combination of the words “logical” and “technology.”

Waterproof Keyboard by Logitech

While the waterproof nature of this keyboard provides something of a lifesaver in times of need, it touts the added bonus of providing a way to clean your keyboard. Take a look at your typing device. Look past the smooth keys and the nice black and white color contrast. See that? A remnant of your lunch today? A crumble of a mid-afternoon snack? If you’re “not a messy eater” or “don’t eat foods that crumble,” first of all – get a grip – but more importantly, you probably see the mini-dust bunnies between and under the keys. Logitech to the rescue, yet again. With a simple dip in the sink and a light scrubbing, your waterproof keyboard will be squeaky clean in no time.

You can purchase the Logitech washable keyboard on Amazon for $39.99. Worth it? Your coffee mug certainly thinks so.

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Dedication:

This post is dedicated to my dad who, for so many years, has graciously shared his computer and desk space with five computer-obsessed women (wife and four daughters) and probably had more heart palpitations than necessary as a result of our drinking and clicking. The number of mugs, water bottles, and glasses that covered the surface of his desk on a daily basis is enough to warrant him a magical keyboard like this, all to himself. Daddy, your next birthday present awaits.

Living in New York, I’ve learned that maximizing the space in my apartment is key to living comfortably. I’ve realized that the more purposes a single piece of furniture can serve, the better. Like a lamp with built in shelves or a multi-level table for extra storage space.

The great thing about dual-purpose furniture is that it inspires some serious creativity. Designers have to think critically about the practicality of the product and how the purposes of the product relate. The product combination should make sense to the customer and should make their lives easier in some way. For instance, a combination-wine-and-spice-rack might not make very much sense because wine and spices don’t have much to do with each other (at least to my knowledge, which I admit is limited when it comes to both wine and spices). Just because wine and spices both need homes doesn’t mean they should “live” together. However, a combination wine and glass rack would be ideal – one location for two related products.

When I came across the Sunflower chair with a built-in bookcase designed by He Mu and Zhang Quian from the Shanghai University of Engineering Science, I saw the value immediately. A comfy chair surrounded by an assortment of books at arms length that has the utility any bookworm would love and the visual appeal to charm any designer. The book storage-chair combination eliminates the need for a separate bookcase, freeing up those precious square feet in a living space.

Sunflower Chair by He Mu and Zhang Qian

Although the Sunflower chair isn’t for sale, its ingenuity has not gone unnoticed. The design won the Redtory Design Award at the Design for Sitting Grand Prix competition in Guangzhou, China. The day this chair goes to market is a win for all small apartment dwellers. Out with the bookcases and in with the Sunflowers!

I’ve written a lot about the modern day need to be connected 24/7. To have the Internet in all its various forms – email, social networks, search, breaking news, etc. – at the mercy of our fingertips. It’s no secret – we are creatures of instant gratification. Hear a ping, open your email. Forget the name of that actor in a movie, open the IMDB app on your cell phone. Need directions, speak to Siri. Google it. Shazam it. Tweet it. And so on.

Conveniently enough, the mobility of cell phones, iPads and laptops allow for our uninterrupted state of connectedness. Miraculous as this is, there are flaws in each of these technologies that prevent us from doing literally anything, literally anywhere.

Although laptops have significantly decreased in size and weight in the recent past, they are still a bulky, space-consuming hassle. Not the most convenient for the on-the-go lifestyle many of us lead. Smart phones have become pretty much as conveniently mobile as we can imagine (although I’m sure there’s something in the technology pipeline of the future that will somehow make mobile even more mobile, I’ll leave that to the geniuses), but they have faults of their own. No matter how sophisticated touch-typing technology gets, I am convinced that there is a limit to the number of characters one can type in a text message or email before calling it quits out of exasperation. It’s annoying, and there’s no two ways about it.

So Laurel, you say, welcome to the age of the iPad – the best of both worlds. Its convenient size offers the mobility of a cell phone, and its manageable interface is conducive to easy typing. Voila.

I agree, the iPad has filled a much-desired niche (although I still always laugh when I see someone listening to music from a device ten times bigger than my iPod). But I’m wholly unconvinced that an iPad enables the same effortless ability to type that a laptop affords. I’ve seen it in action and I can see how itcould be useful for short note-taking sessions. But in much the same way that punching letters on a smart phone with no more than two fingers at a time can get mind-numblingly frustrating, I believe the same goes for the iPad. Leaving out 8 perfectly capable fingers seems…silly. I’m sure there are those of you who disagree, for whom typing with two fingers on a touch interface is not all that far off from how you type on a keyboard. But if given the choice to use a physical keyboard or the touch type of an iPad, I think 95% of you would choose the keyboard. So in the age of technology solutions, what’s the solution? MAGIC. No, but really.

The Magic Cube, a keyboard projection device from Celluon, can be used on literally any flat surface – your mother’s antique coffee table, that bench where the cute guy/girl is sitting, the steps leading up to the courthouse where you will inevitably sit for may hours while serving on jury duty (shoutout to the wonderful city of NYC for that gem), or the tree stump that the boy in The Giving Tree abandoned (see, still useful for something after all). The Magic Cube projects a standard size QWERTY keyboard onto your surface of choice that connects wirelessly to your laptop, iPad, or smart phone. A bonus feature is the sound produced that corresponds to each keystroke, offering positive reinforcement that striking that precise location on your table surface or tree stump actually had some effect.

Simply put, this device makes the on-the-go, must-answer-all-emails-immediately life easier. You may look a little crazy tapping away on a seemingly blank surface, but you’ll be no worse than people who walk around with Bluetooth devices in their ears. The crazy label will only last a few seconds. With 3.4 ounces of sleekness, the Magic Cube gives you the tools you need at your fingertips.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2yDP1I/www.psfk.com/2012/04/projectable-keyboard.html

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In the final scene of the movie A League of Their Own, the retired Rockford Peaches teammates reunite at the opening of a new exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum honoring the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. There’s a great moment when Ernie Capadino, one of the league’s recruiters who is seldom seen in the movie without a cigar dangling from his lower lip, poses next to a picture of himself taken decades before, that trademark cigar still in his mouth. Immediately, you see the elderly Ernie “reclaim his youth” as the gruff young man portrayed in the photo.

As the former baseball players wander through the exhibit, they too recreate moments of their past by reassuming poses and expressions that the photographs depict. To relive the moments caught on film is an ode to the past, to shared memories and long-forgotten moments. Though clearly nostalgic for the days of baseball glory, team bonding, and Madonna’s figure circa 1992, the women are also celebrating all that they’ve accomplished to get to the present day.

The ability to compare things as they were to how they are now is nothing new. We’ve been doing it pretty much forever – first through storytelling, music, and writing, then photography made its debut. Looking at pictures is one of the most concrete ways we can revisit our past, and the pasts of others. On visits with my grandparents, a photo album (or five) is guaranteed to make an appearance and the subsequent hours are spent pouring through picture after picture and retelling the stories of each. A moment frozen in time can unleash a rush of memories from the past, but also prompts reflection about where you are in the present.

A photoblog called Dear Photograph takes the sentimental value of a photograph and ramps it up about a million percent. Dear Photograph is a collection of digital pictures that incorporate photographs from the past into new photographs taken in the exact same location, effectively integrating the past into the present. The elements interweave two stories into one, creating something deeply complex that hits right at the heart of our human instinct to feel nostalgic.

It’s easy to melt merely at the sight of these photo; then you read the accompanying words and you’d better hope there’s a box of tissues nearby. Here are several samples of photos and their descriptions (click the images to enlarge):

It’s a simple concept that translates into something far more rich and expressive than almost any other form of media. The overwhelming popularity of this photoblog speaks to its success. The founder, 22-year-old Taylor Jones, is writing a book based the blog. DearPhotograph.com attracted over 8 million hits in 3 months and receives nearly 20,000 visits per day. And the photo submissions keep rolling in.

Photographs serve as portals to moments of the past. The memory contained within that 4×6 is each of ours to define. And in the case of Dear Photograph, that memory gains another dimension entirely. A 4x6x4x6, if you will.

A few of my favorites (click photos to enlarge):

Related Articles:

Dear Photograph Featured in Business Insider

Dear Photograph Featured in The Guardian

I recently went to brunch with a few friends at a great restaurant in New York City. The line was absurdly long but we’d heard the place was great, so we decided wait it out. It was pretty clear that the like us, the people waiting in the entranceway were bored, restless and envious of those already seated. Our collective behavior said it all: lots of sighing and watch-checking. Foot-tapping and eye-rolling. But the best was one girl who, while standing inside the tiny temporary winter vestibule, had written “RACHELLLL <3” with her finger in the fogged-up windows. This immediately took me back to car rides with my family when my sisters and I would get bored and draw tic-tac-toe boards on the windowpanes (much to my mother’s chagrin). When there is a foggy glass surface, chances are it won’t stay foggy for long. Someone always accedes to that temptation to scribble out a name or write a message to the world or make a smiley face. It’s one of those weird human psychoses: let no foggy window remain untouched.

As fate would have it, I had recently come across an outrageously cool press release on the Windows of Opportunity (WOO) Project in which General Motors challenged Bezalel Academy of Art and Design to enhance a backseat passenger’s car ride experience, using car windows as the working medium. With no further restrictions, Bezalel students and researchers were left to create.

A bit of background on the technology guru-superstar-sensei that is Israel: according to a New York Times article, Israel has more high-tech start ups per capita than any other nation in the world. This country has not only contributed to many of the most revolutionary technologies of our time, but has fiercely led the charge. So really, it is no surprise that GM challenged an Israeli design school to wow them. If you want to push the technology envelope, Israel will deliver with some serious digital cred.

Using motion and optical sensor technology that transforms standard windowpanes into “smart” glass, Bezalel project participants created a variety of applications. One app called Spindow gives passengers a glimpse into the view from other windows around the world. You could be driving on the bustling streets of Chicago and instantly switch the view “outside” your window to the serenity of rural Vermont. The Foofu app creates the window steam effect that allows passengers to draw, doodle and repeat. Another app called Pond has been dubbed a “virtual bumper sticker.” Users can write messages on the windowpane and flip the message around so that passengers in cars passing by can read the message. This app also enables music sharing between cars on the road. Other apps featured child-friendly games and interactive activities that merge a passenger’s window view with an augmented reality experience.

The notion of looking out your window and seeing something that is not actually there is definitely bizarre (afterall, are windows still windows if what your eyes perceive is not what lies on the other side of the glass?). Beyond that, is this type of technology something that people will crave, like they do their smartphones and the accompanying world of apps? Will there ever be a time when people look back on car models and think, “I truly do not understand how humans survived without smart windows,” like we do when we think about a time without cell phones? I can’t confidently say yes, but I’m intrigued enough to say…it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

I think GM and Bezalel are on the right track. There is opportunity here for some wild innovation with a medium that has been largely left untouched. As Omer Tzimhoni, a member of GM’s Human-Machine Interface Group, says, “The idea of connecting the content, the creativity, the new possibilities with the existing technologies and the technologies that are just about to be ready is one that we think is worth exploring.”

Think of the endless tic-tac-toe games you could play on long car rides with these apps. Or how quickly you could address your need for a “change of scenery.” Although none of these apps are available with GM cars just yet, I have a feeling that it won’t be long before window doodles go digital.

GM Smart Windows let you Interact with the World from your Car

Remember on trips to the museum when your mom used to say, “This place is for looking, not touching”? Then for the rest of the trip all you could think about was how much you wanted to touch everything? For most of my childhood, one of my absolute least favorite things to do was go to those museums where every other piece on the wall was a sign that said, “Do not touch.” Art museums were the very worst; the idea that someone would taunt me with all this stuff that I could only explore with my eyes was outrageous. That, combined with the fact that staring at paintings was far too monotonous of an activity for my energetic self to handle, made museums a torturous activity. It’s a wonder that my mom continued taking me on those day trips to Boston’s finest museum collections, despite my clear ingratitude.

It took me most of my growing years to learn to appreciate museums. I had to come to terms with the [fairly blatant] fact that if I were permitted to touch a painting, all the other millions of visitors would be as well and that’s just not a good situation for anyone, least of all the painting. When it comes to traditional art, we often have to rely on our visual skills to do most of the assessing.

That is, until traditional art took a dose of digital medicine.

This digital creation by artist Scott Garner from the design and production company, Süperfad flips tradition on its head. No longer are paintings merely for observation. For that matter, no longer are still-lifes actually still. Using the game development tool Unity3D, Garner recreated a still-life scene consisting of fruit and dishware, in which the objects actually react to gravity. As the picture frame (actually a framed flat screen television) is tilted at an angle, the objects in the frame slowly tip over, much as objects would do in real life if the surface they rested on were at a slant.

The playful nature of this piece is riveting – seeing a still-life defy its very stillness is a beautiful contradiction. Watching a still-life, often devoid of any emotion, transform into a mildly hilarious scene of fruit rolling around on a table and dishware bouncing every which way, is a fun, lighthearted reinterpretation of something that’s often in the what-you-see-is-what-you-get category.

Now, imagine walking into a museum full of interactive pieces like this. Where patrons could twirl paintings and watch as Picasso’s cubes came crashing down, or Monet’s lily pads floated serenely down moving water. Those taunting “Do not touch” signs that we’ve grown so accustomed to seeing at museums would, at last, be nowhere in sight.

http://www.psfk.com/2012/01/interactive-painting-motion-sensing.html

There’s an App for That was Apple’s clever iPhone 3G commercial that has been parodied to pieces by the masses, Sesame Street included. For those of you who live under a rock…the commercial demonstrated that there is an app for virtually anything you might want or need in life. Check the snow conditions on a mountain, locate your parked car, find where you can purchase your Biology 101 textbook for the cheapest price – there’s an app for that. No matter what we want to do, there’s an app to help us get it done (even if we don’t need one…the slew of useless apps out there is terrifying).

As digital technology infiltrates our lives, our expectations change. We rely on the omniscience of our digital tools to no end. We get so swept up in the things that digital technology can do that we tend to neglect, or even consider, solutions and opportunities that don’t live “in the cloud,” so to speak. We consult backlit screens and endless newsfeeds to get information, answers and suggestions. There’s nothing wrong with using these resources; digital technology has enabled an incredible revolution of shareable, accessible content that is second to none. What I am suggesting is that with digital as our go-to guru, we can easily overlook other solutions and channels without even batting an eyelid.

As a result, what we often forget is that the simple solution is sometimes the best solution. A good idea doesn’t have to have an iPhone app, a customizable digital platform, a Facebook campaign, and a Twitter handle to be successful, or even smart. In fact, sometimes those are the biggest failures of them all.

There’s a lot of good to be done with digital technology, but let’s not forget that there was a time not long ago when apple meant a crunchy red and/or green fruit and cloud meant it was going to rain sometime soon.

The campaign created by Koleston, a brand that sells hair products, caught my eye because of its simplicity. The billboard depicts a woman’s silhouette, her hair a gaping hole in the board, allowing the seaside background to show through.

Koleston utilizes the natural landscape to demonstrate its commitment to using natural ingredients in its products. The campaign communicates the brand’s position with clarity and effectiveness, both points crucial to the success of a highway billboard, which gets all of 2 seconds of a passerby’s attention. The incorporation of natural elements that change overtime, and thus change the billboard itself, speak to so many aspects of the brand’s position. Natural ingredients are valued and respected. Beauty comes in many different shades and textures. Let natural beauty speak for itself.

And to think, all of these messages emanating from a billboard with a hole in it.

So before you ask yourself if there’s an app for that, think about if there should be an app for that.  And even when the answer is yes, don’t let your idea spiral into a digital monstrosity of complication. As the great American writer Henry David Thoreau reminds us, “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!”

http://www.psfk.com/2012/01/cut-out-billboard-changes-apperance.html

Ads of the World – Koleston Naturals: Change

When I was 6 years old, I had an irrational obsession with stickers. Like many others in my first grade class, I had a book containing my precious sticker collection, the pages organized by type: fuzzies, oilies, puffies, holograms…I’ll spare you the extended list. During snack time, my classmates and I would huddle together and make sticker trades.

“I’ll give you two fuzzies and a puffy for one oily.”
“No way, this oily is worth at least three fuzzies and two holograms.”
“Okay how about this sparkly and three puffies for that scratch-and-sniff?”

I know, you don’t have to tell me – I was a very cool first grader.

I loved collecting stickers, but I also loved sharing them. My parents often remind me of the letters I sent home from summer camp, enclosed in envelopes completely covered in stickers, save for tiny rectangles containing the mailing address and stamp (I proudly passed this tradition on to my youngest sister, who to this day thoughtfully includes stickers in her letters to me). In my 6-year-old brain, there was something exciting and meaningful about choosing that perfect sticker to stick to a letter. Of course my choices were often limited to hearts, stars, smiley faces and cute animals, but to each his own. Save for the actual writing, each letter was a blank canvas for me to decorate to my heart’s content.

The Obliteration Room, an interactive installation created by artist Yayoi Kusama at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art in Australia, is a sticker-enthusiast’s dream come true. Kusama created a room environment and painted every surface, object and piece of furniture white (very much like the stark white TV room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Over several weeks, Kusama invited groups of children to plaster the walls, furniture, ceiling, floor – every imaginable surface – with an assortment of bright, multicolored circular stickers. As the children “obliterated” the room with these stickers, the transformation of a blank white canvas into an explosive work of art began.

The interactive nature of this project, which relied solely on the creative freedom of thousands of children, gives this installation a wild and fun feel. It elicits that “young at heart” sentiment that surfaces when we see or experience something that reminds us of our childhoods. You can imagine the sheer enthusiasm and energy of children racing around, breaking all the rules they were ever taught about the acceptable places to put stickers, which certainly did not include sofas and lamp shades. And as a sticker enthusiast myself, I couldn’t be more jealous.

http://www.psfk.com/2012/01/dot-sticker-art-room.html/obliteration-5-yayoi-kusama

My friend sent me this photo several years ago and I saved it on my computer, knowing that it would come in handy someday:

"Wall-E" - Courtesy of Abbe Sokol

The metal components of this seating area remind me of Wall-E, the loveable trash compactor robot Disney character. There’s something so endearing and humorous about this photo, about seeing human features in a few pieces of metal screwed together. And once you see the humanness, you can’t “unsee” it.

Examples like this demonstrate how desperately people seek humanity in their surroundings. We’re inclined to see elements of ourselves – physical features, body structures, facial expressions, etc. – in the Other. Anthropomorphism, the tendency to identify something not human as having human characteristics or qualities, is a natural part of our development and our ability to relate to others.

I took a course in college called The Science of Art and Motion Capture which blended the study of psychology with the art of animation (Note: if you’re reading this at Dartmouth and you see this course is offered in the near future, TAKE IT). One topic we explored was The Uncanny Valley, a theory contemplated by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. The Uncanny Valley states that an object that looks 50% lifelike is likeable. An object that looks 90% lifelike is very likeable. An object that looks 95% lifelike is extremely likeable. But an object that looks 96% lifelike is disastrous. The Uncanny Valley is the point at which an object looks both familiar and foreign, like a robot that looks human but something about it seems peculiar and “off.”

Essentially, the more we’re able to anthropomorphize, the more pleasant an object is to look at (at least up until the Uncanny Valley kicks in). We see the familiar, we see the recognizable, and we see ourselves. Frankly, we’re a pretty conceited breed.

Artist Terry Border took anthropomorphism to the next level with his photo series shown below. He arranged meticulous photo shoots that breathed life and personality into everyday objects. With the help of clever props and sets, these inanimate objects become the subjects of charming and often ironic photos that we, the human spectators, can identify with and appreciate. What was once just an inanimate object transforms into something lifelike, with a touch of humanity.

There’s one thing for sure: you’ll never look at candy corn the same way again.

http://designmock.com/bent-object-when-everyday-objects-come-alive-photography/