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Bob the Lamp and the Futuresonic Adventures
1May 15, 2009
Well for the past few days me and Biff have been pulling shapes at the Futuresonic 2009 festival in Manchester. Now in its 14th year, Futuresonic is the UK’s leading festival for digital culture. Art, music, collaboration and ideas are all in the mixing bowl and a whole host of visionary thinkers wielding the spoons of debate… I’m not sure if that makes sense but it sounds like something off a television show and that feels good right now. Anyway…
Amidst all the grand ideas buzzing around the festival it was actually something very small that immediately grabbed our attention… A little chap known as Bob the Lamp.
Bob is a wooden lamp with a personality. You can chat to Bob using a keyboard and he responds just like any other lamp… He’s interested in what you’re wearing, he’s not keen on guns, he likes movies about robots and tells some pretty bad jokes. A typical lamp of his age I feel. As well as resonding with text Bob displays his emotions through his movements. If he is feeling down he slowly slumps over towards his feet and if he’s feeling good he lifts his head high and proud, illuminating all those around him… He’s ace.
The great thing is that when you’re not in his presence, you can still chat to him online and see his emotional responses through a live webcam:
Seriously… He’s very sweet and extremely funny… Go and check him out!
Here are a few other wonderful things present at Futuresonic that are definitely worth a world wide wander:
Isophone – Immersive telephonic space
Aaron Koblin – Uber data visualization
Johann Johannsson – Beautiful strings
Murcof – Electronic soundscapes
Philip Glass – Beautiful classic piano
Babbitt’s Light & Color
0May 12, 2009
“LIGHT reveals the glories of the external world and yet is the most glorious of them all. It gives beauty, reveals beauty and is itself most beautiful.” Edwin D. Babbit
I’ve been captured by Edwin Babbit’s book entitled “The Principles of Light and Color”. I can’t stop reading it. It was written in 1878 and apparently not very well received by the medical community due to the suggestion that light and colour could have healing effects on the human body. I’m trying to remain aware that the work was written over a hundred years ago and that much scientific discovery has happened since then and it’s this very thought that keeps my mind dancing back and forth between new understanding and new ‘old’ understanding. The way it is written is very different to any scientific writings I have experienced before, he uses elegant adjectives to embellish theories and writes with passion about subjects usually documented with a more objective approach. I haven’t read like this since i was ten years old, reading Roald Dahl under the bed covers by the light of my Sega Game Gear.
In first chapter “Harmonic Laws of the Universe” he writes about unity and diversity and how the these combine to reveal harmony. He uses three images to illustrate his ideas:
Fig 34 and Fig 35 are described as equally distressing and a violation of the regular development of nature. The first (fig 34) immediately resembles the work of Jackson Pollock and the second (Fig 35) reminds me of Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square and even John Cages’s 4’33″. It’s fascinating to think in the century following this book, artists began using the principles Babbitt is discussing in their work to explore alternative directions in art beyond the aesthetic.
Anyway… It’s got me hooked and it’s got me thinking… about light and colour and Horstmann and the butterfly.
Take a peek for yourself:
Dancing in the Snow
1February 5, 2009
Someone put 2 inches of snow over everything in the night… and today is for dancing. Snow day. I walked to my car and danced with a pretty lady on the bridge. Just a few moments ago Beal caught our once cold cups of coffee dancing together in the microwave. We listen to Rhian Sheehan and watch the people dance on their way back from the canceled bus commute… The typewriter awaits a good story.
Hello world!
0December 28, 2008
Well then…
The first post is always tricky. I’ve been thinking what I should write for a while now. So much so that I’m now writing about not knowing what to write about. Well rather than rant on about what the luniere blog is about or what it aims to do, neither of which I know myself, I guess the best way to say a thousand words is with a beautiful picture… of the moon…
The picture is by Johannes Schedler and is pinched from Nasa’s APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) website… Click with your finger and check out some beautiful pictures taken by some of the best peeking machines around.
