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Generative Systems

I’ve had the great fortune over the past day and a half to attend part of the Code, Form, Space symposium on “generative form and digital fabrication” put together here at CMU by Golan Levin (this is the second mini-symposium Golan has put together while I’ve been here and both have been fantastic).  In particular, this symposium brings together several highly acclaimed generative artists (Casey Reas of Processing fame and Marius Watz of generatorx.no), and several well-known architects working with generative and digital fabrication techniques.

Yesterday, I attended a talk by Reas and Watz in which the two traded off giving three 10-minute monologues on each of the titular topics, while providing examples in the form of their personal works.  I have always been a great fan of generative art (and music!), but I was particularly interested by how generative artists are beginning to bring their code-art into the physical world through the use of 3D printers and the like.

This morning, I  also had the special treat of attending a 3 hour workshop with Reas and Watz in which they provided a blitzkrieg lesson in basic Processing and gave tips and advice on creating (and fabricating) generative works.  I just have to stop here and point out that Reas and Watz are both astoundingly nice guys - I hope I get a chance to talk with them more later this week.  The workshop was then followed by a luncheon at which Reas, Watz, Golan, and the three visiting architects (Ben Pell, Hilary Sample, and Michael Meredith) had a panel discussion on various related topics.  Sadly I wasn’t able to see Ben Pell’s lecture this evening, but I plan on attending Sample and Meredith’s tomorrow.

All of this got me thinking more about a topic that came up recently in the independent study my colleagues and I are currently doing (an exploration of models of design advised by Hugh Dubberly and Shelley Evenson - see our as-of-yet unrefined blog here). Shelley and Liz Sanders have posited that the next step beyond user centered design is the design of tools for co-creation.  Hugh has called this “the design of adaptive systems,” and I couldn’t help but think of it while listening to all this smart talk about generative systems over the past day.  With the rapidly dropping cost of 3D printers, laser cutters and other rapid fabrication technologies, we may well be at the end of the era of mass-production, and be instead barreling into the time of mass-customization.  Will generative systems play a role in this coming age as well?  Perhaps the designers of the future will find themselves challenged to design generative systems capable of producing a near-infinite variety of forms (or interfaces!)that end-users will engage with.  One can imagine sitting down and playing with a generative system to design one’s own form for their iPod, rather than the pre-designed one.

I brought these ideas up to my friend and colleague Kyle Vice, pointing out that the advent of loop-based music sequencing brought computer music to the masses.  With cheap, simple loop-based sequencers anyone can sit down and knock out a decent sounding piece of music within half an hour.  I wondered aloud whether the same could happen for drawing programs - far too many people don’t draw because they feel they can’t; what if they could draw something beautiful and totally unique using a generative system?  Kyle pointed out that a spirograph might be a better example than loop-based sequencers (which still smack of a “Mr. Potato Head approach” - Kyle’s words).  We can all remember being amazed and proud of the formal beauty we produced with spirographs (which are essentially mechanical generative drawing tools).

I believe that generative systems may have a significant role to play in the age of mass-customization and co-creation, and that we as designers must begin to look at these systems with an eye for how they can be integrated into the digital products of the future.

February 4th, 2009
Posted by Paul in CMU, CoolHunting, Design Thinking | 2 Comments »  

Google’s got competitors?

A new search engine called cuil.com (pronounced “cool” they say - though where on earth they got that from, I can’t imagine), has gotten a lot of publicity lately.  Apparently it was founded by several ex-Google masterminds, and claims to index more of the web than Google.  So I thought I’d give it a shot using the most important and standard metric of all: my name!

It’s a crock though – I searched for my name and it said there were 45,000 some results, but then it only gave me 6 pages of links.  It also missed a few things that Google gets, matched random pictures to links (I know they were random because the links were to my own blog, and I’ve never seen the pictures before).  Oh, and it didn’t respect Boolean search terms (I put my name in quotations, but it returned things that weren’t an exact match).  All rather fishy…

August 26th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CoolHunting | No Comments »  

News from Apple

There was an interesting article posted to Apple’s front page today - basically an interview with Paul Van Dyk focused on his use of MacBooks and Logic in live performance. Worth checking out if you’re interested in any of those things (personally I’ve been a fan of Van Dyk since I first picked up electronic music in the late 90’s).

In other cool Apple news, you can now rent movies from iTunes! $4 gets you a new release, $3 for old titles. You pay up, the movie downloads in its entirety, and then you get a month to watch it (but after you start, you have to finish watching it within 24 hours). I’ll be interested to try this out - I’ve gotten a little tired of NetFlix’s online catalog only containing indy films and B-movies. That’s convenience! Now if only it were cheaper…

And a couple random trends I’ve noticed to the point where I shall now make a prediction:

• 80’s style synth-pop is coming back and will start to hit the mainstream in the next couple of years. This is sad because, as a general rule, I find this style of music extremely boring.
• Leggings as pants are back. This is horrible, but true. Tights under a skirt have been popular for a couple years now, but now the skirts are disappearing, leaving just unattractive leggings (often, but not always, capris). Let’s hope this doesn’t last.

January 19th, 2008
Posted by Paul in CoolHunting, Music and Movies | No Comments »  

Yard Sculpture

Can you tell it’s my day off from the number of posts I’m putting up? Gotta play catch-up sometime. Anyway the photo below is over one of my neighbors’ front yard. I really like these (this?) sculpture, and think that there is something about this aesthetic that will be coming into vogue in the future (though these pieces probably date to the early 90’s). I would be interested to hear other people’s thought’s about them. I appreciate the beautiful geometry in the context of ragged grass and the old house behind. I also like how the two pieces appear symmetrical at a glance, but are not at all on closer inspection. I think that people are coming to appreciate metal as a natural material again - it gives a sense of strength, permanence, and strict intention that other materials, like plastic, do not. By ’strict intention’ I mean that it feels as if thought went into its design. Plastics are so cheap to produce that it is hard to make them feel this same way. The downside to all this is that metals are mined, and mining is a huge polluter, so I don’t think they can stay popular for long among the growing green trends. Still, I think metal will have a resurgence as a stylish material for things otherwise constructed in plastic.

September 28th, 2007
Posted by Paul in CoolHunting, Design Thinking, Photography | No Comments »  

A Weekend Off

After having projects due in every class (except seminar, for which we had the normal difficult readings), we got the weekend off (hooray!). So, I promptly headed for DC to visit my good friend and occasional musical collaborator Matt Treskon. I snapped some photos in DC - I’ve decided I want to become a coolhunter - predicting the next trend before it happens. I’ve done this with some success in the past, but now I’m going to write my thoughts so I can prove it later on down the road. Right now, I’m thinking that the steam-punk aesthetic is going to make it’s way into the home appliance world. It’ll take a while, but how cool would it be to have dinged brass appliances instead of stainless steel? The only pervasive example I’ve seen of this is the awnings on Cheesecake Factory locations, which don’t actually look all that cool. But it’ll happen, just give it time. As far as it goes, I did not (unsurprisingly), see the next big thing in DC, but I got some funny shots.

This was taken at the Kennedy Center. Maybe they haven’t repaired this on purpose? It would seem to agree with the current climate in Washington. Especially if the final ‘S’ were to be removed as well…

I have no idea what this sign meant, but it seems like it wouldn’t be out of place in a Ludakris tune…

This one was just strange and humorous. I would totally hire these contractors.

And for anyone who hasn’t seen this bizarre structure before. This is a giant Mormon temple in DC. It looks like some sort of crazy sci-fi scenery, which is really cool, if only it weren’t what it is I might have gone closer to it. For what it’s worth, I think it’s interesting to examine what about this makes it look sci-fi. Sci-fi architectural aesthetics are in many ways determined by Japanese anime these days, and this building would fit right into one of those films - but why? I think it’s a combination of the metallic and round spires with the extremely square geometric shapes of the building proper. The spires are also huge (and pointless), adding an extremely whimsical quality generally not found in buildings that people actually pay to construct. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on why this looks sci-fi (or why not).

September 24th, 2007
Posted by Paul in CoolHunting, Photography | No Comments »