Archive for April, 2009
The Arecibo Message: Hello Universe
The Hello World Universe article on Frank Drake’s Arecibo Message now has a project page and photos: http://stewdio.org/work/arecibo/. On a related note, Stewdio highly recommends the 1980 Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series, currently available for free on Hulu. Episode 12 in particular mentions the Arecibo Message as well as the Pioneer and Voyager probes.
Terre Natale lecture at Parsons CDT
Stewart Smith (Stewdio) and Robert Gerard Pietrusko (Warning Office) will lecture on Terre Natale and data visualization at Parsons Communication Design + Technology (CDT) lab next Tuesday, April 21st at 6:30pm. The CDT lab is located at 2 West 13th Street in Manhattan, 10th Floor.
Gimbels Passageway Simulator
Ear Studio and their team of collaborators are engaged in the public art portion of the Gimbels Passageway renovation in New York City. Stewdio has designed a light-weight simulator to assist Ear in visualizing the choreography of approximately 900 clockwork discs that will rotate along Gimbels’ wall. See the Gimbels Passageway Simulator page for more detail and video.
Jist, the Javascript List Processor
Jist is a new Javascript-based Lisp interpreter currently in development as a research project at Stewdio. With less than 24 hours behind it, Jist is in an “über alpha” stage—offering only minimal functionality and very little stability. The core of Jist is currently a cribbing of Joe Hanley’s JavaScript Lisp Interpreter. Stewdio is rebuilding this to favor lexical closures over dynamic scoping, and to add avenues for DOM manipulation.
Suggestions and code submissions welcome. See Jist at http://stewdio.org/jist/.
Stewart’s Arecibo Message essay featured in “It’s Nice That” premiere issue
It has arrived! The beautiful premiere print issue of London-based It’s Nice That appeared in the Stewdio mailbox yesterday to much excitement. The release coincides with the refresh of their website, http://itsnicethat.com. The print issue was designed by co-creators Will Hudson and Alex Bec in collaboration with Joseph Burrin. And it is gorgeous, not to mention the hypnotic smell of fresh ink. Having engaged so fully in the RGB world, Stewdio rarely enjoys the olfactory spoils of CMYK production. (Stewart cannot stop sniffing the pages and going on about memories of Gus Mazzocca and Laurie Sloan’s Print Shop at UConn.)
The issue features Stewart’s essay Hello World Universe on Frank Drake’s 1974 Arecibo Message to aliens. It’s a humorous (and very loose) explanation of the message’s sophisticated design and how it inspires Stewdio. Also in this issue, a shout-out to fellow Yale MFA Ryan Waller whose work will appear in the It’s Nice That exhibition this September.
Stuttgart Germany visits Stewdio
Professor Uli Cluss and his wonderful students from Stuttgart ABK in Germany
On Saturday afternoon Stewdio hosted Professor Uli Cluss and his wonderful students from Stuttgart ABK in Germany for a small presentation of Stewdio projects. The session began with a quick look at the Jed’s Other Poem music video along with the primitive Apple II computer used to build it. This was followed by a more serious discussion on data visualization and the Terre Natale (Exits 2) piece in Paris. Loosely continuing the theme were WindMaker and the more experimental typography of HistoFace.
The second half of the presentation consisted of in-progress interactive work such as Avoider [unreleased], the Gimbels Passageway simulator for Ear Studio, and face-tracking games. The subsequent abstract discussion on Code Typography found a momentary anchor when comparing reformatted code whitespace to redecorated chord progressions as heard in Lua Hurts Everybody on Sullivan Street (DGeA). A short QA session followed, touching on the importance of play in design as a tool for discovery; always endeavor to fail in a brand new way.
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