Archive for the ‘Press’ Category
Stewart interviewed for The Setup
The Setup has just posted an interview with Stewart about hardware and software. But the actual content veers off topic a bit. (Easily distracted?) See for yourself: http://stewart.smith.usesthis.com.
Panic combines an, iPad, an Apple //e, and our Jed video
A few weeks ago Stewart happened upon pictures of Panic Inc‘s new offices. In the shuffle was a photo of their vintage Apple //e computer sitting at an empty desk. Lovers of vintage hardware can’t resist. Stewart emailed Panic to ask if they would “do him the honor” of running the Jed’s Other Poem music video source code on it. Despite their tight schedules—including the recent release and promotion of Transmit 4—they did indeed get the code onto their Apple //e and even filmed their own version of the video! Have a look at what we’re affectionately dubbing “Jed Panic.”
Jed’s Other Poem is a music video for the Grandaddy song of the same name. And (perhaps) the world’s first open-source music video. You can download the Jed source code package to run on your Virtual II emulator or even your own vintage Apple II series machine. To do the latter just play the audio from the “cassette tape” source code file into your vintage Apple’s cassette drive port. You’ll need an audio cable with male mini-jacks on either end. (Read up on Apple DOS and the “LOAD” command, you’ll be fine.)
After Panic posted their version of the Jed video other Apple-related sites—such as Daring Fireball, TUAW, and 9to5 Mac—linked to it. The flood of traffic brought down Panic’s site temporarily. (We think that’s pretty hardcore.)
Stewart interviewed by Creativity
The design and advertising blog Creativity (formerly AdCritic) has just posted an interview with Stewdio’s Stewart Smith, conducted by Jamie Kim of Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. The two discuss the intersection of art and software, collaborators, personal projects, and the “fake it ’till you make it” ethos. Read up here: Face to face with the brains behind iQuit, Browser Pong and other experiments in digital fun.
Browser Pong on Chrome Experiments
Browser Pong has just been added to the Chrome Experiments library, a website that features notable JavaScript experiments in the spirit of the Google Chrome browser. Many thanks to Aaron Koblin and everyone behind the scenes of Chrome Experiments who are keen to promote the browser itself as an art platform.
Experience Browser Pong yourself at http://stewdio.org/pong/. To leave comments on the Browser Pong’s Chrome Experiments page see http://chromeexperiments.com/detail/browser-pong/.
Terre Natale on Processing.org
Casey Reas, cofounder of the Processing language, has posted the Terre Natale project on Processing.org‘s Exhibition Page. We are very excited to be featured here. The project description on Processing appropriately focusses on the digital team, but for more information on all of the collaborators who made this project possible please see Stewdio Blog items tagged Terre Natale.
Below is a one minute excerpt from the half-hour show that demonstrates humanity divided equally between cities and rural areas, a threshold only recently crossed in 2007. In this visualization nearly six million pixel-sized “agents” fill the screen and flock to their geographic home. First the city-dwellers take their place, illustrating 50% of all living people occupying a tiny portion of Earth. Finally the remainder of “agents” take their place, filling out the familiar shapes of the continents.
Terre Natale – Population Shift (Pixel Flock) from Stewdio on Vimeo.
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.
HistoFace featured on Five Whys
HistoFace, Stewdio’s histogram typeface, has been featured on the Five Whys blog at
http://whywhywhywhywhy.com/2009/03/histoface-hidden-histogram-messages/. Author Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet even provides an RGB channel-separated secret histogram message that he constructed himself.
Terre Natale on Raddest Right Now
Eleanor Weber has written up the Terre Natale exhibition on Raddest Right Now. Regarding our exhibition piece she writes “Virilio’s second part is an amazing visualization of global migration in graph- and stat- form. It’s so clever and surprisingly easy to follow [. . .] it’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen since An Inconvenient Truth, and possibly more effective. It is an astounding piece of work to experience in a gallery context.” See Terre Natale on Stewdio at http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale/.
HistoFace blogged by Adobe’s John Nack
HistoFace, Stewdio‘s histogram typeface, received mention on the Adobe blogs today via John Nack in a post titled Slick typographic apps: Hidden Messages & More. HistoFace is a form of steganography, the art of hiding messages within another medium. The medium in this case is a digital image and the vehicle for revealing the message is the Photoshop Levels tool. Don’t rely on it for security, however, as HistoFace makes for horribly weak cryptography. Its purpose was more process driven: How does one craft a unique set of letterforms that handle the impossibly tight constraints of histogram imagery? Visit HistoFace at http://stewdio.org/histoface.
HistoFace featured on Ironic Sans
This morning David Friedman wrote about HistoFace on his blog Ironic Sans. HistoFace is a histogram typeface designed for use in the Photoshop “Levels” window. The character shapes articulate the tight constraints of histogram imagery: Each figure must be constructed from bottom-flush vertical lines, rendering compound paths and concave cantilevers impossible.
It’s a particular honor for this project to be featured on Ironic Sans because it was inspired by an Ironic Sans article on Histogram Hacking and an I.S. reader, Josh Millard. (Thanks to Lan Lan Liu for originally bringing Ironic Sans to our attention.) HistoFace was also recently linked from The Moon Goons.
Share on Facebook
StumbleUpon
Bookmark on Delicious
Digg this