YARRRRR! YE PROCESSING SKILLS GIVE ME TH'WILLIES!

Jonathan Harris makes killing large mammals and chopping them into small pieces seem COOL. Check out his other work over HERE.

TILT-SHIFT, I LOVE YOU

ARE BUBBLES PLAYED OUT ALREADY?

playing around... thinking about entering a competition...

THE BIG CHART

THE BIG CHART is a comprehensive quantitative analysis of things qualitative. I can't believe that the Bilbao Guggenheim beat out Vigo Morgenson, but it's true: bottle rockets are slightly better than Duchamp's urinal.

What do you deem to be good and crappy?

KOREA WOBBLE EXTRAVAGANZA!

Some photos of the Yong San Masterplan Competition. I had nothing to do with the design, but a little hand in the final presentation work. Personally, I'm not really sure what they were trying to accomplish in the masterplan, but they sure gave a heavy dose of the digital wobble!

Landmark Tower Model


Landmark Tower Model Detail


Masterplan Model

WE PUT THE ASS IN ASYMPTOTE

Sorry for not posting in a while, but since Switzerland I've been living in a studio apartment with spotty (if any) internet. I actually resorted to paying for the sweet web at Starbucks - twice! And just last week I started working at Asymptote, interviewed by Mrs. Backberry ad herself, and apparently passing the test. Already I've worked a 60 hour week (including Saturday and Sunday) and it's looking to stay that way for a little while, as I'm working on a residential tower design competition for a new coastal development in Bahrain. The image above shows a concept we started with, which the client saw and hated, so now we're onto bigger and badder things. More to come, as long as I don't get fired in the meantime.

SNAPSHOTS AT WORK

Ah, the real world... a few photos from around the office:


Las Colinas model


Las Colinas screen samples


Dubai masterplanning


More Dubai masterplanning


Libya aerials


Jim's desk

LE BALLON!

I've been running a workshop at the EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) on "Scripted Architectures," reviewing techniques for generating architectural form and spatial organization using code logics, and summarizing those techniques in the syllabus for a masters-level studio to be taught this fall. According to the EPFL brief:

This studio explores contemporary digital techniques for architectural form finding. We will use biologically-inspired geometrical models to generate building forms with a certain organic elegance, affective complexity and environmental performance. The studio scripts a skyscraper as a final project.

It's been an intense week with a lot of productive thinking, too much to share here and now. But I plan to write a paper or article on it all and try to publish it soon. But suffice it to say that the dominant themes are:

Code Logics
The inheritance of systems research from bio-sciences and computer science, but not to be confused with natural systems or biological metaphors, instead these are systemic strategies used for organizing form and material in ways that cannot be done by analogue means, and as such they intend to solve problems that require code logics rather than enhancing that which can be resolved without them.

Versioning
A byproduct of coded logics and parametric flexibility within the systemic approach. This is not a new concept by any means, but is a necessary concept for inclusion, since it forces the designer to design the system over the final product, making each version of the final product perfect examples of the designed system. This also applies to issues typology, especially with regards to Moneo's analysis of Palladian architecture in "Oppositions."

Organicity
aka "performalism," "elegance," "decadence," "super-nature" or "visual opulence," and can be described as the transcendence of form beyond pure performance and into the realm of affect and aesthetics. It is not to be confused with the term "organic", but rather it is the incorporation of code logics, versioning and a lust for formal excess (affect).

To conclude, the example above (generated during the workshop) attempts to address these 3 themes using a set of codes adapted from my graduate thesis. As an experiment in form and workflow it has no program other than what the viewer assumes. Half balloon, half plaza art-piece, and 10% in celebration of Anish Kapoor, it isn't anything but inspiration for the process. From here, we'll testit as a hypothesis and see what the students generate.

BARACKROLL'D

AND THEN SOME PRETTY ONES

last summer, i used this video by Robert Hodgin to help explain what a voronoi is to the career discovery kids:



recently, i stumbled on more of his work and it's quite nice.




more can be found here.

MY HEAD S'PLODE

BEST COMPUTER EVER

GLEAMING THE 'CUBE

Definitely view THIS in Full Screen Mode!

U - V - A! GO - 'HOOS - GO!

HONG KONG REFUSES ENTRY TO GARY GLITTER

HONG KONG (AP) -- British glam rocker Gary Glitter, who served nearly three years in a Vietnamese prison for molesting children, was denied entry to Hong Kong after refusing to return to England, officials said Wednesday.

Glitter flew to Hong Kong Wednesday night after staying in the transit area of Bangkok's international airport for several hours.

"The Chinese authorities have informed us that they have refused Paul Gadd entry into Hong Kong," a spokeswoman for Britain's Foreign Office said. Glitter's real name is Paul Francis Gadd.

"It's a matter for the Chinese authorities what happens next," she said.

A second Foreign Office spokesman said Glitter was interviewed by Chinese immigrations officials after arriving in Hong Kong.

Glitter was turned away "as a result of those interviews," the spokesman said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing official policy.

In a statement, the Hong Kong government said it doesn't comment on individual cases but that immigration officials would "take into consideration all relevant factors and circumstances when processing applications."

The territory was making arrangements for Glitter's departure, and he might be returned to Thailand, according to a Hong Kong official, who also declined to be identified, citing policy. It was the third country to bar Glitter in the last two days.

On Tuesday night, Glitter was taken from his prison cell to a flight out of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. He had been booked to change planes in Bangkok en route to London. He refused to board a flight to England, however, complaining of an earache. Thai authorities would not allow him to pass through immigration, leaving him in limbo.

Lt. Gen. Chatchawal Suksomchit, the chief of Thailand's immigration police, said Glitter was denied entry because under Thai immigration laws those convicted of child sex abuse in a foreign country can be barred.

But another officer said his department received a note from Vietnam and Interpol requesting that Glitter not be allowed entry into Thailand. The official spoke on condition of anonymity since he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Col. Voravat Amornvivat of Thailand's Immigration Police division said officials turned Glitter over to the custody of Thai Airways Wednesday afternoon, after he agreed to travel to a third country.

Glitter, 64, was convicted in March 2006 of committing "obscene acts with children." He served two years and nine months of a three-year sentence, which was reduced for good behavior.mThe incidents involved two girls, ages 10 and 11, from the southern coastal city of Vung Tau. The verdict said he had molested the girls repeatedly at his seaside villa in Vung Tau and in nearby hotels.

Although Glitter proclaimed his innocence, he was sentenced to three years in prison. His sentence was reduced by three months for good behavior.

Glitter's fall from grace began in 1997, when he took his computer to a repair shop and an employee there discovered he had downloaded thousands of hardcore pornographic images of children. Two years later, British authorities convicted him of possession of child pornography, and Glitter served half of his four-month jail term.

Glitter hit the front pages of Britain's newspapers Wednesday. In an editorial headlined "Who'd want him?" the conservative Daily Mail said "no country in its right mind would want this pervert at large on its soil."

The news hit as British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced a raft of new measures to tighten controls on people convicted of sexual offenses against children. If Glitter ever returned to Britain, he would be met at the airport by police officers and would be placed on a sex offenders registry, which already lists about 30,000 people.

In his 1970s heyday, Glitter performed in glittery jumpsuits, silver platform shoes and bouffant wigs. He sold 18 million records and recorded a string of British top-10 hits. His most successful song, the crowd-pleasing anthem "Rock and Roll (Part 2)," cracked the top 10 in the United States.

M'NOSE...

Beats any Oakley Tower I've ever seen...

YOUR HONOR...

Of all times to get a ticket, I was pulled over during graduation weekend while heading to pick up my parents at their hotel for dinner. The officer said he was citing me for failing to yield to the car turning across traffic, but listed the offense as "Failure to Stop". We'll see what Mr. Magistrate has to say about all this tomorrow morning...

EXTREME FACIALS

Facial animation is one of the hardest tasks for a 3d-modeler, probably more difficult than any other kinematic representation, since the human face is so often recognized as a deeply expressive communicator. For example, consider the oddity of the faces featured in the following videos:





Meanwhile, software engineers at Image Metrics (the people behind Grand Theft Auto 1-5) have been working on this issue for several years, and most recently released the results of Emily Project which can be seen in the following video.



The Times of London commented on the video in a recent article:

"Emily - the woman in the above animation - was produced using a new modeling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured and recreated. She is considered to be one of the first animations to have overleapt a long-standing barrier known as 'uncanny valley' - which refers to the perception that animation looks less realistic as it approaches human likeness.

In the past, computer game animators have purposely simplified their creations so that the audience realizes immediately that the figures are not real. Previous methods for animating faces involved putting dots on a face and observing the way the dots move, but Image Metrics analyzes facial movements at the level of individual pixels in a video, meaning that the subtlest variations - such as the way the skin creases around the eyes, can be tracked.

Researchers at a Californian company which makes computer-generated imagery for Hollywood films started by filming an employee talking. They then broke down down the facial movements down into dozens of smaller movements for the appearance of reality.

'Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real,' Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said. 'The subtlety of the timing of eye movements is a big one. People also have a natural asymmetry - for instance, in the muscles in the side of their face. Those types of imperfections aren't that significant but they are what makes people look real.'"

FACEBOOK ALTER EGOS

What does this teach us? I need to switch coasts and take up competitive bowling. Josh needs to work on his neck muscles and cultivate the chinstrap. And Noel needs to move to Ireland and paint his face on a pumpkin.

Commence!

GEHFAHRENPOTENZIAL ELEKTROROLLER

You don't need to speak German to enjoy a good Segway crash. The one at 1:25 is not to be missed.

PHOTOSHOP ON THE FLY

There seem to be a slew of web-based Photoshop clones that I didn't know about. I don't think ill be switching over anytime soon, but it's a novel idea. I mean, who doesn't hate installing software?





Here are a few to check out:

sumopaint
aviary
splashup
piknik
fotoflexer

Some seem to be superior to others. Some require you to register. Some don't.

Not to be left out, Adobe even made their own.

So, I suppose the next question is: when can I start building 3d on the internet? Oh wait, SquareClock is pretty much doing just that.



Though it does have a rendering engine that can raytrace, it's not exactly the robust set of tools that designers might be looking for. Maybe Blender will do it.