The Treehouse + The Cave

I read Rands regularly but missed this 'til now. Definition of another cave.

The MacDailyNews video walkthrough of the Apple TV interface features a Screen Saver menu. Several questions spring to mind: Why are so few screen savers shipping on the device? Why isn't there an RSS screen saver? Why isn't there a Photocast screen saver? Why aren't there iTunes visualizers as screen savers? Do the current screen savers run on Core Animation? Does the Apple TV support standard screen saver files (.saver)? Does the Apple TV support Quartz Composer files (.qtz)? Is there a way to put any old OSX screen saver on the Apple TV? Will Apple allow third-party developers to create screen savers for the Apple TV? Will Apple offer add-on screen savers themselves? Will they be for sale? Will they be web-aware? Will the Apple TV become the first cheap networked passive information appliance? You know they already make one--the expensive one--the Mac mini. I have one, hooked up to an HD display--I'm already living this dream--I have the "living room" they talk about. I spin a wheel to select a cut. Once playing, an AppleScript triggers fullscreen GasLight. When it's not, the news fades in through a modded RSS screen saver. I already have video conferencing from the couch, IPTV, and an infinite selection of movies. I know what's next in the living room--I'm building it for myself piece-by-piece. Just let me show the others, let me polish that homebrew and put it on that thin, thin device. Just screen savers still? Or beautiful passive information interfaces? Let me help decide, open it up.

Pulled a torrent of Writers United down, and read for a while. When I got to these images I felt like I had taken them. A series I did for The Blow Up in 04.

Today, Tom who lives in the Netherlands, sent Alan Chao this picture of a dutch magazine called "Bright" quoting what he said about CoverFlow in a post on macteens.

I should be listening to a lot more Dub. I know it--but just never knew where to begin. What are the sub-genres? Which producer is the most forward-thinking? Anyone connoisseurs out there with suggestions? I lean toward the dark and instrumental. Massive Attack not Sean Paul.

Image by Urban_data

Left just as I found it. In an intimidating dressing room, trying on a possible suit.

"Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today." Anyone think that Boot Camp might mature into a virtualization environment called Aloha? A simultaneous hello and goodbye to the Windows monopoly?

I bit them, they bit me.

While I agree that CoverFlow's feature-set, as it stands, is not ideal--and applaud the mutation of my proposal into competing incarnations--CoverTunes, the latest fork in a year-long trajectory, takes as many steps backward as it does forward. Anders Wählby, it's creator, seems to have made three principal modifications--the addition of quick-access filtering, the ability to flip an album around to reveal its tracks, and the skinning of the cover art onto a 3-D representation of an actual CD jewel case. Every other departure from the UI as implemented by Steel Skies, is subtractive. Which isn't to say that a subtractive approach isn't an appropriate one--less is more, especially in Apple-land--but cut too far, and you kill. Omission of the fluid, nearly-tactile way in which a user can manipulate the UI strikes me as a significantly anti-human choice--leaving CoverTunes feeling stiffly engineered rather than artistically summoned. Most of his additive revisions, seem well considered however. One-click access to user-determined sort criteria--good idea, no doubt--very useful in a multi-user (family room) environment. Ditto on the rotation of the center record to reveal a tracklist--it's been our most requested feature, and one I fully support. I never foresaw a need for it, as my initial proposal hinged upon full integration with iTunes (in which the library window shouldered that duty). But in a stand-alone app, I see no-more-elegant a method of including track-selection capability (provided you can actually click on a specific track, which one currently can't in this alpha release). Which leaves me with the use of realistic CD jewel cases, à la JewelCase--something that has been suggested by many, many CoverFlow users, and has thus-far made zero sense to me. The whole point of the digital music revolution is that it frees the listener from physical formats. The songs in my iTunes, on my iPod and eventually, in something like CoverFlow or CoverTunes, no longer have anything to do with compact discs. Ribbed grey plastic, and a quarter-inch spine perform no better as visual browsing elements than plain images, and are in-fact completely counter-intuitive for any type of media asset other than that which was originally released on CD. Why for instance, should I have my podcasts represented by a CD? Movies are an even further cognitive leap. Nostalgia for the physical is not only non-functional, it stands in the way of interaction transparency, and consequently I find no place for it. That said, all ideas are improvable--mine, no exception. The tweaks and twists here however, seem to satisfy the whims of one, rather than the needs of a current-and-future public, my stated goal from the get-go. Thank you Anders--only through the testing of all available strategies--good, bad and in-between--will this idea evolve into a common method for browsing libraries of all types, something many feel it may have the potential to become. Lastly, I should take this opportunity to remind all developers working with (or considering working with) my visual browsing concept, that it is currently protected by a Creative Commons license, and that any derivative work must be released under an identical license. I reserve the right to change the terms under which my work is licensed, and may do so in the future.

Just now, upon watching the video record of Graffiti Research Lab's first project, I sincerely thought to myself, "This, is beautiful". Then immediately afterward, "Why didn't I think of that?" Which I think I meant quite literally--I'm intimate with all the materials and ideas being drawn from here, I could talk Flavin and neodymium, open-source and installation, all day. The elements at work just never coalesced into this manifestation for me. Thank god they did for fi5e and Resistor. This is inspiring work--the kind of easy brilliance that makes me proud to have found my profession. Thankful too, that communities like Eyebeam/Openlab and Indestructables exist and are beginning to thrive. I might also add, playing off of Sony's Bravia ad is shrewd. Perhaps more intelligent however, is the choice of location--Jim Kempner Fine Art on the corner of 23rd and 10th, an icon in many ways.

After trying to define beauty for a reader who wrote, it's been on my mind. This animation of the Aurora Australis qualifies.

I'm quite proud to present CoverFlow, an OSX application (currently a Tiger-only technical demo) that allows you to visually browse your iTunes music library. This stunning example of current Apple technologies (OpenGL, Core Image, Cocoa) programmed by the talented Jonathan del Strother of Steel Skies, is largely based on concepts and illustrations that I posted here in December of last year, under the title Dissatisfaction Sows Innovation. A month or two after I wrote about my vision for the visual browsing interface, Jon wrote me wanting to hear my thoughts on his proposed pursuit of an actual implementation. I of course agreed, anxious to see this tool in the hands of other visual thinkers/music lovers. Five months after I gave him the nod, I heard from him again. He had created CoverFlow. Since that first taste, the program has progressed rapidly. It has become everything I had hoped it could be this early in development. It respects my design and vision in a natural way. I'm so happy that, of all the developers out there, the right one had stumbled into the Treehouse. This guy got what I was talking about and could pick up where I left off. CoverFlow is beautiful (Videos: 1, 2, 3, 4) and is beginning to receive some very kind reviews (The Unofficial Mac Weblog, The Tao of Mac). As nice as the comments are however, I still don't think anyone is seeing the massive change this tool could usher in. Imagine your living room in a year (maybe two): you're likely to have a computer of some sort attached to a flat-panel, high-resolution display (rather than the DVD player/TV combo of today). Now imagine trying to navigate an entire lifetime of music from the couch across the room. You could never read text as you scrolled through it. In that environment CoverFlow would be positioned as the most elegant, intuitive way of navigating audio collections available. I stand by its ease-of-use, and its aesthetic beauty, and am dying to see where this will take me and Jon. Apple, this is one more way into the world's living rooms, one more way to humanize the technical. Drop us a line, we'd love some help spreading the love. Thank you, Jon. Your effort and genius are much appreciated.

I'm quite proud to present CoverFlow, an OSX application (currently a Tiger-only technical demo) that allows you to visually browse your iTunes music library. This stunning example of current Apple technologies (OpenGL, Core Image, Cocoa) programmed by the talented Jonathan del Strother of Steel Skies, is largely based on concepts and illustrations that I posted here in December of last year, under the title Dissatisfaction Sows Innovation. A month or two after I wrote about my vision for the visual browsing interface, Jon wrote me wanting to hear my thoughts on his proposed pursuit of an actual implementation. I of course agreed, anxious to see this tool in the hands of other visual thinkers/music lovers. Five months after I gave him the nod, I heard from him again. He had created CoverFlow. Since that first taste, the program has progressed rapidly. It has become everything I had hoped it could be this early in development. It respects my design and vision in a natural way. I'm so happy that, of all the developers out there, the right one had stumbled into the Treehouse. This guy got what I was talking about and could pick up where I left off. CoverFlow is beautiful (video, another video) and is beginning to receive some very kind reviews (The Unofficial Mac Weblog, The Tao of Mac). As nice as the comments are however, I still don't think anyone is seeing the massive change this tool could usher in. Imagine your living room in a year (maybe two): you're likely to have a computer of some sort attached to a flat-panel, high-resolution display (rather than the DVD player/TV combo of today). Now imagine trying to navigate an entire lifetime of music from the couch across the room. You could never read text as you scrolled through it. In that environment CoverFlow would be positioned as the most elegant, intuitive way of navigating audio collections available. I stand by its ease-of-use, and its aesthetic beauty, and am dying to see where this will take me and Jon. Apple, this is one more way into the world's living rooms, one more way to humanize the technical. Drop us a line, we'd love some help spreading the love. Thank you, Jon. Your effort and genius are much appreciated.

For the past five years much of my student work has sat dormant. Some of it resides in carefully organized and easily accessible directories (on hard drives and CD-R). The balance however, is stored within enclosures now antiquated (leather portfolios, acid-ridden envelopes and video cassettes); each unfortunately securing its contents from both private and public eyes. The pieces I had most wished to experience again, the ones I'd lived longest without, were the three videos I made in the Fall of 2000 while learning analog editing in an introductory video-art course. With the help of my employer's talented (and nerdy) New Media Department, I've begun exhuming them from their S-VHS coffins and encoding them in pristine and efficient MPEG-4 H.264. This means that you will need to have QuickTime 7 to watch the videos that follow. H.264 support hasn't made it to QuickTime for Windows just yet, so for the time being PC users should save the files to disk and view them with the open-source VLC. Click the Video: links to view each video within your browser, or right-click and save the file for later viewing. Systems The first video I had ever made, Systems examines repetition, the perception of time, duration, looping, and the artificiality of the modern experience. It principally depicts the birds of Baltimore, which (interestingly) have become nearly invisible after being transcoded. Video: Systems Format: MPEG 4 Codecs: H.264, AAC Dimensions: 720 x 586 Duration: 4:21 Size: 14.2 mb 108 Frames 108 Frames, was my response to the 2000 Faculty Exhibition at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The length of time each work is displayed correlates directly to my opinion of it. Tones separate each piece. All pieces included in the exhibition are included in this work. Video: 108 Frames Format: MPEG 4 Codecs: H.264, AAC Dimensions: 720 x 586 Duration: 4:46 Size: 11.8 mb Setting Setting marks the beginning of my transition away from systematic creative processes, towards a practice better informed by beauty, identity and the invisible/intangible. It is the last video I made prior to my arrival in New York. Video: Setting Format: MPEG 4 Codecs: H.264, AAC Dimensions: 720 x 586 Duration: 7:47 Size: 18.1 mb

Per Anti's request, my lone contribution to Videoblogging Week 2005: File: Dissipation.mov Format: QuickTime Dimensions: 240 pixels by 180 pixels Duration: 14 minutes Size: 12.2 megabytes Click the above link to view the movie within your browser, or right-click and save the file to disk. Either way, give it some time to load.

Sometimes the bizarre, soulless future we all predict feels closer at hand than usual. Let me illustrate: Image 1: Britney Spears' chihuahua, Bit Bit, wearing a mink coat. A miniature, hairless, famous, dog wearing mink. From the Dog's Crib portion of her official website. Via Pink is the New Blog. Image 2: Eva, an android that specializes in incredibly lifelike (and incredibly scary) emulation of human facial expressions. A QuickTime movie of her in action can be found here. Via Engadget.