Greg Pidgeon

I've trawled through many actionscript tutorial sites to try and get a handle on actionscirpt for our 5 Random Throws assignment and the most useful I've managed to find is www.freeprogrammingresources.com . Loads of easy to digest tutorials from beginner to advanced.

Check out some really nice flash movies @ www.squizzle.com. Alot of crap but there are some absolute gems in there.

Whilst having a gander at some actionscript & flash examples I came across this. Just a personal home page, not much content but I did really like the flash navigation and graphics. Neat, clear and funky, check it out @ www.funky-flash.com

Not muc to do with anything but I was doing some research for the 5 Random Throws assignment and I came across an image that couldn't be found. Nothing new there but what came on my browser instaed was a manic depressive web server explaining to me in the 1st person all his problems. I was well entertained! Funny as, check out the link below...

Web Server With Manic Depression

I attended a seminar today by one of the senior designers at Digit, a now well established new media innovation and production company. It highlighted some of the work Digit has produced as a whole, from websites to digital installation projects, focusing on a few particular outstanding pieces of work including a piece from one of our very own ex-students.

Another much enjoyed seminar from a brilliant company. Also to note is that Digit are running a competition called ‘Feed’ with the prize being not only a finished and produced concept of yours turned to reality but 3 whole months placement at this dynamic company.

Check out Digit for yourselves @ www.digitlondon.com.

Highlighted in the Digit seminar were a selection of the websites that they have produced.

The first being www.rizer.co.uk which is a unique website service which provides information and advice for young people about the law, crime and the consequences of offending in the UK.

The Digit representative explained that Digit like to follow alternative ways of research to create their products. In this case they ran a series of workshops for kids and in their workshops they gave out a selection of flyers for music events that they had collected. The aim of this exercise was to get the kids to pick the flyers they preferred and explain why. This is how they came to have the general graphic feel of the site. Also another design decision was to include a character the takes the user through the site, this was done to humanise the product which helps the site as the speaker explained.

Another site by Digit is www.habitat.net, an upmarket household store. As I have mentioned digit like to take inspiration from everywhere and this time is no different. I don’t think this particular aspect is on the site any longer but the demo we were shown was taken and adapted from a scene in the popular cult movie ‘Fight Club’. It’s the scene where it shows the furniture in the lead characters apartment. Anyway it looked excellent, check out the site and see if you can find it.

This site also uses a concept called ‘Fairies’; these are the rollover state of a button where a small menu appears next to it and then can be accessed with the mouse until the area is left and the menu disappears. These fairies work extremely well and are inline with the very nice overall design and functionality of the site.

St. Lukes is a creative agency that has worked with big brands globally and here in the UK including Ikea, BT, Clarks shoes, UK government and Emirates Airways taking them through radical brand transformations. Their website is again, designed by Digit and it has one feature that really stands out. Not only is it an attractive and functional information source about the company but it has a real connection with the St. Lukes building. Placed somewhere in the building is an interactive unit where a question is asked to its users, this information is the uploaded directly to the site and displays in a graphical form on the homepage. As of 10.03.05 the question was ‘Have you been watching the Michael Jackson trial on Sky News?’. Check it out @ www.stlukes.co.uk.

This can be used in many ways, an example would be to have a site that is weather orientated perhaps, when its raining outside, it rains on the site and so on.

When MTV2 was created it had no real branding at all, Digit was commissioned through an agency to create branding on the web. This extended into graphics and content on the channel too. The site has since changed but the examples we ere shown took inspiration from the instructions of flat pack furniture instructions. Animated blocks of colour were used to construct a navigation menu and various aspects of the site which worked very well.

Check out the new site @ www.MTV2.com

Digit also does a great deal of projects beyond the web. These can include various digital projects but there are a few digital installations that we were shown that I was particularly impressed by.

The first was an installation done for habitat using RFID technology. A large screen was placed behind a desk. On the desk was a bowl and beneath it was various bits of fabric and furniture. This was placed in store and the user would pick their selection of furniture and fabrics for a room, placing it in the bowl. The RFID tags on the items would be read by a sensor in the bowl and the items would be placed on screen with the chosen fabric on in a virtual room.

This was also used by Audi. Same setup used in their showroom but a car park was drawn on the desk to replace the bowl and car options to replace the furniture such as car model, wheels, colour. The user would put the items in the parking spaces drawn on the desk & the screen would display their customised car on screen before the bought.

For the final of the Champions League rugby final Digit created a installation that used 2 large plasma screens and asked users to kick a football into a net. The trigonometry, speed and path of the ball would then be shown on the screen as small blocks of colour shooting into the distance.

Another installation was called ‘Feed’ and again used a large plasma screen but has a tree trunk with a microphone on the top that when talked/sang to would grow a tree on the screen using the frequency and volume of the voice on the mic. This was taken around a number of places like schools and tested by students from anywhere between 3 years old to 16.

My favourite of the installations we were shown was a promotion done for Motorola by Digit, promoting Motorola’s ties with music. It was set up in Miami at a launch for Motorola’s new 3G technology. It used 3 large panes of clear glass stood upright as the canvas and users would be given a digital spay can to use. The colour and size of the spray could be changed and when spayed would use Bluetooth technology to create a digitally projected image onto the glass. Along side this whenever someone sprayed on the glass a loop or beat of music was played, users could then get an mp3 of the music they created and a jpg of the artwork. Some users chose to just create something that looked good and some created music without consideration of the image. They got some big names to come and have a go, the only one I remember is Dizzy Rascal but there were others.

Another project by Digit was created for the sportswear giants Nike. This was produced for the launch of one of their trainers that used a weave of material for the main parts of the trainer. Digit created a programme that allowed users to text in with their messages displayed on screen following a weaving line emphasising the new products selling point. This was affective and helped users to tie the installation to the product anchoring the product in their minds.

‘Nold’s innovative approach works to alter the way we use monitoring technologies; the Bio Mapping project uses skin sensors to construct maps which visualise where we as a community, feel stressed and excited.’

Pavilion in collaboration with Huddersfield University and Leeds College of Art and Design are running a number of seminars here in the university from February through to May. I attended a seminar by Christian Nold on his work focusing on his Bio Mapping experiments. In this Nold developed an electronic device that incorporated GPS technology with the ability to measure heightened stress/excitement in its subjects by measuring moisture on the fingertips. He then used this technology to send subjects out walking around an environment and recorded the information, mapping it to an OS map. This highlighted points on the subject’s journey where their stress/excitement was increased. The subjects were show the mapped results and asked to write a small review of their experience which gave some really interesting feedback. Nold is now thinking about practical applications for his device, this includes using group data to better understand crime stricken estates to developing the device.

I thoroughly enjoyed this seminar and wish Christian all the best with his work in the future. A very interesting and innovative experiment.

You can find information on Nold’s work @ www.biomapping.net and some pictures about the Bio Mapping projct and Nold himself below.