Clare Townhill

The Beautiful Mind

Just too tired this week to blog with any sense or salience - all brain juice is spoken for on the pitch I'm working on at the moment. This lovely work by MIT will just have to suffice.

Video

Library of Dust

For this stunningly produced, profoundly moving, and quietly imposing monograph on loss, photographer David Maisel gained access to an abandoned building at a mental hospital. In a locked room, he found neatly shelved copper canisters numbered 1 to 5,121, alive with evidence of chemical reaction at the seams—as if the contents were escaping in crystalline blooms of color. What's inside these enigmatic vessels? The cremains of long-forgotten patients.

Library of Dust depicts individual copper canisters, each containing the cremated remains of patient from a state-run psychiatric hospital. The patients died at the hospital between 1883 (the year the facility opened, when it was called the Oregon State Insane Asylum) and the 1970’s; their bodies have remained unclaimed by their families.

David Maisel: Library of Dust

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Lines from Andreas Muller on Vimeo.
For All Seasons from Andreas Muller on Vimeo.
Wind (Field) from Andreas Muller on Vimeo.
This beholder's eye finds these interfaces beautiful.
Vimeo: Andreas Muller
HaHaKid.net

Video Games Becoming The 'Fifth Network'

Interesting report today from Nielsen on video game consumption in the US. Some nice quantifiers of minutes spent engaged with video games vs. TV consumption (heavy gamers watch lots of TV too) and some current data on the mighty Wii's effect on the gamer demography:

Americans, as a whole, spend more time playing video games than they do watching the CW. And video games—the real “5th Network”--may even be closing in on NBC.

Those are just a few of the conclusions that can be drawn of a new report issued by Nielsen PreView called The Video Game Handbook, which provides marketers a sense of the scope and scale of the growing video game audience. According to the data derived from Nielsen’s National People Meter back in the fourth quarter of last year, usage of console video games (gaming systems which are connected to a user’s TV) accounted for a whopping 64 billion minutes in December.

Only four other networks accounted for more viewing time during that period, says the report. And though Nielsen does not identify those networks, based on ratings patterns they are presumed to be CBS, ABC, FOX and NBC.

According to the report, though it’s possible that given the continued growth in popularity of video games may push that number higher in the coming years, the TV business doesn’t necessarily need to feel threatened. Nielsen (which like Mediaweek, is owned by The Nielsen Company) found that since 1999 console usage has grown steadily while TV usage has remained steady, even growing slightly.

In fact, big time gamers are also big time TV viewers: The top quintile of gamers—who average 93 minutes of console usage per day--consumed as many minutes of TV as the weakest video game users, according to the research cited. “Gamers are a sophisticated media consumer, digesting media at a higher rate than the average,” reads the report.

MediaWeek: Nielsen Study Gamers

Google Never Forgets

Succinct and brilliant:

Personal branding in the age of Google

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person's name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I'm annoyed by it. I'll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don't have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you're on Candid Camera, because you are.

Seth Godin's Blog
Will Lion's Digital Bits - always good.

A friend advertised on Craigslist for a housekeeper.

Three interesting resumes came to the top. She googled each person's name.

The first search turned up a MySpace page. There was a picture of the applicant, drinking beer from a funnel. Under hobbies, the first entry was, "binge drinking."

The second search turned up a personal blog (a good one, actually). The most recent entry said something like, "I am applying for some menial jobs that are below me, and I'm annoyed by it. I'll certainly quit the minute I sell a few paintings."

And the third? There were only six matches, and the sixth was from the local police department, indicating that the applicant had been arrested for shoplifting two years earlier.

Three for three.

Google never forgets.

Of course, you don't have to be a drunk, a thief or a bitter failure for this to backfire. Everything you do now ends up in your permanent record. The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you're on Candid Camera, because you are.

Why TV Lost

Here's the first paragraph of Paul Graham's excellent post on convergence, socialising, and of course TV:

About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they'd produce when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It's clear now that even by using the word "convergence" we were giving TV too much credit. This won't be convergence so much as replacement. People may still watch things they call "TV shows," but they'll watch them mostly on computers.

Paul Graham: Why TV Lost

A World Drowned In Music

The video above is footage from a working application (under development) created by Paul Lamere’s team at Sun Labs in Massachusetts (The AURA Project). I'd love to see more musical experience interfaces MEIs: an ability to swim or haptically feel our way through the music we own making the phrase 'drowning in music' a pleasurably immersive user experience rather than a feeling of being overwhelmed by seemingly limitless linear lists.

The Daily Fail

see more pwn and owned pictures

Motherly Fail

Apparently the text in the red box says 'My sons are supporting me in spirit'. Dear God. Failblog.org a panacea of pity.

Butterflies and Benylin

The MET in New York are doing a special season ofmatinee performances streamed live in HD to cinemas around the world. Yesterday, after glugging down a hearty measure of Benylin - noone likes a cougher at the opera - I went to see Madama Butterfly at a sell-out showing at the Imax on Charlie Chaplin Walk. Now, I've never been to the opera (I'm not really sure if I have now) but I will definitley be going to more screenings. It was absolutely wonderful if a little uncanny at times: the audience were dressed for a nght at the opera, we also clapped along with the 'real' audience in New York. We definitely all cried along too. Madama Butterfly sang in New York and cinema audiences wept.
I've put a link to the programme if you fancy a shufty.
Download Madamabutterfly

Ume!

Blossom season has arrived in Japan. Here's a list of the ten best spots and the lovely email I got from a contact in Japan:

Dear Friend,

Here in Japan, ume blossom season has come! It is earlier than usual year, because we had several warm days recently. In Japan, ume blooming is the most impressive sign of coming of spring. Because ume blooms even in the cold February, it has been thought to be very auspicious flower. So ume blossom is very usual design motifs of kimono and other Japanese handicraft.
Every year, we noticed ume blossom were blooming in the neighbors and felt the coming of spring, but we don't have memory that we went out purposely to view ume blossoms.

1. Yoshinobaigou ( Aoumeshi, Tokyo)
2. Yugawara Bairin (Yugawara, Kanaga)
3. Kitano-Tenmangu ( Kyoto )
4. Minabe Bairin ( Wakayama )
5.Tsukigase Baikei ( Nara )
6.Dazaofu-Tenmangu ( Fukuoka )
7.Kairakuen ( Mito )
8.Yuuki Shrine ( Tsu )
9.Soga Bairin ( Kanagawa )
10. Sinsyu Ina Baien ( Nagano )