Archive for play
November 5, 2008 at 3:27 pm · Filed under play
So its official now: we are currently working on a book for Routledge India where me and Soum (with guest star Angad Chowdhry) will co-write a chapter on the work we do. While I really have no idea at this point how the chapter will be organized — I increasingly believe in improvisation and semi-random iteration when generating new ideas — momentary closure was nonetheless achieved on the note that had to be sent to the publishers. Can we use genetic algorythms as new metaphors for thinking? What is the use of literary narratives of time such as sideshadowing and foreshadowing for understanding the future of technological development? Though perhaps a bit academically dry for my tastes, I thought I’d like to share these here.
February 25, 2008 at 11:09 am · Filed under play, technology
I was laughing recently at myself – always a good thing to do. I’m currently starting a research project into emerging digital cultures and Tactical media, especially in places outside the traditional US / Northern European domain that has been overcovered. So I’ve been doing the background info-rounds, locating the key focal points etc. So what repeatedly pops up everywhere is the importance of mobiles phones as the fastest growing technology of the future. For instance, an article in the Washington Post recently claimed that there are now an astonishing 3.3 billion mobiles phones on the planet – one for every second person! The article says, in specific
From essentially zero, we’ve passed a watershed of more than 3.3 billion active cellphones on a planet of some 6.6 billion humans in about 26 years. This is the fastest global diffusion of any technology in human history — faster even than the polio vaccine.
February 13, 2008 at 9:46 am · Filed under design, play, technology
So in our never-ending quest for the Idea, we have been recently throwing around some ideas around AI, aesthetics and creativity. To understand this particularly strange one, however, I probably will need to provide a few words of background to the wider project that we are interested in. I will try to keep it simple. Basically, the problematic/question that I am working around has to do with the “image of thought” in today’s digital cultures. One of the key tropes we are seeing emerging today is that the universe is made of patterns; or “abstract machines” as I prefer calling them after the French philosopher Deleuze. Without getting into unnecessary theoretical complexity here, what this means can perhaps best be seen inflected and explained in two ways:
February 1, 2008 at 1:09 am · Filed under design, play
In this second experiment, my attempt is to slowly explore the aesthetics that one can achieve through minimal code. This was written in ten minutes, and is just a version 0.001 of what is possible. At the moment, each is driven by a random generator, and controlled by three variables… but that will be the first thing to change in the upcoming update. I am yet to decide on the real world pattern that I will feed to the algorithm, but I am getting inclined towards live video feed…
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Matti is a researcher, designer and visual artist working with emerging digital technologies globally. He is currently dayjobbing as a Teaching Fellow in Digital Culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and spends time shuttling between London, Helsinki and the rest of the world.
Soum is a new media technology architect, ex-mixercast founding member, filmmaker, photographer, and a general wanderer who lives partly in London and rest of the time in Mumbai. He builds scalable web sites, dabbles in emerging technologies, and spends rest of his time in various film and photography projects.