Hugh Garry

The Descriptive Camera

 

So simple, very brilliant. Watch the video and find out more about it here.

Lean Startup: From the boardroom to the Whitehouse (SXSW12)

The Mind & Consciousness As an Interface (SXSW12)

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think (SXSW12)

Invention & Inspiration: Building a Better World (SXSW12)

Can Printed Electronics Save the Music Industry? (SXSW12)

Fancy a pint Louis?

Last night I downloaded the new live show from comedian Louis CK. It's very good. The whole project is self produced. The film is DRM-free and cost just $5. Amazing. It's great to see an performer breaking away from traditional distribution models. Trying something new. Mucking about with his content.

As a comedian there's something about the tone of Louis that I love. You could easily see yourself having a chat with him over a pint in your local. I've had a lot of conversations recently about how hard it is to get the right tone for your platform of choice. It took Ira Glass more than 8 years to find his voice for radio. Some people are still trying to master their telephone voice. So it's not surprising that organisations struggle to know how to speak using new platforms. Louis seems to have nailed it with his journey into digital downloads. This kinda made me want to tell the world to download it too.

To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.

Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I’m just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can’t stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.

Love the line 'Please help me keep this being a good idea'. I admire his honesty and uncertainty and hope that he manages to retain that tone when his good idea becomes a much bigger idea. 

Welcome to our world

As 2009 drew to a close I came across an article in magazine asking lots of smart people the question 'What has been the icon of the first decade of the 21st century?' If my memory serves me well I think the consensus was the iPod.

I never get asked those questions, probably because I'm not one of those very smart people. If I had my answer would have been 'the pixel'. All the big moments of that decade I recall as heavily pixelated footage.

Before then the pixel went pretty much unnoticed. The only people that really paid attention were those whose job it was to make sure they remained invisible.

Then came the internet, then camers in phones. With them the border control dropped. Anyone could create and share media, flaws and all. The best camera was the one you had with you. Pixelated footage began to creep from the internet to the TV. On the news or as a new form of late night entertainment on Channel 4. The big pixels were there for everyone to see. Pixels or not, Charlies finger would have remained bitten and the planes still hit the tower. We watched. And not a single person complained. 

Soon they became part of a visual language that told us something was authentic, not something faked by big media to look 'viral'. For a moment big media really did believe there was a viral look. The pixel became a part of something that was 'made', as opposed to high definition perfection that suggests something just appears by magic. Not a suggestion of process. No working out in the margins. 

So I was delighted when I stumbled across James Bridle's talk about 'The New Aesthetic. It's a really interesting look at how pixels are spilling into our world. I don't want to say anything more other than 'just watch it'. It's wonderful. 

Woody Allen, Physical Email and the Proverbial Wallet.

I went to see Woody Allen's new film 'Midnight in Paris' today and couldn't help smile when the main character Gil, who is fascinated by 1920s Paris, gets into a debate with Adriana about when was the best time to live.

Gil meets Adriana (a beautiful Parisian who is having an affair with Picasso) after travelling back in time to his favourite era. The conversation takes place when pair travel further back in time to the 1890s, which is Adriana's favourite period in history. Gil wants to return to the 1920s but she wants to stay in the 1890s forever because the era in which she belongs holds no excitement for her. Whilst they are there they bump into Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gaugin and Edgar Degas who all believe that the golden age was the Renaissance and not the 1890s, the era in which they were living. 

We all have a romantised vision of the past, a golden age that we long to return to for some rose tinted reason or other. We're great at ignoring the present and appreciating it for all its brilliance. Personally, I've never been like that, much to the disappointment of my friends as my enthusiasm for reminiscing falls short of theirs. I can be such a stick in the mud sometimes. 

I've said it before. The greatest time to be alive is now. Teetering on the edge of tomorrow. I do forget sometimes, but then brilliant people share brilliant things using brilliant technologies and I get incredibly excited about the here and now again. 

So. If like me you get excited by current thinking around the intersection of the real and digital world then you may just love the work of former MIT student John Kestner (thanks to the lovely Tom Uglow for bringing him to my attention).

Here are a few interesting things he has done. Please do check out the rest.

Tableau

 

"Tableau acts as a bridge between users of physical and digital media, taking the best parts of both. It's a nightstand that quietly drops photos it sees on its Twitter feed into its drawer, for the owner to discover. Images of things placed in the drawer are posted to its account as well".

Proverbial Wallets

"The Proverbial Wallet gives us that financial sense at the point of purchase by un-abstracting virtual assets. Tactile feedback reflecting our personal balances and transactions helps us develop a subconscious financial sense that guides responsible decisions. In addition to providing a visceral connection to our virtual money, tactile output keeps personal information private and ambient".

The greatest invention ever...

It's got to be, hasn't it? Glad Theo did this because I was never going to get my lazy ass off the couch to make one - no matter how much I wanted to see a wind-powered Strandbeest stride proudly across the beach in Rhyl. We all did, didn't we?

I can't even begin to imagine how long it took to build one of these. One thing I can almost be sure of though is that from the minute the idea jumped into his head right through to the moment his creature first walked on the beach there will have been numerous occasions when he considered packing it all in. He will have questioned himself as to why the hell he was doing this. He will have wondered if anyone really cared. He will no doubt have thought about putting it off for another day then weighed up the idea of turning on the TV to see what was happening on the Jeremy Kyle show instead. 

All I can say is thank heavens we have tinkerers in the world. Thank the lord we have thinkers, the people who just keep at it. They get things wrong to save our blushes, then get things right to save our time. They go out on a limb show us a world of possibility and imagine a future that is beyond our brain's capabilities. Damn, this would be a pretty dull place without them.