Futuresonic
A couple of weeks ago I attended Futuresonic in Manchester. It had many interesting speakers, and some not so good ones, but overall the impression I took away was an idea about where tech conferences are at right now.
One of the most stunning presentations I saw there was Aaron Koblin’s, on data visualisation. There are many projects I’ve seen, thought were interesting, and never realised were his until seeing the talk (for instance Flight Patterns, The Sheep Market, and House Of Cards).
However, Koblin is quite exceptional in his ability to implement technical ideas in interesting and aesthetically pleasing ways. Another speaker, Tapio Makela, pointed out that artists involved in interdisciplinary data visualisation projects are often relegated to simply deciding on the visual aesthetics that data are presented with, rather than seriously engaging in any dialogue.
Partly this is to do with the massive gulfs of understanding between fields. Artists simply are not scientists, and it takes a great deal of effort to seriously insert artistic practice into a subject of scientific study. Tapio pointed to M.A.R.I.N. as one effort at breaking down this barrier. It’s a sailing boat that carries oceanographers but also runs artists residencies. It reminds me of Bell Labs running residencies with people like Lillian Schwartz; giving the kind of immersion which is much more effective than spectating on, flirting with and then referencing a given field.
Overall Futuresonic reinforced the concept I pointed to yesterday with Charles Stross’ LOGIN talk:
Using these gizmos, we won’t need to spend all our time pounding keys and clicking mice inside our web browsers. Instead, we’re going to end up with the internet smearing itself all over the world around us, visible at first in glimpses through enchanted windows, and then possibly through glasses, or contact lenses, with embedded projection displays.
To an extent, this is already happening with smartphones and handheld gaming, never mind the kind of prototype hardware he’s talking about there. Glasses with prisms that bounce projected displays into your eye have been around for a decade or more, the problems are just battery life and miniaturising the projectors to the point of aesthetic acceptability.
Beyond that, many of the talks were kind of formulaic despite wildly varying content. It’s not that they weren’t interesting, they were, very, but I saw exactly the same at GDC too: The speaker gives examples of interesting projects they and others have created within a particular field, then ends the talk with “We’re in a transitional period and noone knows what’s going to happen next. Thanks for listening!”. The frequency with which I’m hearing this indicates to me that it’s well nigh time for us to talk less and make more.
(Image from Flight Patterns by Aaron Koblin)
