Adam Luptak :: Scratches

I love the Olympics. It’s a statement that may sound silly, childish, or perhaps a little disingenuous, but I really believe it’s true. I’ve always loved the Olympics – the athleticism, the competition, the warm-fuzzy one-world-isms, I buy into all of it. I’m really kind of a sap for this sort of thing.

Photo by Matthew Field

So the 2010 Winter Olympics start tomorrow, and I’m pretty stoked. The 2010 Olympics in Vancouver – admittedly, I really kind of wish I could go up for it, but oh well. (After all, I never attended any of the events when they were held in Salt Lake City, even though I only lived 3 hours north at the time – I did go see the torch as it came through town, though.) For one thing, they’re in Vancouver – I mean, look at that photo – that’s just ridiculous how cool that is.

The medals, though, are what I wanted to talk about. I love the design of these. The simple, minimal shape, with the subtle Olympic rings in the lower right-hand corner. Further, the shapes etched into the surface are actually the forms of a design in the art style of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. It is probably an indication of how white I am, but I have been enchanted with Northwest Coastal art for as long as I remember, and I love that the placement of the design on the medal is randomized, so each medal only has a fragment of a larger whole, and no two medals are alike.

Another awesome aspect of the medals is where the raw materials have come from—a portion of the metal (I haven’t done the math, but my friend Rachel thinks it may be more than 50%) is recycled from e-waste. While it’s certainly only a first step towards sustainability, it’s a fairly ambitious first step. (I’d encourage you to check out Rachel’s well-footnoted post on the matter.) I also wanted to share the following NOVA segment about the making of the medals, which inspired me to write this post.

Mad props and humblest thanks to those involved in the creation of these beautiful pieces.

P.S. Be sure to check out The Big Picture albums of the Olympic Torch Relay (both the torch and the relay are works of beauty too)—both the first and second album.

It’s possible that you know and love TED as much as I do – if not, I am honored to introduce you to it. I haven’t been watching TED Talks in the past few monts – lost sight of them and forgot, in the face of work, personal work, personal life, and the seemingly insane shortness of days, weeks, and months. Luckily, I ran out of new ‘All Things Considered’ content on my NPR app, and happened to remember TED.

So, tonight I wanted to watch a quick talk while I ate, before turning my attention to a project that needs very badly to be finished, lest I fall so far behind that the universe collapses. What I watched was, not only hilarious at moments, but the most interesting discussion of creativity that I’ve heard in a long time, if not ever. I hope you watch and enjoy.

If you’ve spoken to me during the past few weeks, I’ve no doubt told you about the project I’m on at work. That’s not what this post is about, however. For the project I’ve been on, we used the AS3 port of Box2D to manage our collision and physics. As I was working through figuring out how to use Box2D, I was checking out the demo file, and one of the demonstrations had this spidery walking machine, labeled as a “Theo Jansen Walker.” Of course, I couldn’t contain my curiousity, so to Google I went…>

Turns out that Theo Jansen is, quite simply, an evil genius. This guy is just throwing down some incredible stuff. It started, it seems, 21 years ago – Theo Jansen wrote a computer program that created virtual 4-legged walking machines that would race each other, and then emulate the winner, evolving towards increasingly faster machines. As a programmer, that is a cool enough concept for me, but he wasn’t satisfied – he decided to take the concept analog.

So he’s been building these multi-legged walking machines out of plastic tubing and cable ties. Let’s pause for a moment – he builds multi-legged machines. That walk. They capture the power of the wind, and they walk. How. Cool. Is. That.

STRANDBEESTEN from Alexander Schlichter on Vimeo.

And he keeps them evolving. He tries variations, and when something works, he takes that “dominant” gene and puts it into other machines. His ‘beach animals’ have even started to sprout wings, store compressed air into bottles for later use, or hammer themselves into the sand to ride out storms.

The cynic in me rolls my eyes a little at Mr. Jansen’s hope that someday his machines will be able to self-evolve, and that he’ll be able to turn them loose on the beach to live their own lives. But then again, with the strides he appears to be making, maybe he will be able to pull it off, at least a partial – beasts that can react to their surroundings well enough to go around obstacles and hardy enough to survive on their own. It’d really be quite something to see these things just crusing on a beach somewhere.

So check it out – it’s awesome. Not only is it awesome on a technical level, I really love the aesthetic of his beach animals.

At the suggestion of Eric, I thought I’d do a little roundup of a few things I’ve seen recently that I thought were awesome. (Actually, it was my idea, but Eric gave me the tiny amount of encouragement that I needed.)

Booty Juggler

Rachel would tell you that I have a certain affection for things piratey. (Yarr.) So I was delighted to see the post on grain edit this morning about Booty Juggler. It’s both a lot of fun, and one of the most beautifully designed (and amusingly designed) Flash games I’ve seen. So check it out.

HOPE – CHANGE

Erik Natzke is, quite simply, the man. I saw him speak at FITC, and thought, man, this is what generative art ought to be like. So my ambition is to do work as interesting as his. But more on that later. Anyway, check out his latest work. (Yes, that’s generative art, not paint.) Oh yeah, and make sure you vote.

The New Yorker

Quick little thing, the cover of the New Yorker – what a great little illustration. Saw it on ISO50. I just really dig the style, it’s a lot of fun. And again, make sure you vote.

Thomas

And lastly, this one is for Adwoa. And me too, because I think it’s adorable. Saw this first on grain edit, but the meat is on Design*Sponge. If only I could find a copy of it… my future (hypothetical) children would love it, and in the meantime, I imagine I would enjoy it too.

(Vote.)