20three

Photographs from this years Magazine Library exhibition, Tokyo, Japan

Owen — Wed, 09 May 2012 07:57:57 +0000

Now In Lemon was featured in this years Magazine Library exhibition, Tokyo, Japan. The organisers very kindly sent me some pictures of the exhibition as we could not get over there ourselves this year.

All photography: (c) Nishio Shinsuke / a Zillion ideas.

~ Magazine Library ~

The 1967 Russian horror film ‘Viy’ reduced to seven animated GIF files

Owen — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:31:42 +0000

I recently saw the 1967 Russian horror film Viy, directed by Georgi Kropachyov and Konstantin Yershov. It’s the tale of a wayward priest who is coerced into spending three nights praying over the coffin of a young bride. The young bride is in fact a witch who thoroughly torments the poor priest each night. (I also recently saw Encounter of the Spooky Kind which has a similar set up, a poor chap spending a few nights in a temple. But with added Kung Fu.)

Viy has some great imagery and some amazing set design. After seeing the film I was inspired to create some looping animations based on some of the sequences in the film. I ended up making seven, so below please find my re-interpretation of Viy as a set of animated gif files.

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≈ v i y ≈

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≈ v i y ≈

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≈ v i y ≈

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≈ v i y ≈

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Databending and glitch art

Databending and glitch art

Owen — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:29:38 +0000

I’m a big fan of imagery produced from mistakes, accidents, glitches and other random acts. As a student I messed around with the accidental results photocopiers could produce, and now I still abuse scanners to randomly warp and distort images.

Most recently I have been looking into Datamoshing and Databending as part of a Kerb project – both are terms for deliberately corrupting images or video.

Glitching out images and video has been going on for as long as there were images and video to glitch out – nowadays a new wave of creative types are jumping on this lo-fi/glitch bandwagon, and as movements grow and get popular they get labels, so now we have Databend and Datamosh.

Below are a few results from using a HEX editor (I have been using Hex Fiend for the Mac) to manipulate the code of a JPEG image. The first image is the uncorrupted original, a cross-processed photo I took in Spain using an LC-A, the following five images have been corrupted by randomly replacing characters, copy and pasting chunks of code, and cutting chunks of code entirely.

Original JPEG image

Corrupted JPEG 01

Corrupted JPEG 02

Corrupted JPEG 03

The two examples below are quite extreme, almost completely destroying the original image. This was achieved by running ‘search and replace’ on the code. I randomly chose a glyph which I swapped out for another randomly chosen glyph.

Corrupted JPEG 04

Corrupted JPEG 05

As you can see some quite crazy and random results occur from just some colour change to the outright destruction of the original image.

Below are a couple of examples of glitch art that I have seen recently that take these techniques and create something interesting. The examples below are a video created by using a load of corrupted still images, and still images created by corrupting video.

Here is the video using corrupted JPEG’s. Created by my old Creative Director at Lateral Simon Crab. Apparently it took him a long time… (he did the audio as well)

Here are some freaky beautiful portraits created by deliberately corrupting video, produced by Jared Leistner:

Portrait by Jared Leistner

Now in Lemon featuring at the ‘Magazine Library’ exhibition, Tokyo, Japan

Owen — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:39:25 +0000

Our self published art zine, Now in Lemon has been invited to be featured in the 2012 Magazine Library exhibition, Tokyo. From the exhibition organisers: “Since its launch in March of 2009 the travelling ‘Magazine Library’ exhibitions have featured more than 1000 magazines, art books and independent publications. The past 9 exhibitions welcomed more than 50,000 visitors and more than 30 publications have found new distribution routes in Japan via the Magazine Library”.

We are very pleased to have been invited, only wish we could make it over. Here is a video of the 2010 exhibition:

You can take a look at the 2012 Magazine Library exhibition website here.

We still have some copies of Now in Lemon for sale, check it out here.

MAO // Logotype system

Owen — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:51:16 +0000

I recently created a logo for techno outfit MAO.

I ended up producing a customizable logotype so that MAO could create their own versions. I stuck to one typeface (an abused Gotham Thin) so that the different variants of the logo all feel related.

Below is an animated GIF I made illustrating some of the logotype variations. Below the GIF is a selection of logotypes produced from the set of characters that made up the customizable logo. I especially like the last one, when just the negative space of the characters is used – unreadable and meaningless without context but still my favorite.

Check out tunes and video produced by MAO at www.maomusic.co.uk. A MAO remix of a Maribou State tune is available as a download at rcrdlbl.com.

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The Incal by Moebius and Jodorowsky

Owen — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:37:33 +0000

The Incal

I have wanted to write about Jean Giraud aka Moeibus, or at least post up some of his work for a while now and after picking up the 2011 hard cover collection of The Incal (Amazon UK) late last year I now have some sort of excuse to write about him (I could have used his huge exhibition staged at the Fondation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain in Paris last year as a reason to write up a post, but after making plans to visit work/life got in the way – a nice little micro site of the exhibition still exists, you can check it out here).

My introduction to Moebius was through my friend Tom and his huge comic collection. As a 16 year old I would be dropped off in town early – Tom would sleep late, so I would climb through his bedroom window (it was on a lower ground floor) and get myself comfortable reading from his comic collection till he got up. Tom had a huge collection of comics, ranging from US marvel and DC imports, to European bande dessinée, in particular Heavy Metal (Métal Hurlant), which was always full of sci-fi and fantasy inspired strips and art, including quite a lot of work by Moebius (he was one of the founders). It was Heavy Metal and it’s more adult themes of sex and violence which introduced the 16 year old me to comics beyond the usual American fare.

So Moebius has always been an inspiration and has left an indelible Impression on me. It’s the elaborately detailed scenes he draws and beautifully colours, and the slightly seventies science fiction aesthetic that at the time seemed so futuristic and now, when I look at these panels again, still seems contemporary and a believable vision of a possible future.

The Incal

It has taken a while for English language collections of Mobeius’s work to come onto the market – I was told by one of the staff at Dave’s Comics in Brighton that Mobeius was not all that bothered about getting his work translated or re-printed, if true it would certainly explain his relative lack of fame in America. In 2010 US publisher Humanoids put out a ‘classic collection’ of The Incal, now out of print it was a pricey affair, hand numbered and released in limited quantities. The copy I picked up is a UK edition published by Self Made Hero.

The Incal

Originally published in the early eighties, this is the first English lanuguage collection of The Incal that I am aware of (I think it was translated in the album format in the late eighties, but not collected). Anyone familiar with the films of Jodorowsky (in particular ‘The Holy Mountain’) will find the general plot of The Incal familiar – a physical journey of discovery that is a metaphor for spiritual awakening or cosmic transcendence. Or something like that. The Incal has a plot that is quite hard to describe; on the surface, The Incal is a race against time, and a confrontation against a great all encompassing evil. The ‘hero’ is the coward John Difool, chosen by cosmic coincidence to save the known universe along side a band of characters that include his pet concrete bird, Deepo, and the most feared mercenary in the universe: the Metabaron. Difool constantly endures the worst humiliations as he faces increasingly bizarre situations.

Detective John Difool is much more of an idiot than the ‘heroes’ Jodorowsky often shows on screen – almost as if Jodorowsky has been able to use the perceived low brow medium of comic books to add humor and a little self deprecation into the mix, all packaged up into the anti hero John Difool. The clue is in his name, he truly is a cosmic fool.

To sum up: if you are into graphic novels or comics buy some work by Moebius. And if you have never seen a film directed by Jodorowsky I suggest you check one out, you will have never seen anything like it before.

The Incal

A little more Moebius:

The Incal was also going to be a feature length animation – a trailer can be seen here.
Jodorowsky and Moebius also collaborated on a film project of Dune in 1974, check out art work for this here.

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Sketchbook pages: 02.2012

Owen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:41:46 +0000

Some recent scans of my sketchbook.

Metaphors & skeuomorphs in touchscreen UI design

Owen — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:21:06 +0000

Skeuomorph:
(Greek: skeuos—vessel or tool, morphe—shape), is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs may be deliberately employed to make the new look comfortably old and familiar.

There is no question that Android interface design has caught up with Apple IOS in terms of delivering a premium user experience, and with the release of Android 4 (or Ice Cream Sandwich) it appears that two opposing philosophies are emerging in mobile UI design.

An interview at fastcodesign.com with Android UX Design Chief Matias Duarte makes interesting reading. Duarte’s design thinking seems to be opposite of Apple’s – while Apple go for a skeuomorphic design heavy on using metaphors, Duarte opts for the opposite. His rational (and I’m para-phrasing here, you can check out his interview here) is that people don’t care for real looking buttons or metaphors – they are a hang up of a 30 year old computer interface design, and over-designed buttons with a 3D effect look great on their own but overwhelming when all put together. In his words: “…when you assemble the individual elements on a screen, each one becomes prominent on its own… Each is very pretty, but when you try to make a wall or a house out of them, all the embellishments fight with the larger building.”

In the fastcodesign.com interview with Duarte, references to Android’s new UI design being ‘like a magazine’ crop up rather a lot – although never directly attributed to Duarte as far as I can tell, the magazine as UI metaphor gets mentioned a few times – on the surface this seems at odds with his design thinking, as a magazine inspired layout, complete with turning pages, is of course… a metaphor. Magazines have been around a lot longer than computer interfaces, and can hardly be called a current and modern interaction model.

And then there is that problem of the ‘Pictures Under Glass’ technology, a phrase nicked from the very insightful Bret Victor. In this great blog post, Victor rants (his word) that “Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness.” – we can’t ‘feel’ the pages of a magazine through the interface of a touch screen device. Using ‘real’ objects as interactive elements within an interface helps a little with this problem – buttons under the glass of a touch screen will never be tactile, but they can have the appearance of being tactile, which can only help.

I am not a huge fan of using metaphors but I often find myself encouraging their use. I have found them useful for quickly communicating functionality – the one great advantage of using metaphors and skeuomorphic design is that you already know how something is going to work – if there is a dial, I know that I have to turn up or down. A toggle? I can toggle it. The big downside is that we tie ourselves to the limitations of the objects we are basing our metaphors on, we lose the chance to innovate or create new methods of interaction.

I would like to think that the average smart phone user is capable of learning new interactive conventions and can get by without the blatant signposting of metaphors, and that decent UI design can be accomplished with new interaction conventions; but to make sure a UI is understandable quickly, without instruction and by a broad demographic I will choose a metaphor. This piece of advice I have lifted from http://developer.android.com sums it up: “Real objects are more fun than buttons and menus: Allow people to directly touch and manipulate objects in your app. It reduces the cognitive effort needed to perform a task while making it more emotionally satisfying.”

Android 4 is promising a much more refined and improved user experience. As more people upgrade and as Android’s market penetration continues to grow it will be interesting to see how Apple reacts.

West Sussex Literary Trail

Owen — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:06:13 +0000

Last month, while the weather was still bright and sunny, we had a days walking and one nights camping along the West Sussex Literary Trail. We met at Christ’s Church railway station and walked along the trail till we got to Amberly, were we set up camp for the night. The days walk was about 15 miles and we had the customary late pub lunch at the White Horse Inn in Pulborough along the way…

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Photos above taken with a Pentax K1000 using 400 ISO Fujifilm. The pic below taken on a HTC mobile.

The campsite near Amberly:

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op / gh / dl

The Monarch’s Way: Sussex

Perry :: sweet pears and their lovely juice.

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:05:48 +0000

It’s that time of year again. It’s pressing time! And this year I had the great fortune to be given a crop of perry pears.

Last year I bought a workshop press with a 12 tonne hydrolic bottle jack to use as a press for making cider. I managed to make some ok cider, and it gave me more confidence to experiment this year. As said, I have been given some lovely perry pears (variety unknown). So over the weekend I embarked on pressing them to get the lovely juice out.

The process of pressing I find incredibly enjoyable. It involves firstly sorting the pears and disgarding any that are way beyond their best; washing them; mashing them; then pressing them. Below shows the set up I have.

Once the pessing starts the juice collects in the plastic tray at the bottom.

I’ve managed to get around 4 gallons of juice, which when measured had a gravity of 1.065 which works out to be a potential alcohol content of around 8% if the fermentation process is allowed to run its course, and no additional sugar is added. I plan to allow this perry to be as natural as possible, so I will be relying on natural yeast rather than adding any years to the juice. When I’ve done this in the past with cider I’ve had a good result. I don’t wish to have a perry that is 8% as that would mean all the natural sugars have been converted into alcohol, and I’d like some sweetness to the flavour. So I will more than likely bottle early on and allow but will allow fermentation to continue in the bottle, which will give the perry a fizz!

Above is the perry. There is a weeks difference between the two on the left and on the right. As can be seen the colouration changes as the sediment drops to the bottom. Once the fermentation has got to the stage I am happy with I will syphon off the perry and put into smaller bottles.

I’ll report back once the whole process has had time to do it’s thing!

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