Russell Davies

magic little boxes

boggle flash from russelldavies on Vimeo.

Everyone's excited about Sifteo. If you're lucky enough to live in North America you could even order some for a while.

But if you want a little hint at the magical feeling you get from little boxes that seem to know what other little boxes are thinking you could try the much cheaper Boggle Flash. Just one game, just mono, very limited sounds. But you get a real sense of delight from it. It's slightly, but wonderfully, uncanny to see them cooperate and coordinate. A little hint of how a swarm of slightly clever, very connected objects could feel in your life.

(Apologies for the filming, and the poor Boggle. Trying to do both at once proved too much for my brain.)

 

monster party

More of Stefan's adventures with monsters:

"(Maybe there are illustrators out there who get blasé about having string concertos written about their work, but for me... very exciting! How could I possibly miss it?)"

tom and things rules do

Tom Armitage from Interesting North on Vimeo.

You should watch this. Tom does a talk about games that's beautiful and moving.

I was

whoosh

demo mode

This magnificent post from Ben Bashford reminded me of another potential trap in the world of designing behaviours and personas for things: demo mode. It's the showroom version of the product, which, inevitably you can't switch off without rooting through the manual. Below is one of the demo modes of our car stereo. (I'm convinced there's a more elaborate and showy version too - but i can't get it to perform on demand. It's slightly annoying, but not annoying enough for me to do anything about.)

Attract mode and idle mode are designed - they're part of the product in use. Demo mode isn't intended to be part of its ongoing life but it ends up being there, because we forget to design it out. And those too-small-to-be-annoyed-about things will add up when they're all over the house. Something to think about.

Anyway.

demo mode from russelldavies on Vimeo.

blimey, yes, ambient

Chris has done a good thing here

your authentic east end merch

Our fabled Silicon Roundabout t-shirts and hoodies are now available for public purchasing. And/or if you'd like to do something non-commercial and non-derivative you could download the artwork for yourself. (Other formats are available.)

Sony Rolly performs Robert Frost

Rolly Frost from russelldavies on Vimeo.

I posted about the Rolly a while ago. It's clearly an odd, atemporal object. Something that fell out of Sony before the world was ready and the price was right. It makes sense at about £30. Not the £500 they were asking. But I've been fascinated because you can programme the behaviour, so I've been trying to instruct it to do a convincing recitation of a favourite bit of Robert Frost. I've not done an especially good job but it still hints at the possiblities of second thing that fascinates me - the idea of embodying media in objects.

A little robot performing Robot Frost. That's futurey.

I now want to make a seashell that plays Permanent Bedtime. Anyone know of a cheap, recordable soundchip that can take about 10 minutes of sound?

 

starlings over poole

100,000 starlings fill the skies in Poole from Mark Rigler on Vimeo.

I post this because it'll mean something to two, possibly three, of my favourite people. The rest of you - just enjoy.