Bobby and Stewart are currently revising new data visualization animations of the global wine market for inclusion in SFMOMA's exhibition How Wine Became Modern opening next month in San Francisco. The two are building out the graphics using Bronson--their custom animation framework originally created for the Exit piece in 2008 and now two years evolved. Also next month, Stewart is giving a talk about Stewdio at the Creativity and Technology conference in London on the 10th. Further down the road? More collaboration with ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. A workshop for Sara De Bondt's students at the Royal College of Art by Jürg and Stewart. And perhaps a holiday present for the Internet to follow up last year's Browser Pong. There's always more around the bend.
Hello World. Again. We've rebooted a bit. Update your bookmarks to the new http://stewd.io. Double website all the way. So intense. This is our first major overhaul of the internals since 2008--when we replaced the Google Showcase (Beta) hoax. Some features and content are temporarily offline while we clean up and rebuild (where did those old blog posts go?), but these will certainly return in time. Felt it's best to launch the scaffold early than to wait indefinitely. You can still catch Stewart on Twitter and watch Stewdio videos on Vimeo. Cheers from our new studio in London (just a door down from the old one) with special shout outs to our space mates Jürg Lehni and Nazareno Crea.
- Wolves. Phosphorescent.
- Figure 8. Elliott Smith (covering Blossom Dearie).
- Paranoid Android. Radiohead.
- Going to Georgia. The Mountain Goats.
- Everytime I'm with You. Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse, featuring Jason Lytle.
- Drift. John Larsen.
- Falling Man. Blonde Redhead.
- So. Central Rain. R.E.M.
- Hated Because of Great Qualities. Blonde Redhead.
- For the Damaged Coda. Blonde Redhead.
- World Leader Pretend. R.E.M.
- Hairshirt. R.E.M.
- Tonight. Sibylle Baier.
- Lizzy. Ben Kweller.
- Soothe. Smashing Pumpkins.
- Two-Headed Boy Part 2. Neutral Milk Hotel.
- Famous Blue Raincoat. Leonard Cohen.
- Mill Town. Bob Martin.
- Do Re Mi. Nirvana.
- Figure 8. Blossom Dearie.
Today we are very happy to release the video for Tomas Halberstad's new single The Pendulum Swings Again. Have a listen as you journey to the far reaches of the universe to meet some new (non-human) friends. Inspired by The Last Starfighter, WarGames, the original Tron, various others.
Last week Stewart gave a small talk titled Code Play at Wieden+Kennedy’s London office. They’ve posted a short text and images about it on their blog here: Code Play with Stewdio
The Setup has just posted an interview with Stewart about hardware and software. But the actual content veers off topic a bit. (Easily distracted?) See for yourself: http://stewart.smith.usesthis.com.
Stewart is speaking about Stewdio today at renown branding agency Landor Associates in London at 4pm
This week Stewart will be guest-posting on design blog It's Nice That. Here's a brief interview and links to the posts.
Design journal Core77 has just posted an interview with Stewart by designer / writer Lisa Smith. It's the inaugural piece for a new series called "Starting Out" which profiles designers who have recently struck out on their own.
Because there's really something to listening to the same songs over, and over, and over.
- Up the Down Escalator. The Chameleons.
- Like a Fool. Superchunk.
- Travel as I Wait. Tomas Halberstad.
- Lessons Learned. Matt & Kim.
- Milk It. Nirvana.
- Oh Messy Life. Cap'n Jazz.
- Two-Headed Boy. Neutral Milk Hotel.
- A Chicken with its Head Cut Off. The Magnetic Fields.
- NYC's Like a Graveyard. The Moldy Peaches.
- Tightrope. Yeasayer.
- Sleepless. The Decemberists.
- Running up that Hill. Kate Bush.
- Hounds of Love. Kate Bush.
- Time. David Bowie.
- All My Friends. LCD Soundsystem.
Stewart will be speaking about Stewdio at the Regent Street store.
Monday, 28 June at 19.00 Apple Store London http://stewdio.org/apple
The Scriptographer team has just released version 2.8.050 which is compatible with the all new Adobe Illustrator CS5. (And previous versions too.) Description from the Scriptographer site: Scriptographer is a scripting plugin for Adobe Illustrator™. It gives the user the possibility to extend Illustrator’s functionality by the use of the JavaScript language. The user is no longer limited to the same tools that are used by most graphic designers around the globe. Scriptographer allows the creation of mouse controlled drawing-tools, effects that modify existing graphics and scripts that create new ones. But Scriptographer is also a webpage on which users can exchange scripts and ideas. Scriptographer gives the tool back into the hand of the user and confronts a closed product with the open source philosophy.
If that sounds good to you, download it today.
Tonight, Exit (also known as "Terre Natale") opens at the AlhondigaBilbao in Spain. If you're in Bilbao don't miss this opportunity to experience the immersive 360-degree data projection. Exit (Terre Natale) is a 45-minute immersive visualization of human migration data divided into six narratives. Our historical focus is primarily from 1990 through today, augmented by occasional older data points or forecasts into the future. Humans migrate for various reasons. Political turmoil may create refugee migrations. Environmental disasters create refugees of a different sort. Some people migrate to wealthier economies sending micro-transactions, or remittances, home to their native land. We have recently crossed a threshold; 50% of humans have migrated from rural areas into cities. As of 2007 one out of every two people is now an urban dweller. See the Exit (Terre Natale) projection description and links to videos at http://stewd.io/w/exit.
Today also marks 30 years since Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis hung himself.
A few weeks ago Stewart happened upon pictures of Panic Inc's new offices. In the shuffle was a photo of their vintage Apple //e computer sitting at an empty desk. Lovers of vintage hardware can't resist. Stewart emailed Panic to ask if they would "do him the honor" of running the Jed's Other Poem music video source code on it. Despite their tight schedules—including the recent release and promotion of Transmit 4—they did indeed get the code onto their Apple //e and even filmed their own version of the video! Have a look at what we're affectionately dubbing “Jed Panic.”
Jed's Other Poem is a music video for the Grandaddy song of the same name. And (perhaps) the world's first open-source music video. You can download the Jed source code package to run on your Virtual II emulator or even your own vintage Apple II series machine. To do the latter just play the audio from the “cassette tape” source code file into your vintage Apple's cassette drive port. You'll need an audio cable with male mini-jacks on either end. (Read up on Apple DOS and the “LOAD” command, you'll be fine.)
After Panic posted their version of the Jed video other Apple-related sites—such as Daring Fireball, TUAW, and 9to5 Mac—linked to it. The flood of traffic brought down Panic's site temporarily. (We think that's pretty hardcore.)
The design and advertising blog Creativity (formerly AdCritic) has just posted an interview with Stewdio’s Stewart Smith, conducted by Jamie Kim of Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam. The two discuss the intersection of art and software, collaborators, personal projects, and the “fake it ’till you make it” ethos. Read up here: Face to face with the brains behind iQuit, Browser Pong and other experiments in digital fun.