This Thursday Stewart will be speaking at the sold out On Digital Experience event in London organized by It's Nice That along with Ross Phillips and Daniel Brown. Back in 2009, Stewart contributed an essay for the premiere print issue of It's Nice That on the 1974 Arecibo welcoming message to aliens. And then moved across the Atlantic to the UK, becoming the alien in need of welcome.

Last week was "workshop week" at the University of Art and Design, Lausanne (ÉCAL). Selected practitioners from various fields within art and design were invited to the school to conduct five day workshops with the students. Stewart was invited to work with the Media & Interaction Design students and posed to them the following group-based assignment: 1. Design a language or system that accepts input and transforms it into a new output. 2. Select 'found' inputs to be processed by the system. 3. Design an input that hacks and extends the original design of the system. (No actual programming required, though of course some groups did choose this route.) Special thanks to assistant Mathieu Rudaz for his help and insights during the week and to Jürg Lehni who collaborated on an earlier form of this experiment—challenging design students to imagine new languages of design. And finally, a very warm thank-you to the ÉCAL faculty and staff who were incredibly generous hosts. Below are brief descriptions of the students' final results.

Next week I'll be conducting a workshop for students in the Media and Interaction Design department at the University of Art and Design, Lausanne (ÉCAL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. —Stewart

Code Play is a small talk about the intersection of art, design, and software illustrated through Stewdio works. Stewart was invited to speak about his work at the Creativity and Technology conference (CAT) held in London, November 2010. Stewart's talk, titled Code Play, focussed on playfulness as the unifying theme of the Stewdio portfolio. For more information and the full 20 minute video see the Code Play project page.

It's spring. And that means design thesis shows. Below is the invite text for the Yale School of Art 2011 Graphic Design MFA show. http://yalegraphicdesign.info/.

As both noun and verb, book and exhibition, CATALOG recasts the deconstructed components of finished design projects as new work. The result is an exhibition that is an exploded book, and a book that is a collapsed exhibition.

CATALOG represents the work of Yale School of Art MFA candidates Lauren Adolfsen, Juan Astasio Soriano, Keri Bronk, Benjamin Critton, Lauren Francescone, Brendan Griffiths, Bona Han, Sara Hartman, Hank h. Huang, Zeynab Izadyar, Zakary Jensen, Zachary Klauck, Michael Mikulec, Mylinh Trieu Nguyen, Lindsay Nordell, Ji−Eun Rim, Sally Thurer, and Brian Watterson.

CATALOG will show from May 9−15, 2011 in the Green Hall Gallery of the School of Art, located at 1156 Chapel Street in New Haven, Connecticut. The Gallery is open daily, 10AM−6PM. A closing reception will be held from 6−9PM on May 14.

See you there, YALE G.D. MFA 2011

Thanks to everyone at ZKM for a fun and productive two weeks. I will return on Wednesday, first of June along with Bobby for another round in the panorama lab. For now, I'm back in London. Sketching. Coding. Rendering. —Stewart

Recently I've become re-obsessed with The X-Files. (My last bout of this ended around 1998 or so.) I strongly believe a second movie should be made—there's just so much potential there. (Yes, I realize there have already been two movies, but let's just pretend that absolute rubbish sequel was never made.) I've been watching the series in order, taking notes on arc themes and character introductions, cinematography, etc. It's like homework. But fun homework. These X-Files triptychs are a scatterbrained byproduct of my obsession. Have a look here: http://stewd.io/xfiles —Stewart

One week down and one to go here at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. To recap, I'm here working with Bernd Lintermann, head of the Institute for Visual Media, and the Global Art and the Museum team lead by Andrea Buddensieg on a data visualization exhibition piece for The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 exhibition opening this September. Storyboarding. Coding. Bumping along to an odd mix of the instrumentals-only version of Dr. Dre's 2001 and the first three records from Squirrel Nut Zippers. Not to mention the two minute trailer for the Beastie Boys' Fight for your Right—Revisited which seems to have the most incredible cast list ever, including what appears to be a DeLorean time machine. ("Sense is something you can't even make sense of until you've been to the future and spent time there.") So much more coding and sketching to do. Back at it now. —Stewart

It's that time again. Stewart is currently at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany working with Bernd Lintermann, head of the Institute for Visual Media, and the ever-sharp Global Art and the Museum team. (Bobby will return to ZKM in June.) The result of this collaboration will be an immersive data animation of the art market—a strange and sometimes illogical economy of artists, curators, biennales, fairs, auction houses, and collectors—on display as part of the The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989 exhibition opening this September. But for now, it's springtime. Trees. Leaves. Rain. Breezes. Sunshine. Bunnies. Storyboards. SQL. OpenGL. And so on. Unrelated: Seventeen years ago today there was an unhappy kid in Seattle. And then there wasn't. How time passes.

Yesterday Stewart gave a little talk about Stewdio at Rapier London. Because Rapier's website is a live webcam online visitors were able to peek in and comment via Twitter. You can follow Rapier's tweets at @RapierUK.

This evening Stewart will be showing some slides at Nexus Interactive Arts along with Rumpus Room and Quayola. A fun night of interactive exchange. Check in on the Nexus Twitter feed at @NexusLondon.

David Reinfurt, Stuart Bailey, and Angie Keefer are creating a new model of library: The Serving Library. You are encouraged to read their collective Statement of Intent PDF, help with kickstart funding and of course keep an eye on the Serving Library website which will soon flower from its current form of minimalist five-point manifesto into something much, much larger. See also Dexter / Sinister, O R G, and Dot Dot Dot.

Jürg Lehni has been featured in the relaunch issue of Grafik Magazine (issue #188, pp.28–41). The profile includes photos and descriptions of Jürg's work and interview snippets from Jürg, his collaborators, and his brother Urs Lehni. Some projects highlighted in the profile include Scriptographer, Empty Words, Hektor, Rita, Flood Fill, and the Lineto type foundry website. You can read more about Jürg's work on his website, http://lehni.org and watch more video at http://vimeo.com/lehni/videos. Also check out the brand new Things to Say website, a curatorial collaboration between Jürg and Alex Rich, at http://thingstosay.org.

Last September TED announced their Ads Worth Spreading challenge. Now that the deadline for entry—February 7th—is upon us the judging begins. Stewart has been selected to participate in the twenty-four member judging panel for this competition. Stewdio wishes good luck to all the entrants. Stay tuned to TED for the Ads Worth Spreading results: http://partners.ted.com/adsworthspreading/.

Jürg Lehni and Stewart have been invited as tutors to a one month workshop at the Royal College of Art organized by the Helen Hamlyn Centre and sponsored by Research in Motion. As part of the workshop proceedings Stewart will be speaking about his work at the RCA tomorrow afternoon at 13:30 in the Performing Arts Lab (on the first floor of the Stevens Building). Jürg will do likewise the following Wednesday.