Camped out in the hospital for a few days after my wife gave birth to our son. These fogs move through Chicago all the time but I had a great view from my window sill bed. The forefront building is Water Tower Place with the Hancock Tower angling behind. Naturally desaturated images always move to the top of my list.
The Kings Speech film at one minute intervals – each scene as 1 and 4 average colors.
Each scene sampled to 4 colors
I had a quick idea yesterday to see what a movie would look like simplified down to its color palette. What if anything can you tell of a film’s mood, pace or story this way? I mocked up Tron Legacy, taking a film grab every minute and averaging each scene down to just one color. Admittedly you do lose quite a bit this way, where a high contrast black and white scene becomes gray. I’ll rework a version sampling each scene down to 4 or 6 colors to accommodate that. The color blocks start top left with the beginning of the movie and move to the right, then restarting down a row and moving right again. I’ll try another film when I get a few free moments to see how they compare.
Each scene sampled to 4 colors
The Vanguard and Underscore Magazine teamed up a while back to create 4 bicycles – Cloud, Mist, Dew and Rain single speed rides. All four are built on restored 1970s Ishiwata tubed frames. The four are sold out and at $3,200 each, I imagine they are probably on someone’s wall somewhere.
CLOUD Messenger Bike
MIST Messenger Bike
DEW Messenger Bike
RAIN Messenger Bike
From his new biography:
“Eichler did a great thing,” Jobs said on one of our walks around the neighborhood. “His houses were smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simple taste to lower-income people.”….
Jobs said that his appreciation for Eichler homes instilled in him a passion for making nicely designed products for the mass market.
“I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost that much,” he said as he pointed out the clean elegance of the houses. “It was the original vision for Apple. That’s what we tried to do with the first Mac. That’s what we did with the iPod.”
A lot of interesting thoughts on the importance of architectural design and the influence on its inhabitants – whether it is directly perceived or not. Interesting to see Eichler and other modernist thinking from that period applied to today’s mass market housing production, to the house as product. Smart and cheap and good still? Cheap and big and comfortable still seems more appropriate. Funny that Eichler homes are now basically collectors items in that part of the United States. Smart and good but highly-sought-after and expensive and brand-name fashions. For a reason. Hard to imagine people boasting they live in an “Eichler” or a “Haver”, etc. in the 50′s. Very hard to imagine people now or in the future talking about their homes as “Pultes” or “Hortons” or “Lennars”. For good reason.
The future, according to the Microsoft Office Division – their concept video full of touchscreens, interaction, reactions, visualizations, collaboration, relations and productivity.
Send me an angel.
If this preview for a new documentary filmmaker Seb Montaz doesn’t at least make you want to get out from behind your computer then what will?
I Believe I can Fly ( flight of the frenchies). Trailer from sebastien montaz-rosset on Vimeo.
I’m really digging this Hirsaki Knife Box by Keiji Ashizawa, made of paulowina and local apple tree wood.
Similarly concepted, the Drawer Shelf is also a piece to recognize.
All images via http://www.keijidesign.com/
