BIT TRIP BEAT

. . .stumbled across this video on my web wandering this morning. I appreciate the integration of sound this game. What's more fascinating to me is that it looks like the player is either extremely relaxed and focused—in a meditative state—or totally stressed out and tripping balls. . .anyone played this game before? Which is it?

The Robogames are here!

To appease the geek inside us all, the Robogames are back in SF! They rumble (with fire), play Connect Four, an oh yes, dance. And some, like the ones above, are pretty sweet-looking. Personally, I’m in the market for the one that hunts down and debilitates mosquitoes and spammers (uh-huh, mosquitoes and spammers are of the same species as far as I’m concerned).

i want you to want me

I can't remember the last time I was actually floored by a work of art—I mean floored, effected in every conceivable way. I recently came across one of the most moving pieces of technology art/information architecture that I have ever seen. What is unique about it is that not only is the gathered data fascinating, the delivery is quite beautiful. I mean, yes technology art usually looks interesting with its random visual output, and information architecture is quite appealing in a black and white sort of way, but I tend to miss the poetry. This piece has the graphic design know-how needed to carry its message closer to the heart.

Take a look at Jonathan Harris & Sep Kamvar's I Want You to Want Me, (featured at NY MOMA last spring). It's a powerful soliloquy, real expressions of desire and loneliness orchestrated into an interactive installation that speaks of our human need for company and sense of self. This ode to humanity reveals how we see our selves, how we represent ourselves to the world, and our struggle to find a perfect match. Across time and cultures, methods and technologies vary, but this need is always universally the same in its urgency.


Perhaps, the work can be best described as a tracking device on the human quest for love and a chronicle of the phenomena that is online dating—what it says about us, and how it reveals our ultimate solo essence.