This is big, and I just found out about it today. The UK government, one of the first governments worldwide to put open government data on the agenda, has released the Combined Online INformation System, or Coins. Basically this is a huge online dataset in which the government shows every aspect, to the tiniest of details, of their expenditure. [Read more →]
This edition of Test_lab, a bi-monthly event by our friends at V2_ featured a selection of freshly graduated artists, architects, and designers from European art and design academies whose projects explore the invisible aspects of our contemporary urban environments. This sounded interesting enough to travel to Rotterdam, where I found out that the event had grabbed a lot of peoples attention: the room was packed.
Let me start of by saying that it was hot. So hot in fact that none of the participants got what they deserved: interaction with the audience. We were simply unable to think.
With that out of the way I let’s see what the event was like. The opening speaker, Theo Deutinger is known for his data-visualizations. He learned from the best: he was trained at Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, who besides architecture make wonderfully evoking visualizations. OMAs style was recognizable in Deutingers presentation, however only one part actually made sense to me. With a beautiful animation, Deutinger showed us that the world actually goes to sleep everyday at 24:00 GMT+1. I always figured that when we went to sleep, people were at work on the other side of the world, and this would balance out over the day, keeping a stable amount of people who were at work. However, in his Work around the world project Deutinger shows the opposite. Play around with it. It looks beautiful. [Read more →]
Another company promising real AR-vision: Laster Technologies has started promoting their SmartVision technology, and it has got me excited. This is the first time I see AR goggles with transparent glasses. The goggles themselves are starting to look like normal glasses. The company says they expect to have a consumer product in the next two years. This is one I would love to try.
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