I came across these photos from Olafur Eliasson‘s latest installation in Beijing, Feelings are facts, over at designboom. I saw a book of his work this winter and liked the more geometric pieces, but love, love, love this one: spaces filled with shifting, saturated colorfog.

(images from designboom)

When I started Rivers, this was a guiding principle. The first sketches were actually volumetric color fields oozing around with objects and networks floating around in them.

As it developed, I kept these color gradients as they materialized onto surfaces. I’m just a sucker for these palettes (and funny how much the ground here looks like Eliasson’s ceiling above :)

I am holding half an acre
Torn from the map of Michigan
And folded in this scrap of paper
Is a land I grew in

- Hem, Half Acre

This song came on while I was hacking away on new features for the LOVELAND site tonight and it seemed like a funny enough synchronicity to spark a post. In particular, I’m making tools for people to shape and shuffle their fragments of land on the map, folding, dividing and apportioning tiny neighborhoods. I haven’t written lately about the project but only because it’s been picking up steam and keeping us all extremely busy! The new site launched, the Detroit crew is breaking ground on the property, and exciting events are taking shape.

If you’d like to support this wild idea, please grab some inches! Or get in touch to help shape the future of LOVELAND – we’re always looking for artists, geeks, programmers, writers and all-around awesome people to collaborate. If there’s something you want to build this is a great platform & community of creative weirdos.

April 10 – Yuri’s Night Bay Area

I’ll be playing at Yuri’s Night down at NASA on April 10. It is awesome. It’s a collaborative production this year by crews including Symbiosis and Lovetech, so expect top-notch music and art installations.

(photos from Laughing Squid)

March 18 – 5 Minutes of Fame at Noisebridge

Thursday I’m signed up to talk about Loveland at the new Noisebridge space in the Mission. The idea, recent developments, and upcoming website launch and developer’s platform.

I was invited to play a Valentine’s Day party and thought I’d conjure up some hearts for it. These functions at Mathworld looked suitable for some parametric sweetness so I grabbed one.

And shortly had them floating around…

…at the Red Party.

• The Mag+ concept design and Kicker’s notes
• Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense project
• MIT gestural screen interface
• Two-handed theremin
• Magic projection
• 3D AR sketching
• Kicker Studios‘ gestural TV remote
• Johnny Lee does amazing things with the Wiimotes
• Microsoft’s Project Natal
• Projection on buildings
• Reactable tangible sequencer blocks
• AR magic
• Emotiv, EmSense, NeuroSky, OCZ’s neural impulse actuator

Mike at Stamen writes about a project proposing the reuse of small remaindered lots for urban renewal. Local Code / Real Estate on Vimeo.

Today, these remnant parcels represent an essential archipelago of opportunity.

Once each site’s urban performance is maximized its design can be engaged & extended for local benefit. Based on existing models of community design, as well as new research in digital democracy, we propose place-based media to shape opinions, engage communities, and even aggregate finances and funding. The final outcome is a network of urban places and virtual space combined.

I dig the digital overlays on paper maps & on video of the sites (near mid-video), and idea of online community engagement with small urban lots. (Yes, my mind is on Loveland lately, why do you ask?)

It’s my new book! 144 whole pages jam-packed with your favorite art. It’s so exciting to finally be done and flip through a copy. You can order one too!

Last week I was working on Loveland inch viz at the Marsh Cafe in the Mission, where they happen to be producing a show called Loveland. Last time I mentioned a 2D-yet-linear progress bar, showing each inchvestor’s share with colors! and squares! Thought I’d share some steps along the way towards real placement on the 9′  Plymouth grid, experiments with placing rectangular plots. A random scattering…

And more clustering tendencies…

The empty swath in the middle is a walkway to provide pedestrian access to all parts of Plymouth, as originally taped down on the studio floor in Detroit. (We don’t want visitors trampling the miniature city…)

Some big news this week: early investors’ square inches will become square feet once we reach 10,000 and colonize the next patch of land. For now play with it on the web over at makeloveland. Keen observers will notice that the whole arrangement reshuffles every few minutes – just to keep things interesting…