Syd Mead and Third Tuesday

A Better Blade Runner and the Designer Behind its World

Before I got started on redesigning this blog, I did get to spend an evening hearing stories from a real designer. Last Wednesday evening’s talk by Syd Mead was a mind-blower.

Before his talk, however, the SIG-CHI Chapter of Vancouver, who were hosting the evening’s event, made some announcements, and then… well, the best description of it might be a ‘happening’.

Here’s a video that someone took of it:

(For those who can’t see the video, essentially, the lights went off and 2 lightweight balls of stretched fabric enclosing multi-coloured lights were tossed over the audience. They were about 7 or 8 feet in diameter, and changed hue every few seconds or so. The crowd happily bounced the balls around the hall, reminding me of those beach balls that get bounced around over the crowds at political conventions. Accompanying the bouncing balls, which were called ‘Zygotes’, courtesy of Tangible Interaction Design was a sort of processed audio, from sensors responding to impacts as the balls bounced off the crowd or the walls and ceiling.

The main event followed: Syd Mead. Mead is the designer of a half a dozen films, including the science fiction classics Tron and Blade Runner. He spoke about his work, using a Quicktime movie to show several decades of illustrations of futuristic cars, buildings, cities and other artifacts of the future that were inside his head and now, perhaps, inside our own as well. There is a DVD of his work as a ‘Visual Futurist’, containing much of the material from his lecture, as well as interviews with others about him and his work. Here’s the trailer, from his web site (check out the high definition version there, it’s well worth seeing at a larger size):

He’s not only a brilliant designer, but he was a good speaker as well, commenting on his work and influences. He showed probably 50-75 examples of his work over the past 50 years or so in various games, cartoons, movies, cars, and industrial design projects. I was surprised to hear that the two artists who influenced him the most were the Baroque painter Caravaggio and 19th/early 20th century illustrator, Maxfield Parrish. As one person interviewed in the trailer put it, Syd Mead is essentially an ’18th Century Man moved to the 20th and 21st Century’. Many others spoke of the ‘reality’ of his vision, that it had gone through much of the evolution and testing related to a product, building, or technology, but entirely in his own mind.

After the talk we saw a screening of the Final Cut (or so it’s now known) of ‘Blade Runner’, a film that . That screening, in and of itself was fascinating as well. The version has none of the film noir, Raymond Chandler-style voice over by Harrison Ford, and there are quite a few scenes either lengthened, added or in one particularly critical case, omitted (I won’t spoil it if you don’t already know). As I was watching it, I kept marveling at the consistency and richness of the visual environment. The only giveaways that Mead’s vision (like Kubrick’s) of the future wasn’t 100% correct was the appearance of the Pan Am logo on a few electronic billboards. Boy, nobody saw that airline as going away, and its logo still looks fine in all of the visualizations of our future.

Third Tuesday

Last night was the monthly meeting of Third Tuesday, a combination presentation and mixer, focusing on (but not entirely limited to) marketing, web 2.0 and the new ‘social media’ that takes place, whenever possible, on the third Tuesday of the month. Last month, Writer and Social Media Evangelist/Consultant, Monica Hamburg introduced many who attended (myself included) to the concept of crowdsourcing. This month, Local Vancouver Technologist, Writer, Raconteur and Miscellanist (that’s how his web site puts it) Darren Barefoot gave an excellent ‘case study’ that explained how his marketing company, Capulet Communications got the attention of the web’s movers and shakers through an online demo of his client’s product. Most surprising detail of the campaign? To invite key people to the online demo (actually, a faux company’s Intranet Wiki), they sent invitations to about 35 of them via snail mail. That’s right, email has produced so much noise and clutter (read: SPAM) that the best way to get to some people is the old fashioned way. It reminded me of an Isaac Asimov short story where a bunch of military scientists realize that the best way to compute some missile trajectories is through some lost ancient techniques, known as ‘multiplication’ and ‘long division’ performed by a soldier with (*gasp!*) a pencil and paper… There was no mention of telegrams or signaling fires, so I’m going to assume that those ‘Employee kits’ sent via Courier were as far back in technology as he was willing to go.

I met up many friends and acquaintances, and am glad to see that the summer season (and mostly sunny skies) has not meant that everyone is heading for the beach, only to reconnect up in the fall. At least, not yet.

Summer (Blog) Fashions

How can you tell when I have a little more time on my hands? A change to the look and feel of this blog is a sure sign. For those who don’t read it via the feed (which means, family and a few others, rather than other bloggers), I’ve once again fiddled with the theme or rather the pages of the blog/web site. There are a few minor glitches, but overall, I’m pleased with this one, and if I don’t screw it up, this design might be in place for a while. The picture of the mountains in the header is from a recent picnic at Locarno Beach.

(Warning, geekery to follow : ) I’m still a fan of the Georgia font for body text, but now I’m making the more standard font choice of a sans serif (Helvetica or Arial if you don’t have that installed) font for headers and navigation. I’ve decided to take the chance of using the WordPress ‘widget’ technology for the sidebar, instead of relying on the theme’s own PHP code for generating the calendar, search box, blogroll and category list, which may or may not be a good idea. Already I can see some disadvantages to this approach, as the sort order of the blogroll is no longer randomized and always appears in alphabetical order. I guess the answer is to use a different widget, but I’m new to this approach. I also can’t figure out how I’ll insert Flickr thumbnails between widgets. I’m thinking that will need a widget of its own. Will have to research further.

At any rate, the advantage to experimenting is that you learn more, so I’ll surely be playing around a bit more. I’m already a bit more sure of myself on the CSS side of things, so hopefully there will be fewer layout glitches.

Now I just have to figure out how to get the home page listed in the page list…

Things to Do When You are Between Jobs

It’s been a little over a week before my last day at IBM. I was frankly blown away by the good-bye that I got from coworkers that Friday. We all went out to a Thai feast in Burnaby (and by Thai feast, I mean it just kept coming and coming until we started giggling as each dish was brought to the table; Pad Thai? Sure, Crispy Fish with sauce? Why not!? More Stir-Fried Vegetables? Of course!)

I packed up my desk (I had spent over a week moving books and toys from it to home in half a dozen trips). It was a strange time, with my time alloted to the project over, and work still needing to be done the project I’ve been working on. I hope that I haven’t left too much hanging; Some of it was dependent on details of features that had not been defined yet, but where I had to leave wireframes (which are essentially diagrams of how screens should look and what should be on them and where) partially finished, I tried to make it clear how they could be completed. I said many good-byes to friends and colleagues, and drove home from Burnaby, a little dazed (hey, it was probably all that food at lunch).

On Saturday, we decided to play tourist all over again. We went to the open house of CityTV and took a station tour, meeting most of the crew of Breakfast Television (which I must confess, we’re not regular viewers of, but it was fun, nevertheless). I won a CityTV Umbrella, and we got some Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream at the end of the tour. I like the station; It’s small and has a lot of personality, and they run Jeopardy each evening (and also carry Reaper, which is a lot of fun and another series filmed here).

Saturday Night, I went to the ticket office at the Orpheum just before the Symphony Concert, and got a last-minute seat for the concert (only $15!). I heard the VSO play one of my favourite pieces, Prokofiev’s Third Symphony. I love it because it’s mostly loud and fast, and almost never lets up. In particular, the third movement is some of the wildest and most vivid music that Prokofiev ever wrote, and much of the drama of the piece is due to the fact that it’s taken from his opera ‘The Flaming Angel’, which chronicles a young nun’s psychotic breakdown and pursuit of a man she believes is an angel, complete with an on-stage exorcism and chase through the streets. Not your usual opera fare, and certainly not your usual Symphony. The orchestra did a fine job, but I suspect that it was too racy for the crowd, who didn’t give it as much of a standing ovation as they did for the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in the first half. Ah, when will they stop doing this?! Once again, people, when every performance gets a standing ovation, it ceases to mean anything!

The rest of the weekend was a bit quieter, but things picked up again today, with a job interview. I’m not going to write more about that until things settle down either way. Pam also has a lead on a contract, so it’s probable that the free time between engagements for both of us is probably going to come to an end soon.

Tomorrow evening is a special SIGCHI event: the film designer Syd Mead (who was responsible for the revolutionary sets and scenery of Blade Runner) will be in town speaking, followed by a screening of the final cut of the movie.