prototyping the future

Last week it was 'prototyping the future' time. It is a one week of workshops on different topics like mobility, biology, philosophy and many more. I decided to go for an info-graphics course, as I had the chance to get a sneak-peak last semester.

I only had two and a half days, so it was a quite short attempt, but I learned quite a bit about showing (or not showing) information. I really liked working on information graphics, hopefully i get another chance soon - maybe with a little more time...

Voices of Umeå

The week before the last we had a short project together with a local composer. He is planning to make a music-piece made up from human voices. Our brief was to give him the tool to collect those voices. It should be some sort of installation in public space, that makes people to record their voice.

Our idea was to use the iconic shape of an old telephone as it is an unmistakable hint that one can 'talk to it'. Providing two telephones, people could have a conversation over a short distance. The rotary dial is used to apply different effects on the voice and by that invite people to experiment with their voices. 

In further development, a sampler functionality could be used to enable the user to create music with his own voice - fun project, and a nice introduction into sound design, which we will work on during the next couple of weeks...

Some product designs from UID

It's been a while but I still wanted to share some of the results of the product design master students. They had a project in cooperation with a mining company and did some nice, proper industrial designs. I think ID will never loose its appeal to me!

winter_2

One thing you can do with vast amounts of snow: building 3D mazes for ice-marbles. And yes, we actually do have sun in here in Umeå!

We are working on a 'design for sound' project at the moment: How to collect voices for a big music project. It will be done on Friday, so I might post some results soon.

winter

Umeå is covered with snow since I returned from my 2 week trip to Germany. It feels like a REAL winter, not that rainy, muddy German 4 month lasting November. The temperature drops to around -10 degrees, so it's not that cold (yet). Days are getting longer since end of December, it's almost 6 hours now.