the above video has a secret: it's not actually a video. it's a complex series of instructions telling a computer's graphics and sound components what to do, and it takes up less than 200K on your hard drive.

for some perspective, 200K is smaller than many microsoft word files.

here's how this is accomplished, in the author's words:

"The secret behind all this is procedural content generation. in a nutshell, instead of storing a movie as-is we're storing a certain number of mathematical formulas for image and audio manipulation as well as the "recipe" how to apply those small bits of code in a way that what you see comes out. And while it's running your computer's graphics card cares for the actual displaying ot the world, just like in modern 3D games. Formulas+recipe are of course way smaller than the end result, and with a few additional sprinkles of magic compression fairy dust we get down to under 200K, which is way less than one single high quality image of this show would take.

This of course means, no, we don't have any magic technology that can compress videos down to that size, but the video has to be authored in the way described above. Manually. With, like, lots of work involved. Making this gem took us all more than two years of hobby part time work after we had five years of experience with this kind of technology."

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Patric King.

I found this gem of an animation while looking for news on John Kelly's performances, and boy howdy is this the truth. procrastination is painful.

Whenever I'm beginning a new typeface design, a new page composition, a new picture, procrastination hits me like a ton of bricks.

I try not to worry too much about it as i simultaneously try to contain it—this sort of busywork before diving into a project a way to pre-process the task at hand. A way to think and plan out the upcoming task, not just dive in and make avoidable mistakes.

The trick is to balance the amount of pre-processing I do with a necessary amount of risk, so that i can be assured I'm trying something new. It's a tactic i picked up from my friend the personal trainer. He constantly tells me to know where I'm going to run before I do, but not so much that i can't enjoy moving.

Posted on March 23, 2009 by Patric King.

"P22 is our latest attempt with music-oriented tangible interfaces. We figured out an instrument to convert phisical movements into acoustic waves.

"We worked with light sensors and arduino in order to get numbers out of the actual light source. The intensity of the “noise” is then translated into visual projections for achieving a clean feedback of the interaction."

from Personal Report.

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Patric King.

Here's a thoughtful review of Rei Kawakubo's latest collection for Comme Des Garçons, posted recently at the New York Times. With such severity in the fashion world right now, Rei's mixture of a rather sad reality with a fantastic feminity is a welcome sight.

All photography originally shot for the New York Times by Valerie Mezzanotti.

Posted on March 09, 2009 by Patric King.

this short film is a recent find from one of our friends' profiles on facebook. it's a heartfelt look at how we connect and separate ourselves in urban life, both to our detriment and great reward.

Posted on March 03, 2009 by Patric King.

A lesson in love from Jennie Tarr and Kyle Gilman: fOr the sake of your relationship, don't go messing with the space-time continuum.

Posted on February 07, 2009 by Patric King.

Ah, the nineties. Flannel, local coffee, grungey guitar-laced Liz Phair songs in the air. Brad Wood was the audio producer behind the soundtrack of that era, and many a teenaged boy's hero. Here's young Hartley's take on Brad worship, in a video by Kyle Gilman.

Posted on February 07, 2009 by Patric King.