flash

New magneticNorth web site

by Andy Polaine on April 30, 2009

in General

mn_scribble_interface.jpg

Great to see magneticNorth’s new website live. Brendan gave me a sneak peek of it yesterday and I love it.

The navigation is very playful and intuitive. Actually it is intuitive because it is playful. You basically scribble a doodle and this makes a mask into which a piece from their portfolio opens. You can then click on that item to view more info about the work or simply make another scribble to look at a new piece. The navigation across the top is a history that you can move back and forth through or reset.

What is nice about the whole thing is that you just don’t have worry about doing anything ‘right’. You can scribble any shape and you can scribble over the top of other scribbles and everything automagically sorts itself out.

Go and have a play yourself and tell me what you think.

[UPDATE: Quite some debate started about this, which I'm very happy to be part of. I wrote a long response, which is almost a post in itself, but decided to leave it in the comments.]

Tagged as: flash, interaction, interface, magneticnorth, Play

Tonematrix

by Andy Polaine on April 19, 2009

in General

Inspired by the Tenori-On, Andre Michelle put together Tonematrix. Each square creates a wave force that spreads across the grid (I don’t think that affects the sound though).

It reminds me quite a bit of a piece Andy Allenson made at Antirom years ago that was a multi-user grid sequencer. The smart thing about it was that you could adjust the grid cell amounts to produce complex polyrhythms. It was done in Director and I can’t find it online anymore unfortunately, but it was very compelling. I was always amazed that he got it working over the network too – around 10 years ago now.

I am glad to see sound finally getting some attention in Flash (now that pixels have arrived too). The work Andre has been doing is amazing, but I’d really like to see it being used for more unique, unusual and playful experiments rather than reproducing vintage sequencers and synthesisers (that’s what Reason is for, right?). Somehow that seems to be a missed opportunity – Tonematrix is a more interesting direction.

More on Andre’s blog.

(Thanks to Matt Delprado for the heads up).

Tagged as: audio, flash, Play

Flash on the Beach 2009

March 20, 2009

I am thrilled to have been asked to present again at Flash on The Beach again this year. The info about my talk isn’t up yet (and fortunately that highly unattractive picture of me in the sidebar has been covered up with the text). I’ll be speaking about a deeper understanding of play based on [...]

Read the full article →

Jonathan Harris at Flash on the Beach 08

October 6, 2008

Jonathan Harris’s talk at Flash on the Beach caused quite a stir this year. Originally titled The Art of Surveillance and Self-Exposure, he altered the last section to Beyond Flash (slides here) arguing that “there have been no masterpieces” in Flash (and he included his own work here). I recorded the session, which you can [...]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Read the full article →

Last one in the water buys the drinks

September 28, 2008

Nothing like a bit of animated GIFola. I’ll be at Flash on the Beach this week if anyone fancies catching up to say Hi. I’ll be writing a round-up for Creative Review and interviewing a few of the speakers too. If anyone has any requests or burning questions for them, let me know. If I [...]

Read the full article →

Flash On the Beach 2008

July 11, 2008

Flash on the Beach 2008 is coming soon: September 28th – October 1st in Brighton. I’m not speaking this year, but plan to be there to write about it for Creative Review again. It’ll be nice to relax into being in the audience rather than worrying about my own presentation. I’ve been to a fair [...]

Read the full article →

Director 11 Released – R.I.P. Director

June 3, 2008

ed. Director 11 was released a couple of months ago apparently, though I hadn’t seen the press release. If this was a new version of Flash, the web would be going crazy right now, which just goes to show what’s happened to Director over the years. It was only Douglas Edric Stanley’s rant on how [...]

Read the full article →

3M Interface – Reverse Multitouch

May 22, 2008

My brother, Matt, just e-mailed a link to this interface on the 3M website. Given the multitouch hype at the moment, it’s quite a clever little riff on the theme. Basically it’s as if you are standing to the rear of a multitouch screen. Your mouse controls the finger movements of the person blurred out [...]

Read the full article →

Website Navigation Via Camera Tracking

March 28, 2008

The website of Publicis & Hal Riney uses camera-tracking in Flash for the navigation – the first website to use it as far as I know. Although described by a Twitterer as “Minority Report-like controls” (can we stop using that as the yardstick please!), it’s really more like the method used in the EyeToy Play. [...]

Read the full article →

IKEA Complete Bedroom

February 12, 2008

I seem to be having a bit of an IKEA theme going on at the moment. Following on from the Dream Kitchen site there’s a nice new piece called The Complete Bedroom. It uses the same kind of multi-angle video technique that the other versions use, though this one is simpler. It has some nice [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries