I stumbled upon this talk from the middle of last year, which features Brian Eno (legendary music producer, originally part of Roxy Music) and Will Wright (one of the worlds most successful game designers - responsible for the Sims, Sim City and the upcoming Spore) organised by the Long Now foundation. The two have recently been working together (Brian Eno is working on the soundtrack to Spore).

The Long Now foundation is a curious institution. Formed in 1996 (or “01996″ as they state) its aim is to promote consideration of human existence and culture over a much longer term. Their own description states:

The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and promote “slower/better” thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.

Among other things, they are currently designing an enormous clock to be displayed in a section of the Nevada desert, to mark the passing of the next 10,000 years. A prototype of the first draft of this clock is on display at the Science Museum.

The talk is centred on generative content, the emergence of interesting forms and phenomena from well-constructed simple rules, and touches on a wide variety of disciplines in which this is of use or interest. Naturally Brian’s focus is on his employment of generative content for much of the ambient music he has released as well as visual work such as 77 million paintings. Will talks extensively on the applications to games and simulations, and naturally his particular speciality - simulation games. He presents a series of examples of generative content, from cellular automata, such as Conway’s game of life and the Sand Pile model used for predicting avalanche size, to generative character illustration, to pattern language within architecture such as the work of Christopher Alexander. He talks of tradition games, such as Go in which player action is the driving force, but through the small aperture of the game’s two rules, enormously complex strategies come into play.

Will’s presentation ultimately culminates in a presentation of his magnum opus, Spore (which has progressed significantly since the last time I saw it… the latest version of the creature creator is mind-blowing). Spore as a game is possibly the single largest demonstration of generative creation to date - everything within the game is created using intelligent, adaptive procedural systems (obviously directed by the player). This includes wonderfully detailed creatures (that animate in a physically believable, consistant way), cities, civilisations, planets and eventually an entire galaxy.

Its a fascinating talk (about an hour and a half), and well worth watching one sunday afternoon. Shame the streaming seems a bit screwed (why can’t I just download the damn video huh?).

I’ve just finished reading The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by the revered Physicist /Storyteller Richard Feynman - nobel laureate, atom-bomb builder and safecracker.

I’ve been a huge fan of Feynman since I was a kid and my brother Toby lent me his copy of the autobiographical Surely You’re Joking, Mr.Feynman! - his world view, his sense of wonder and his understated attitude to his work are inspiring.

This volume is a collection of lectures, interviews and short papers assembled from different periods of his life. They detail his attitude to religion, to pseudo-science and philosophy. It contains stories of his time working at Los Alamos on the Manhattan project (the WW2 project to build the the first atom-bomb), lectures to science teachers

One of the recurring themes throughout the book is the sense of wonder imbued upon him by his father, a non-scientist (he was a uniform salesman) with a passion for science. It is striking how much of an effect he had on the young Feynman, how by taking walks through the forest and asking probing questions about the activity of the woodland creatures, or by the suggestion of taking a martian’s perspective to ask questions of everyday things that may evade the observational radar of people leading their everyday life. This inquisitive force in his early youth gave him an unquenchable thirst to discover the inner workings of nature, as well as to share his passion and findings with anyone and everyone. This enthusiasm has certainly already had an affect on me as a reader, stirring up pleasant memories of New Scientist subscriptions and head-scratching times trying to slog through various physics books way beyond my ability. Its also interesting to see his attitude to education and his belief that effective education is a process of cultivating a deep understanding of the subject rather than the repetition of learned facts and definitions. He seems to favour process-based learning and states the importance of failure in acquiring skills and knowledge, sentiments Echoed by Will Wright (will blog about this soon).

Another subject touched upon is top-down vs bottom-up design. Ben Cousins mentioned this in relation to game design when discussing the chapter containing Feynman’s report on the Challenger disaster. It discusses two different approaches taken when designing or building anything with a certain degree of complexity: top-down (design the system as a whole simultaneously) and bottom-up (design each individual component separately, integrate completed components to create more complex composite components, iterate). Feynman is a firm advocate of bottom-up design, primarily because it is a far more reliable method to create well-crafted, well-tested projects. It affords the team members the opportunity to focus their efforts on mastering each individual component, on gaining a deep understanding of each part and getting each part right before integrating to the next level. It also brings deep, re-usable knowledge to a team. This can apply to game design (fine-grain prototyping of specific mechanics), software engineering (unit testing), product design (focus group testing on specific elements)…anything that can be broken down into more elementary units. While many fields of work have been using this methodology for years, there are others where it is still in its infancy or not employed at all and I’m sure it could reap benefits.

So, as a book its definitely recommended. Perhaps not for any explicit knowledge imparted, but for its ability to inspire and for its insight into one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.

Realtime rigid-body physics has been around for a while now, producing wonderfully realistic results of many real-world phenomena (buildings collapsing, explosions, collisions, and of course everyone’s favourite: big stacks of boxes falling over). Something thats not seen very often in a real-time environment though is the simulation of deformable objects.

DefColStudio is a “simulation framework implementing various published methods for deformable modeling and collision handling”. The result of employees of AGEIA (developers of physics engines that bought out Novodex) and academics from the University of Freiburg, it provides the user with a little sandbox to play with a selection of deformable object simulation algorithms. In other words it lets you drag around squishy things and poke/pull/prod them to your hearts content.

From a designer’s perspective, I love how this kind of interaction feels, its a welcome departure from the formality and seriousness of rigid body simulation. It provides an entirely new tactile sensation, much more playful, and could have numerous applications in bringing a game-world to life. I don’t know how close it is to widespread adoption amongst the big boys of physics (though I assume as Ageia folks are behind this, not far), but its certainly a welcome new entry in the designer’s toolbox.

So heres the direct download link (Windows only). Download and have a play.

I’ve been spending a bit of time thinking about the kind of projects I like to work on, and the kind of freelance work that I’m really looking for. Looking at what I’ve worked on and created over the past 6-7 years, I think I’ve found a pattern in terms of projects that really make me content and satisfied and those that drill into me the sensation that I’ve been genuinely wasting considerable chunks of my life.

So, without further ado, I provide three questions that you can ask about a project that you are working on, or that you are planning or considering creating:

• Is it Fun?
• Is it Useful?
• Is it Interesting?

Perhaps this can be applied to other areas of work where you actually end up producing something e.g. product design, service design etc.

So to summarize, look at any given project, and answer these questions. If the answer to one is yes, then very good! Its a worthwhile project. If the answer to two is yes, then you really have something special. If somehow you have all three, then wow - this is most certainly worth your time and effort.

For example, an online game can be considered fun, perhaps interesting, but not useful. An online service like Google maps can be considered useful, perhaps interesting-ish but not fun. Wikipedia is interesting and useful. Ebay is useful. Youtube is fun and interesting. Brain training on the DS is fun and useful (well probably).

The trouble is that the majority of online projects (and this can certainly be applied to other areas) do not address any of these basic requirements. One area that is particularly guilty is online marketing. Quality, effective marketing is about clear communication, of informing the consumer of a product/service, detailed information about it, and its benefits. For example, the Apple site does a good job of providing a wealth of information about its products in a clear and concise way. Marketing should be, above all else, USEFUL. Its when people think it should be fun or interesting that it really fucks me off, because generally attempts at making marketing fun or interesting fail hideously and get in the way of the primary objective. If you can get it right, fair enough (for example, inclusion of perhaps a promotional film in a subsection of the main site) but how many times have I gone to a site to be presented with a “brand experience” when all I want to do is find out basic information about the product I want to buy. If you want to modify the objectives of your product beyond the core objectives, look at your plan and ask the questions again. If it is somehow less useful but no more fun or interesting, then its a bad move. This also applies to duplicating an existing useful product or service. For example, if you are to launch a marketing campaign, then no, you don’t need to create another myspace or facebook, unless you are going to make one that is actually better than the existing competition, otherwise its just not useful.

Another aspect that I find astounding is that so many companies still consider online activity to be primarily about marketing. For example, while I was working at SCEE, all online activity was directed by a subsection of the marketing department! You would think for a company attempting to move into a sphere of unified product, service, community, then online would be a true channel for a wealth of activities and that online would be an independent section of the company, but instead the overall vision was massively blinkered because decisions were being made in the context of marketing objectives for the company rather than based on whether the end result was useful, fun or interesting.

So, are those questions enough to measure the quality of something that you work on or create? I’m not sure. I might start reviewing things, ala an 80s video game mag or top trumps, with stars out of five for “FUN FACTOR”, “INTERESTING FACTOR” and erm.. “USEFUL POINTS”.

Perhaps a bit cheesy, but definitely of interest, this is a video by an assistant professor of “Digital Ethnography” at Kansas State University charting the history of the web up to the present day, and being Ethnography it focuses on the social impact of recent developments. I guess the part that I found particularly interesting is the idea of the web being “trained” or “programmed” via content entry and cross-linking to represent a map and archive of human knowledge, and that in some way the web represents or reflects humanity itself. As the title says “The machine is us”

I was at a wedding at the weekend, and the question I really hate getting is “what do you do”. I really wish there was some term that could be used to describe the job which I guess I do. I’ve had a few job titles, most of them rather vague or woolly (senior creative technologist, game designer, technical creative, interaction designer). We need a new job title that covers a lot of this stuff in a way that people get, as opposed to the reaction “oh you make games” or the one that is like a stake through my heart “oh you’re in IT”. This will also prevent me from spending ten minutes rambling “well I do a bit of design… no not really graphic design, more the way it behaves…. and yeah I do some programming…. and yeah i make animals in 3D sometimes”.

One thing that I’ve noticed over the past few years is that some subjects and areas of work that I used to be really passionate about have lost their allure. I hope that it is not extreme cynicism that has made me more focussed on some interests and less keen on other areas of the digital landscape, but I personally feel that one thing is to blame - specialism.

Following on from the previous discussion of the RCA Show, it does seem that more areas that previously overlapped are becoming more specialised, that perhaps as these areas of study are becoming more elaborate, practitioners feel that they should become more specialised themselves. Perhaps there is the assumption that the only unexplored territory, the only frontiers left to push back are deep rather than broad.

I’m a generalist. I love being a generalist. This is mainly because there are many things that interest me and I don’t want to be forced to work on a single aspect of a project, or a single genre of project. The trouble is that the more I look around, the more that specialism seems to be a requirement. Freelancing certainly seems to be the best antidote to this (I’m currently working on a big installation for the natural history museum, an educational project for the BBC and starting a t-shirt business - great for my ADD), but I do worry that generalists are not being considered as vital for a project, and that roles are mostly being considered along traditional hierarchical lines (eg creative/design/technical).

If you take the Flash community for example, initially those that were attracted to Flash came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Everyone did a bit of everything - you had coders with an eye for design, and designers that knew enough Actionscript to pull a site together. You look at the situation now, and its a case of never the two shall meet - Actionscript is now maturing into a Java-esque language, flash coders now have to implement design patterns and are writing reams of OO code which goes far beyond the average designers abilities or interests. While its easy to take a nostalgic look back a few years, the truth is that any industry is less interesting to work in when you are unable to work outside your core specialisation. Most designers I know enjoyed the fact that they could get things moving about with a few scrappy lines of code, and most of the coders early days were quite happy to mock up wireframes, create simple timeline animations or to create visual effects that they could recommend to the designers.

The projects that have really resonated with me in the grandest way are those that have made startling connections between entirely different spheres of work. People like Gaudi (combining science, nature, religion and art), artists like Eduardo Paolozzi (art, philosophy, computer science, nature), Mathematicians like Benoit Mandelbrot (mathematics and the aesthetics of structure of nature), Tesla, and of couse Leonardo da Vinci (umm pretty much everything). Lets celebrate the generalist!

The partitioning of knowledge is the antithesis of creativity. Creativity at its highest form is the connection of hugely disparate ideas to form an entirely original subject, idea or object. Everyone is creative and has the power of making such connections that can lead to huge successes in any field. Their confidence to work in areas outside of their comfort zone has to be nurtured and it is the responsibility of management to build this. So if you are in such a position, end excessive specialisation now, please.