Videos

“I was read­ing David Chang’s Momo­fuku cook­book, and there’s a pas­sage in there where he points out that there’s this con­ven­tion amongst top-flight chefs,” he con­tin­ues. “They are all expect­ed to offer their own per­son­al take on two basic stan­dards: bread ser­vice, and an egg dish. These foods are so neu­tral in flavour and so depen­dent on tech­nique that you can use them to ana­lyze the dif­fer­ence between chefs as artists.”

“And I reflect­ed on what that would mean for game design­ers. I decid­ed that we should all make our own ver­sions of Pong (which is eggs), and chess (which is def­i­nite­ly bread),” Fod­dy sug­gests. “I would strong­ly rec­om­mend it as an exer­cise to any­one in a cre­ative field—figure out what the bread is, and what the eggs are, and then give them your best shot. It’s a great way of fig­ur­ing out your own iden­ti­ty as a creator.”

(via Gama­su­tra — The very good rea­sons for Ben­nett Foddy’s mad Speed Chess)

I’ve been track­ing the emer­gence of a “play eth­ic” in the inter­net of things / con­nect­ed prod­ucts field for a while because most of the projects are so damn util­i­tar­i­an. This new series of works by Bren­dan about email is kind of inter­est­ing in that regard. Lana in par­tic­u­lar is nice because it appears to “con­tain” email and spits it back at you in a sort of ran­dom manner.

(via Bren­dan Dawes — Six Mon­keys)

“Play­ing a song changes your under­stand­ing of it. Play­ing music changes how you lis­ten to it. Doing changes knowing.”

Great piece on how the inter­net is facil­i­tat­ing a new lit­er­a­cy of media pro­duc­tion. Doing def­i­nite­ly changes know­ing. How­ev­er, I dis­agree old struc­tures of pow­er and access are no longer in place on the inter­net. And I also dis­agree learn­ing to play a song on a gui­tar is the same as “learn­ing” to post a tweet. There’s a dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship between the tool, the media and the per­son going on there.

(via Doing is know­ing: “Sweet Jane” and the Web — Word­yard)

“Fish on Wheels is an aquar­i­um on wheels that fish can dri­ve wher­ev­er they want to go. Final­ly some free­dom for our aquat­ic pets that have so far been lim­it­ed to their fish tanks!”

Anoth­er one for the grow­ing col­lec­tion of play­ful animal/tech projects.

(via Home)

Glitch Tank (by smestorp)

Because of the pre­vi­ous post, a plug for Glitch Tank—put it on your iPad and play it with a friend.

Hus­tlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Joke­sters and Ricky Jay (by 770pratik)

A great doc­u­men­tary on sleight-of-hand artist (and schol­ar) Ricky Jay. An intrigu­ing char­ac­ter for sure, and a joy to watch when doing tricks.

Easy Rid­ers Talk UFOs (by Bryce Zabel)

Final­ly got around to watch­ing Easy Rid­er the oth­er day. Nicholson’s mono­logue were an unex­pect­ed treat. I couldn’t help but observe the par­al­lels between the advanced civil­i­sa­tion he describes here, and the ambi­tions of cur­rent-day adher­ents of the Cal­i­forn­ian ideology.

Demo: Mak­ing a Deci­sion with the Loomio pro­to­type (by Loomio)

Appar­ent­ly, some of the inter­ac­tions in this group deci­sion mak­ing plat­form were inspired by the con­ven­tions that emerged from Occu­py. Which I find inter­est­ing. I’d like to think this can work well, pro­vid­ed all peo­ple involved are invest­ed in a good out­come for the group.

Miek Uit­ten­hout • Xan­tippe (by Miek Uit­ten­hout)

A very big gun. Remind­ed me of a mechan­i­cal bull. I can imag­ine this might be quite men­ac­ing in real life.

Videogames and the Spir­it of Cap­i­tal­ism (by pao­lo ped­erci­ni)

Pao­lo Ped­erci­ni on videogames and cap­i­tal­ism is rather good and thought-pro­vok­ing. I am grate­ful he’s will­ing to dis­cuss gam­i­fi­ca­tion (most “seri­ous” thinkers in games have start­ed to ignore it, but that doesn’t mean it has gone away). His sug­ges­tions for steer­ing com­put­er-assist­ed gam­ing and play­ing away from a super-ratio­nal and util­i­tar­i­an mode remind­ed me of soft gam­i­fi­ca­tion and are worth explor­ing further.