Here it is on Information Design Watch:

One of the main pieces of the show is the Bryant Vase, designed by Tiffany and Company. The vase itself was copied by electrotyping and the exhibit accompanies the original with its copper molds. Using the Bryant Vase as the main character, Dynamic Diagrams created a short animation explaining how the electrotyping process works.

Bryant Vase with electrotyping animation in background

The video starts with slow zoom of a photo of the original vase. We then transition to a 3D model which we animate to show the steps in which a mold is created and immersed in a copper-sulfate bath. A “microscopic” view explains how copper ions transmit in the the bath from a positively charged copper bar to the negatively charged mold. Finally, we show how individual pieces are reassembled into a near-identical copy of the original and plated in silver.

By using 3D modeling software we are able to give exhibition visitors a greater understanding of the technology behind the works they are viewing.

Update: The Museum has posted an exhibition page.

Via artist and architect Jesen Tanadi (originally from desprezivel). You can view Tanadi’s projects at his eponymous URL.

2. Blogger Ann Althouse reduces the reductive aesthetic:

Oddly, I came away feeling that the 10 principles were all the same, and if that principle was simple functionality, the make that one thing into 10 is a violation of the principle itself. But then Rams wasn’t purporting to dictate the principles of website content, so there really is no paradox.

3. Could you have one principle with ten examples and still get the page-views? Lists are so addictive.

Conceptual artist Roman Opalka made this challenge personal, making his life’s work the painting of integers in sequence:

Starting at the top left of a canvas measuring a little over four by six feet, and using acrylic paint, he used a fine brush (No. 0) to inscribe 20,000 to 30,000 white numerals on a black background in neat rows that ended at the bottom right corner. Each succeeding canvas, or “detail” as he called it, picked up where the previous one left off. As of July 2004, he had reached 5.5 million….

All the paintings in the series bore the same title, “Opalka 1965/1 — ?.” “All my work is a single thing, the description from one to infinity,” Mr. Opalka once wrote. “A single thing, a single life.”

Starting in 1972, Opalka began taking self-portraits, also in sequence. These have been published in the stunningly crafted book shown in this video:

This is the kind of photography an artist now would turn into a digital animation.

You can see the physical experience that would be lost.

Quote:

The number of colors doubles every 28 years!

This is just the setup. For the real fun, see where Morley went next:

(via Chris Wild’s fabulous How To Be A Retronaut)

The Guggenheim Museum recently launched an interactive timeline to accompany its new exhibition, The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918. This colorful interactive map and timeline highlights the era’s artists, artist groups, exhibitions, performing arts, publications, artworks, historic events, and cultural movements.  Select one of these categories, then scroll across to choose a particular year.  Corresponding dots appear on the map above, and clicking on a dot displays a lightbox overlay with more information (see detail above).  Overall, the timeline works from linear, drill-down perspective: choose a cultural activity, year, and sample activity within that year.  Navigating the “Selected Artworks” category gives users the most detail (as expected), with an image of the artwork, and links to the artist’s biography and to an essay about the artwork, both housed in the pre-existing online collection on guggenheim.org– a nice way to leverage and highlight what’s already available.  Discovering these individual nuggets is a little like going on a treasure hunt.  The user seeks and finds individual gems scattered throughout.

At the same time, though, this interactive is weak in terms of  providing an integrated picture of the era overall.  Part of what makes studying an artistic era so exciting is the chance to discover connections: between artistic disciplines, or between the arts and historic events.  The timeline misses this opportunity by forcing users to choose only a single category (the checkbox-like bullet next to each category is misleading).  Additionally, once you’ve selected a dot on the map, dots of other colors at the bottom of the lightbox (see above) are indictors of simultaneous activities, but these are only visual cues and not links.  Investigating these further means selecting a different category for that year and clicking through individual dots to eventually make the connection yourself.  Allowing for multiple category selection and including crosslinks to other categories at the lightbox level are straightforward ways to make the pieces of the timeline more tightly integrated, showing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The Great Upheaval is on display through June 1, 2011.

This 1958 report (known also as the Red Book) was presented by Jørn Utzon to the Premier and the Opera House Committee in order to “give … a project which realizes in practical form the vision of the competition”. The report comprises: plans, sections, elevations, photographs of models of the Opera House; and reports by other consultants.

The technical plans are intersticed with Utzon’s free-form drawings and conceptual studies, creating, as a whole, an extraordinary essay in realized imagination.

The map has a method, indicated by the legend above, and a timeline. The latter runs in a diagonal, from the northwest 60s to the southeast 00s.

Aurally, the map offers definitional tracks for each genre. Visually, its delight comes from Galbraith’s emblematic variations on the leather default. Below is his riff on Visual Kei, “a movement among Japanese musicians, that is characterized by the use of make-up, elaborate hair styles and flamboyant costumes….”

Hello Kitty.

(via LearnedLeague)

The clarity of the image derives from the technology, wherein ”the electron beam is shifted little by little over a rectangular area. Thereby, the area is literally ‘scanned’ from one pixel to the next.” Analysis of secondary electron emissions allows scientists to map the specimen’s surface:

Unlike pictures captured with a camera, SEM scans are based on particle emission rather than light – they don’t show colors and brightness depends from the characteristics of the sample surface: while dark areas mark low secondary electron emission, bright areas are the result of high secondary electron emission. Thus, an SEM scan could be seen as a topographic image with very close resemblance to a black-and-white photograph.

Oeggerli adds the color later. Here, he explains his technique:

Most importantly, you need to understand how nature works to create authentic effects. My images need a color-costume, which combines natural perfection with imperfection, to mimic the often very subtle individual variations provided by the raw material for natural selection.

But nature doesn’t exactly work the way Oeggerli records. His “nature”, like that of Dutch pronkstilleven or Pixar movies, is brighter and more chromatic than reality.

The images are really precise — but not really real.