The full transcript of my first academic seminar is now online: Microplexes. It's housed at urbagram.net, which will be the home of my research into urban systems.
The Rest is Silence is a project published as a booklet by Jeff Kinkle and Emanuel Almborg. As Jeff explains over at Dossier,
In the late 1970s a group of people living in the borough of Hackney in East London began building a structure on a derelict lot in their neighborhood and continued building until this January. The story of the project’s origins are shrouded in mystery. What is known is that because the residents couldn’t decide on what they wanted to build, they made three rules. The first was that not only would they build without any plan or blueprint, they would not discuss the direction of the project at all. Second, when they were on the building site, no one was allowed to speak. Third, the building would never be completed in that anyone at any point could decide to take it in a new direction. So the structure was built for thirty years until last autumn when the council sold the land to a developer who tore it down in January.
The book is published by andperseand. You can pick it up at Artwords on Rivington St.
I've posted some background on the research I'm just embarking on, to provide a little more detail for all those of you who have been asking and as an embellishment to the many conversations I've had with friends on the subject. You can read it here.
In short the research involves using computational methods to help increase the energy efficiency of transport networks in cities. The research draws on complexity science and network theory, and the output is a set of tools & techniques that allow policy makers to design more efficient transport systems.
Last month I left Last.fm after a little over three unforgettable years. We did some good work. I got to hang out with a group of people with immense talent and grew in all kind of ways that can't be quantified, charted or spreadshot. So much remarkable stuff took place in such little time I wouldn't even know where to begin telling. So I'll spare you.
A week after my voluntary unemployment kicked in I walked into an interview at the multi-disciplinary research unit, CASA, for a funded PhD in the application of complex systems & network theory to matters of urbanism. These matters interest me.
My presentation contained three quotations that served to illustrate why I was sitting in front of the project leads. They clinched me the PhD,
I have confirmed Pascal’s observation that imagination tires before Nature.
- Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature
The fact is, that the creation of a town... is fundamentally a genetic process. This conclusion, simple though it is, calls for a shattering revision of our attitude to architecture and planning.
- Christopher Alexander, The Timeless way of Building
The key systemic property of a city is nodality rather than centrality... Since network cities easily exercise control at a distance, the influence of a town has little to do with propinquity...
- Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Non-linear History
Sotto Voce, the second edition of the one-day festival for improvised silence and noise, is at the State51 Factory just off Brick Lane next Saturday. Amongst other things, Aki Onda, of Cassette Memories fame and Matthew Bower, of Skullflower fame, are both on, as well as Benedict Drew, whose soundtracks for Emily Richardson's films are super. Come down. A bunch of tracks to listen to and pre-booking available at the Sotto Voce website.
Girl Chewing Gum by John Smith. He shot this in 1976 on Stamford Road, looking across to what is now the bike shop opposite the Oxfam on Kingsland Road. It was one of about 30 films on the subject of East London screened last weekend in the Rio as part of the East End Film Festival.
Wall mounting system using clips and hooks from the 98p shop. The hooks are temporary and don't appear to leave a mark, which is great because I have a landlord for the first time in my life.
Who wants to cuddle Charles the hardest? Let Edwige and Alberte fight it out.
The film (re-)discovery of the year for me - Bresson's The Devil, Probably (clip). Not knowing whether you want to lamp Charles in the chops or embrace him is half the fun (and a mark of its complexity). It's got such a memorable tone and remarkable performances that it left a big impression second time around - especially the church scenes. It's still my favourite suicide film ahead of Taste of Cherry and Japon. Other films I stumbled across this year: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's mesmerizing Syndromes & A Century, Carlos Reygadas' breathtaking Mexican Mennonite film Silent Light, the totally wonderful Zizek! (clip) and one of the only good biogs I've ever seen - Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (clip) as well as UK screenings of Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema (clip) and Marker's A Grin Without a Cat (clip); both epic in length, scope and purpose and well worth the wait.
Siobhan consumed by our merciless ball-pit at work (it's great for naps, breaks, meetings and fights).
Hackney Coat of Arms (source: Wikipedia)
The border of blue and white wavy lines represents the water of the rivers and canals on or near the borough's boundaries. The red and white Maltese Cross and the black and white background, like that in the arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, commemorates the Orders of the Knights Templar and Knights of St. John. The Knights Templar wore a red Maltese Cross on white surcoats and mantles and the Knights of St. John wore black surcoats and mantles with a white Maltese Cross on the left breast. In 1312 the Knights Templar were suppressed and their lands and rents, including those in Hackney, were transferred to the Knights of St. John. The two golden oak trees with red acorns derive from the arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington and recall the forest which once covered the northern part of the Borough. The three golden bells represent the Bells of St. Leonard's Church, Shoreditch, referred to in the nursery rhyme. "Oranges and Lemons". The Crest consists of a representation of the tower of the former Parish Church of St. Augustine, Hackney, which is the only part now standing and the only scheduled Ancient Monument within the Borough. The green mound, represents the island in the River Lea - "Hacon's Eyot" - from which the name "Hackney" is thought by some authorities to have been derived.
From civicheraldry.co.uk
1950 Encephaloscript EP 502 – 4 to 16 channel EEG, From the forthcoming 'Sleeping & Dreams' exhibition at the Wellcome Trust building
Henry Wellcome's esoteric personal collection of artefacts from the history of medicine is housed inside the renovated Wellcome Trust building on Euston Road (Euston Square station). The Trust has a huge public exhibition space alongside the permanent collection, currently exhibiting 'The Heart'. It's a great trawl through the history of medical science with outstanding exhibits displayed with care and attention. Included in the collection are objects as disparate as Ayurvedic anatomical drawings, centuries old Japanese dildos, collections of artifical eyes, a Bosch painting, 19th century medical chairs, a fully functioning modern heart/lung machine and a collection of prosthetic limbs through the ages. They have an exhibition on 'Sleeping & Dreams' coming up. Don't miss.
→ More on the permanent collection
→ More on The Heart exhibition
Probably the most important British architectural undertaking of the post-war period, Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood's (never realised) Fun Palace would have changed the complexion of East London, at least for a decade (Price didn't believe in 'permanent' architecture) but I suspect far longer.
Essentially a re-programmable cultural space built on the principle of work as 'play', Fun Palace was 20-30 years ahead of its time, displaying an attitude towards technology that has since faded from a lot of architectural practice.
Fun Palace was composed essentially of a scaffolding housing massive rotatable walkways and movable wall components (two cranes presided over the building). Cybernetic regulation systems were planned (perhaps naively) to control everything from scheduling to programming to flow of people.
All images are from the Architecture Association.
Ironically, one of the sites earmarked for the Fun Palace in 1964 is now part of the Olympic Masterplan in the Lea Valley - an aquatic center will sit on the site. A plan whose 'cultural legacy' promises seem both vague and lacking in conviction.
Fun Palace, for all its utopian principles, was a project pursued with conviction and designed in detail. Its legacy lives on in various Fun Palaces since realized, including the Pompidou and Toyo Ito's Sendai Media Center (video torrent).
Above: Olympic Planning Authority's Hackney resident consultation document (I'm a homeowner here) alongside the new publication 'From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price'
Duracell plays Bubble Bobble at the Spitz (video by sharevari)
(Quicktime required)
John Hunter's specimen collection (one of several galleries), now collected in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. Hunter pioneered surgical techniques in the eighteenth Century, using ethically questionable techniques (he was prolific in his use of stolen corpses), coming to be known as 'The Knife Man'. Specimens include human teeth grafted onto Cockerels and dissected elephant trunks. The Hunterian Museum is open to the public.
"incredibly noticable, brave and confrontational" - Peter Saville
"a solid gold stinker" - Adrian Shaugnessy
"Don't pay the designers" - Ken Livingstone
Now and again an event thrusts graphic design into the nation's spotlight. This Olympics Logo has got everyone talking about graphics. I welcome that. I don't think the means justify the end here though. In a city so teeming with graphics talent, this is one major fuck up.
Exercise for the reader: Contrast this to, say, Otl Aicher's work on Munich '72.
We had a power outage so last.fm migrated to 'The Diner' on Curtain Road, Old Street. They were great to us. Pop in there if you get a chance.
Photo from the Last.fm rehearsal room by Dekstop.
We were joined by the lovely folks from MOO and Trampoline Systems for a BBQ on the Last.fm roof on Friday. I was particularly thrilled to meet Stefan, whose work on UpMyStreet, TheyWorkForYou and WriteToThem has been inspirational to all those interested in social software on the web over the last decade. Thanks to everyone who came for what was a fun night.
The last.fm toilets have become a battle-ground. Left to right - Textmate reference, Vim cheat sheet, Emacs cheat sheet. Barely legible on the Textmates sheet, someone has scrawled 'tab triggers ftw'. I use textmate and vim over emacs nowadays. My observation on Emacs (through 18 months of use about two years ago) is that Stallman must have very large hands. Not a very useful take-away but I thought i'd share nonetheless. Allan Odgaard on the other hand, he has my kind of hands.
Flickr phonecam shot from govan depicting me fumbling with a presentation remote
First of all thanks to everyone who gave their support at the Future Of Web Apps conference in London last week. I had an amazing time and met many awesome people - absorbed lots of energy and enthusiasm and gained some interesting insights. Thanks again to Carson Systems for having us on stage and even letting us drag our last.fm sound-system over to the conference to stream FOWA group radio in the foyer of the Kensington Conference Hall...
Matt & I spoke on the first day, on the topic of 'Lessons from the Building of the World's Largest Social Music Platform'. Corante has written up some notes, and someone even posted a great mindmap of the talk.
2 slides I particularly enjoyed presenting:
- Demonstrating osmotic communication through our internal wonderbot, irccat. In response to one of the questions on the day, our CTO RJ has open-sourced our implementation of irccat so you can start playing with it. To clarify - we use irc as our internal comms channel, and all aspects of our company absorb information through it.
- Attention as filtering tool for user-generated content, in the context of tag cloud moderation. The talented heiress Ms. Hilton was used as an example.
Other bits and pieces - I referenced this Fred Wilson blog post on the future of media with respect to the monetization of attention data. Also someone in the audience brought up the principles of the AttentionTrust, set up by Ed Batista and Seth Goldstein. If attention data is going to be critical to your web app (and I would argue that it should), then I encourage you to read Seth's entire blog archive on the subject of attention. I know I pretty much have.
My personal highlight was hearing Bradley talk on Flickr interestingness and Yahoo! Pipes (which caused quite a stir in the last.fm office last week). I was particularly bummed out about missing Simon's openID presentation on the second day, as it was ace by all accounts.
A podcast of our presentation will be up soon, but in the meantime download the slides - 'Lessons from the Building of the World's Largest Social Music Platform' (pdf)
Walked from Regent's Canal (Hackney end) through Hertford Union Canal down to the River Lea, ending up at Bromley-By-Bow. An interesting slice of East London. The Lea Valley is scheduled for re-development for the Olympics in 2012; it's largely an industrial wasteland right now. Photos here.
Julian plays 'sad takeaway' in last.fm intern office drama.
Organized freedom is compulsory. Woe betide you if you have no hobby, no pastime.
- Theodor Adorno, "Free Time"
As you may have noticed by the activity around here, i've taken a few days off work to catch up with myself. Most of my time off has been taken up with a crash course on DSP using my shiny new copy of MAX/MSP.
Last night i even ventured to North West London (gasp) to catch Junior Boys for their first (overdue) London show. The photos are here. Really ace to see everyone again. I should stumble out of East London more often...
All sorts of crazy good stuff going on at the Serpentine Pavilion in Hyde Park this weekend - like Cory Doctorow hanging out with Cecil Balmond and Rem Koolhaas chatting to Zaha Hadid and Ken Loach and Liam Gillick and a Thomas Demand show and open air screenings to cap it all off. More here.
Be there!
Some people were asking about my new place so here's a shot.
Blog looks like a link wreck right now, sorry. It's been a little over a month since i started showing myself at last.fm hq, things happening:
- Redesign - gradients, drop shadows, multiple themes, ponies. Still being tested but soon to be unveiled. If you're a subscriber try it out.
- We decided to make friendships mutual going forward and this 'friends' thread kicked off in response. We are thinking about categorising more than one type of relationship (delicious has friends/fans, flickr has family/friends/contacts, we need a more finely grained model)
- New last.fm desktop app to replace old radio. OS X version coming real soon.
- Lots of Dr. Pepper going on.
- Launching in Japan. Hopefully means we'll get some more J-Pop in our catalogue. Ace.
- Discovered synergy for multiple box convenience. Simple setup. Just works.
Advice: don't move jobs and house in the same week. If you do, buy a 32 pack of Dr. Pepper. It's the only way i'm getting through it right now. I have moved into Hackney, where amenities are provided to fulfil my every need,
I leave you with my plasticware,
And promise of less silence in the coming weeks.
The mantra of the well-informed UK geek seems to be, "The world isn't like me -- technology is central to my life, but that's not so for the rest of the world, and it won't be any time soon."By contrast, the mantra of the San Francisco geek is more like, "Technology kicks so much fucking ass I am about to explode. Soon everyone will realize this."
- Cory Doctorow, commenting on Tom Coates' insightful discussion of Paul Graham's xTech 2006 talk, How American Are Startups?.
A weekend retreat for a classical musician in Japan. Girl plays the violin for Alain de Botton (a popular philosopher with a receding hairline) while he looks out on the forest. This is the scene.
De Botton's main observation in this TV program is that the trite aesthetic traditionalism of the British means most of us aren't living in homes that reflect the age we live in. We seem averse as a society to the idea of modern architecture, whereas the japanese effortlessly blend age-old religious values with modern materials and structures. For the Brits, when it comes to architecture, traditional is good and modern is ugly by default. Potential mass scale post-industrial fallout with design, subjugation to our nation's Most Great History or just plain apprehension. Not sure.
De Botton's TV series - The Perfect Home - is based on his essay, The Architecture of Happiness.
Anyway, this kind of geometric pastoral gets me every time.
I'm joining social music service last.fm as a full-time developer in a couple of weeks over at their new office in old st (it still looks like a mess - story + pics). As those who know me will confirm, i have views on social software and how culture can suck less under new classification, distribution and publishing models, so i'm really looking forward to getting stuck into moderation strategies, web services, folksonomy and data mining. Particularly psyched to find individuals i respect (e.g. Joi Ito) among the investors.
It should be a tremendous year for last.fm. Hopefully i can play my part in that.
If i'm going to buy a technology related product, then i'd prefer to buy it from a domain geek - someone with an almost obsessive knowledge of the technical details of said product. This works for me because i'm a particular kind of customer - one with an interest in tech. Generally, people like me want a domain geek because:
- A domain geek does not want to sell you whatever 'specials' distributors are pushing on their franchised store in any particular month. He's in this for life.
- A domain geek will call BS on anything that's technically mediocre.
- A domain geek will teach you something about said domain.
- A domain geek will give you an enthusiasts approach (cable? Here's a reel, cut it yourself!)
- A domain geek will be keen for you to test out the technology in question before buying. After all, he would never buy anything without pulling it apart first.
Case in point: In search of a speaker system for my place I walked into a sevenoaks nearby and was met by an audiophile named Rob, with thick glasses and unhealthy looking skin.
The first thing Rob said was, "no we don't do computer audio, we do sound fields. You need to go somewhere else". You need to go somewhere else. There isn't a single better line in retail for boosting consumer confidence in you. He then proceeded to draw me two schematics on a piece of paper with an HB pencil. The first explained crossover (a simple concept, but i'm a bit of a novice when it comes to sound engineering). The second was a conceptual architecture sketch for a proposed system, based on 10 minutes requirements capture. During that time he had extracted a lot from me without my conscious knowledge; my usage patterns, the dimensions of the room, the issues i have with my current system, my budget and a number of other bits.
This weekend Rob set up the proposed system in their basement and i dropped by with a CD of anything i could think of that would call BS on a mediocre system:
We blasted these through it and it sounded ace. I walked out of there with some B&W components and an amp. Victory to the domain geek.
Nice to see some energy in the web app circuit here in London. Tonight there was a packed out (200+ audience) demonstration of three open-source MVC frameworks - Django (python), Catalyst (Perl) and Rails (Ruby). One great thing i found was how the character of each framework was reflected in their representative speaker on the night (and yes, software has character... and opinions! What next - software with identity?). Django's automated admin interfaces were a highlight (lots of ajax) - we had Simon Willinson playing around on his live server for us. Matt Biddulph's BBC archive on Rails showed off the sparklines plug-in and the potentially explosive power of an open information infratructure. He presented Rails in a refreshingly un-Rails esque manner ("There's this Rails video out there where they enthusiastically build a blog engine in 15 minutes, accompanied by american-style whooping...").
This BBC archive is going to be a big deal - a kind of BBC wikipedia replete with live feeds for search terms, programmes, BBC contributors, etc, with data dating back to 1936 and a controlled tagging vocabulary meticulously enforced by BBC librarians for that entire period. It'll be a unique data repository and the BBC are expecting upto 3000 requests per second on this thing (yes, you read that right). That should prove whether Rails can scale or not. Watch this space.
I still think Rails will continue to win the popularity contest. I'm convinced it's the stronger of these three for general purpose application development, with Django seemingly having the edge for publishing-oriented (CMS) projects. Catalyst looked the weakest, but hey, if you've got a good knowledge of CPAN built up over years of experience, then the choice is a no-brainer. Catalyst does most things, but chickens out when the going gets tough (ORM).
Matt snuck Switchtower in through the backdoor of his presentation. Switchtower is a deployment tool for distributed environments. It's not Rails specific, but is written in Ruby. I've been harping on about it for weeks, even though i haven't had a chance to test it. This is due to my inability to grow a cluster in my back garden. Sorry.
Where was the poster boy of open-source programming languages - PHP - amongst all this? Sadly absent. PHP is the most approachable, widely adopted open-source programming language on the web. The fact it didn't represent here was disappointing but also shows a move towards higher level languages, powerful syntax (reduction of LOC) and DSL's.
If you're a kid with a thing for PHP, now's the time to be a hero and sneak a framework in before Zend clean up the market. You could port Rails. No one's done it properly yet.
UPDATE: ok i got my figures mixed up and it's nowhere near 3000/sec page requests on the BBC project. I thought that was kind of an awesome target, even for the mother of all media organisations. Think double figures though.