I’ve been following the cycling-influenced illustration work of Dave Walker for a while now. When he posted this recent compendium of bells and whistles I wanted to respond creatively. It was a chance to explore how to make sound both interactive and visual. It was also a lot of fun interpreting the depths of Dave’s subtle humor. Make sure you have your sound on and enjoy it here:
https://omundy.github.io/bells-and-whistles/
If you know me then you already know I have little patience for bad interface and user experience design. Like most users, I leave websites when they fail to provide intuitive paths to the information I need. However, the physical world is full of bad design you can’t escape.
Take this device. The MPC Control (Model Code 134 Basketball) sold by NEVCO. This is a pretty standard piece of equipment in North American youth basketball games (like my daughter’s). While I used this thing for a whole season, I hated every moment. Examine the below and try to describe how you would correct a mistake if you added 3 to the guest team’s score and should have added 2. Before you try, note that this equipment does not have an “undo” button.
This year is going to be different. This is the year I pour over their manual (another atrocious bag of text describing all the unintuitive steps and making up for the poor UI design) and redesign the instructions using a single side of one letter-sized page. So here, I offer to parents everywhere, those who worked all day at their “job” and have about five minutes to figure out how to use this thing, my redesign of the Scoreboard Operator’s Instructions for the Nevco MPC Control (Model Code 134 Basketball). There’s also a PDF. Enjoy.
Here’s a permanent link to this post: https://bit.ly/scoreboard-control-134-basketball
I just launched a new ongoing project this week. Here’s the text, a video and some screenshots. I’ll post more about how I made it soon.
Welcome to the today’s internet—you can buy anything, every website is tracking your every move, and anywhere you look you find videos and images of cats. Currently, there are 15 million images tagged with the word “cat” on public image hosting sites, and daily thousands more are uploaded from unlimited positions on the globe.
“I Know Where Your Cat Lives” iknowwhereyourcatlives.com is a data experiment that visualizes a sample of 1 million public pics of cats on a world map, locating them by the latitude and longitude coordinates embedded in their metadata. The cats were accessed via publicly available APIs provided by popular photo sharing websites. The photos were then run through various clustering algorithms using a supercomputer at Florida State University in order to represent the enormity of the data source.
This project explores two uses of the internet: the sociable and humorous appreciation of domesticated felines, and the status quo of personal data usage by startups and international megacorps who are riding the wave of decreased privacy for all. This website doesn’t visualize all of the cats on the net, only the ones that allow you to track where their owners have been.
Folks can also contribute to a kickstarter to help with hosting costs.
For this project I returned to the Coleman Center for the Arts in York, Alabama, to create a new work in collaboration with the community there. During the residency, six years after my first, I invited people to bring pictures of service members, veterans or those depicted in uniform, images of themselves or people whom they knew, to the center. I also collected stories from veterans and family members while they were dropping the images off. The photos depict individuals throughout history, from a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War to a current JROTC member enrolled at Sumter Central High School.
Every image I received was scanned and digitally restored, printed using archival ink and paper, and then sealed in a unique frame. The reproductions are embellished with an artist-designed seal that features the project name and harkens back to both military and government seals as well as gold leaf photo studio adornments. After the exhibition, original and new restored, framed photographs and digital files will be given to the owners. I will also publish a short record of the exchange along with photographs and selected stories, which will be preserved in the York Public Library.
The framed images were installed in a one-person exhibition at the Coleman Center, with The Americans, a reproduction of a military portrait studio, and Through A Glass Darkly, a 12 minute film representing only the landscape scenes from the top 100 Hollywood war films.
There is much interest in my project here at the Coleman Center. People stop by every hour with photographs and stories of their past experiences and motivations for joining the service.
To My Dearest and Beloved Family, Aubrey, England, May 3, 1945
On Monday I worked with the Art Club, showing them how to use the equipment and talking about the many different ways the military is represented through photography and film.
Touching up a WWI image
Fred Adams and his portrait
I’m writing from the Coleman Center for the Arts in York, Alabama, where I’m currently an Artist in Residence. While here I intend to keep this site updated with news and progress from the projects I’m working on. Below is a “seal” that accompanies the project as well as a letter to the community which was published in various local sources. More soon…
Dear Residents and Friends of Sumter County, Alabama,
I’m writing to ask for your participation in an art project that will investigate our shared experience of service and its representation in photography. Have you or someone in your family served in uniform?
In order to honor the men and women who served our country and to represent the shared experience of sending our sons and daughters far away from home and safety, I would like to invite anyone who has served, or is related to someone who has worn a uniform, to bring a portrait of the service member in uniform to the Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) in York.
Digital reproductions of the images will be displayed at the CCA, and participants will receive their own free, high quality, archival reproduction of their portrait. Original photos will not be displayed, and will be returned to their owners with the reproductions.
The original image can be any quality, printed or digital, but must be of the person in uniform (military, police, firefighter, etc..) If you like, you are invited to share the story of this person, which with your permission, will become part of an exhibition at the CCA. Stories may be hand written, typed, or directly shared in conversation with the artist.
To participate please bring your photo to the CCA by Monday January 28th at 5 PM. Original photos and reproductions will be available for pick up at the project reception on Thursday, January 31st at 6 pm, or afterward during normal CCA hours.
For more information, contact the CCA at 205-392-2005 or email colemancenter@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Owen Mundy
Artist in Residence
Coleman Center for the Arts
Enjoying all the screenshots of glitches that appeared as I was testing the visualization for the Flashpoint show in D.C. Here is a sample.
Joelle and have completed our Packet Switching (Weimer Hall) commission in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. Read about the process for this project here.
Joelle and I are working on an installation for Flashpoint Gallery in Washington D.C. This animation was made using ColladaFragmenter to deconstruct the architecture, and Processing with OBJloader to visualize the 3D fragments. The text is scraped from pages describing short sell real estate in D.C. This is work in progress:
