Offf 2009. Day 1. James Paterson & Amit Pitaru

They show a number of new projects, succesfull and not (ref. "fail gracefully"), where they get inspiration from, the work process, as a schetchbook of Paterson and told stories behind it. As for instance about the last drawing, the nun with two breasts, who give depressive advices. Depends where are you standing of course, near the left or right breast.

Offf 2009. Day 1. James Paterson & Amit Pitaru

I Am A Chain Reaction (performance)

I Am A Chain Reaction is one of seven works that make up the dance/animation/programming hybrid project, Smashup. Smashup is the outcome of an ongoing collaboration between artists James Paterson & Amit Pitaru, and dancer/choreographer Dana Gingras. It premiered in its complete form, an hour long performance, at the Festival Transamérique in Montreal in the summer of 2008. The Sonic Wire Sculptor seemed also interesting to me.

watch it here

Offf 2009. Day 1. James Paterson & Amit Pitaru

The Rotten Fruit Tardis

The Rotten Fruit Tardis is the software component of Harvest, a solo exhibition by James Paterson that was on display at bitforms gallery from March 12th until April 25th, 2009, New York. The Rotten Fruit Tardis is being developed and changed on an ongoing basis; significant updates will be recorded in the form of video screen captures and posted on the website.

watch it here

Offf 2009. Day 1. United Visual Artists

The presentation of British-based collective United Visual Artists was very inspiring. They create architectural installation, live performance and responsive installation. Research and development are the main parts of their working process.

extra links: interview, speaking at offf

Offf 2009. Day 1. Jason Bruges

Jason Bruges Studio in all its current work produces innovative installations, interventions and ground breaking works creating interactive spaces and surfaces that sit between the world of architecture, site specific installation art and interaction design.

Offf 2009. Day 1. Eva Vermandel.

The only belgian speaker of this year, Eva Vermandel, showed an amazing portfolio which include clients as Vox, The Wire, Telegraph, Squarepusher, Sigur Ros and many others.

Offf 2009. Day 1. Karsten Schmidt.

Design as a verb

Karsten Schmidt (aka toxi) is a software developer, designer and artist with particular interest in computational design. With his recently founded studio PostSpectacular, he is exploring possibilities at the intersection of design, art and software development. A strong conceptual thinker and always striving for maximum creative freedom, Karsten’s design approach is based on treating ideas as software at the heart, which in turn informs all other facets of each project.
shown project- cover design for "Print magazine" (as a support for a main article about kinetic typography) executed by 3D printer.

extra links: 1, 2,3

Offf 2009. Day 1. Karsten Schmidt.

Graphics piece for Nokia's five superlarge 14.8 x 3.36 meters LED screens at the new Heathrow Terminal 5.

Offf 2009. Day 1. Karsten Schmidt.

Faber Finds generative book covers
Print on demand (POD) is becoming more mainstream. English publisher Faber & Faber has also joined that field. The task given was to build a “design machine” which would be flexible enough to generate a very large (theoretically infinite) number of unique designs, one for each single book ever printed in this range. The imprint has currently 4 genres, each with its own slightly varied style and rules. Faber also commissioned the super talented Canadian typographer Marian Bantjes to create four designs used as templates.
Font by Michael C. Place, Wearebuild.

extra links: 1

Offf 2009. Day 1. Karsten Schmidt

Fid.Gen is an open source fiducial marker generator used for creating tangible interactive installations. These markers act as machine readable identifiers which can be attached to physical objects. Markers created with Fid.Gen however, also resemble cute abstract characters and so cleverly blur the line of perception. The far less technical look also makes them more suitable for large scale public installations.

extra links: 1, 2

Offf 2009. Day 1. Guten touch, space invaders !!

Multitouch Space Invaders searches a new way to interact besides the classical multitouch applications that we’re familiarized to.
Using balls as inputs versus fingers, the players could play in a totally collaborative environment.

made by Multitouch Barcelona

extra links: 1, 2

Offf 2009. Day 1.

One of the music corners.

Offf 2009. Day 1. Neville Brody

Make trouble.
The festival started with a special opening act by Neville Brody who gave a lesson of humanity and consious/deep thinking. He began his presentation by showing how the graphic design looked before, using examples of russian constructivists as Rodchenko. He spoke about the forgotten words like revolution, progress, taking the risk etc.
As introduction of his own works he showed a projects made for Kenzo, Issey Miyake etc. His newest challenge was to redesign "The Times" newspaper without beeing noticed ("The Times" has changed his original size and became smaller). He designed 10 different templates for cover, designed typeface (Times Modern), made the layout look softer by changing the size of letters from 6pt to 5pt and introduced more graphic illustrations to make it look more dramatic and dynamic. "Looks the same - feels different" says Neville Brody.
While telling about this project he mentioned about a "need of limitation for graphic designers (otherwise we are artists and not graphic designers)". Well, I can agree with that.

Future looks worse then present. Do something new! conclude Neville Brody.
standing ovation

Offf 2009. Day 1.

the venue
Twitter messages projected on the wall
the hotspot. always full of people.
the drawing cube, an initiative of IADE.

Inspite of some problems with sound and heat, OFFF 2009 was worth visiting. As a student, I felt very connected with the theme of these year - This isn’t flying. This is falling with style. Fail gracefully. The intro sounded very intriguing as well: "We fail. We all do, and our failures often say more about us than our successes do. But we hide failure, we are ashamed of it and we often just deny it altogether. For almost a decade the Offf festival have featured successful digital creators in design and experimental sound and have celebrated the cutting edge of digital aesthetics. This year, we shed some light on the dark side of success and discover the dynamics and aesthetics of failure."


extra links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Film poster. Day 4

Another printing day at MIAT. Well, today I fixed some mistakes (and made some new ones) and printed it in two colors. These are the test prints, but I already figured out how to print it next time with a better results, first all red parts and then the blue ones.

Film poster. Day 3

Well, today was "the printing day" and I did some test prints by using just black ink. Next week I plan to make some changes in composition and print it in 2 colors.

Film poster. Day 3

Well, fixing the details took a little bit more time then I thought, but now it is completely ready for print.

Monotype

Details of a Monotype Typesetting Machine (MIAT collection). A Monotype machine consists of a 120-key keyboard, a caster, and a replaceable matrix case divided into quadrants, each holding one complete type font. Using shift keys, the operator can select characters from any quadrant and can mix typefaces among the four fonts without changing cases. The operator types out characters and spacing to produce a paper ribbon perforated to indicate characters and spacing. The ribbon is placed on the caster, which “reads” the perforations and automatically casts the individual characters in succession.

Film poster. Day 2

Day 2. The composition is there! I succeed to find all letters needed and all I have to do now is to fix some small mistakes and start printing it next week.