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scraps of paper

Memling Portraits: The Anti-Digital

Published December 10, 2007 by cgerrish

Portrait by Hans Memling

I spent the last week on holiday in New York City. While I was walking around with an iPhone, and still somewhat connected to Twitter, my focus was on looking at the art and design that serves as the foundation for Western Civilization. The digerati, while filled with a certain type of creativity, they lack any real sense of history. That’s a big generalization, but in a general sense it’s true. There are a number of threads that were spawned by my trip. I hope to capture a few of them here before they return to the aether.

The Frick had a show of the portraits of Hans Memling a few years ago. It was a small show, the Frick doesn’t have a large exhibition space for shows, and there aren’t many Memling portraits still in existence. At the time, I spent more than an hour with those faces. On this trip, I had to seek out the portraits. Some are in the Frick’s permanent collection and their are a few at the Met. These portraits present humanity to us in a manner that seems to have been lost. Memling was born around 1435; the portraits deliver us the visages and the souls of people from that time.

In thinking about the wonderful creativity of our time, and the vast power of our digital tools, we have nothing to match what Memling accomplished. And these works must be seen directly in person. No form of reproduction can convey their power—in this sense they are the anti-digital.

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Web As Industrial Design: Painting with Code

Published December 1, 2007 by cgerrish

Juicer Prototype

 If you happen to be passing through Terminal 3 of the San Francisco Airport any time soon, check out: Prototype to Product: 33 Projects from the Bay Area Design Community. Rushing through the Terminal to my gate, I didn’t have enough time to spend with each of the pieces. The exhibit features preliminary sketches, detailed illustrations, models, prototypes and the finished product. Every time I see this kind of approach to design I think that Web design should be done in the same way.

Designers of Web sites need to take the materials, the DOM, the semantic HTML, the CSS, the javascript, the images and links into account when they design something for a person to use for a particular purpose. Industrial designers need to know and understand their materials. Will there be a new generation of Web artists and designers who can paint in code?


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Digg, Mixx and Viral Negativity in a Social Network

Published November 25, 2007 by cgerrish

Arrington writes that some of Digg’s unpaid editors are moving over to Mixx. Since they aren’t compensated for their work, switching costs amount to getting some of their friends to switch too. This is an interesting case study in the value of social networks. If the creators of the “user generated content” decide that the environment has become poisoned with negativity, they may decide to pull up stakes and migrate to another more friendly environment.

One Digg user makes the claim, in Arrington’s article, that:

I think Mixx has a real chance for success…Mixx has a much more positive audience than Digg. It always amazes me that even the most popular and highest quality articles can get so many negative and unnecessarily degrading comments on Digg. So far the users of Mixx have proven to be quite a bit more pleasant, something that I know will be welcomed by most users.�

Negativity can quickly become viral in a social network, especially where some kind of voting takes place. Competitive strategies can overtake collaborative strategies and then the community’s overall output starts to become skewed. To combat the negativity, the owners of the site make rules to curb some forms of competition, and before you know it– it’s not that fun anymore.

It’s interesting to watch the figures of game theory play out before your eyes. Should part of the valuation of a business that depends on social networking and voting be dependent on its ability to enforce and maintain a friendly environment? See Craig Newmark for a lesson in how this can be done.

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I unpushed an elevator button, and didn’t stop on the 5th floor

Published November 22, 2007 by cgerrish

Elevator Button

I’d like to be able to unpush an elevator button. How many times have you been in an elevator and pushed the wrong button? How many times have you seen someone else do it? The only remedy is to let the doors open on the errant floor, and then push the “close doors” button.

A double-click on the button could unpush it. Could the elevator biometrically register the identity of the button pusher and then limit unpush privileges to that individual?

Hmmmm…maybe I should just take the stairs.

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