Category Archives: MFM

The End of the Desktop?

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Part 1 – The Enchantment

I was actually in the room at CHI 2001 when Bill Gates introduced the Tablet PC.  Taking notes on my Pocket PC, mobile and tablets, I was all over it.  I became an early adopter soon afterward, using my convertible notebook/tablet doing UX design consulting.  And let me tell you that in those days, jaws would drop in amazement when folks saw you draw on the screen.  Nothing impressed the natives more.  “Look, him draw on screen!  Him must be a god!” Alias sketch, Microsoft OneNote, and all those new app user interfaces that were going to change the way we interacted with computers,

Part 2 – The disappointment

except that it didn’t happen.  None of the MS Office apps ever budged to utilize pen input, nor did Adobe, or anyone else. Instead Microsoft abandoned us early tablet adopters like freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs.

Then a few years later, Apple invented both the pocket PC and the tablet. And everyone swooned. And for good cause, this time it worked. Plus it had the Apple and third party support to make it really productive and price point lower, not higher, than a regular laptop.  Google joins in the fun steeling Microsoft’s role as the “other leading brand” to be compared with Apple, mimicking their every move, yet with an open hardware platform.

Part 2b – More Disappointment

Fast-forward again to 2012. Microsoft introduces Windows 8 and the Surface.  There has probably never been someone so late to their own party and awkwardly dressed for the occasion.  Microsoft launches an Apple-esque store in the mall with Kool-Aid drunken sales people mimicking the weirdoes at the Apple store.  So I stopped in to check out the Surface.  The name itself speaks of another great concept that couldn’t find a market and so left its name to be adopted by this iPad wannabe.

Somewhere in the windows 8 mix, I was hoping to find my old tablet PC reborn with a contemporary vigor.  No such luck. What I discover is a lesser knock off of tablets that are already too dumb for my professional taste. That may sound lofty, but this was my daily work tool for four years, constantly with me in airports, airplanes, hotels, coffee shops, and offices everywhere.

Part 2c – Even More Disappointment

Windows 8 — Disappointing Usability for Both Novice and Power Users  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/windows-8.html

Disappointment.  The word that Jakob Nielson uses to describe the Windows 8 experience.  I am compelled to agree. Not that I am or have ever been a firm Jakob follower. I just hoped that we would see the high end supported with trickle down impact to the lesser demanding users.  Instead what I see at every turn is the computing environment reduced to a contest between Dumb and Dumber.

Looking at Nielsen’s article, it is confirmed.  Power users have been thrown under the Windows 8 bus. Nielsen’s description of the modern style induced usability problems in Windows 8 sound all too familiar. It seems that Microsoft has confused minimalist with primitive. Can you say pre-Win 95?  No, wait, more like pre-Win 3.1!   It’s like Microsoft has unlearned all the lessons of the past twenty years. I wouldn’t mind except that I depend on their products to do actual work, not just goofing off.

Makes me think of the “Apple Wheel” as reported by the Onion

http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/05/macbook-wheel-revealed-by-the-onion-news-network/

It feels like Microsoft is sacrificing the power user desktop which is still dominates to become a tag along in the tablet space. It seems, there may be a clear opening for a high performance user experience Operating system environment.  Silicon Graphics Irix, where are you?

Part 3 – The Enlightenment

On the other hand, if Microsoft believes that the desktop is vanishing from the earth no matter what, then it might seem prudent to use their window of time to convert that desktop lead while it exists into a tablet contender. It still leaves many of power windows users in a hard way and opens the door for a new aggregator to jump in and direct the larger virtual platform.

Pondering this a bit more, this may indicate a milestone in the abandonment of the desktop by Microsoft as something that they see that cannot be held onto. The computing environment that was once the virtual desktop metaphor invented at Xerox PARC is now being replaced by a ubiquitous heterogeneous environment that exists both in real space and in the cloud.  An aggregation of real and virtual devices is needed to perform the same role that the proprietary desktop once played.  I see that mobile devices may have their own avatars in this virtual space.

Who will define this space? Who will own it? How about me and you?

I am pretty sure this is the theme of my next techy art piece. “MyFavoritemachine, In the Cloud” or maybe “Escape from Desktop’.

- roger

copyright 2012 r.e.belveal

Geek Iconic MyPhoneStone

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So is this MyPhoneStone on steroids? Ouch, sore subject these days.  Coincidentally, the first of these pieces go to a bicyclist friend of mine from Texas.  No, not who you’re thinking of.  This Guy is also a motorcyclist and techy UX design geek,  AND one of my Kickstarter supporters.  Remember Kickstarter?  Yes, I am still diligently fulfilling my promises and most of them are met. And here’s one more.  And this one is cool!

I like it when I get excited about something I’ve created.  Trust me; it doesn’t always happen on the first try.  Much sweat and bruises and burns and ideas tried and tweaked and tried again until it gets to the cool.  I’ve got an abrasion from the wire brush wheel to prove it!

Making things that have function almost makes this into work.  But rest assured, though these are functional, they are ART first.  And that is what makes this fun.  Art + geeky tech stuff has to be fun!  Isn’t that one of the laws of thermodynamics?

Practical minded thrifty people – If you just want a thing to set your phone on, I’m sure Radio Shack has something just right for you. And be sure to show your card for your free battery.  Hmmm, do they still do that?  BestBuy has a whole freaking aisle or two of plastic gizmos and stands for your smartphone.  And you can borrow my Reward Zone card!  This is not that.

What this is? Remember when you went to see the Eiffel Tower or the empire State Building, or Statue of Liberty, or some other big thing?  Anyway, remember as you were leaving, you forked over a twenty for some plastic or tinny molded mini-me of the thing to commemorate your visit?   This is more like that.  To those who attended BIG(D)ESIGN either of the past two years and saw MyPhoneHenge or MyFavoriteMachine up close in person, owning a MyPhoneStone is like the mini-Eiffel tower experience except for one very important difference.  We are pretty certain that cute little tower you brought home from France was not actually made by Mr. Eiffel himself. Get it?

Every one of these MyPhoneStones is unique art, signed by the artist, numbered, and photo-documented.  No two are identical (How boring would that be?) The supply is limited to until I get too caught up doing other kinds of art to spend time on these.  And know that I have LOTS of other even more fantastic ideas in mind!  So here’s a tip – don’t count on there being an endless supply of original MyPhoneStones.

In case you still don’t quite get it (I’m sure you do, I just want an excuse to talk more about it) the motif blends the tall monolithic image of the large scale art with the icons that were contain in each one. Remember those icons made from real world objects that were intended to make fun of the metaphorical iconography of virtual devices? Its “physical virtual, low tech rendering of high tech subject matter, ironic, iconic art“.  I know, it seems I am having way too much fun with this!

Imagine making your own little arrangement of MyPhoneHenge using real phones!  They also work great for the classic iPod and totally killer for showing off your business cards!   And please please whatever you do, have fun!

- roger

Torching MyPhoneStones

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I keep coming back to the torch.  Gas welding is reliable and organic.  Electric welding is efficient, but the electrodes wear out and presently both my plasma cutter and MIG welder have issues.  The oxy acetylene torch always works as long as there is gas. It produces a bumpy-yet-smooth-to-the-touch edge which is just what I am aftter for that rough but touchable result.  It’s where I started.

- roger

A Steve Urkel moment on Mars?

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Well, it seems this week, everyone’s “favorite machine’ is a little robotic off-roadster called Curiosity. Take a look at what he sees from his little vantage point on the red planet. Yes, I am personifying this little creature. I can’t help it. Anything that travels that far to send photos to the folks back home deserves our love and affection. It is without a doubt in the Favorite Machine Hall of Fame next to Lunar Rover and Robbie the Robot.

Link to Panoramic 360` pan

Pretty spectacular. We didn’t have images anything close to this with the moon landings and there was a photographer on site to shoot it. As you pan around ponder the tracks resembling some kind of crop circle style drawing in the sand to space men (Us?) that I wonder, will it ever erode away?, and I fancy Curiosity, upon seeing it (slightly personified) has a Steve Urkle moment. “Did I do that?”

Is this personification?  Anthropomorphism?  Or is it really Steve Urkel on Mars?

- roger

Steve Urkel in Wikipedia

MFM @ Tech Wildcatters

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My Favorite Machine made the short trek from the Aloft to Tech Wildcatters today.  Returning back to this favorite venue, it attracted a lot of attention even before I could get it set up.  And this was just the small weekend crowd.  I’m anxious for it to be seen during one of the many techy gatherings at TWC. What a perfect place to display this tech-expressionist-pop art!.  :-)

- roger

oh yeah.  Here are some photos of MFM in the TWC space.


Tune in, Get Creative, and Share

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The Texas Sculpture Association show at the Aloft Hotel Dallas is underway.  The artists’ reception was yesterday evening. Great time had by all.  It was fun meeting people and looking at a wide spectrum of styles.  I am proud to be displaying my work alongside these other artists’ work.

Some Observations:

  • Out of 90+ works in the show, there was only one that had anything directly to do with technology in subject matter or substance;  MyFavoriteMachine
  • Multiple people commented to me, not just that they liked MFM, but that they enjoyed watching other people engaging with it. Hmmm.
  • There were a few people who expressed absolute ecstatic excitement over MFM.  They happened to be the youngest people in the place.  They were Twenty-ish while most of the art crowd appeared to be in the age bracket of between fifty and a hundred years old.  Whadja say, sonny?
  • One young man told me he came to the show just to see MFM.  Thanks Justin.  It was great meeting you.  More important than my being flattered, it tells me something about the appeal of this art motif that I have invented.  Maybe anyone could have guessed it, but I like the way the evidence is stacking up.

Conclusions:

  • All Young people get it.
  • Some older Tech savvy people get it.
  • People who are basically outside the box thinkers get it.

This is consistent with the response I have gotten so far already as it has appeared in various locations.

Who I don’t expect to get it:

  • People who are not current with technology, not that you must know how to operate it, but this art is about technology from an up-close personal and social/cultural point of view.   Art connecting to an expereince that they do not share would naturally be a like a dance to music they cannot hear.
  • Some Art establishment people. The reason is interesting and I am still figuring it out.  Ironically, while we think of artists as outside the box thinkers, the fact is they have their own boxes.   There are plenty of rules and conventions that must be adhered to in order to fit into the art world as we know it today.  MFM violates some of those rules.  I may elaborate on that later, but for now I’ll compare it to a Seattle grunge band playing at a swing / big band recital.  That Art world is about to change and MFM will help change it.  I clearly recall a similar thing happening in the tech world when the world wide web happened.  There were plenty of reasonably smart tech people that said it was “just a fad” and would quickly fade. I being a youthful analyst at the time got extremely excited as I brainstormed endless things that the web could be used to do. One of my collegues who I choose not to embarrass told me, “Roger, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.  Well, today, virtually everything is a nail.  In fact, there are far more nails in the world than ever I could have imagined.

What to do with this?  My experiment:

  • Where to go from here seems very clear.  In the words of my twenty-ish daughter, “Play to the young crowd”.
  • So, I will be looking for opportunities to display works from the MyFavoriteMachine series on college campuses and other locations where young people gather, any place where creativity is fostered.  Art and or technology departments of course would be targets, but also cultural anthropology, sociology, and really anywhere the cross-over between sciences and humanities is contempleted. If you have suggestions and contacts for such places that would be interested in hosting MFM, please let me know.  They can contact me at contact@belveal.com

“Timothy Leary is Dead” indeed and his legacy is a negative one.  Still, I’d like to latch on to the idea that he had of encouraging young people to expand their thinking, but take it in a positive direction.  I’ll reuse the first step, ‘tune In”  which now refers (not reefers)  to the technology culture and add my own second and third steps.

Tune in, Get Creative, and Share something good with others.

- roger

A great tune with a little time and age introspection built in by the Moody Blues

TSA Art Show, ALoft Hotel Dallas

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Spent much of the day installing MyFavoriteMachine and Javelin Man in the lobby of the ALoft Hotel, Dallas. These are part of the Texas Sculpture Association show running through Jun 9.  You are all invited!  Opening reception for the artists is May 18.

What a great space for an art show!  The ALoft staff is awesome.  They seemed particularly excited about having my art there and they gave MFM an ideal location in the main corridor between main desk and the elevators. It is fun to see people walking by and enjoying the art. Some stop to point out details and smile, touch the metal, or pull out their own smart phone and take photos.

- roger

Frames Done, Surfaces Next

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Sweating all week finishing the structural elements of MyPhoneHenge. Frames are completed. Interior rectangular frames provide finish it off nicely, providing a standard structure to which all of the other elements can be attached. It also provides a rich aesthetic of contrasting square black perforated steel against the tubular outer frame.  Just so ya know, my intention is to leave these mainly hollow, staying consistent with my motif of sketching in space. I think it is far more interesting to look into and through an object than simply at it.

Perceiving the whole volume is much more interesting to me than a surface.  You can see this bias of mine throughout my sculpture work, both techno and figures.  I also like to play with inverting the positive and negative spaces, making your brain do more filling in based in certain visual cues hints or suggestions about the form.  Its always more fun when your mind works more.  That’s why the book is always better than the movie.

Speaking of stirring the imagination.  Here are some photos to stir yours up a bit.  Cheers!

- Roger