Architecture as 3d visualization of information - Frank Gehry's Art Gallery of Ontario

Is architecture a kind of information visualization? Perhaps if you consider the functions that buildings support and the people they house to be very rich data. Consider this example below showing a topographic rendering of text topic search results in which the size and adjacency of "mountains" tells you about the similarity of results.



And if viewed this way, then does it become reasonable, or even necessary, to evaluate (criticize) architecture in information visualization terms like legibility and accuracy?


Frank Gehry's buildings, like his "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague would hold up pretty well under such scrutiny. As whimsical as it looks, the building actually takes a lot of cues (reads data from) its environment, squeezing in so as not to obstruct the sightlines of its neighbours and fluidly reflecting the river it overlooks.

At the recent OCAD VizDay, Pierre Boulanger repeated a well-known addage: without knowing the uncertainty of a piece of data, it is not a measurement, merely an opinion. Architecture is historically considered to be an art rather than a science; in that view, buildings more like opinion than data. But with Gehry's deep engagement with software, more and more his conceptual and modeling processes are data driven.


What can we see visualized in Gehry's newest project, the renovated and expanded Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto? There is something about that sweeping wing of glass along Dundas Street that seems to want to be measuring wind currents, northern light and perhaps sound bouncing around from the bustling Chinese market a block west. And the big blue titanium box on Grange Park at the rear; it's a sky-ish sort of blue, a blue like the sky reflected in Georgian Bay, meant to disappear under the right conditions. How long before the color of building facades can be modulated by computers so that they change with the weather?

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Hippie bus - VW Routan ad bludgeons aging boomers

In this TV ad airing now in Canada for the Routan mini-van, VW pictures aging hippies living chalk-a-block in a suburban house, slumped depressively over photos from their heydays, until a new Routan wheels by in slow motion, causing them to rise from their chairs, stunned. "We dared to reinvent our classic van." is the final slogan.

There's no percentage in mocking one generation to sell to another, especially if the generation you are mocking is older. Unless of course you are confident that economic clout has shifted so decisively to a younger generation that you think you can get away with it.

This is an example of a very interesting ad concept bumbling hopelessly over complexity. The relationship between generations and the adoption of the VW minibus by the counterculture are complicated matters. It would take insight and great art to handle them well; neither are evident here. For example:

A. It is interesting to think about where the hippie generation is at right now. How old are they? How do they live? What are they doing? What interests them?

Instead of answers or insight, we get clichees meant to be funny: hippies as decrepit (uniformly grey haired, wrinkled and slow moving), poor (living communally at age 65) and drowning in nostalgia (looking wistfully through photo albums that make their current decrepitude only more accute). The soundtrack, Live for Today by The Grass Roots, is like salt in the wound: counterculture spurning of convention, in particular money, leads to social and financial ruin.

B. It is interesting to think about the remarkable legacy of the VW microbus (a.k.a. the Transporter) and to try to capture some of that cultural value.

But instead of valourizing the legacy, it is mocked. The vintage bus seen briefly in the driveway is... what? still running? out of commission? a relic, as aged and useless as the various greyhairs rambling through the ad?

The VW Routan ad is an interesting development on, and departure from, an advertising trend identified in 2007 by Stuart Elliot in the NY Times. Elliot pinpointed the potential trouble even then. Just as agencies were seeing the 60s as something consumers could identify with, possibly tapping into anti-Iraq-war sentiment, Elliot noted the danger of superficiality, ads that only appeal to the financially successful of the older generation.

C. It is interesting to think that subsequent generations didn't make the same mistakes but today enjoy the kind of financial security and family life that makes the minivan the most successful of any auto manufacturers lines.

The rather grim reality here is that Chrysler minivan has consistently captured marketshare because it is incredibly cheap. Massive sales kept prices low, the joy of the market system. But as the automobile industry collapses, the minivan is unlikey to escape the fate of all other vehicle lines.

This is a train wreck of an ad that even if times were good, stumbles into the minefield of generational and economic classes, exploiting the disadvantage of one for an assumed-to-be-affluent other, that, as it turns out, has no or minimally more security.

The salvage:
Something can be salvaged from every ad, something revealing about our culture or how we think about culture.

In the VW Routan ad, it's interesting to see a group of aging people living together communally. What a good idea! Something definitely to be added to our toolbox of coping strategies for the new millennium.

The prognosis:
Will 60s nostlagia ads be shelved under the current economic meltdown? Certainly it is challenging territory, emotionally rich but also highly sensitive. Finding just the right balance between the idealism of the 60s and the cruel realities of the present could be very rewarding. The Obama agenda (www.change.gov) places high value on the ethics and creativity so evident in the 60s. Advertising with a 60s bent has the potential to reinforce the message of bringing people together, doing things in new ways.

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US Election - Visualizing the Vote

How exactly I've come to renew my interest in Information Visualization will have to wait to another blog post. It started accidentally with a workshop called VizDay at the Ontario College of Art and Design this past week.

If you've wondered as I have how the Democrats came to be identified with the color blue, contra the red that you might intuitively expect, this post sheds some light on that, http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=5679

The Liberal Values blog also some interesting maps visualizing the US election vote:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=5750

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Adidas - Impossible is $200

Those of you who know me, know the slogan:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN VACATION AND VOCATION IS O

which I created at the Banff Centre in May, 2006.

Well, check out Addidas new "Impossible is O" campaign. Evidently O is the new black!


I like this ad not only because it uses a syntax I feel I personally invented :) but because it uses athletes as "artists". This one's with Gilbert Arena and there's one with David Beckham painting a painting too. I also like the documentary treatment of their "stories" that fleshes the campaign out. It is almost shocking too that these guys seem to be able to create pretty good art, tho' really that could be just faked by the agency.

What I like more though is Stephon Marbury's endorsement of a $15 court shoe called the Starbury... Marbury is campaigning for shoes that parents, and teenagers can actually afford, an absolutely awesome concept. What I like less about the Adidas campaign is that I'm still paying and paying and paying for all this creativity in the price of brand-name runners. Naomi Klein, in her book No Logo, actually itemizes the percentage of consumer price that pays for marketing. I'll have to look that up, but we know it's high, very high.

So kudos to Adidas for syntactic imagination, but really the campaign should read Impossible is $2OO.

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Sopranos Vista

Gosh, but I AM straying far afield. Focus, Rob, focus. Aw fuck it!

My local ISP, Rogers, just notified me by email that they are having "problems" with the Vista upgrade and that they are "working with" Microsoft... that sounds an awful lot like an episode of the Sopranos in which a local landscaper loses a Sopranos-related client to a crime-related competitor and asks the Sopranos.org (local boss) for "help"; resulting in him getting back his contract... at a cost of 50% of his revenues... ouch!

now, I don't know from Microsoft, but how much is Rogers going to have to pay Microsoft I wonder?

Bill, if you're listening, please, there's time, you CAN change the world, just not in the way you think.

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(visual) quieting - life after cars

What will we do when the streets are empty?

Please contribute your ideas by way of comments or by sending me an email to adminATkloojDOTnet. Thanks!


[ img src ]

We'll ride bicyles!


[ img src ]

We'll find other uses for cars and parking lots:


[ src: Just Add Water event by Samantha Crowhurst and Leah Sandals ]

[ src img: more about Adrian Blackwell ]

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Microsoft - the invisible possibilities ads

This is a good example of how the attempt to render a positive by portraying a negative can backfire. Here, a black waitress is shown without (outline only) the graduation cap and degree that is presumed to be necessary for her to get a better job. The ad assumes a lot of things, like that higher education is an automatic ticket to a better job and a better life, that college grads don't end up working in diners, and that people who work in diners all want to work somewhere else. The ad copy "We see..." attempts to correct the image, to explain the invisible cap and degree as "potentials," achievable with Microsoft's help, which is all well and good, but really what the ad is showing us is a happy waitress in a nice diner who doesn't need a higher education.

I also question who these ads are talking to. If they're in Harper's or The Atlantic, then they are preaching to the converted, talking to people who already have post-secondary education, validating that education as an objective for and attainable by working people.

These ads are a little old now, but might they not be considered an indication of Microsoft's increasing disconnection from reality, now crystalized in the brilliant Apple vs. PC comparative advertising campaign? But more about those later.

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visual quieting - at what point does marketing start to work against itself

The increasing price of consumer goods is largely due to marketing and delivery costs. Companies have learned that marketing pays off, especially once they reach the global scale. This cost effectiveness of marketing is what feeds the increasingly overwhelming clutter of billboards, print and other materials we face every day.

At what point is enough enough? Does brand awareness ever get sufficient that marketing budgets can be safely trimmed back, optimized so that companies start to become more responsible about the "cultural noise" they are creating.

Nike running shoes, for example, could cost substantially less if you bought them direct online from Nike. And I don't need to see another Nike ad for at least several years.

So, for example, take Nike's own numbers:
--
Consumer pays: $90
Retailer pays: $45 to NIKE, and then doubles the price for retail.
NIKE pays: $22.50 and then doubles the price to retailers for shipping, insurance, duties, R&D, marketing, sales, administration and profits.
The $22.50 price paid the factory includes: Materials: $14.60; Labor: $3.37; Overhead: $3.41; Factory Profit: $1.12; Total Costs: $22.50
[ source ]
--

and get rid of the retailer and the marketing:

Consumer pays: 33.00 direct to Nike
This eliminates the retailer (disintermediation) and much marketing so the price comes down to somewhere between 22.50 and 45.00... split the difference. This also opens room up so people assembling the shoes could be paid better, Labor is a pitiably small portion of the cost of production according to the document above. How much sense does that make?

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zefrank is one damned media savvy dude; check out this video on brand emotional aftertaste.



Not as cleverly crtical but awesome in his depth of knowledge and almost-over-the-top radio voice, Terry O'Reilly does a show called the Age of Persuasion on CBC radio (Saturday, 4 p.m.), and has just started a new blog: http://www.oreillyradio.com/

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It's tax time, feeling tied up in knots?

One the finest ways that advertising reveals truths about our culture is when it shows a problem in order to claim the solution to that problem for its product or service. The Canada Revenue Agency, a.k.a. Revenue Canada, for example, wants you to believe that they will make tax time so easy you won't have to have the flexibility of a gymnast to get through it, or that their online tools will make it so easy it will be as if you had the abilities of a gymnast. What the ad really tells us is "you can't do this". Go on, I dare you to try that pose.

And while we're talking about the tax dept. why'd they change the name? We used to have Heritage Canada, Industry Canada and others, names that had a professional feel and that put the title of what they were about ahead of Canada... Canada Revenue Agency is so utilitarian, opaque, bureaucratic, a gulag of naming.

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