Media Yarn

The Museum of Everything!

This weekend I went to a fabulous museum called “The Museum of Everything” located on the corner of Regents Park Road and Sharpleshall St. N. London (tube: Chalk Farm Station). The museum is fairly new, having only opened this past October 2009. Since then it has received so much attention that they will stay open until the new year and hopefully be permanent.

Upon arrival you think you are either walking into a bohemian speak-easy or a fight club garage down a dark alleyway. What I loved most was not only that it was FREEZIE but the curation of the exhibit. Each contemporary artist was nominated by another artists and each work description was then written about by another famous artist in the industry. Truly collective. Supposedly its Britain’s “first space to show works by Outsider Artists, described here as “un-taught artists who live or lived outside of modern society” (about two thirds are no longer alive). One piece that was exhibited was a yarn-wrapped sculpture created by an artist with downs syndrome, who was mute and deaf.

In tiny crevices and under dusty beds, there lies a secret creativity by the unknowns of society. Unexpected, delicate and profound, this democratic work has inspired the world’s greatest artists.

www.musevery.com

Google Wave or Google Tsunami?

Last Monday a few of my classmates and I attended a special invite to the Google Technology User Group for a preview of Google Wave. I was itching to find someone with open invites but was happy to hear that everyone who signed up was automatically getting active Wave accounts.

Some of the initial stats were quite impressive so far: .5% of waves are public, the longest wave has 1134 blips, 8% contributed to a public waves, 98% have tried photo uploading. Since I was granted access I’ve been using wave mostly with other wavers and some of my classmates. I still feel however that I cannot get the full experience since my entire network isn’t on Wave yet. In class we use it for sending documents, images, and creative to each other in collective environment. To do so I needed to install gears.

I think the branding choice of Google Wave is quite interesting. Since I’m studying HCI stuff in LCC we recently discussed how some theorists compared innovation to “waves” or the build up of an idea and movement of interaction.

What do you think of “the wave?”