Lost Motion Assembly | Blog

If you keep shouting, you are not making communication any better. You are only removing talking and whispering from the system.

— Bruno Monguzzi

“Every time I type a web address into my browser, I don’t need to be taken to a fully immersive, cross-platform, interactive viewing experience,” said San Diego office manager Keith Boscone. “I don’t want to take a moment to provide my feedback, open a free account, become part of a growing online community, or see what related links are available at various content partners.”

Irrespective of its satirical source, I can’t help but wonder how much of the sentiment in this Onion article would be echoed in a real-life survey on the same topic. There are certainly times that I would choose a straightforward reader-content interaction1 over the increasingly complicated social/sharing/liking/pinning landscape.2

A typically brilliant look back at 40 years of Pentagram.

– Via Jared Erickson

Illustrator Jude Buffum has a wonderful set of 8-bit influenced work, including these movie portraits.
His illustration of The Goonies is especially good; much better than the graphics of the original NES game. I could never fault the game’s music though, that theme tune was boss.1

– Via supersonicelectronic

In an effort to teach Watson – the famous artificial intelligence – how to understand informal language, researchers at IBM decided to teach it slang, by feeding it The Urban Dictionary. The plan backfired when Watson had trouble distinguishing between polite conversation and profanity, which led to the researchers curbing Watson’s newfound crassness by selectively wiping its memory.

Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word “bullshit” in an answer to a researcher’s query.

I would love to know what that original query was.

– Via Moving Brands

This week’s photographic fixation is desolate landscapes that border on the abstract. Muted colour pallete? Check. An imposingly limited sense of scale? Check. Barren vistas of brutal rock and ice? Check. Devoid of signs of humanity? Check.

I have a feeling that my subconscious is trying to tell me… something.

– via butdoesitfloat & Wired

According to Team Geek, last Sunday the 13th was Browser Awareness Day (it’s ok, we didn’t know either1). If you’re using an outdated copy of Internet Explorer, why not do yourself a favour2 and upgrade to a modern browser.3 They’re faster, more secure, have loads of extra features that you’ll find useful and best of all they’re free. Go do it now, it will only take 5 mins.

Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

– Neil Gaiman

It seems I have a certain soft spot for videos that fall into the category of “Intimate-Documentary-Portraying-a-Skilled-Crafts-Person-Deeply-Engaged With-the-Craft-They-Love” – a genre that I have just coined that should slot in nicely between “Indie Rom-Com” and “Japanese Horror.” Maybe it’s the romantic appeal of getting away from the sterile realm of the digital and getting ones hands dirty.
A prime example is The Carpenter,1 a short film by Deep Green Sea, an Athens-based group of multi-disciplinary artists working in film and animation. The film is part of a series entitled The Art of Making, which also features films on dressmaking and guitar-making.

– Via Jared Erickson

At Letters of Note, there is a correspondence between to Frank Lloyd Wright and 12-year old Jim Berger:

Dear Mr Wright

I wrote you June 19, 1956 about designing my dog Eddie a dog house to go with the house you designed for my dad. You told me to write you again in November so I ask you again, could you design me a dog house.

Respectfully yours,

Jim Berger

Despite his curmudgeonly reputation, Wright agreed, and supplied a full set of drawings the following year. Eddie’s House was finally constructed in 1963.1

– via Architizer