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A monthly review of Web design and resources.
By Ken Coupland
February 2002
Chronopolis <www.madxs.com/chronopolis>
In a 24/7 world no longer ruled by the revolutions of Earth and Moon, Sun
and stars, do we need a new way of telling time? Erik Adigard and Chris
Salter--creators of Chronopolis, a traveling installation that this year
stops in Munich and Rotterdam--think we do. They propose to "reset"
the clocks in the cities they visit to a more practical metric standard
while speeding up time to reflect the accelerating pace of modern life.
A spare site documents with graphic animation the project's reconfigured
timekeeping, which interpolates itself in real time over the course of the
exhibition.
Renzo Piano Building Workshop <www.rpwf.org>
The official site for the Renzo Piano Building Workshop is so bells-and-whistles
free--without scrolling thumbnails and distracting animations--that initially
your expectations aren't all that great. But don't let the low-key presentation
fool you. This industrial-strength tribute to one of architecture's master
builders features a comprehensive portfolio of photos and project briefs,
plus an efficient internal search engine and an extensive archive of
drawings that allow you to zoom in on details. Never mind that the text
translation verges on the unintelligible or that the drawings are available,
maddeningly, only on a PC. What's so impressive is the reach of Piano's
practice: in the current year alone, the workshop has 20 projects under
construction.
Necoro <www.necoro.com>
Remember Sony's Aibo, the robot dog from a few seasons back? The Japanese
electronics manufacturer Omron has done Sony one better with Necoro, an
eerily lifelike fur-covered robotic kitty that--unlike the hairless Aibo--looks
an awful lot like its living counterpart. Necoro responds in an alarmingly
realistic fashion too, meowing and displaying various endearing cat behaviors
when you pet it. You'll need a Kanji translator to read the site's sales
pitch in the original Japanese, but it's hardly necessary unless you want
to order one of the damn things. The site's gallery section posts half a
dozen enticing QuickTime movies that (if you're not too creeped out) you'll
probably end up viewing time and time again.
BillyBlob <www.billyblob.com>
Kansas City--based illustrator Billy Robinson advertises his talents
with a gallery of short films that showcase his spare but evocative
rendering style and decidedly skewed sensibility. The standout of a small
selection of the artist's disquieting Flash animations is "Karma Ghost,"
the cautionary tale of a shiftless hipster who tempts fate in a series of
ill-considered lapses of judgment that end very, very badly. To a cocktail-jazz
accompaniment, Robinson furnishes a stylized, vaguely retro setting for
a posse of spectral cherubs who wreak divine justice on the cartoon's unfortunate
antihero.
Lines and Splines <www.linesandsplines.com>
If you're addicted to type, you can get a regular fix at this no-frills
posting administered, oddly enough, by a UC Berkeley history major. Host
Andy Crewdson publishes as the mood strikes him, and there doesn't seem
to be anything about letterforms that escapes his interest. On a recent
visit the site's copious links included a learned discussion of aboriginal
alphabets and their production, breaking news and gossip on the latest typography
books worldwide, a round-robin debate on the merits of student experimentation,
and much more. Fraught with obsessively detailed commentary that presumes
a high level of connoisseurship, Crewdson's labor of love blissfully embraces
the most arcane aspects of fontology.
Ken Coupland can be reached at
screenspace@metropolismag.com.
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