This IGN Entertainment brochure site might just be a virtuoso piece.  Anchor links that autoscroll the page to their destinations, a navbar that becomes pinned to the top of the browser window as the user scrolls down, hard-edge geometric design, clear content segmentation…  Just lovely.

IGN Entertainment

Rob Keller writes about the development of his font face called Vesper.

Is our fear of biotechnology impeding the scientific progress we once revered? Michael Specter thinks so. In his new book Denialism, Specter says irrational thinking has led the opposition of vaccines and genetically modified food. The internet and the news media aren’t helping either.

via On The Media: Transcript of “The Fear Factor” (October 30, 2009).

Melvyn Bragg and guests AC Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile and Christopher Janaway discuss the dark, pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.

As a radical young thinker in Germany in the early 19th century, Schopenhauer railed against the dominant ideas of the day. He dismissed the pre-eminent German philosopher Georg Hegel as a pompous charlatan, and turned instead to the Enlightenment thinking of Immanuel Kant for inspiration.

Schopenhauer’s central idea was that everything in the world was driven by the Will – broadly, the ceaseless desire to live. But this, he argued, left us swinging pointlessly between suffering and boredom. The only escape from the tyranny of the Will was to be found in art, and particularly in music.

Schopenhauer was influenced by Eastern philosophy, and in turn his own work had an impact well beyond the philosophical tradition in the West, helping to shape the work of artists and writers from Richard Wagner to Marcel Proust, and Albert Camus to Sigmund Freud.

AC Grayling is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London; Beatrice Han-Pile is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex; Christopher Janaway is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton.

via BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – In Our Time, Schopenhauer.

Honest and Epic Mobile Home Commercial

Thanks to Andy Horwitz for interviewing me on his terrific blog Culturebot.

Only the Lord could imagine why but if you are so inclined you may follow me on Twitter.

Hot on the heels of the SFMOMA website redesign comes the Hammer Museum’s new site.

It’s a knockout that weaves together many threads of programming – events, exhibitions, and the crucial multimedia that bind users to a site – into a cohesive experience that satisfys the needs of many kinds of visitors.  Even better, they’ve embraced an openness to multimedia distribution and sharing so unusual among organizations of this type.  A user can subscribe to the museum’s offerings through podcasts or RSS, embed video or audio into their own website, or post content to content sharing sites like Facebook.  These are fundamentals in 2008 which a lot of museum sites still aren’t embracing.

The design team also came up with a minimal and elegant design that frames the museum’s programming transparently, throwing emphasis onto the many visuals the museum naturally generates through its events and exhibitions.

The Hammer also has crack crew making sure their site runs smoothly.  Audio and video and images are everywhere and that’s a testament to all the little monkeys behind the scenes who are producing, cropping, editing, formatting, and posting this material.

Tip o’ the hat, folks.

I confess that when I first went to their site I was nervous it was going to be an all-Flash hell hole on the order of the epic disaster that is The Kitchen’s website: a nightmare of an interface, a buggy, error-filled disaster that probably halves attendance figures because content is so freakishly hard to find and so garishly designed.  The Kitchen’s website is made even more painful because of how it stands in such stark contrast to their outstanding programming.  Although I have many friends that work at that august institution, I have no idea what happened behind the scenes that led to their digital debacle.  I’ll assume it has something to do with an overworked staff entrusting the project to developers who had absolutely no business making websites.  It’s a total heap and needs to be redesigned completely and immediately for institutional solvency.

Anyway.  Back to The Hammer.

It turns out that Flash is limited to the homepage and discreetly around the site in audio and video modules and an effective (if random) interactive Membership matrix.

Featured programs are listed on the homepage (although I wish it would say “Featured” since I thought that all I saw on the homepage was all that was at the museum (wrong)).  They’ve nicely integrated video into the homepage (but didn’t allow it to go fullscreen).  The full bleed background images switch as the user selects different featured programs – cute.  Upcoming events are conveniently listed on the bottom.  It works.  It’s full of stuff but is coherent and offers a lot of info in a compressed way.

The real killer feature – and it’s simple – is the section that drops down from the main horizontal navigation bar when you roll over major section headers.  Mouse over “Exhibitions” and before you click into the unknown, a helpful menu drops down to show you what to expect: exhibitions on view, etc.  For each section the dropdown area shows you the most important stuff.  It’s so good.  They’ve really done a nice job of not forcing people to click, instead enabling users to find things simply by hovering.

I like how they list their current and upcoming exhibitions together on the Exhibtions landing page but it’s a bit obnoxious that in order to see more current exhibitions one has to click a tiny right arrow for the other thumbnails to slide in.  Hammer: just have it drop to the next level.  This type of hard-to-find-button-to-push-to-see-more-stuff won’t pass the mom test.  Also I’m not sure if segregating the past exhibitions into its own area is necessary but it works well nonetheless.

The Programs section does what SFMOMA’s didn’t do: tag lots and lots of images to every single event.  I know from firsthand experience that it’s annoying and it’s grunt work but it makes the section look visually delectable and encourages visitors to click on things they otherwise wouldn’t.

The Collections sections provides an overview but doesn’t even attempt to put anything online.  Bummer, but they’ll have time to fundraise for that functionality in the future.  In that case they can look to SFMOMA who did a great job.  And the Met, of course, who does an even greater job (and from what I’ve heard will be launching some exciting new online collections soon).

The best part of the site is the “Watch and Listen” section which does what every museum should be doing: have a whole section fully and totally devoted to the gobs of audio and video that they are producing.  The Hammer nails this section.  First off, you can watch things right there on the website but you can also embed it into your site or subscribe to the podcast feed.  SO BASIC BUT SO GOOD.  Why can’t most every other place get this so right?  Filtering works well but Search doesn’t.  Just to see if search functionality actually functioned, I searched for words that I saw in the titles: “Lopate” and “Arbus” in my case.  It said nothing could be found.  Uh.  Tsk tsk.  Fix this.  I also wish there was a browsable list of all the multimedia participants so I could just skim and see if my favorite artist was there.

I’m not sure why the section is called “News and Blogs.”  How many blogs do they have?  As far as I can tell it’s just one.  And just call it “News.”  I don’t think you have to drop the “B” word.

The user interface is really elegant and smartly prepared.  Content flows intuitively and key information is presented immediately with secondary or extra information accessible through a mouse click.  I would boost the overall site font size.  Small looks sexy but it’s hard to read for a lot of (older) visitors.

All in all – this site is a real triumph and the team behind it should be complimented on an outstanding offering.

Unrelated to art but a very good (and short) interview with a philosopher on the meaning of friendship:

Philosophy Bites: Alexander Nehamas on Friendship.

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the minisite I designed and built to accompany the Elizabeth Peyton exhibition at the New Museum.  Features include an audio slideshow, interactive timeline of Peyton’s life and career, and an essay by the show’s organizer Laura Hoptman.  Special thanks to Amy Mackie and Nick Hasty.

From the English Wikipedia. Original description: Pterodactylus kochi, drawing by John Conway, 2003.

Ever wonder how a pterodactyl walked on the ground?

Now you know.

There are times when one stumbles upon an inadvertant fluxus video.  This is one of those times:

Thanks to David Rager for the tip.

The new perrygarvin.net has launched. The old site’s navigation structure was hard for some to figure out, the Futura theme was growing tiresome, and the art section’s slideshow couldn’t go full screen. Those issues have been addressed and a few more goodies have been peppered about.

Take a look around.

N. Korea Reports 1st Nuclear Arms Test – New York Times

This is bad, bad news.

This girl’s face looks identical from photo to photo.

http://www.friendster.com/photos/2598722/283114893