1 post tagged “science technology shiny”

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

"The Museum of Modern Art's "Design and the Elastic Mind" showcases works and objects created by designers in response to changes in society and culture. The focus is on the relationship between design and science, with over 300 featured projects. The website itself is an amazing work, with related projects tied together through an impressive interface. Browse categories such as "Harvesting the Internet" and "3D Printing" in this unique online experience." (via)

This is essentially a featured exhibit at a MoMA (museum of modern art) compressed into a website.  It took me a while to get used to the layout, but I found that it can most easily be navigated by maximizing your browser window, and shutting down all other applications, especially if Firefox is your browser (it's been taking 100K+ of ram for me lately).  Also, a white scroll bar that appears to the right of the window that allows you to scroll up and down the page to look at the other exhibits.  Arrows on the left and right of the page appear to scroll side to side.

If you're completely at a loss as what is going on with this page, here's my take: each art "piece" is summed up in short paragraphs, lined up under category headings (Origami, Tagging, Future Mores, etc.).  Click on the paragraph and a little picture pops up framed in a circle with other words jutting out from the circle.  Ignore the words for now, and click on the circle.  A presentation of the piece will pop up.  When you're done viewing the piece, click on the "Return" option on the lower left to go back to the main listing.

As to the meaning of the words jutting out of the previews and above the "Return" option, I imagine that they are an implementation of "tagging," if you're familiar with the term with photos.  These exhibits tend to have things in common with other exhibits, but the relationships can't be shown in the traditional "family tree" style of categorization, so the somewhat arbitrary "tagging" style is implemented to link you from exhibit to exhibit, depending on whether you like the "interface" aspect or "nano" aspect or whatever aspect of that exhibit.

I know that this all seems like too much work to put in for a website, but these pieces alone should pique your interest:

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/84/

http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/27/

click on the "video" option next to "photo" near the top of the images for maximum mind-blowage.