July 19, 2004

Ongoing Saga of Frustration

Hello Reader(s).

Since this site long ago became a weblog about not having a Drift Table, here's another horribly pointless update: the Table will be away for 'a month or so' being repaired.

I guess two years of being lugged about to different homes¹ so folk could be observed getting all Homo Ludens on its ass has taken a toll on it's fragile computery innards.

Needless to say, while I understand this, the tabular to-and-fro is totally doing my head in.

Oh well. Drifty matters are still being posted to the corner of my del.icio.us space devoted to it, so you could subscribe to this feed if you fancy a bit of low-level Drift chatter while this site goes quiet until the Table's return.

1. Did I ever mention that Phil Oakey had it at some point, apparently? Yes, that Phil Oakey; him out of the Human League.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

July 02, 2004

Coffee Tables In The News

From Popbitch:

Wondering what Daft Punk have been up to since their last album Discovery in 2001? They've just designed a special coffee table for Habitat's 40th anniversary.

It's no surprise to find these geniuses have come up with something fabulous - the table top has flashing red lights, to look like the dance-floor in the 2001 Odyssey disco in Saturday Night Fever.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

June 30, 2004

Taken Away

So, the Drift Table has been taken from my room, after a whopping great crash over the weekend (complete with Windows error messages about lost data and not stopping drives before unplugging them, and stuff).

I don't know when it will return. There's talk of replacing components, or even giving the thing a full-blown overhaul, since, two years after the Table was made, good old Moore's Law progression means that its guts can now be fashioned more easily. Whatever - I'm not exactly holding my breath!

I've got some notes sitting on my desk that I should probably turn into posts here before I lose them, or forget what they were about, and a bunch of photos, so there might be a little more activity here for a couple of days. After that, this place will be mothballed again, so Drift fans should keep an eye on Submit Response for news of the Table's return.

In conclusion: bugger!

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (1)
Location: (Here)

June 25, 2004

Sound and Vision

My digital camera is broken at the moment, so here's a few tiny pictures of the Table taken with my telephone:

And here's a very brief MP3 of the Table humming away in its deafening way, recorded from directly above: hum.mp3 (135KB).

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

May 27, 2004

Slight Update

On the offchance that anyone has been waiting with baited breath for this weblog to come alive again, it looks like the Drift Table will be with me before too long.

There's no exact date pencilled in for its arrival as yet, but when Barry (who is studying the responses of Glaswegians to the Table) returns from the Americas, the final repairs will be made.

Also, I've switched off comments on the weblog for the time being - in my absence spammers had turned this place into a billboard for some particularly unpleasant pornographic websites.

Finally, since it is very faintly related to the Drift Table, I think I should plug the book I'm reading, and thoroughly enjoying, at the moment: Garden Cities of To-morrow by Ebeneezer Howard. It's an 1898 treatise on town planning that suggests a model city, carefully zoned into residential, commercial and agricultural areas, owned in trust by its citizens. Fascinating stuff.

Slight Update Update:

It's coming! I know I've said this several times before, but I'm assured that the Table will be with me by this weekend (19-20 June). One of the Table's hard drives failed, and restoring it has been the cause of the delay. Now all the map data is - at last -loaded up, and the Table is ready to, well, drift.

Updating the Slight Update Update:

It's due this afternoon - 23 June - at 3pm! Fingers crossed it doesn't explode on its trip down the hill from the Computing Science Dept.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

March 01, 2004

Kaput

I have received word that the Drift Table has some manner of disk drive problem, and may well need to return to the RCA for a little TLC. So it doesn't look like it'll be installed for a while.

I am, however, going to visit it in the laboratory later in the week, and will post a touching photograph of it not-drifting then, then mothball this site until the thing is all better and ready to play.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

February 27, 2004

What This Weblog Is For

Just so you know why I'm keeping this weblog, here's an extract from the brief participants in the Drift Table trial are given:

As part of the trial we would like you to produce an 'artistic work' of some kind that is inspired in some way by the table. We are open to what you produce... yet we encourage you to produce something which you normally produce in your day to day work, be it writing, music, whatever. We want you to see the table as a creative inspiration.

Alternatively (or additionally) you may want to write us a review of the Drift Table, saying what you like about it, what you don't like about it, and what you think of its artistic and practical direction.

Now, by no stretch of the imagination is this weblog an artistic work, but since I'm a journalist who keeps a weblog this is the best I can do. I've also pitched pieces on my time with the Table to various newspapers and magazines, and should any editor bite, I'll post the articles here.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

A Useful Weblog?

To avoid the embarrasment of being caught by flatmates dancing around my room singing, 'Huzzah! Huzzah! The Drift Table, she comes today!' I thought I'd sit down to write a final pre-Table post.

Barry, the chap who fixed me up with the Table and will be charting my responses to it, was talking last night about weblogs in an academic context (he's not fond, since the lack of peer review can cause shit to float, so to speak) and it occured that they are ideally suited to a project like this.

I don't pretend to understand quite what Barry and his fellow Equator project people are up to, but when it comes to researching the way folk respond to electronic furniture prototypes, the weblog is a peculiarly useful medium. (I can't believe I just wrote that sentence, but bear with me.) Without this site, Barry would have to interview me, or ask me to write up some thoughts about my time with the Table. Since I am keeping a weblog here, by the end of my six week stint he'll have a useful (I hope) chunk of data that, importantly I think, has been recorded over time, as and when the Table provokes me to post.

With that in mind, I'll see if Barry and the other participants in the trial are amenable to keeping the site going after the Table is cruelly wrenched from my grasp in six weeks time. Things could certinaly get interesting if Barry were to post his responses to the responses of his guinea pigs, if you catch my, um, drift.

Finally, I've been remiss in not extending my thanks to Bill Gaver and the RCA folk for making the table, and the Equator gang for making it available for me to play with. So: thank you!

Update: The Table has broken again, and so won't be installed until Monday afternoon. Bugger.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (1)
Location: (Here)

February 23, 2004

Early Mapping

In her dissertation on The Use of Maps In Contemporary Art, Anna Oliver mentions in passing the earliest map:

The earliest extant map dates from the 6th Century BC. [It is] a Babylonian clay tablet , on which Earth is shown as a flat circular disk surrounded by ocean.

Sounds familiar.

I wonder what options were available to the Drift Table designers for the vieport? The disc format seems to point to early maps as an inspiration, but it doesn't stop there.

Like early maps, the Drift Table isn't a tool for navigation, but an aid to contemplation; a spatial take on Memento Mori if you like. It doesn't say, 'Here is Wolverhampton' in the sense that an Ordance Survey map does; it says, 'Think about Wolverhampton-ness' in the same way that Mappae Mundi used spatial cues to frame the cartographer's agenda, incorporating mythology, religion, even time.

Similarly, the interactive aspect of the Table - the viewport shifts its 'position' according to objects placed upon it - mirrors the non-spatial cartography of early maps with their orientation of places in relation to a point of significance, like Jerusalem in the case of Christian maps.

There's something, too, about the emphasis the Table's tight focus places on here and elsewhere that recalls the almost exploratory nature of early maps - whatever can be seen in the viewport is known, everything else to be guessed at. Literally, given my terrible grasp of British geography: I have no idea what's next to our example town of Wolverhampton, so the Table might as well bear the legend Here Be Dragons.

Or, at least, I think these thoughts are relevant - I really ought to stop speculating and wait for the thing to arrive.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)

February 02, 2004

Welcome

Welcome to The Drift Table Weblog, my way of responding to six weeks of slo-mo virtual travel around the UK, by magic coffee-table.

Until the table is installed, I'm not sure what form this weblog will take, but you can expect near-daily updates on the Drift Table's 'location' and talk of related technologies and ideas, be they other examples of interactive furniture or more tangentially connected things about mapping, psychogeography and the like.

Posted by Jack. Permanent Link | Comments & Trackbacks (0)
Location: (Here)