Through the Interface

Lighten Up! at EPFL

After an interesting start of the week in Copenhagen, I hurried back to Switzerland on Thursday afternoon to attend the opening of an exhibition and a following full-day symposium with many of the artists involved. The exhibition in question is called “Lighten Up! On Biology and Time” and is at the intersection of Art and Chronobiology. It’s running at the EPFL Pavilions until the end of July. The opening was in the Rolex Learning Center on the EPFL campus, and the auditorium was nicely full. In his keynote address Till Roenneberg had everyone close their eyes – a risky... Read more →

The APS Sustainability Accelerator in Copenhagen

On Sunday night I headed to Geneva airport to take a late flight to Copenhagen for a special Sustainability-focused APS Accelerator. I knew something was up with my flight when at 7:49pm the gate information that was promised to be shown at 7:25pm still wasn’t posted. (This is Switzerland. Something was badly wrong with this scenario.) It turns out the inbound flight from Nice was delayed by an hour, which meant our flight to Copenhagen would arrive at midnight rather than 11pm. Walking through Copenhagen’s beautiful airport at that time of night was highly surreal. It was completely deserted.... Read more →

Dynamo Office Hours showing Space Analysis and VASA

Last week Rhys Goldstein and I had a blast joining Sol Amour and Jacob Small during the Dynamo Office Hours session on Packages of Note, something I mentioned in a recent post. We spent some time stepping through a few samples for both Space Analysis and VASA, to give a rough sense of what’s involved in using each. Next week I’m heading over to Denmark for the first half of the week, where I’ll be attending the APS Sustainability Accelerator in Copenhagen. If you’re going to be in Copenhagen next week and want to meet up for a chat,... Read more →

A student design challenge: Make It Bridge

Over on Instructables there’s a student design challenge featuring the 5m Dar Smart Bridge. It’s called “Make It Bridge”, and the idea is that contestants – who have to be students aged between 13 and 21 and based in the USA or Canada (excluding Quebec, for some reason) – can place the geometry of the Dar bridge, or another bridge of their choosing, in surroundings to which it adds value. It sounds like a lot of fun. I like the guidance given: In choosing the site for the bridge, you might consider what it would look like from below... Read more →

And the Oscar for best commercial goes to… Otto Desć!

Yesterday’s Oscar ceremony was punctuated by a series of commercials (or adverts, as we call them back home) by Autodesk. The first few paid homage to a mythical filmmaker/visual effects specialist named Otto Desćinski – or Otto Desć to his friends. It was only during the third segment that the secret was unveiled, that the series was really all about Autodesk. Here’s the extended cut, showing content from all three segments: The whole thing was really nicely executed: Ryan Reynolds’ creative agency, Maximum Effort, were behind it, and our new Chief Marketing Officer, Dara Treseder, clearly played a role.... Read more →

This year’s snow week

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that in Switzerland the annual winter half-term break – the Winterferien or semaine blanche – is basically meant for skiing or snowboarding. Or sledging, I suppose. The canton of Neuchatel has its Republic Day on March 1st, so the holiday week always falls to include this day (other cantons have theirs sometime earlier in February). Frankly, with the shifting seasons, this is starting to feel a little late – snow is far from guaranteed, these days, at this time of year, and this winter season turned out to be exceptionally dry in... Read more →