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Went to a great talk this week by Nicolas Henninger of The EXYZT collective (thanks to Bethany @Wolf Ollins ‘Because’).EXYZT were formed in Paris in 2002 on the idea of  building and living together. Starting out as 6 architects it now seems to be more inter disciplinary. The group have been responsible for some awesome projects including; Mushroom House in Latvia, The Dalston Mill and Southwark Lido. A number of interesting aspects in the way EXYZT work. Firstly, their process really brings the local community into the project – probably helped by the fact they tend to live on site during the life of the project.  Secondly, it’s really smart the way they keep an open programme for part of the event to allow the community and the whole event to organise organically over time, as opposed to pre-defining every aspect from the outset.
Check out their YouTube and Flickr channels (including some great photos by EXYZT’s Emmanuel Gabily)

A charming video from IBM, but they’ve missed the point by calling it ‘Social Media’. Alas, still stuck in the Brand-Everything world of days gone by.  But an enjoyable video nevertheless…

Had a wonderful lunch the other week with Vic Keegan from the Guardian and Mark Headley (too shy to have a professional web presence but can be found in his creative outlet here). Back in 2001 we worked together on Text Message Poetry – which was one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever had the privilege of being involved with. Looking back now and seeing how mobiles have advanced it seems a little primitive (we’re no longer restricted to 160 characters) but it’s still charming on many levels. I still recall bits of the winning poem from the first competition (it was so successful we ended up repeating it the following year).

txtin iz messin,
mi headn’me englis,
try2rite essays,
they all come out txtis.
gran not plsed w/letters shes getn,
swears i wrote better
b4 comin2uni.
&she’s african

This competition was a great example of how ‘restriction breeds creativity’ but this is at odds with the infinite nature of digital media…but I wonder if there restriction can be applied to digital media in other ways?  Perhaps mini sagas could be taken in to the digital world

Vic’s a real enthusiast for mobiles and during the conversation the topic of how do people get music on their mobile and I recalled seeing some research so bit of digging. According to m-Metrics in Jan 2008 a staggering 83% was sideloaded.

“83% of mobile music was sideloaded onto cellphones in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. M:Metrics also found that the second most common way of getting music onto mobile phones was to share it with friends via Blue-Tooth” but this was only at 12% in the most popular market.
Full details here