Latest bits and bobs:

We had some deep snow at the start of the month which made the red glow of the Bus-Tops screens look very beautiful.

We celebrated Glitch Art with intriguing works that really make you look twice.

Pattern Runners by Pixelnoizz.

Our artist for February Ian Monroe created a series of Equivalencies, exploring Double Decker Buses, blue whales and more, evincing a wonderful humour:

Fly me to the Moon, Ian Monroe 2012

————————————

The Art of Code

On the 1st of March we launched a season which celebrates the ‘Art of Code’.

A simulation of Conway’s Game of Life in red by Istvang Chung

Partnered with OpenProcessing we invited artists using Processing to create artworks for the Bus-Tops screens. All of the entries can be seen as original sketches at the competition page and you can also see all the entries on Bus-Tops.

Artists using code to create their work are at the edge of a new era of visual arts and we hope they inspire you as much as they do us. The season for Generative art runs throughout March so remember you can still get involved by uploading here.

Fluid, by D.Ruckus

————————-

March Artists

In March we welcome  Carla Arocha + Stéphane Schraenen with a new work –

‘All The Umbrellas In London Can’t Stop The Pain’

© Carla Arocha + Stéphane Schraenen. Courtesy ersatz, London

Arocha+Schraenen will be exhibiting a series of works  situated on Bus-Tops near World War II V-2 missile bombing sites.

Entitled ‘All the Umbrellas in London Can’t Stop the Pain’, in reference to a song by the band Magnetic Fields, the works to be exhibited on Bus-Tops throughout London feature abstracted animations that suggest raindrops, video game’explosions’ and reference the Olympic rings.

Keep up with their work as it goes live by following them at Bus-Tops.

A while ago now I installed a library shelf and a whiteboard for library requests in my block of flats. People liked it, had fun with it. Books were borrowed and the shelf replenished. As is so often the case with stuff like this though of course someone eventually ripped it down.

So a little about lifts. Lifts are just weird, right? We all feel fidgety in them, we feel exposed, we feel a bit nervous.

But they’re also more than that. At an art-wank conceptual level lifts are these odd and totally unique interstitial environments that are both a transfer from one state to another (home/work/street/bus/car) and a Schrödinger’s cat box of weird suspension; a little bit of Limbo.

The lending lift played with that idea. By adding inherently social objects into the lift (second hand books) you could encourage both play and a sense that we were all in the lift together, even if we were alone when in it.

My girlfriend bought me a whistle locator for my keys a while ago (I really am terrible with my keys) but it was being set off by music and, well, lots of stuff at home. We were in the lift and at *exactly* the same moment Ela and I said “Let’s put it in the lift!”.

Now whether this was a by-product of the changed way we felt about the lift since the lending library or a delicious brain synchrony, I immediately realised it was a fun thing to do to socialise the space again, and interesting from a social object position too. So I immediately ordered ten more. Of course.

When we’re alone and we sing or we whistle, we are arguably happy, or at least likely not maudlin. When you’re alone in a lift and preparing to exit this interstitial realm, you very well might have a little whistle. In our lift at least, if you do, the lift will now join you in chorus. It’s like they want to play too.

This is all a bit of silliness of course, and not to be taken seriously. Obviously.

Hello! What do people write in a first post? I guess a little about us would be a good start. As a loose knit team of individuals with interests ranging from the future of the book to documentary practice, augmented reality to that gorgeous 80′s smell that accompanied newly opened He-Man toys we are a bit of an odd bunch, and that comes out in the work we produce.

We tend to self originate a lot of our work and from time to time businesses and organisations ask us to make or do things for them that in some way call on our original work and way of looking at things. This can result in playful applications or web based games, process driven reports into user behaviour, insight documents, physically instantiated web enabled objects and even actual websites.

I’m Alfie and Kai, Paula, Tuur and James will be posting here on the blog from time to time too.