The use of inspirational works by designers to create new ideas
"Designers immerse themselves in environments rich in inspiration: collecting examples, amassing libraries, pinning notes and images around their workspaces, and so on. There is a broad recognition that much of the design proceeds by modification of previous ideas (e.g., Oxman, 1990) and that experts amass collections of examples and precedents to employ in design (e.g., Lawson, 2004). Indeed there are attempts to introduce students to relevant design precedents (e.g., Heylighen and Verstijnen, 2003). However, much of the previous research has tended to focus on reference, recall, and reasoning, and to neglect the vital role of explicit external sources of inspiration in triggering and guiding designers' activities. It appears that many attempts at computer support and most research starts with conceptual design; this paper reports on research which attempts to investigate the even earlier gathering of sources of inspiration and exploration of ideas and hence to understand the mechanisms by which inspiration is harnessed (see also Eckert and Stacey, 2000)."
(Marian Petrea, Helen Sharpa and Jeffrey Johnson, 2006, Design Studies)
Marian Petrea, Helen Sharpa and Jeffrey Johnson (2005). "Complexity through combination: an account of knitwear design", Volume 27, Issue 2, March 2006, Pages 183–222
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
National Archives of Australia: Archives Viewer
"Say hello to the Archives Viewer (naming things isn't really one of my strengths). Instead of rewriting my existing script I decided to create a completely new web application. Why? Mainly because it gave me a lot more flexibility. I could also make use of a variety of existing tools and frameworks like Django, Bootstrap, Isotope and FancyBox. Standing upon the code of giants, I had the whole thing up and running in a single weekend. The code is available on GitHub.
What does it do? Simply put, just feed the Archives Viewer the barcode of a digitised file in RecordSearch and it grabs the metadata and images and displays them in a variety of useful ways. It's really pretty simple, both in execution and design.
Yep, there's a wall. It's not quite as spacey and zoom-y as the CoolIris version, but perhaps that's a good thing. It's just a flat wall of page image thumbnails with a bit of lightbox-style magic thrown in. But when I say just, well... look for yourself. There's something a bit magical about seeing all the pages of a file at once, taking in their shapes and colours as well as their content. This digital wall provides a strangely powerful reminder of the physical object.
Of course you can also view the file page by page if you want. Printing is a snap - just type in any combination of pages or page ranges and hit the button. The images and metadata are assembled ready to print. No more wondering 'which file did this print out come from?'.
But perhaps the most important feature is that each page has it's own unique, persistent url. Basic stuff, but oh, so important. With a good url you can share and cite. Find something exciting? Tell the world about it! I've included your typical social media share buttons to help you along."
(Tim Sherratt, 29 August 2012)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Zealand National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library
"We're in Beta, and we're excited to share this new National Library website with you. Why are we so excited? For the first time you can search right across our collections in one place. It's easier to get what you're after and easier to use it."
(The Aotearoa New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua)
Fig.1 Ref: 1/2-220232-F, Portrait of girl with fan, 1968, photographed by K E Niven & Co of Wellington.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
JISC Final Report: Enhancing the VADS Image Collection
"The project had three overarching aims: to improve image searching and retrieval; to enable VADS images to be accessed more easily; and to facilitate increased use of the collection by academics. To achieve this, the project has developed OAI-PMH capabilities on the VADS database; developed and applied a general top level hierarchical taxonomy to the VADS collections; implemented a combination of controlled terms and free to edit user tags; and enabled academic users to create, annotate and publish their own image sets. "
(Amy Robinson, August 2009, p.4)
Fig.1 French photographer, JR.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Video Data Bank: video art by and about contemporary artists
"Founded in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement, the Video Data Bank (VDB) is a leading resource in the United States for video art by and about contemporary artists. A not-for-profit organization located at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the VDB Collections include the work of more than 550 artists and 6,000 video art titles, 2,500+ in active distribution.
The VDB makes its Collections available to museums, galleries, educational institutions, libraries, cultural institutions and exhibitors through a national and international distribution service, and works to foster a deeper understanding of video art, and to broaden access and exposure to media art histories, through its programs and activities. These include: preservation of historically important works of video art; the perpetuation of analog and digital archives; publishing of curated programs and artists' monographs; the commissioning of essays and texts that contextualize artists' work; and an extensive range of public programs.
The VDB is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, and the Illinois Arts Council, an agency of the state."
(Video Data Bank, School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Fig.1 Videofreex (1970) 'Women's Lib Demonstration NYC', 00:23:30, United States, English, B&W, Mono, 4:3
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
