Creativity Base

Every now and again I stumble upon a beautiful union of substantial intellectual content and playful creativity. The embedded video in this post is a shining example of such a harmony resonating at its best. Below is a speech by radical sociologist David Harvey, who asks us if it is time to look beyond capitalism and towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane.

The producing party, The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA Animate) describes themselves as:

a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.  Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.

Importantly for Creativity Base, this RSA information-dense presentation is accompanied by the live cartooning genius of an uncredited artist. As David Harvey’s narrative progresses, his ideas are illustrated by drawn analogies (pun intended) photographed in timelapse and played back as video at various speeds. The cartoonist wryly draws a mock Monopoly board to set the scene for the presentation’s climax- a perfect choice considering the piece’s open criticism of Capitalism’s shortcomings. In the cleverly crafted cartoon continuum, humor and character abound and transform a powerful speech into powerful media- multiplying its potency in the process.

Dan Monceaux

Back in April, I was asked by the wonderful folks behind the group Mobile Monday in Adelaide if I would be interested in presenting at one of their sessions. Having been actively interested in smartphones since I bought my first back in 2009, I agreed to present and decided to look into what was coming up on the mobile video front. After spending several hours trawling through specifications, articles and forecasts (many hosted by the terrific website GSMarena.com) I assembled my observations into a series of slides and transferred them directly to my LG Viewty Smart GC900 phone. Why, do I hear you ask? Well, the days of the laptop presentation are over my friends. When I chose to invest in my LG handset last year, one of the exciting new features was a composite video output. By running a cable directly from my phone to Mobile Monday’s provided desktop projector, I was able to give the presentation from the palm of my hand.

These early generation smartphones are not without their limitations, but change is afoot. Offering faster processors, better resolution screens, more storage space and more flexible operating systems as general improvements, we’ll be watching the decline of the phone and the emergence of the pocket media and communications centre before the year is through.

Since giving this presentation, exciting new models have already been announced, including several with HDMI output capabilities. The Android operating system is also proliferating, though my new Smartphone will most likely be Nokia’s N8, which runs the Symbian 3 operating system. I went to a conference in Sydney on Friday and came extremely close to not taking a laptop. With a device like Nokia’s forthcoming N8, I will be able to connect to a hotel or conference centre TV, flip out a collapsible wireless bluetooth keyboard and have a seriously powerful pocket computer at my hip.

Not only that, it will also have a 720p HD video and 12MP stills camera built in, and a squillion other attractive productivity and lifestyle features. As a digital media professional who likes to keep mobile, this wave of change is one I’ll be riding all the way.

Dan Monceaux

Locals in my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia will recognise that we’re in the early stages of an unusually wet winter. Since we’re placed in one of the less fortunate corners of this arid continent of ours, I never view rain as a curse and instead take great delight in seeing the foliage and watercourses flourish in times like these. In the past fortnight I’ve also taken pleasure in catching another symptom of the season, the awe-inspiring rainbow, on several occasions- recording them with whatever devices I had handy at the time. After proving popular on Twitter, I thought I’d break the Creativity Base blog-post format, and post this triptych of recent rainbows for your enjoyment. Of course, we have the divine science of refraction to thank for these gifts, and if you’d like to read some more on rainbows, Wikipedia provides a pretty good catch-all for the curious.

Shot on Emma Sterling’s cellphone, I tweaked the saturation to bring up the rainbow colour intensity in the above image.

You’ll notice in the above double rainbow, the colour band order is reversed in the outer, feinter rainbow.

This one was snapped through the windscreen on my cellphone while driving. At the rate cellphone cameras are improving, i won’t be bothering with a digital point n’ shoot by the last quarter of 2010… but that’s another blog post! Enjoy the rainbow season, everyone!

Dan Monceaux