This week I’m circling on the Milan orbit.
My headquarters until friday will be the newly opened and very white Cowo, a coworking space in the forever up and coming Lambrate area. Monday actually started exploring the neighbourhood and ended up with an introductory coffee for Alberto to the place.
Milan these days is bursting with the usual plethora of activities, events, gallery openings and performances that accompanies the Salone del Mobile. Usually the sensation at the end of the week is that you ran around for days, missing one shiny event after the other, and getting drunk in the process.
Tonight I’ve been very briefly at the Fabbrica del Vapore, an interesting, totally cool, ex industrial space now converted to creative studios, galleries and performance spaces. Conversation and the usual nice conversation with Vanz.
Among the many, I’m looking forward tomorrow to go and have a peek at Lago’s new space, and absolutely visit the Peter Greenaway installation at Palazzo Reale.
On Friday I’m looking forward to aggregate some Openspime and Arduino crowd, let there be dork.
Tag Archive for 'italy'
True, I said one week out :)
I’ve been spending a couple of weeks (almost non stop) kindly hosted by a client’s office in order to facilitate the launch of their new project.
Apparently there’ll be more (support, documentation, handover, other than the fun bug-squashing) so until the end of the month you’ll find me in the Fleet Street area more than in SE1.
Interesting discovering of the past week: the Leon Gobi.
I also realized that I didn’t write a word about the week spent in Italy.
I was at a Barcamp in Turin where I did a presentation about webdesign-meet-gamedesign (here my slides, in Italian), and at the girlgeekdinner in Milan (where I wasn’t the only UK based guest, as Sarah Blow, Maz Hardey and Amanda Lorenzani were also there).
The other surprise from my trip I wanted to write about is OpenSpime: almost by chance, stepping by Leandro’s, I had the chance to see a live preview of the first prototype, amazing. Good luck with the tour now, and call me in for the next brainstorm :P
To understand OpenSpime in a nutshell, watch this interview to David Orban on YDN:
In this post on the newspaper blog, Marco Pratellesi, chief editor at Corriere della Sera, apologizes for having published the gallery of the mysterious digital artist Paulthewineguy without link nor references. Babysteps, yet steps they are.
Saw already twice (Joi’s and Matt Jones’s) this morning a link to Mission Bicycles, an interesting project just started where you can design your own bike, that starts as a “light steel frame fixed gear bike with high quality components, a custom paint job, no visible branding”.
That reminded me of Stefano and SlyWay, an Italian bike design studio I’ve been involved with in their early stages of, a few years ago. I went to check the website and I’m glad to see it now features several videos and models.
They still focus on the recumbent concept but apparently have several different “interpretations” of it. Quite cool!
I need to nag them though for the absence of microformats and whatsoever form of interaction on the website (well, there is a network, but pretty static). However on youtube you can find a few videos… enjoy! :)
Finally managed to take a break from the City, jumped on an easyjet and safely landed this side of the Alps.
Spent the first day with the family, and the second essentially sleeping and “decompressing” (which means that I’ve been in constant touch with London but not taking any commitment): I just can’t take a sudden break, I know only too well.
While I was there, I took the chance to have a few walks around town to progressively get in touch with the old (most) and the new (very little).
I also took note of the different perceptions, main one being related to amplitude vs. definition: London is bigger, faster, louder than here; colours, sounds, smells… they travel fast and are all-encompassing, while at the same time blending and mixing in a multidimensional smoothie. And leaving gaps behind, gaps much wider than those you can find on the shores of river Po, for instance: there’s a discontinuous thread that connects the social, cultural and architectural fabric and if you look carefully enough you’ll be able to see the difference in texture.
In the modest perfection of the elders dressed up for their monday walk through the village.
In the forsaken ground floor windows of ex shops on the south of the Thames.
In the orange rusty spots of a worn out corkscrew laid on the counter of the loco winery, permeated by the smell of laugh and salt and the regular ticks of a large, round wall clock.
Even in the
crowd assembled outside of a pub, consuming the after work pint.
Then you can start speculating on what can cause or be caused by this different texture. Suit yourself.
Me? I’ll be walking through Milan tomorrow. I have an exhibition to see and a few friends to meet. If you want to have a drink or coffee together, drop me an email, tweet, pidgeon by tomorrow morning.
Good old Babele posted a video (in Italian) of the iAble, the office suite totally controlled through eye tracking developed at SRLabs (the last Italian company I worked with before moving to the UK).
Your Voice