Susan Norrie artist talk at MCA

In Archive by Fredy Ore

On Monday 15 September, Susan Norrie will be conducting an artist talk about her current Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) exhibition, Susan Norrie: notes from underground.

The session is FREE and open to both teachers and senior students of visual arts. The talk will discuss notes from recent developments in her work, including her use of new media technologies.

It is a great opportunity for audiences to hear from this well-known Australian artist. The talk will be followed by an exhibition walkthrough.

MCA Level 6, FREE
Bookings are essential.
Contact MCA Education on 02 9252 8484
or email education@mca.com.au

Visual Symbols Library

In Archive by Fredy Ore

The Visual Symbols Library is a collection of high-quality images by digital design pioneer Clement Mok from the best of his acclaimed image collection (formerly sold as part of PhotoDisc’s Object Series).

The library is organised around conceptually themed collections including:

1. Objects
Celebrations, & Events, Domestic Animals, Editorially Speaking, Everyday Objects, Holidays, Culture & Religion, Home, Decoration, & Lifestyle, Info Media & Technology, Typography

2. People
Characters: Men, Characters: Women, Everyday People: Babies, Everyday People: Kids, Everyday People: Men, Everyday People: Teens, Everyday People: Women

You can search the library, download comps from these professionally styled and art directed images.

Language, music, syntax and the brain

In Artificial Intelligence, Audio, Future, Music, Science by Fredy Ore

A really interesting high-level article by Aniruddh D. Patel and published in Nature Neuroscience which looks at the comparative study and cognitive theory of music and language and its representation in the brain.

The paper is titled, Language, music, syntax and the brain and was published in the July 2003 Volume of the Journal.

Comparative neural research on language and music can focus on a number of different levels, such as the level of individual speech and musical sounds, or of melodic and rhythmic patterns. This article focuses on syntax, a topic of central concern in the neuroscience of language.

An interesting paradox has emerged from comparative language-music research in this area. Recent neural imaging data suggests an overlap in the processing of syntactic relations in language and music.

See also the:
Scientific 2020 Report (Article number: 11222)
Music, Language, and The N400: ERP Interference Patterns Across Cognitive Domains
by Nicole Calma-Roddin & John E. Drury

Reference:
Aniruddh D. P. (July, 2003), Language, music, syntax and the brain. Volume 6 Number 7 pp 674 – 681 [Online] Available: http://www.nature.com/neuroscience

Clement Mok suggests – lets focus more on the Process

In Design, Digital Culture, Disciplines by Fredy Ore

AGDA, the Australian Graphic Design Association, have posted a link to an article in the Communication Arts site by Clement Mok (President of AIGA, The American Institute of Graphic Art).

The article titled, Time for Change, presents an argument for the need of designers and the design community to professionalise the profession by focusing more on the creative process.

It is a worthwhile read for any creative.

The same article can be found in Clement Mok’s website. More information can be found in the AIGA Designing Initiative homepage and the Process of Designing case studies.

The Gene Ontology Consortium

In Archive by Fredy Ore

The Gene Ontology (GO) project is a collaborative effort to address the need for consistent descriptions of gene products in different databases.

The Gene Ontology Consortium‘s aim is to produce a controlled vocabulary which represents all organisms even as knowledge of gene and protein roles in cells is accumulating and changing.

W3C OWL becomes Candidate Recommendation

In Archive by Fredy Ore

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have issued a Candidate Recommendation for OWL, The Web Ontology Language.

OWL is a language for defining structured Web-based ontologies that enables richer integration and interoperability of data across applications and systems. OWL is essentially a more meaningful and semantic extension to XML, RDF, and RDF Schema (RDF-S) and DAML+OIL.

OWL is represented in three sublanguages: OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full.
I had the opportunity of visiting the W3C Day talks the other day for the Evolve 2003 conference and it was interesting hearing first hand from people responsible for some of the new directions from W3C.

A summary of the speakers at Evolve W3C Day can be found here.

New Objects and Methods with Flash 7 Player

In Archive by Fredy Ore

Todd Dominey comments on some of the new features in the Flash 7 player by posting a series of links which specify the new Objects and Methods and some early concerns.

Interestingly, Colin Moock has posted up a petition directed at Macromedia to make better use of the preloading API.

Currently some of the concerns includes no support for http server responses such as 404 (not found) or 403 (forbidden), the order in which loadMovie() executes, and inconsistencies of getBytesLoaded() returned values from IE and Netscape.

The usability of Linux and Windows XP

In Archive by Fredy Ore

ComputerWorld comment on a research study by Relevantive which compares the usability of Linux and Windows XP, with XP slightly ahead.

The study looked at how easily two groups of users could perform tasks using the two different operating systems by performing tasks such as creating and administrating files, copying CDs and basic office tasks, such as composing a text and sending e-mail.

A copy of the research study is available in English and German and a forum has been setup for further comment.

Slashdot have also some interesting comments by users in a related post.