I organized another ‘scripting salon’ this past Saturday. We were ten people, which made for a good crowd and at least two parallel conversations at a time, so my notes are extremely incomplete (thanks Caleb for supplementing). In attendance: Caleb Johnston, Adam Elstein, Mark Collins, Toru Hasegawa, David Kraftsow, Lucas Chung, Jacob Bek, Frank Bitonti, Nathan Degraaf, and me.
We met at ‘Gallery’, in Dumbo at the corner of York and Jay – this place has recently taken over the space from the previous ‘Choice’. For the salon it was a decent venue, thanks to friendly and adaptable service who accommodated the rapid escalation in our numbers. Might try a more dedicated coffee/lounge space next time, though.
A mere sample, alas, of the topics discussed:
- Grasshopper:
- Frank: someone is making a node to generate G-code in Grasshopper (looks like it’s my ex-GSAPP-classmate Andy Payne, in fact – not surprising! And he did this in 2009…)
- Jake: “ghowl” can be used to take Processing output into Grasshopper
- kangaroo got a lot of mentions, though Frank swears by Maya’s ‘cloth’ physics. I want to simulate inflatable structures using one of these…
- the wonders of data tree manipulation – I am struggling with the Path Mapper these days
- Mark: discussed small scripting consulting firms that are springing up in architecture:
- Design to Production in London
- Evolute in Austria – these guys have apparently patented a particular kind of geometry… Mark wonders if this will be the beginning of a patent escalation the way we’ve seen in general software and wireless technology (e.g. Google’s patent portfolio vs. Apple’s vs. IBM’s etc…)
- Importance of CATIA to a certain sector of experimental BIM – e.g. Frank Gehry, and at Columbia they run studios using it
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(via Caleb) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA — in regards to the CAPTCHA strategy used as an automated turing test
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(via Caleb) http://cleverbot.com/ Okay, this is very funny, and also a little troubling. I assume these guys’ plan is to make interaction with this bot so enjoyable that you will then want to use him to, say, search the web, run your home, etc. etc…. what if it turns out that the voice interfaces of the future are not dour or bumbling, the way sci-fi taught us, but actually incredibly clever and enjoyable to talk to? What a great business model this is… so long as Cleverbot is able to learn from the (presumably) millions of people who will chat with him for hours.
- For pure kicks, watch these Cleverbot videos.
- I think there was a whole lot of discussion at the other end of the table about iPhone development, but I did not get in on that.
Thanks to all who attended – I think it was enjoyable and thought-provoking. NEXT SALON: maybe mid-December? e.g. Saturday December 17th. I’ll email.