Monthly Archives: December 2010

High tech Hockney

Paintings

Art and technology.

Painter and photographer David Hockney has migrated from a paint brush and camera to an iPhone and iPad to create new works of art.

He creates images on his iPad and sends them to friends. The app he uses is named Brushes – click the picture below for more:

As this fascinating article from NPR relates, Hockney is so intense when using the iPad and Brushes that he occasionally wipes his finger on his smock, forgettting that he is not using a real brush loaded with paint!

Most intriguingly, his current Paris show is displayed on iPads to any of which he can simply send a new image when he feels like it – a dynamic, ever changing exhibit which will make multiple visits worthwhile and is surely the right way to display photographs in the modern age. I wrote of this concept over four years ago suggesting that ever cheaper LCD televisions would be the display ‘canvas’ of the future. LCD displays have halved in cost since I wrote that earlier piece. though it seems like the iPad beat the TV to the punch in Hockney’s capable hands.

Were I a photo gallery curator, I would chuck out all the frames, fire the framers and printers and museum guards, buy 50 iPads and 50 big screen TVs and advertise “See our latest show – no two days alike. Come as often as you like with a show pass allowing any number of visits for just 50% more than the regular price. See photographs in their true splendor and dynamic range.”. Result? Costs halved, revenues up 50%. Gallery saved at a non-recurring cost of $60k. Further, sell each show as a download at the conclusion of the exhibit and really clean up. Oh! yeah, and sell all those dumb ass prints to collectors to pay for the hardware and severance costs.

There are still those who maintain that the iPad is a device purely for consumption. Disregard these luddites.

TotalFinder

Software

Finally a proper Finder.

Update October 14, 2015:

The new security features in OS X El Capitan require a hack to keep Total Finder working, a hack which compromises security. This from the developer:

So for all practical purposes this great app is dead. RIP – you will be missed.

* * * * *

Ask any Mac user what the single worst app which comes with every Mac is and the chances are pretty good that the answer will be ‘The Finder’. ‘The Loser’ would be more like it, if you ask me.

Well, the folks at BinaryAge have fixed much of what ails the stock Finder in TotalFinder, adding the ability to use tabs and multi finder windows, allowing the drag and drop of files across directories/volumes/drives. You can also use cut-and-paste rather than Finder’s copy-and-paste, precluding the need to delete the source file if you really want to move it. The multi finder window shown below is toggled with Command-U.

TotalFinder in dual window mode, with tabs shown.

TotalFinder integrates into Finder but is also available as a separate app, meaning it’s visible in HimmelBar which I use to avoid having on screen icons for applications. So now you can jump into finder rather than Command-Tab’bing or mousing to your on screen app display.

TotalFinder is visible in HimmelBar

MacLampsX you ask? It’s a neat seasonal app which frames your display with Christmas lamps! X-Mas tree? More of the same. 0SEx? No, not what you think. It’s a DVD ripping app. And the little printer icon in the menu bar to the right of the Dropbox icon is Fingerprint which allows my iPad and iPhone to print to any Bonjour printer on the network.

I cannot detect any performance changes on my desktop Mac. Highly recommended for anyone who uses the Finder a lot.

Computer of the year – 2010

iPad

No surprises here.

A year ago – it seems like a million years ago – I named the MSI Wind netbook the Computer of the Year.

Further, a few days later I wrote of the yet to be announced ‘iSlate’:

Such was my confidence in the iPad, finally released three months later in early April, 2010, that I bought a couple on the opening day and have since given away another half dozen to friends as gifts.

By this time next year another 50 million or so users will get the message but we early adopters have benefitted mightily from the unfair advantage this gadget confers.

So in nine brief months the iPad has obsoleted the netbook and created a whole new way of creating and consuming information, opening up sales to a demographic which would never touch a ‘computer’. Part of the device’s magic is that it really does not bear much resemblance to what we think a computer should look like. And you can take it with you, it weighs little and all you need is an internet – or maybe cell – connection to access the world.

So in a year which was decidedly blah for new gadgets, the iPad reigns supreme, easily being this consumer’s Computer of the Year for lack of any credible competition.

Computer of the year – 2010.

Alfred Stieglitz

Photographers

A change agent.

The American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) took photography out of its early frou frou era and into the modern world. He was not only a fine photographer, he was also a great promoter of other artists, including photographers, painters and writers, primarily through his 291 Gallery in New York. In all things artistic, Stieglitz was on the cutting edge of the avant garde.

The Steerage, 1908

His best known image is The Steerage where, as a passenger on board the first class section of a ship to France he chanced on the image of the fourth class passengers in what was known as ‘The Steerage’ – maybe because the people were herded in there like steers. Rent the PBS documentary on Stieglitz from Netflix and you will hear how, when he first saw the crowd, he was fixated by the straw topper and the white suspenders; he dashed back to his cabin for his monster plate camera, one exposure left, and captured this stunning image – no one had moved. Twenty-five years later a young Cartier-Bresson was doing much the same, albeit with a strong dose of surrealism added, but he could bang away over three dozen times, with his pocket sized Leica. Not that he needed to.

Even in his earlier work, Stielglitz’s sense of immediacy was in abundant evidence.

The Terminal, 1893

This is the New York location where horses pulling streetcars, before the days of electrification, were changed. The photograph is electric, not just for its historical interest but also because of the sense that you are there. You can almost smell what’s happening.

Stieglitz was a class act, selfless in his support of fellow artists not least, in later life, of his great love Georgia O’Keeffe, another transformational American modern painter.

Stieglitz in middle age.

The PBS documentary is an excellent place to start if you are new to Alfred Stieglitz.

Four displays

Displays

When you are desperate for screen space.

A while back I wrote about using the Air Display Mac application which permits use of the iPad as an external display. After adding my third Dell 2209WA monitor to my desktop rig, I revisited Air Display to see if it still functions, this time as a fourth monitor.

It does!

The iPad is being used as a fourth monitor.

Sure, cursor response on the iPad is a tad jerky as the cursor’s data stream is being sent over the air, but it’s more than acceptable as a peripheral for displaying a screen which rarely needs mouse action, like a live stock price chart, for example.

Here’s how I have System Preferences->Displays->Arrangement set up:

The rarely accessed screen is pushed out to the left.

Note that the blue screen area with the white menu bar is aligned at the base, not at the top – this makes sure straight lines remain straight, rather than stepped, as you mouse across. Also, by relegating the iPad display to the left or right you avoid having to access the jerky iPad screen’s base if that’s where you keep your application icons. I have mine set to hide except in the case of a mouseover, which is why they are not visible in the photograph above.