PICNIC07: The Art of Paul Pope

Works exclusively in analogue. Most interested in comics and picture-making. Brought in influences from rock art albums as much as comics he grew up with, and sees a relationship between music iconography and comics. Loved silent film.

Lots of Japanese manga artists worked with avant-garde theatre in the 60s and 70s. Shows a piece of work he did, borderline-plagiarised: you can do cover versions of songs, why not other art?

Currently working on a line of clothers with DKNY, and a store installation for Diesel in Hollywood.

Batman: there have been many batmen, and everyone has a version of it in their head. How can you make it new and your own? (Aside from PP: is Popeye the first superhero?) He started with the logo: the silhouette of the character is instantly identifiable. The shape looked to him like oppressive german black type (as seen on rock/metal albums). Shows some examples of attempts to form the logo into a shape using this style of font and the bat motif.

Wanted to comment on "what is a secret identity", whether in a police state a superhero has a right to a private self: the mask as a metaphor for privacy. Batman should scare you. Early silent film: "even their mistakes are pregnant with possibility". Wanted to have a repeated theme, like a refrain through music.

Time lapse film of Paul working; he often jumps between 2 projects to prevent boredom. One of these was fashion design work: "I started out drawing her naked to make the job more interesting".

PICNIC07: Some thoughts on creating worlds, Michael Johnson

Talking about making a movie at Pixar. 3 steps:

1. Creating an interesting world with self-consistent rules;
2. Designing engaging characters that exist in that world;
3. Tell a compelling story with those characters in that world (the hard part, where flaws are exposed);

All underpinned by research. e.g. in a Bugs Life, they put cameras at ground level and noticed that everything seemed translucent - so used that in the film. Shows 2 videos of fish in water side-by-side: one film, the other animation based on film: indistinguishable.

For Ratatouille they spent a lot of time running round Paris in the Autumn, looking at live action, etc. Also spent time looking at the details of food porn photography.

Again, Edna from the Incredibles: building up of the character through 2D and 3D design.

PICNIC07: Observations of Visionary Works, Danny Yount

"Is a terrible speaker so I just brought a bunch of stuff I can show you"

And he did :)

PICNIC07: Minimally Invasive Education through Social Play, Dr. Sugata Mitra

I've been looking forward to this one :) So obviously my battery is running low :(

Later: easily the best talk so far. Wonderfully simple, uplifting and socially important. Find out anything you can about this and the guy behind it. Thanks to Ribot Minimus for a link to his presentation at LIFT07 (which I missed).

PICNIC07: Future Technology Trends, Pablos

Hosted by Bruno Giussani.

First up Pablos: "Raised by hackers". Worked on Blue Origin: privately funded space programme. Talking about wearable computing: taking it into other contexts. Audio moves well into other environments, but screens don't work the same way when they're small: all head-mounted displays suck. Multitouch lets you "create dynamic input environments" (which sounds like lots of modes to me, Mr Raskin's pet hate). Demo of tiny tablet device running Windows - which was never meant to be mobile or designed for pocket use, and doesn't work that small.

The mindset cultivated by hackers is "fantastic": a playground where innovation is incredible. Has taken iphone apart - half of it is battery. Technology is revisiting everything you know about whenever you get a new capability. So, hacking hotel rooms: the TV is on a network with all the others in the hotel. Free access to films and games, remote control of other TVs, check other guests out, observe web access (ebay, banking, etc.).

Cars: every manufacturer has a second source for every part in a car - except the OS. Every product is becoming a computer, and therefore gains the same set of problems. e.g. key-space for car keys is quite small, so some keys open other cars. Computer security folks are familiar with this problem, but how do you solve it? There's no patch management for cars in the field. Certain brands have override codes too.

Wireless devices: e.g. Hackerbot, drives around finding wi-fi users and showing them their passwords on-screen. Got lots of press and good attention for wi-fi security problems. Bluetooth surveilance: work with Ben Laurie tracking folks with BT devices wandering around a conference, but having sensors in all the rooms. Done in a weekend.

Phones and caller ID spoofing: hacks Cory Doctorow's voicemail live, by spoofing his caller ID :)

XSS: web sites are the low-hanging fruit for computer security. Well-known software frameworks have well-known bugs. Shows hack of CNN showing this article using a XSS attack.

Samy hacked Myspace with a friend-adding virus. Shows a hack of the PICNIC site doing the same thing :)

"For innovation, you need to go through a process of discovery. Difficult to put a timeline or budget on this, so big companies aren't good at it." References Mediamatic RFID projects running here on-site (like iTea).