london Archives - Digital Urban

2007 fps – A London Conversation for the BFI SouthBank

Andy — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 11:30:00 +0000

The 37 minute film below by D-Fuse and Illustrious Company has been commissioned to make a new immersive visual and sound installation, to be presented as part of the opening of the revitalised and refurbished National Film Theatre, BFI Southbank. Designed as a large scale piece of public art, the work will be projected onto the exterior wall of the National Theatre, and along the entire length of the façade of the new BFI SouthBank building. The audience will be enveloped in a three-dimensional soundscape.

With the interplay between moving image and 3D sound, and the juxtaposition of old with contemporary, 2007 FPS – A London Conversation creates a series of unlikely dialogues that span the history of London on film, its wonderful:

2007 fps – A London Conversation from D-Fuse on Vimeo.

A London Conversation began as an exploratory journey through the BFI’s London Calling programme. D-Fuse and Illustrious were seeking a way to bring to the public realm via a large scale outdoor installation an intimate association with films that explore London. The purpose of which was to create a dialogue between the disparate pieces and to find a common thread other than the obvious geographical locations.

It is often said that cities are places of isolation and fragmentation yet within the urban sprawl we find emotion and a sense of belonging. This is more predominent as urban dwelling grows. “At some point this year, our species will prove Darwin wrong. For the first time since the dawn of civilisation, the human being is about to become a predominantly urban creature: humans have not evolved to fit our habitat, we have changed our habitat to suit ourselves.” Jonathan Watts- The Guardian

One of the themes examined and juxtaposed over the timespan is London as a refuge, both to immigrants and to those who have gravitated to the metropolis from far flung corners of Britain. The stories and struggles of characters from London films making their way in the city are interwoven, and from this, a new intimate tale is drawn onto the Southbank.

The close-up story of the changing face of our city, architecturally and culturally, and how we interact with it is explored within the work. London cuts from being the star in the frame to acting as a backdrop for a million nights out, break ups, and family days out. Through the process of sampling, spooling and phasing, the snippets of conversation and their condensed meanings are amplified.

From these disparate moments we take with us a sense of belonging to London, and it to us.

Via the BFI [Stuart Brown] and film makers in the London Calling programme they allowed the reinterpretation of the following films and soundtracks.

01 Finnisterre – Colour
02 London1993 – Colour
03 Street Scenes Silent – B/W
04 John Krisch_The Elephant Will Never Forget – B/W
05 London Suite_London Suite – Colour
06 London Suite_Latifah+Himili’s Normadic Uncle – B/W
07 John Krisch_Return of Life – B/W
08 We Are The Lambeth Boys – B/W
09 Brief City – B/W
10 London Suite_Sundial – Colour
11 This Year London – B/W
12 Colour on the Thames Silent – Colour
13 Together – Colour

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London’s Twitter Island – From ArcGIS to Max to Lumion

Andy — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 10:32:00 +0000

As part of the MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, here in CASA at The Bartlett, University College London, we are exploring new methods and techniques for visualising data. As part of the course we are looking at collecting data from the Twitter API and using the resulting .csv file as an input into a variety of software, including Processing and ArcMap.
One such known example is the London Twitter map by UrbanTick, developed using the data collector created by Steven Gray and imported by Fabian into ArcMap, it developed a style of its own as the ‘NewCity Landscape’ collection. From a digital urban point of view the next stage of the map is a 3D extension, a transformation that proved surprisingly difficult due to the nature of combining the worlds of traditional GIS and game engines such as Lumion.
We are still in the early stages of development but the movie below illustrates the NewCity Landscape Map of London visualisation in Lumion as a ‘Twitter Island’:

Music by Pigeman over at MP3 Unsigned. There are of course many arguments on the pro’s and con’s of visualising data in such a way, indeed the visualisation is developed to open up the debate as part of the MRes course allowing various visualisation techniques to be compared from the same data set.
We will have more updates as the visualisation develops, along with a walk through of how to build it. If your interested in such output our MRes is now open for applications, entry 2012-2013…

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3D London: Google Earth

Andy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:57:00 +0000

With recent developments here in CASA we somehow managed to miss the addition of automated 3D models into Google Earth for London. The mix of hand made and we presume LiDAR derived models is stunning with resolution down to modelling the chimneys on many buildings:

The quad at University College London is notably impressive, as is Trafalgar Square. The model is far from complete but we assume other areas are on their way.

Music: London Town by Rod Kinny on unsigned.

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Urban Trees: London

Andy — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 06:00:00 +0000

A short yet somehow eye opening clip that should make anyone living in London wondering why this is not already part of our infrastructure:

Created by Hixon Design, a company providing green solutions for awkward spaces, we can see a few practical issues but overall it would make many London streets slightly nicer, and that can only be a good thing…

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London Cycle Flows: A Sociable Physics Animation

Andy — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:25:00 +0000

The animation below details the real-time behaviour of hire bikes in London on October 4th 2010, the day of a major tube strike, and the busiest day for the scheme to date.

Departure times and journey durations are real; routing is calculated from OSM data; average speed from journey duration and route length.

London Hire Bikes animation from Sociable Physics on Vimeo.

In the visualisation, the fixed circles represent stands – when a stand flashes red, it means that one or more bikes have left it – and a yellow flash means a bike has arrived. The bikes themselves are represented by the Boris Barclays Blue Tadpoles whizzing around – leaving at the right time, travelling at their correct average speed, and taking a (generally) realistic route.

The movie was created by Martin Austwick of Sociable Physics, here in CASA with the help of Ollie O’Brien (again CASA) for collection and routing.

We are a bit biased on such work, here at digital urban, but its great….

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London Bus Flows: An URBAGRAM Animation

Andy — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 11:50:00 +0000

Cities can be considered “flows of information, vehicles and people” (Sheller, 2007) transported along diverse urban networks. In the Flowprint of London below, the city’s extensive bus network is used to sketch an animated portrait of the living city, its wonderful:

LDN Flowprint from Anil Bawa-Cavia on Vimeo.

The system was developed by Anil Bawa-Cavia of CASA, another example of the kind of data that is currently being processed and visualised in the lab. Take a look at URBAGRAM for more insight into the work.

Would you like to join the team at CASA? We have two lecturing posistions currently available, accepting new PhD students and of course our MRes in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation (ASAV).

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Simply Clouds and Shooting Planes: A London Sky Timelapse

Andy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:53:00 +0000

For the timelapse below we mounted our Go Pro HD Hero on an outside window and pointed it towards the sky. On a late summer London day you can see the planes shoot across the sky, the clouds form and the sun set.
The movie consists of 10,863 images captured one every 5 seconds (it is best viewed in 720p, fullscreen):

Music: Brent Freeman Blair, I Must Fly, over on MP3 Unsigned.
The Go Pro HD was secured using a suction cup to an outside window and powered throughout using a simple iphone charger, the complete sequence filled a 16gb card over 12 hours. The timelapse was constructed using After Effects CS5.

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Simply Clouds and Shooting Planes: A London Sky Timelapse

Andy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:53:00 +0000

The post Simply Clouds and Shooting Planes: A London Sky Timelapse appeared first on Digital Urban.

London Cycle Hire in Google Earth

Andy — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:39:00 +0000

Adrian Short, the person behind the fantastic Boris Bikes API which serves live data about bike and docking station availability has created a visualization in Google Earth detailing current bike availability across London:

To view the live version and see full details on how it was done – head over to Adrian’s blog post. For more about design, citizenship and city keep an eye on http://adrianshort.co.uk/

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London Cycle Hire in Google Earth

Andy — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:39:00 +0000

To view the live version and see full details on how it was done – head over to Adrian’s blog post. For more about design, citizenship and city keep an eye on http://adrianshort.co.uk/

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