Category Archives: Inspiration

Why SciFi Gets The Blues.

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/future-screens-are-mostly-blue/

What they don’t mention but supports their argument  is that the material science to create blue phosphors wasn’t economically feasible until just before 2000. It could be done before that, but it was expensive. So, yes, blue lasers, blue LEDs, in essence the color blue itself, used optically WAS indeed futuristic. The second thing they don’t bring up is the actual physiology of the eye. The human eye sees blue the LEAST. Or one could say the least sharply. That’s why compression algorithms can throw away much of the blue channel and it’s not missed. 4:2:2 anyone? (CORRECTED via Ben’s reply. See Notes.) Half the blue is gone. When designing and animating Science Fiction interfaces you can use blue to keep the action on the actors and not let what is on the display steal focus. This also allows you to put all sorts of abstract, “frou-frou” widgets (the technical term is “nurnies” or “greebles”) that aren’t actually going to be seen in detail. They’re there and the audience senses them but the eye can’t focus on them to see what they actually are.

reconfigurable mazes

mentioned this project in class last night:

http://www.northpitney.com/works/maze/maze.html
and another: http://www.designboom.com/art/kinetic-moving-maze-by-nova-jiang/