Travelscope got selected as a Webby Awards Official Honoree

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Travelscope just got selected as an Official Honoree at The 20th Annual Webby Awards in the Web: NetArt category.

Among the 13,000 entries received this year from 65 countries, the Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 20% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement.

Travelscope visualises the travel freedom attached to passports and the complex visa regulations across the globe.

Online application:
https://www.markuslerner.com/travelscope/

Travelscope – a visual exploration of the travel freedom attached to passports

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The weight and the travel freedom attached to a passport vary drastically across nationalities. International visa-regulations are very complex and often non-transparent. They reflect the economical and geopolitical situations as well as the relationships of countries.

This interactive experiment aims to cast some light on these structures and make it easy to find out which countries an individual of a certain nationality can travel to without a visa or with visa on arrival.

I wanted to create an intuitive and instant way to find out how many countries a certain national can travel to without a visa or with visa on arrival – and which nationals can enter a certain country without a visa.

The web application also features a responsive design and directly works on any iOS device (iPhone/iPad) running iOS 8 or newer and on recent Android versions.

The interactive map is programmed using D3.js and Three.js; the visa data are pulled from Wikipedia in regular intervals.

Online application:
https://www.markuslerner.com/travelscope/

Markuslerner.com website relaunch

new-portfolio-website

I finally relaunched my interaction design portfolio website: markuslerner.com

It starts off with a minimalistic responsive fullscreen slideshow. Detailed information about each project can be accessed via the plus button. The Menu disappears after an idle timeout in order to keep the look clean and simple.

The programming is based on the amazing Touchfolio wordpress theme by Dmitry Semenov and is powered by WordPress, jQuery, ModernizrExCanvastween.jsRoyalSliderGoogle Webfonts (Raleway), Fontello.

A big thank you to all my clients and collaborators for making these projects possible.

 

Outerspace at Ars Electronic Center

0_outerspace_rebuildMy colloborator Andre Stubbe and me took our robot, Outerspace, through a long process of enhancement. After an extensive reconstruction with 3D modelling software, the new hinges were made from Delrin with a state-of-the-art 5-achsis CNC machine.

From 1 May 2007, the new improved Outerspace will be part of the permanent exhibition at the Museum of the Future, part of the Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria.

You can interact with the robot in the RoboLab on the first floor. It is part of the theme field “With all Senses”. The new location of the Ars Electronica Center in Graben 15 in the heart Linz town, Austria. The opening week starts on May 16, 2007.

German bird in india

Eagles in IndiaI just got back from my frist trip to India. I had only two weeks – a very intense, exciting experience.
I was great to see so many of the German national birds, the eagle, mingle in India. This picture was taken just by the road from Bangalore to Mysore. I posted many pictures from my first trip to India on Flickr.

New portfolio online

If you were ever wondering, what I was doing during the last weeks and months, here’s the result: my new portfolio website is finally online.

Panta rei (everythings flows), like the Greek say. So the news are now going to be available at www.markuslerner.com/news.

Blog actually sounded like somebody choked on some bad stuff, so the new stuff will be continued from here: NEWS. Nothing more and nothing less. No homage to another hype. Something most people will understand. And even if they won’t understand the content, they at least get the picture.

Computational Design

Thinking about the topic of my diploma next year and what I’m doing or trying to, I read a discussion about Computational Design at www.generatorx.no.As more and more of us begin to call themselves Computational Designers, I think it makes sense to consider the actual definition again. In the broadest sense, Computational Design can be put as “the design of products and processes through the use of digital means”. But it is by far more than just doing something with the help of digital media, i.e. using some fancy software. The point is to take the challenge of getting down to the real capabilities of digital media.

Nobody else could draw a better picture of the scenario than Prof. Dr. Mihai Nadin, who mainly shaped the definition. If you have the time, there are two great essays by Nadin on Computational Design and design in general, highly recommended for reading for anybody who works in the design field or encounters it:

1. Computational Design: Design in the Age of a Knowledge Society

2. We are what we do

Nadin had founded the worlds first Computational Design Programme at the University of Wuppertal and did a lot of research on anticipation, the topic of my intermediate diploma.

Back in Berlin

After living in London for half a year i finally returned to Berlin. Six intense months of great valuable experiences, but for some reasons i’m glad to be in Germany again: the money, of course, and the speed of living. London is really busy, you feel a constant pressure that you need to be productive.