I’ve been writing about “Tangerine” for, it’s been 3 years now. A friend informs me that, though she’s seen Tangerine’s website, she has no idea, actually, what Tangerine is. Yes, that’s funny and obviously no suprise. I haven’t known what Tangerine is or is supposed to be at times either. It’s been a work in progress. No doubt some others who’ve read the website or blog — it’s been viewed in these countries:

— are also uncertain what Tangerine has on offer or intends to be.

2018 has been an effective year though for Tangerine, with some important conceptual work completed, and with a view now of what Tangerine can become, made much clearer, to me. 2019 may indeed be the year that Tangerine’s newest ideas are developed and made real (like its earlier ideas). So let me explain what Tangerine is, actually, for those interested.

Tangerine is a set of ideas I’ve been working on. I’ll say something about the intended audience of Tangerine, generally, and then more narrowly. I’ll also say something about a progression of Tangerine work already completed, work developing, and work proposed.

Tangerine: for those making drawings or models

Tangerine is of interest generally to anyone who deals with either or both 2D drawings and 3D digital models. What Tangerine has to do with these two things, really, is completely tied up with their innate relation to each other, and the production of innovations related to enhancing and amplifying this relationship.

I’d like to begin describing what I mean by this by pointing out a short film clip that, happily, just appeared in my Linkedin feed in a post from the film maker Jim Cummings. It’s a film clip of 35 seconds. Here’s a screen shot and a video link.

Take a cue from this, the essence of taking a closer look:

Tangerine’s work is not in film, but in a related field of visual spatial media used in architecture, engineering, construction and similar fields. In “computer aided design” (“CAD”) or “building information modeling” (“BIM”) or “digital twins“, Tangerine’s work is relevant. For those whose daily work involves creating either drawings or models (or both), or reading/using drawings or models (or both), Tangerine is relevant.

What’s the innate relationship of drawing and modeling? Well, “drawing” is the embodiment of the act of taking a closer look and articulating, through narrowing focus, something that matters within the wider whole of some environment. The latter, the wider environment, effectively defines “modeling”. As the film clip demonstrates, the wider environment (“model”), and the articulate act of narrowing focus (“drawing”, …our attention is drawn, to something), are inseparable.

They are, simply, innately inter-twined and dependent.

That is the case definitely in terms of anyone’s ability to understand either of them. Thinking happens, and understanding grows, in their interplay, in some kind of mental dance between them. There’s no tango alone. You don’t, can’t, dance, the tango, alone. Likewise, thought happens and understanding grows where wide and narrow, environment and focus, are in interplay (and not otherwise).

The core of Tangerine’s work is the enhancement and amplification of this interplay, and using this to drive the evolution of media itself, to produce new media that makes it easier for people to see and understand what they’re doing in complex environments. This should interest anyone who uses media to understand complexity.

More specifically, Tangerine’s work is aimed at software companies, at developers and decision makers at software companies that develop tools and applications for authoring and viewing drawings or models of any kind. Tangerine offers ideas to these companies. Much of what Tangerine offers, it gives away for free.

Tangerine’s work is developing in a sequence/progression of three steps:

1. innovations that I previously invented and helped commercialize

   I invented the automatic FUSION of drawings in-situ within models. My work on this was granted 3 patents for which I am first named author. I came up with the idea, helped design its implementation within a 2D/3D CAD/BIM commercial application, and managed the software development team that implemented it. This was commercialized in 2012. Since then the concept has been copied by 6 (at least) other software companies in the same space, each developing their own unique implementation of the idea of the fusion of drawings inside models. Here are some examples of my commercialized earlier work: https://tangerinefocus.com/earlier-media-innovations/

   Following this, Tangerine develops:

2. what happens NEXT, now that drawings are infused into models 

   What happens next is that “drawing” (the medium itself) is going to EVOLVE, now that drawing resides in-situ within 3D digital environments. I have conceptualized and described the nature of this evolution, as a set of instructions for software companies. Those companies that want to pioneer the future of media itself, can read my book, for free, and implement what is described in chapter 3 (the rest of the book is commentary) into their software platforms.

   My new (and free) eBook, Tangerine Media Innovation Spec 2018 —  read it here on Apple Books for Mac and iOS devices, and here as PDF for Windows and Android — is written for software companies. The innovations I conceptualize and describe here in detail can be very useful to software companies as they develop the future of their software applications, and pioneer, using the Tangerine Spec, the future of 2D and 3D digital media, through their fusion and evolution.

   This will bring fundamental change to the nature of drawing, the nature of digital modeling, and the nature of the way we engage and interact with visual media in design, construction, engineering, industrial, manufacturing, scientific, and other industries where models and drawings are significant. Companies can take the ideas in the Spec and do this without me. On the other hand, any company that would like my help is most welcome to contact me.

   The third (and last) piece, of Tangerine, builds on the first two steps.

3. the cognitive piece

   The first two steps transform the nature of spatial visual media qualitatively, helping people better see and understand what they’re doing in complex digital environments. The third step will come from ideas that I have about software development that will CONNECT today’s AI systems (like IBM Watson) to these new forms of media. This can extend the benefits of today’s AI into spatial visual media in unique ways that, without this new media, are far more difficult (or impossible) to achieve. New media, that comes to be through evolution that follows from the fusion of wide and narrow, environment and focus, the digital twin and the articulate act of taking a closer look, will give cognitive systems “traction” within media/data types that today remain relatively obscure to AI, where AI largely spins its wheels. Any software company that finds these ideas interesting can bring me in to their team to work on exploring this.

   Here is a simple overview introductory slide deck.

Summary:

Better Media:>> Better Thinking (both human and machine thinking)

The ideas in my book (free on Apple Books, and in PDF for download), when used and implemented by software companies, will change/evolve the nature of “drawing” (the nature of its expression, changing the way that we “draw attention to”, “take a closer look”), as well as the nature of drawing’s fusion within models, moving beyond the first generation drawing-model fusions that began (with my work at the time at Bentley Systems) in 2012.

The new evolutions described in my book, now, for software developers, will bring change also to the basic nature of digital modeling, the basic means by which we engage/interact with modeled environments.

Finally, these new media environments will present also new means for contribution in the field of cognitive computing. This slide deck (5 slides) gives a short intro to the book, Tangerine Media Innovation Spec 2018