Articles from: Culture

As this seasons Apprentice draws to a close here’s a quality piece of subversion from Cassette Boy to show us just how entertaining the much maligned Sir Alan is; playing the nations favourite pantomime villain. I do hope the BBC don’t get all officious about this and start talking about Copyright infringements, as it’s a brilliant advert for the series as well as being one of Cassette Boy’s finest. I could go on about how this perfectly represents what true new/digital media is all about, but I won’t. Just sit back and enjoy. Notable funnies include a B in GSCE French and the size of his appendage.

SMUT Warning from Cassette Boy. It might not be safe for all work environments so think before you play out loud.

Well, I for one have always imagined that a slightly beardy and bespectacled boy lived inside my machine (probably not to these ends exactly, but hey ) so I was WELL pleased to find this little gem floating about on the interweb over the weekend (courtesy of endgaget).

Multitouch Barcelona are a recently formed interaction design group and LBi are loving their experimentation in this physical space - the initial “is there really a guy in the box?” reaction. We’ve been playing around ourselves lately too… following soon, a link to a ‘Surface’ table that our RIA-meister Justin worked up out of a cardboard box over a weekend a few weeks ago.

Its D&AD black pencil (and student award) judging time, and this year we’re very proud to host at LBi!

Here are some quick pics of the setup (we’ve even put a tablecloth on our coffee bar ) First on the list for judging are the student’s furniture design and professional product design categories tomorrow! Also pictured is my favourite piece of work from the students, a great stool-come-table…

Its not often enough that you let yourself get carried away by instant gratification and magnetism (although I think it happens to me more than most) but rather than post constantly about the stream of wonderfulness I’ve come across over the weekend, I’d pop my top five into one post.

01. Ikea BARNSLIG cushion by Maria Vinka (thanks to sub-studio) - a sneak peak of the new range due out in April… this cushion keeps your hands and feet warm!

02. Japanese wunderkind Nagi Noda’s animal hairpieces. One of my favourite artists. The best hair ever…

03. Moustache handkerchiefs from Avril Loreti. For those moments when a stiff upper lip just won’t cut it.

04. Japanese-style  Samsung phone ads (especially the Evil Hedgehog Controlscreen). From The Viral Factory. Mwaaahhhhahhahh!

05. Donna Wilson dog and cat teapot warmers. Could you say no to a cuppa from that poodle’s spout?

Indeed, following on from Riaz’s post I too attended the Microsoft Truman Session. Their take on the world come 2019 caught my eye.

I must say, their vision piece was extremely well thought out and crafted. There were of course some usual suspects: digital newspapers, an evolution of Surface and interactive mirrors (hey, we’ve already done that for Macy’s). I guess when imagining the future these technologies are de riguer.  I would have liked to see the vision piece driven by narrative however. Perhaps a storyline. How’s this: A story about a strange man that builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves?  Oh, wait.

Thru You is some guy’s (KUTIMAN) fantastically executed album based on you tube clip edits.  The only thing that could make this more awesome is if this ran on the fly, generating the clips based on algorithm.  Great work though.

Jack’s back. Following on from the ‘All work, no play‘ book mentioned a few weeks ago, here’s a film trailer for the Shining recast as a romantic comedy. Love it.

If you like things a little darker, how about Mary Poppins recast as a thriller Scary Mary.

In fact YouTube is full of these recut trailers. It’s a clear example of how easy to use desktop tools like iMovie are turning many of us into amateur content creators and publishers. A quick look at the credits for these edits reveals a young digital generation, playing fast and loose with copyright, creating their own takes on popular culture.

I’m not going to provide any great new insights or revelations about this. Its just continued evidence of how our attitudes to media have changed, are changing and how technology is opening up new opportunities for individual expression. We’re living in an increasingly media savvy Internet nation, that’s continually resampling the 20th and 21st Centuries for its own entertainment. With thousands, maybe millions of versions of the same idea being found online, is new technology genuinely allowing us all to be more creative or are we simply reinforcing the old adage about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, whether we realise it or not?

OK that’s a slight exaggeration - donk has been doing the rounds on the ground floor ’stezzer’, but to little critical acclaim and to be honest it won’t be making its way into my record bag any time soon.

However with over 3,750,000 views and over 14,000 comments for this one song alone, the Blackout Crew have certainly caused an emotional reaction out there. In my, admittedly, romantic view, the fact that rave music continues to live on some 20 years after its inception, showing the inventive nature of the repressed working class grasping for their next chemical fueled hit of musical ecstasy at the weekend, cheers me up no end. As does how Donk and its white-boy Eminem inspired MCs continue the potent cultural connection between the North West of England and the downtrodden Motorcity of Detroit, Michigan (see Northern Soul if none the wiser).

And it’s good for us London based agencies to remember the UK isn’t a homogeneous nation of robots who each morning love a tasty bowl of muesli, a cup of cappuccino or similar from one of those high street coffee shops before gifting their “friends” on Facebook, chatting for hours on IM and then indulging in some brand worship on the marketing web.

Now where did I leave that other chip…

Footnote: You’ve got to love Wikipedia and it’s ability to keep expired ravers like myself up to date with the UK music’s myriad sub-genres of popular music.

An intersting viral campaign is building around this summer’s release of the Watchmen movie. PPC, the agency responsible, round-up the activity to date on their blog: www.theppc.com/blog

Watchmen was written by comic book maverick Alan Moore and is widely held as his master work. Many see Watchmen as the first true graphic novel - a deliberately ’grown-up’ reinterpretation of the comic book format. Watchmen is complex with political, social and historical themes. Don’t expect a happy ending. 

The genesis of the film is a Hollywood legend in it’s own right. There’s been nearly 20 years of pre-production argy-bargy; multiple directors and stars have been associated to the film and Moore has withdrawn his approval at different times. At last Watchmen is due for release, March 6 2009 and is directed by Zack Snyder. Expectations are high.

As a bonus I’m including a transcript fragment form a recent interview with Alan Moore. The subject is creativity. The link between comics and some of what we we do at LBi (storyboards, narrative etc.) is obvious…

Alan Moore interviewed by LJ Pindling of Street Law Productions. Final part. Interviewed on 27 June 2008 in Spring Boroughs, Northampton, England.

LJP: What would you say to other young people trying to become successful in their trade?

AM: OK, the first thing you’ve got to really focus upon is why you want to do this. If you want to be famous or you want to be rich, it ain’t going to work. For one thing, being famous - there are some good things to it but there’s not very many. It’s mainly a pain in the arse and it sends your head a bit weird… Even people who’ve got a tiny little bit of fame, it drives them completely mental, it can destroy your life… 

… The only thing that you can do if you want to be a success is focus upon the thing that you do purely for it’s own sake. 

If you love writing comics, drawing comics, making comics, making music or whatever, and you’re not doing it to get famous and you’re not doing it to make money you’re just doing it because you love it and you want to get better, and you want to get better, and you want to get better, then you’ll probably do alright. 

Don’t focus on the fame and the wealth stuff, that’s what everyone wants, you can become famous and moderately wealthy just by going on Big Brother. You know, what does that prove, what does it mean? Especially these days, fame means nothings and increasingly money doesn’t mean that much either. 

LJP: Generally it means you’ll shave off all your hair and be addicted to some sort of drug.

AM: Absolutely. You know the only thing is: focus purely upon what it is that you like to do. If you like to draw, to write… if you’ve got a tiny bit of talent, even if it’s not that much… that’s how we all start out… 

… I couldn’t write when I started out, you know I couldn’t draw but I liked writing. I liked writing compositions and essays at school, and I liked reading, and I liked thinking ‘you know how good am I as a writer, compared to these guys that I like reading?’ And you think ‘actually, I’m rubbish’, and so you try and make yourself a little bit better. And if you are honest with yourself, not over critical (there’s no point at looking at everything you do and saying that’s rubbish and tearing it up) but if you can at least be honest and say ‘yep, this has got some bits in it that are good, I could have done better with these bits, this is not as good as So-and-So, who I admire… Next time this is going to be better’. And you just try and make every thing you do a little bit smarter, a little bit more sophisticated than the thing you did before. 

Eventually people will notice. Eventually you will start to move beyond what every body else is doing. And without ever having a master-plan… you will find [success] without having to compromise anything, without having to sell-out your vision… 

And it’s important that you don’t do that, because that’s the only thing you’ve really got that separates you from anybody else. There’s probably loads of people who can sing, or do music, or write or draw the way that you can. The only thing that makes you unique is that you’re you. You had your experience, you had you’re life, you’ve got your knowledge. So put all of that into what you do. Make it individual, make it unique, and you know make it your selling point… you’ve had this experience. Put it to use and I don’t think you’ll go far wrong.

There’s a lot more to it than than of course. There’s a lot of boredom, there’s a lot of grind, and a lot of anxiety where you think  ‘am i as good as i think i am, am i ever going to really make it?’ But don’t worry about that. You know if you’re doing what you love, even if you’re not making any money out of it you are still better off than 99% of the people in this world who are not doing what they love. They’re doing something that gets them by. Maybe they’re entertaining dreams that one day they could be this or they could be that but all too often those dreams just kind of die in the cradle. 

You know it’s sort of ’stay true to yourself’… there isn’t a ceiling. [Think:] ‘There’s nothing I couldn’t be if I try hard enough…’ and I think that’s something a bit more useful than just security or a colour telly or stuff like that…

(Shout out: The idea for this post came from the continuing JPT/JMT Watching the Watchmen obsession).

There’s something really appealing about the mash-up of broadcast and outdoor media for artistic/social commentary purposes - it often brings out some painful truths. From old-school audio-pirates like Douglas Kahn (who I was lucky enough to have as a lecturer at uni for a semester) and Negativeland to current street art, I love the way it plays with the true value of advertising and the media. And they’re always hidden - are these artists who create something beautiful/funny/poignant/political, using what our industry creates as raw materials, operating in secret because of the threat of big business and the brands ‘we’ represent? Surely if we’re helping brands become more real, believable, genuinely useful and honest then this kind of expression is quite beautiful, and not at all scary? (Or maybe that’s just my art-school roots talking, but Iove the idea of someone mashing up our work).

I haven’t seen anything from my beloved Shoreditch Decapitator for a while now, but Posterboy is just brilliant - and with maybe a slightly broader repertoire.

You can check out his Flickr page here.Or watch his video: Posterboy on the NYC subway.

A few of us have been playing with a Microsoft Surface today. It’s a much-hyped device, famous for it’s multi-touch interface and rather high price tag. Multi-touch is clearly becoming the brave new world for User Interface design but the revolution will probably come as an indirect consequence of it, not because of it.

You see we’ve already got multi-touch on a number of popular devices today; mobiles like the iPhone, HTC Touch, Palm and the forthcoming desktop OS’s; Windows 7 and MacOS X Snow Leopard. For these devices multi-touch simply means an interaction with more than one pointing device, usually fingers instead of a mouse or stylus. Users can pinch, scroll, flick, point and drag; which you can also do on a Surface table.

The thing you immediately notice about your interaction with Surface is that the interaction becomes social and collaborative. Using a PC or a mobile is a solitary situation - one person has the pointing device and usually the keyboard. Opportunities to use both at the same time are few and far between (why were we never allowed two mice?). Now you might see two people working together on a PC; as in the short lived eXtreme Programming methodology, or in a Kindergarten class, but one person usually makes the decisions, one at a time. With Microsoft Surface this changes - the environment becomes much more collaborative and everybody has the ability to lean in and interact.

This is certainly going to challenge User Interfaces and how we design them, but more importantly create exciting new opportunities for computing. Just think how we could work in groups all looking and interacting at the same time. Now that’s a paradigm shift, and probably a cause for a computing revolution.

I love it when people take direct inspiration from other people’s creativity and give it new life. It’s great to see people use sub-plots, objects or characters as the starting points in their own expressions. Borrowing from established cultural artefacts seems to make the idea all the more real and resonant. For example the idea behind the musical Wicked touches everyone who had seen The Wizard of Oz as a child and triggers an immediate inquisitive response, to what the story might reveal.

A recent example of this spring-boarding is a book by Jack Torrence, the main character of the Stephen King film, The Shining. It uses the story of Jack writing his book and his inability to write anything other than ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’. The book uses this idea and using an increasingly varied approach to the layout reproduces that statement over 80 pages. It’s unlikely to be a best seller, but it’s a lovely example of taking a small idea and expanding it out. More details from the Guardian.

With digital work gaining in maturity (and much influenced by previous non-digital pieces) I’m wondering how long it will be before someone creates a popular new experience or narrative directly inspired by famous digital piece. Clearly there are some IP issues to resolve, but when one borrows from an established source you’ve got to come clean on your inspiration.

PS. For those with a passing interest in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, you might have been aware of HAL 9000s birthday a few weeks ago – 12^th January to be precise. I wonder if this date could become a notable day in our global culture for neural computing and artificial intelligence.

The intersection of data and representation is an rich area soaked in wonderfully tactile, beautiful visual and visceral experimentation… but these data sculptures, based on the moods of the artist Martin Kim Luge’s online friends, just hit the sweet spot for me.

Entitled Weeping Willow (l) and Rose of Jericho(r), they scrobble the mood tags on social network portals such as facebook, and “communicate in some level the presence of the others‘ mental state without direct contact.”

The Rose of Jericho “reads the mood adjective at the friends myspace-account in realtime from the internet. The adjective is compared against a database to map a numerical value to the emotion. This value defines the duration of the water pump controlled by a microcontroller, which is irrigating the Rose of Jericho. The higher the value the more water is arriving to the plant.”

“Every branch of the Weeping Willow stands for an online friend symbolically and the slope of a single branch is communicating their happiness or sadness. In other words: the happier the friend, the higher the branch will grow. If the branch hangs, it might be a high time to phone or visit him or her. Once a week the branches are sent to the user by post, and the recipient can put together a new tree to the growing forest himself. The branches are cut as construction set by laser-cutting and is sent by post to the user (and…) with a cup of coffee every Sunday you put the branches to the weeping willow together. Carefully you break the botton and the branches from the wooden board. Every branch is individually labelled and has a unique slot in the bottom plate. There is a clear assignment of friend and you can see easily the developing of moods. As weeks go by, a growing forest of weeping willows are collated, manifesting the collective state of one‘s social network.”

Wow. I want one.

NOTE: Apologies for so much paraphrasing, but its such a poetic idea that the artist’s own words do it great justice, and thanks for one of my favourite blogs, infosthetics, for the heads up.

It was Roosevelt whose “fireside chats” made him the first President of the broadcast age, and later Kennedy with his good looks outmaneuvered an unshaven Nixon as TV came to the fore. With his masterful grasp of the digital age Obama first changed the business model of winning the presidency; by asking for micro-donations he beat the bank and John Mcain. Today, in his inaugural address, I also can’t help feeling there was a real touch of the humility, honesty and recognition for the many who make up the whole which characterises the new forms of communication which are replacing the didactic supremacy of broadcast.

This is a most tumultuous time in history, so much is changing we hardly know where to look. But with events like this, we get a chance to measure our moment in time against the receding past. When you read the text of Obama’s speech you find a plea for a saner more connected world. For me, Obama’s words resonate with the spirit of what the internet at it’s best offer; understanding and insight through connectedness to other people.There is even a specific promise to address the infrastructure needed to make more of technology:

“We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do. ”

Most exciting of all though, is the real sense that an old order finally crumbled as Dick Cheney was wheeled offstage. In our little part of the world, it is marketing which is changing irrevocably and for the better. But that change is grounded in a fundamental shift of power from the broadcast of the few to the narrowcast of the many, which has now resonated so deeply that a black man can become President. As the man says:

“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.”

It would be trite to say the internet created Obama, but the communictions revolution we’re all a part of is certainly bound up in his phenomenon.

Lego master craftsmen have been putting the finishing touches to a model White House, motorcade, and even queues to the porta-loos, as excitement surrounding the upcoming 56th inauguration of a US president reaches fever pitch.

If you’re ever wondering how to name your heavy metal band, here’s a wonderfully simple information design that should help you in the quest.

Words and the internet. They’ve had a chequered history together, what with most agencies seeing “copy” as an asset to be uploaded as an afterthought and many a user claiming they don’t read it. Poppycock I say. There’s lots of great writing on the web, not least this from Nick Asbury. Corpoetics is an inspired and subversive exploration of corporate mission statements using poetry. Let this be a challenge to all brands, mean what you say when you say it. And even better, be believable. So do what you say too.

If you’re looking for inspiration of the word kind, the web contains all the greatest poetry ever written. We should look to poetry more than we do. What other art form is so instantly easily communicable? To appreciate a great painting you have to stand in front of it, novels take days to read, films and plays have to be viewed in the right circumstances. Poetry delivers a lot in a small space without costly embellishments. Is it the ultimate recessionary art form? Try Louis Macneice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.