Hi, it's me Brit Zab the one week intern. Sam has kindly given me free reign of his blog for the week, which could be quite dangerous. He needs to spice things up a bit anyhow.
I'm from a little town called Mars, PA. The prom king of my high school was a farmer, and my house is surrounded by trees. Needless to say, NYC is the complete opposite side of the spectrum, but so far I love waking up in the city that doesn't sleep.
So this is where I'm interning, but in 1609 it looked like this. The Manahatta Project provides images and information for what the familiar NYC looked like before it was actually a city. If you click on specific locations you can learn what types of animals, plants and people inhabited the land. Doesn't look so familiar anymore does it?
I also have recently become obsessed with the site www.thisisindexed.com. It provides diagrams and charts for unimportant things that no one would ever really need a diagram for, which makes it perfect. I could probably browse this site for the entire day..actually I guess I have been...shh don't tell Sam! Here's one that pretty much sums up Times Square.
I am glad to see others getting into the interactive mirror space. Our versions have now been used for events, tradeshows, retail and artistic endeavors. Eric Gradman's Cloud Mirror is a pretty cool experience as well. The Cloud Mirror ties in the mirror experience with Augmented Reality and Facebook/Twitter potential. I am inspired to see ways for us to incorporate some of his thinking as well as potentially collaborate with him on some future project. If you have not seen the Cloud Mirror in action, check it out below.
Rarely am I so perplexed and inspired by one thing. But today is one of those days. After reading a post by @meat99 (Tom Ajello) on A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter by Caleb Larsen.
What is ATTDAS? Good question. And after my brief explanation you still may not know.
Yes, it is a work of art. Yes it is a black box. Yes it posts itself to EBAY continuously for resale. Wait a second, what?!?
As the artist explains, ATTDAS is a work of art that has a physical and a perpetual online state. If either of these cease, then it no longer is noticed as a work of art by the artist that created it (whether this reduces the art value of it will be up to the collector to determine). So you buy the piece of art off of EBAY. You then get it in the mail, plug it in to Ethernet and it will re-post itself at the last paid bid (current bid: $4,250). You are agreeing under contract with the artist that when and if it sells, you will send it to the new highest bidder (and pay the artist 15% of your appreciation). The next person gets it and does the same. Whether you have it for 1 week or 10 years will be determined by the desire for the artwork. The artwork itself is predicated on it always being offered for auction.
Talk about augmented reality! Is the physical piece a work of art in itself or simply a representation of a concept that is auctioned off virtually and in perpetuity?
As noted from the agreement you make when buying the artwork:
"A. Artist has created a work of art titled “A Tool to Deceive and
Slaughter (2009)” (“the Artwork”) which consists of a black box that
places itself for sale on the auction website “eBay” (the “Auction
Venue”) every seven (7) days. The Artwork consists of the combination
of the black box or cube, the electronics contained therein, and the
concept that such a physical object “sells itself” every week.
B. Collector understands and agrees to the underlying concept and
function of the Artwork and that the sale of the Artwork by Artist is
dependent and conditioned upon Purchaser’s agreement and adherence to
the below terms. Such terms are fundamental and crucial to the on-going
viability and artistic integrity of the Artwork."
and
"Any failure to follow these terms without prior consent of Artist will
forfeit the status of the Artwork as a legitimate work of art. The item
will no longer be considered a genuine work by the Artist and any value
associated with it will be reduced to its value as a material object
and not a work of art."
My brain is still hurting a bit while thinking of this, but it is a truly inspiring (and perhaps meaningless) approach to the collaboration between technology, desire and creativity and it encourages me to think differently than I had, which is what I strive to do as much as I can.
I think he has too much time on his hands!
Happy Holidays from geeks, nerds, techies, wii, the future, unicorns, goths, santa, stephen hawking, and more!
Read about this on Tony/Zappos twitter feed. Almost 200 students from the University of Quebec @ Monteal lip syncing to Black Eyed Peas' I Gotta Feelin'. The best part of it is that it was all done in one long shot. A lot of great choreography in there and a bit of infectious fun.
This has been a strange year for many of us in the guerrilla / event / promotional world. Many of our budgets were slashed, evaporated and long standing clients simply disappeared seemingly overnight. Companies that I have been friends or competing with for years ceased to exist in surprising numbers. Everyone was hurting, everyone was cutting staff. It was not the greatest time to be a business owner. If you were not involved in some sort of Social Media, it was hard getting any attention from anyone. We business owners often have these inflection points, experiences where we need to take a hard look at our company and figure out how we need to pivot in order to succeed. Sometimes the that answer is something we have to dig hard to find, sometimes the market determined it and on occasion you just stumble upon it.
About a year ago, my tech partner Alpay Kasal and I posted a video of a concept in development that we called the Interactive Mirror, it was based on a few guerrilla concepts we were working with at the time about adding interactivity to surfaces and happened to be super fun to play with. It was a touch enabled projection mirror that allowed people to interact with technology in a way that most people had not seen before. To date it has received over 1.2 million views on the various video sites. The response we received opened our eyes to the fact that people pay attention to that which they have not seen (a founding premise of my company). Through that video alone we were able to get a few clients and to date have executed interactive mirrors in events and tradeshows all over the country and were honored to be a featured exhibit in the recent Gizmodo Gallery. We are working on our biggest execution to date with them and talking with another brand about taking them international.
Since then, we have focused a sizable share of our energies on trying to come up with ways to get brands and consumers engaged through technology. It seems to be a young and growing niche and has given us some excitement and passion that the economy had depressed out of us. Since then, we have gotten an amazing reception to our new tech offerings. Here is how we have been implementing some of our new offerings.
In the last 2 months we have executed fully customized multi-touch tables for Wyeth combining video, animation, powerpoint type presentations and a nifty gesture that flips the entire screen from the operator to the viewer:
Store windows for GE that are activated by terms typed into Twitter to show a real-time visualization of the conversation around a topic happening on the service.
And most recently, we designed a game for a medical trade show in San Francisco for Pfizer. It is a bike riding game that takes place in SF for patients with Hemophilia and encourages them to get outdoors and enjoy themselves while tackling their condition. In addition to designing the game, we built a wireless controller into a set of BMX handlebars using an Arduino kit and adults and kids alike had a great time riding along the wharf and down Lombard Street. You can read more about the tech behind it here.
These are just the tip of the iceberg of the ideas we are working on to step up the technology level we can utilize at events, trade shows, nightlife and promotions and we look forward to showing you the latest as it comes up. If you are in the guerrilla and promo space, we encourage you to look at how you can put interactivity into your programs, not only can it be great, relevant fun, but it seems to be where people are focusing their attention these days. Those that stay to traditional promotion methods may find their livelihoods threatened by the blips and beeps of the future.
