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DON’T TOUCH YOUR PHONE OR YOU WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE THE EMPTINESS OFFERED BY THIS IMMERSIVE AUDIOVISUAL INSTALLATION

  NAME: The Void

DESCRIPTION: This 360° projection installation will let you visualize the idea of emptiness. Emptiness isn’t considered here as an absence but rather as the initial condition for a new beginning. But do not enter the room thinking this level of emptiness is easy to reach. The room is equipped that with sensors that will stop the projection at every sound or move they capture. You will have to stand perfectly still and let go of your electronic devices to experience this installation and see this abstract representation of the Big Bang evolve on the panoramic screen. The Void was presented in May 2013 at the Loft Project Etagi gallery in St Petersburg, Russia.

Source: Gizmodo

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It Might Look Like A Normal Chandelier. But When You Stand Underneath It And Look Up…

This chandelier is currently hanging in the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC. The CSIS chandelier may look stunning as you walk in, but the best part of the light display isn’t apparent until you stand directly underneath it. Then, your jaw will drop.

Each LED light bulb makes the chandelier a brilliant piece, but it gets even better when you get closer.

  When you stand underneath it…

  A map of the world forms, made out of 425 hanging pendants.

  The chandelier is actually a live display, illustrating various global data reports.

    The lights will change due to GDP growth rate, renewable water resources, and energy consumption for the countries of the world.

electronicproducts.com

All of the data is paired with a lighting animation code and the sytem automatically updates with information online.

  Awesome.

  Every animation that is displayed through the LED chandelier is programmed to look like what it is reporting. For example, the renewable water resources report looks like rain drops, the energy consumption report pulsates and the GDP data looks like it is growing.

I thought it was cool when my car told me how cold it was outside.

Source: electronicproducts.com

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Happy Holidays from the Kenwood Group

Everyone wants to be a marketing visionary. To find out how…  Click here to ask the Magic K-Ball!  Share the K-Ball and Kenwood will increase its donation to Doctors Without Borders and YEAH! Berkeley by one dollar every time you do!

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Kenwood and the Future of Business: Building Brands in the Digital Era

  “We all know that the ways people receive messages, the channels they’re tapped into, are expanding and changing,” says Dan Pinkham. “Attention spans, what people are paying attention to, and where they’re paying attention, are all different. Brands are trying to figure out how to keep up with all that. Social media is the big buzzword, obviously, and there are all sorts of attempts to figure it out.”

Dan, Kenwood’s Vice President and Senior Creative Director, recently moderated a panel called “What’s the Future of Business—Architecting Brands in a New Era,” for the San Francisco branch of the American Marketing Association.

The panel included: Brian Solis, digital analyst, principal at the Altimeter Group, consultant and speaker, and author of the new book: What's the Future of Business? Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences; and Scott Anderson, VP, Outbound Marketing at Bazaarvoice, a network that “connects brands and retailers to the authentic voices of people where they shop.”

“Brian Solis is a very experienced guru in all things digital marketing,” says Dan. “He’s written a book that basically says that as a brand, you have to focus on creating experiences for your customers. Scott’s company, Bazaarvoice, is actually creating part of that brand experience. They’re enabling the conversation to the tune of millions of messages. Their network is voluminous in the number of communications and exchanges that it enables every day. So, Bazaarvoice is a key enabler of the social conversation that is reshaping brands.”

Dan summarized a key take-away from the event: “There’s all this change in the air, and everyone knows it. Everyone who works in the marketing field knows it from two perspectives: as a professional and as a consumer. They’re using smart phones, other digital devices, multiple screens, and subscribing to social media in some way. We all get it, that it’s changing, but no one really gets what it means yet. We all know we’re on this incredibly new journey, in terms of changing the rules of marketing and advertising, but we don’t really know where it’s going.

“The only thing a brand can do now, that’s effective in terms of shaping the brand, is to create experience. If you ask someone in the marketing world what ‘experience’ means, they go right to user experience, or UX. They’re thinking digital, and they’re thinking the way Apple thinks about experience, that it has to be simple, and clean, and modern, and clear, and intuitive. In that sense, much of our impression of Apple as a brand comes through the experience of using their products and software.”

Dan continues: “But experience is a much broader term. Using the Apple example, the experience is also at the point of sale. It’s going to the Apple Store, it’s how I bought the product, it’s how the product was delivered to me, it’s how I unboxed the product, it’s my first experience of turning it on. With a different brand, you can have a different kind of experience. 

“The brand experience threads through the digital world and into the real world, and back into the digital world. It’s analog, it’s digital, it’s live. It’s things you can touch and taste and smell, as well as things you can click on, and all of that.”

The Kenwood Group’s own branding proudly asserts, “We are experience architects. We build business through branded experiences.”

“What does an architect do,” asks Dan, “a great architect like Frank Gehry, to create a great building? He blends multiple disciplines and skills to create something magical, but still functional and enduring. You could say it’s a mix of left-brain and right-brain thinking, or a mix of aesthetics with hardcore technical understanding around weights and angles and loads and that kind of thing. A Frank Gehry building is something that people look at and their jaws drop and their hearts beat faster. Then they go into the building, and the experience continues. It’s really a great metaphor for what we’re talking about when we say we’re experience architects.

“The panel discussion and our agency’s participation were significant because this is where the world is going. It’s where the leading edge of the marketing world is going. And Kenwood is positioned exactly in line with that, around experience and the power of experience.

“For Kenwood as an agency, our whole premise is that we can provide that mentality, that philosophy, that insight, which helps a brand create experiences for their many different audiences - experiences that will move the needle. They’re going to be shareable, memorable, powerful, and transformational experiences. They’re going to provoke conversation, or build loyalty, or activate people. And we can build those experiences across different channels. We think of campaigns as extended experiences that move back and forth between digital and analog.”

Brian Solis’ book states, “the volume of emerging technologies can overwhelm the best of us. Yet it's impacting business and society alike. In recent years, many top Fortune 500 companies have slipped out of contention as their business models failed to keep up in these turbulent times. Survival requires constantly adapting as your customers' behavior changes. You need new systems, processes, and intentions in place to recognize disruption as it happens, assess new opportunities, and quickly test new ideas.”

During the panel discussion, Solis noted widespread changes in consumer behavior, but added, “the problem is that none of us wants to step up to management and fight the fight that’s going to take this to the next level. I think everyone in the room thinks, I just need some help to get an old-school management to shift their perspective to see what needs to be done and how they can survive this … It has nothing to do with age. It has everything to do with arrogance and lifestyle.”

Says Dan, “if you’re a business out there today, you’re subject to what Brian calls digital Darwinism. It’s kind of obvious what that means. You have to pay attention to this, and participate in evolving. You can’t afford to stand still.

“Another core concept that Solis brings forward: one of the things that’s really changing the game, is this idea of connected consumerism. The simplistic meaning is that it’s all about “millenials” now. Millenials are all about social media; they’re connected and they’re online 24/7.  But his point is that it’s really not just millenials. It’s actually millenials, plus, plus, plus. There’s a whole class of consumers now—and by consumers, we mean B-to-B buyers as well—that are completely in a different category from the old days.  This connected consumerism is the trend going forward.”

“Is your company equipped to change with your customers?” asks Solis’ book. “Is it ready and able to create meaningful experiences that keep them hooked? If not, it's time to recognize how customers are not only changing, but also how they're sharing experiences about you and your competition. This is where real transformation begins.

“What's the Future of Business? is not a question—it's an answer. It explains how experience design helps your business and how you can harness its power for business growth. This book introduces a new movement that aligns the tenets of user experience with innovation and leadership to improve business performance, engagement, and relationships for a new generation of consumerism. What's the Future will also inspire you to rethink your business models, approach, and customer and employee relationships in order to create amazing, real-world experiences.”

Scott Anderson told the panel, “In any revolution, whether it’s the aviation revolution or transportation or the Industrial Revolution, there’s a step change in technology, and there’s adoption of that in behavior changes. From my perspective as a marketer, a bunch of mini-revolutions are going on. You have, first, compute power that keeps growing, (along with) social (media) and mobility. With telecom, you can stream things a lot faster. So all of these waves are hitting us at the same time. They’re changing everything. We’ve seen industries change—the music industry, Barnes and Noble on the book side, and others.

“From a marketing perspective, it means the ways people consume, and the ways they go to market and purchase, are changing dramatically. And from what I’ve seen, the marketing profession seems to be lagging behind where consumers are going.”

Dan adds, “We have to create experiences that are going to drive people to make purchases, and actually drive commerce with experience. How do you create those experiences? Companies need partners who get that. It’s going to take some time for this to become common practice, and for this mindset to really be clear. There’s a lot of reflexive, old behavior baked into the system. 

“There’s a new breed of partners who understands this mentality, and that’s what Kenwood is leaning into. We find this fascinating. That’s why we wanted to participate in this panel and engage in this discussion: because to us, it is all about experience. It’s really what we’ve been doing in some way, shape, or form for a long time, but it’s unifying and strengthening that and understanding the value of it now.  In this day and age, experience is the thing. It’s not just a nice thing to do. It’s pretty much the only thing you can do to move the needle.”

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These shimmering LED installations transport you to an alternate universe

Via: CNN

Walking into one of Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms is like walking into a completely different universe. The door shuts behind you, and suddenly you find yourself surrounded by what appears to be a galaxy of shimmering LEDs. The scene is beautiful, in a surreal, space-age fairy tale sort of way.

But it's also a little jarring in its intimacy; it's almost as though you've been instantly transported from a whitewashed gallery into Kusama's buzzing, obsessive mind.

It's a strange place to inhabit, if only because you get the sense that what goes on inside Kusama's mind is very different than what's happening inside, say, your neighbor's, or your colleague's. The Japanese artist has lived in a Japanese mental institution since the 1970s, when she checked herself in after a particularly stressful stint in New York City.

But Kusama's struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder and other mental anguishes is not a shameful secret. In fact, it's the opposite.

Kusama says the kaleidoscopic rooms are her attempt to investigate death and infinity. 

Liz Stinson

Kusama's mental woes fuel her work, with her obsession and compulsion manifested in her exaggerated use of shapes, colors and mirrored rooms. For as long as Kusama has been an artist (she's currently in her mid-80s), she's been obsessed with polka-dots. A result of hallucinations she's had since childhood, the shapes are plastered across her paintings, on her clothes, and incorporated into her trippy infinity rooms.

It's not hyperbole to say they are everywhere. Including her newly opened show at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City.

In "I Who Have Arrived in Heaven", Kusama continues the motif with 27 new paintings and two infinity rooms, all covered in dots of varying shapes and sizes. The colorful large-scale paintings covered in eyes and dots are beautiful works in their own right, but the real reason most people will trek to the Chelsea gallery and wait in the 4-hour line is to see Kusama's brilliant mirrored infinity rooms.

GIZMODO - Infinity Rooms from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Kusama has been making these magical boxes since the 1960s, when she first lined a small room with mirrors and filled it with polka-dotted phallic shapes, creating what I like to imagine a brothel in the Dr. Seuss universe might look like.

Her newest room, "The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away," is more along the lines of her beloved "Fireflies on the Water," a mirrored infinity room that showcased hundreds of warm-hued LEDs at the Whitney last year.

Read more: Christie's: Evolution of the Asian art market

Kusama's mental woes fuel her work Liz Stinson

In her new room, Kusama has again suspended multi-colored LEDs from the ceiling at varying lengths that reflect off of the mirrored walls and shallow pool on the floor in a strobe light pattern that repeats itself every 45 seconds.

Just down the street at the gallery's connected space is another infinity room, "Love Is Calling, which this time is filled with brightly colored inflatable sculptures covered in polka dots that shoot up from the floor and hang from the ceiling like technicolor tentacles.

The artist says the kaleidoscopic rooms are her attempt to investigate life, death and infinity, and if you're prone to existential pondering, it's easy to see that connection. Contemplating the infinite does have a way of drudging up those "what's it all mean?" feelings.

But for most people, being inside Kusama's glimmering universe is simply a brief reprieve from a dulled world they left on the other side of the door. For a moment, you can almost forget about the line waiting outside, the 360 degrees of mirrors and ultimately, yourself. But just for a moment—because there's no way you're leaving without taking a selfie.

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10 Awesome Outdoor Installations That Will Inspire You

While art viewed inside the confines of a museum’s walls will always have its place, public outdoor art installations are truly inspiring, giving viewers a broader sensory experience. These three-dimensional works are often site-specific, meaning they were created for that particular place. Today, we’ve rounded up ten recent favorites that were each made with the viewer in mind. While some of them were intentionally created for public interaction, others are just meant to be enjoyed from a more distant view.

    1. Cathedral Made From 55,000 LED Lights

During this year’s Light Festival in Ghent, Belgium, Luminaire de Cagna created a spectacular projection from 55,000 LED lights. The bright cathedral invited visitors to walk through its immense 91-foot high entrance into a fairy tale gallery, surrounded by light and color. The stunning artwork, a mix between Romanesque and Renaissance architecture, was one of those installations you almost had to see in person to believe.

    2. Interactive Electric Cloud

This large-scale interactive installation called Cloud was built by Calgary-based artist Caitlind Brown. Exhibited this past September at Nuit Blanche in Calgary, Cloud was made with more than 5,000 light bulbs, fluorescent bulbs and chain pull strings. Visitors could walk through the rain of strings, switching the lights on and off. This gave the fun illusion that lighting was flashing across the surface of the cloud.

    3. 10,000 Swarovski Crystals Make a Cloud

Using 10,000 Swarovski crystals and chicken wire, landscape artists Andy Cao and Xavier Perrot in collaboration with J.P. Paull of Bodega Architecture made a beautiful cloud on the Arbor Terrace at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown, Washington D.C. Underneath, a reflecting pond caught the crystals’ light, casting colorful prisms on the water’s surface.

    4. Interactive Giant Red Heart

This past Valentine’s Day, if you were at Times Square in New York City, you might have come across a 10-foot tall structure of a giant red heart. Created by Danish architecture firm BIG, it was comprised of 400 transparent LED acrylic tubes that pulsated a bright red when people would interact with another another around it. How? As more people gathered in the square, their footsteps were collected as energy and converted into light. Thus, the huddled crowd made the heart burn brighter. Love!

    5. Canopy of Colorful Umbrellas

As part of an art festival called Agitagueda, this past July, a beautiful installation of colorful umbrellas lined two streets in Portugal. Not only did they provide shade to those underneath, the umbrellas seemed magical as they hung in mid-air, suspended by wires. Educational researcher Patricia Almeida took the photos of the installation that later made their way around the web.

6. Horse Sculptures Galloping Up a River

While this year’s ArtPrize, the world’s largest open art competition, had over 1,500 entries, one stood out amongst all the rest. Created by Richard Morse, Stick-to-it-ive-ness: Unwavering pertinacity; perseverance featured nine life-size horses made of dead apple trees making their way up the Grand River. The inspiring installation was made to symbolize the struggle and perseverance we must all go through during difficult situations. The artwork ultimately won 4th place at the art competition.

7. Lit Up Pieces of Paper Caught in a Breeze

London designer Paul Cocksedge created a gorgeous installation resembling pieces of paper caught in a breeze for the Festival of Lights in Lyon, France. Installed in the courtyard of Lyon’s Hotel de Ville, the 25-metre-long sculpture, called Bourrasque, was comprised of 200 A3-sized sheets made from an electrically conductive material that lights up when a current passes through it. Each of these double-sided sheets was individually moulded by hand in London, and then assembled on site.

8. 100,000 LED Lights Float Down Tokyo River

As part of the Tokyo Hotaru festival held this past May, a stunning light display of 100,00 LED lights floated down the Sumida River through central Tokyo. Called “prayer stars,” the lights were made to resemble fireflies, insects that have been long celebrated in Japanese culture. Panasonic created the LEDs, which automatically lit up on contact with water, specifically for this magnificent display. 9. Massive River of 10,000 Lit Up Books

For The Light in Winter festival in Melbourne, Australia, Luzinterruptus took 10,000 discarded books, lit them up with flashlights and then arranged them to look like a massive river overtaking the city. The Spanish art collective’s largest installation yet, Literature vs Traffic even encouraged its visitors to take the books home with them at the end of the art event.

10. 90,000 Plastic Balls Inspired by Wisterias in Monet’s Paintings

For the Le Havre’s Contemporary Art Biennale, Canada-based architects and designers at Claude Cormier + Associés Inc. paid tribute to Monet, the father of Impressionism, by assembling 90,000 plastic balls over the walkway of Le Havre City Hall. Set in five vibrant colors, the installation resembled a pop art piece that simply aimed to delight its visitors.

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Rolls-Royce Is Going to 3D Print Its Airplane Engine Parts

Everyone loves talking about 3D printing, but now it's really hitting the big time: Rolls-Royce has decided that it's going to use the technology to help make its airplane engines.

While the company has been mulling the idea of using 3D printing for a few years now, it's finally decided that the technology has come of age. Confident that it can push the limits of additive manufacturing to provide the levels of precision required for aeronautical engineering, Rolls-Royce will now be using 3D printers to create metallic and ceramic parts for its commercial airplane engines. Dr Wapenhans, the company’s head of technology, explains:

“3D printing opens up new possibilities, new design space. Through the 3D printing process, you’re not constrained by having to get a tool to create a shape. You can create any shape you like.”

Initially the company will use the technique to create brackets and fuel nozzles, which can be made more lightweight by using 3D printing rather than existing manufacturing methods. A small step, sure, but it's a definite sign that 3D printing is no fad; in fact, it'll be keeping you in the air in a few years time. Gulp. [FT via Pocket-Lint]

Image by Rolls-Royce

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How To Socialize An Event

Via ( Linkedin ) 

In the past month I’ve spoken at Moto X launch events in Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Chile, and the United States. I began the tour with a laissez-faire and idealistic attitude that if the Motorola team and I provided interesting content, social media would pick it up. I ended the tour leaving nothing to chance and determined to take total control of the social media exposure of each event. I learned that it’s possible to ensure that an event is covered in social media -- even trending as a hot topic with an event with only 100 attendees -- if you know what you’re doing. Here’s how. 1) Pick an evergreen hashtag. We could have picked hashtags like “#MotoXBrasil2013,” “#MotoXMexico2013,” and "#MotoXPeru2013,” and this would have been delusional -- did we think that the events would be so popular that people will use the hashtag until the next event called MotoXBrasil2014? Get real. A hashtag like #MotoXBrasil2013 would last for two days, best case. Instead, we picked a short, generic, and evergreen hashtag: “MotoX.” The other 363 days of the year this hashtag represents whatever is happening with Moto X, but for two days it was the event in Brasil. The big picture is that you want a hashtag that’s constantly in people’s faces, trending, and consistent, whether it refers to an event in Brazil, Mexico, or Peru, or new television commercials. 2) Tell everyone what the hashtag is. From the moment you start promoting an event, the hashtag should be in place. This means on your website, in advertising, and all electronic correspondence including your email signature.  Your program should mention it on the cover. The introductory slides should publicize it in sixty-point type. Every employee, speaker,vendor, and guest should know what it is. 3) Ask attendees to use the hashtag. It’s not enough to pick a hashtag and tell attendees what it is. You need to ask attendees to use it, too. The “voice of God” should mention it when he/she is making announcements. Your host should exhort people to use it. Toward the end of the Moto X tour, I began my keynote with a request that people tweet that they were at the event and use the hashtag #MotoX , and I waited while they tweeted. You cannot pimp your hashtag too much. 4) Broaden what socializing an event means. The audience for the hashtag is not only the people at the event. The audience is anyone in the world who’s interested in the product or company. Thus, a tweet such as “Not in Brasil? See this review of #MotoX to see what the excitement is all about:Motorola Moto X Review!” is appropriate. This kind of post with a high-value link is more likely to be retweeted and reshared. 5) Assign the socializing task to a person. There’s a lot going on at an event: audio-visual production, facilities, babysitting speakers, guest registration, food and beverage, and press coverage. If you truly want a socialized event, you need to assign someone at the event to do nothing but manage social media coverage. Expecting people to time slice at the event won’t work. Done right, this person is the busiest person at your event. Before it, he or she will schedule promotional posts about the event. During it, she will live tweet what’s happening and take pictures and video of speakers and guests. During breaks, she will post these pictures and videos to Google+, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest as well as retweeting and resharing other people’s posts about the event. After the event, she will post more pictures and videos and try to ensure people who are in these pictures and videos know that that they are so that they spread them, too. PR people from your agency cannot do this well if they are concerned with journalists and bloggers and taking care of the speakers and executives. In the case of the Moto X launch, the founder of Pegitas, Peg Fitzpatrick ran the show for me. The social media success we achieved was simply not possible without her.  6) Livestream video coverage. Think of all the money that you’re spending to make the event happen. Why wouldn't you broadcast live video coverage? Are you afraid that too many people will place orders? Get real. If you're announcing a product in Bogota, you want a blogger in Moscow to write about it, too. Livestreaming is obvious for a product announcement, but what if people are paying to attend your event? The fear is that people decide not to attend because they can watch for free. You could charge people to watch the livestream if that makes you feel better, but I would make the case that these people would not have attended anyway.  Also, if watching your event is as good as attending it live, you’ve got a bigger problem. I encourage to think big: livestreaming an event encourages people to attend in person the next time.  7) Provide real-time updates. If you’re not livestreaming video, at least have your social-media person provide blow-by-blow updates. Outfits like The Verge provide outstanding live coverage of events such as Apple announcements, so learn from what they do. This isn’t as good as livestreaming, but it’s cheaper and easier.  8) Display the tweet stream. There are services that display the tweets that contain a hashtag in real time. Displaying these tweets encourages more interaction and use of your hashtag. For some people this is like seeing their picture on the big display in Times Square -- they’ll find it irresistible. You can find many tools to do this by searching for “stream twitter hashtags” on Google.  There is a downside to this. First, tweets could get ugly if your speakers suck or your announcement isn’t impressive. Second, speakers must compete with the tweet stream for the attention of the audience. You can always turn off the feed if necessary.  9) Provide fast, free, and unprotected wireless access. If you want your event and hashtag to trend, you need to enable guests to post fast, free, and easily. Again, you’re spending a lot of money to get people to come to an event, you’re pounding the hashtag into them, and now you’re not going to make it easy to post by providing wireless access? What alternate marketing universe are you living in?  And don’t password protect the wireless network. Are you afraid that somebody is going to host his website for five hours using your network? You should remove all the speed bumps to promoting your event. The upside of open access to a wireless network is much more social media exposure. The downside is … I can’t think of any.  10) Provide a place to take pictures. After the initial Moto X events, I requested an area for taking photos. The area needed good lighting and a backdrop with “Moto X” printed all over it. Think of the pictures of celebrities at the Academy Awards -- they're standing in front of a backdrop with the Academy Award graphics.  I also learned that people will use this designated area to pose with their friends. They see the backdrop, and they think: “Let’s take a photo here to show we were at the event. Let’s pretend we’re Paris Hilton or David Beckham.” Roughly 100% of these photos get shared on social media -- hopefully, many with your hashtag. The bottom line is that every picture is a branding opportunity. Power Tip: You can use a product such as Adobe Lightroom to watermark your photos with your logo. This means that no matter where the photo is taken, your logo will appear.  11) Require your executives to be available for pictures. At most events, company executives speak and then rush off to a limited access press conference or individual interviews. Then they might make a short appearance at meals but are surround by their “people” to protect them.  Give me a break. Tell them to press the flesh. They should not only be happy to pose for pictures, they should ask people to be in pictures with them. Roughly 80% of your guests would like to have a picture with the CEO of your company or your keynote speakers. No one is going to turn you down if you ask them to take a picture with your CEO. Roughly 100% of these photos get shared, too.  12) Take and share candid pictures. Document your event as much as possible by hiring a photographer. He or she might cost $1,000/day, but this is roughly what you’re spending on the thumb-drives with your logo to give away. The follow-up action is to distribute the pictures. I’ve spoken at hundreds of events. Most of them have paid photographers intruding at every instance, and yet I seldom see any of the pictures.  Where are they used? Does the company not own the rights to the pictures so that it could freely distribute them? We took candid photography to an extreme at the Moto X events. I posed with anyone who asked (and asked anyone who didn’t) in front of a backdrop with “Moto X” plastered on it whenever possible. My goal was that everyone who was at the event was in at least one picture.  After the event, we sent an email to guests telling them where they could find the collection of photos. We encouraged them to download the pictures and, of course, share them with the MotoX hashtag.  13) Make a slow-motion video. I discovered one more useful tool to socialize an event: slow-motion video. Whereas pictures require too much clicking to view and regular-speed video moves too fast, slow-motion video is a perfect way to capture and share the images of dozens of guests. Just turn on your camera phone and walk through the crowd. Watch this video of a book party to see what I mean. Power Tips: First, walk fast. When viewed, slow-motion video is approximately six times longer than regular video. Second, YouTube lets you add music to the video, and music makes a slow-motion videos sing. Third, grab the long link address for the video in your browser address bar (not the address you get by clicking on Share) and add “&hd=1” to it. This will ensure that people see the high-definition version.  14) Cover the earth. Once you have pictures and video, share them on Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram with your hashtag. (Click on “Google+” and “Instagram” to see examples of what we did.) You can get away with posting as many as ten pictures per day from an event, so take your best shots and then provide a link to the rest of the album.  Nothing that I’ve mentioned is hard or extremely expensive, and none involve paying for social media services, but these actions can expand the impact of any event. Give them a try for your next event. I’ll be watching what’s trending to see how you do.

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NO MORE CABLES! STUDIO ROOSEGAARDE’S “CRYSTAL” MAKES LIGHTING MORE FUN AND INTERACTIVE

    Presented during the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven (Netherlands), this permanent installation is made of hundreds of crystals containing LEDs and placed on the ground of the Natlab, an historical site of Eindhoven where Einstein works and where Philips created the first light bulb. The magnetic field contained in the floor lights up the crystals and recharges them wirelessly. Dan Roosegaarde calls his creation the “Lego from Mars” since visitors can play around with the crystals, build words or make artistic compositions.

AMUSEMENT RATE: The project is part of the Light-S program of the City of Eindhoven which aims at “creating a public lighting experience”. The crystals do so by creating a whole new level of interaction. No more cables, the lights can be moved freely by the visitors. If Crystal is presented as an installation in Eindhoven, its applications can reach far beyond the artistic field. Roosegaarde plans on making the project open source so people can experiment with it and develop it further.

Source: dezeen

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Today In Dystopian War Robots That Will Harvest Us For Our Organs

Via TechCrunch

Welcome to our continuing series featuring videos of robots that will, when they become autonomous, hunt us down and force us to work in the graphene factories of Mars. Below we see Wild Cat, a fully untethered remote control quadrupedal robot made by Boston Dynamics, creators of the famous Big Dog. This quadruped can run up to 16 miles an hour and features a scary-sound internal gas engine that can power it across rough terrain. Wild Cat was funded by the DARPA’s M3program aimed at introducing flexible, usable robots into natural environments AKA introducing robotic pack animals for ground troops and build flocking, heavily armed robots that can wipe out a battlefield without putting humans in jeopardy.

Next up we have ATLAS, another Boston Dynamics bot that can walk upright on rocks. Sadly ATLAS is tethered to a power source but he has perfect balance and can survive side and front hits from heavy weights – a plus if you’re built to be the shock troops of a new droid army. ATLAS can even balance on one foot while being smacked with wrecking balls, something the average human can’t do without suffering internal damage. I can’t wait for him to be able to throw cinder blocks!

Finally we present these charming self-assembling robots from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory which we covered earlier today. The robots exert an internal force to spin and then connect with each other using magnets, allowing them to fly into the air for a second and then fall down next to their brothers and sisters in exactly the right spot. This allows these completely featureless squares to form any shape they want and, like autonomous LEGOs, they can build complex devices out of a few simple shapes.

“There’s a point in time when the cube is essentially flying through the air,” said researcher Kyle Gilpin. “And you are depending on the magnets to bring it into alignment when it lands. That’s something that’s totally unique to this system.”

They may look innocuous but imagine these things self-assembling into, say, a wall, a door, or even a plate of explosives. They could sneak through pipes into your home and create a robotic assassin to destroy you in the sleep, thereby freeing up your “Schlafplatz” for other humans who have been reduced to sleeping out of doors after the robots took over most habitable locations for the storage of fermenting human slurry. Stay frosty, humans!

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SomeOne/Else develops 'internet for people without internet'

SomeOne/Else is working with the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation on WeFarm, a knowledge-sharing platform that connects farmers in developing countries using SMS.

The service, which is in the design stage, will serve as a means of communication where there is poor internet coverage and smartphone penetration.

SomeOne/Else, the digital arm of consultancy SomeOne, says the system is effectively ‘the internet for the people without internet.’

WeFarm members can ask questions and share farming tips and advice by sending a local SMS message. 

The message arrives at a centre of volunteer translators - possibly at the Essex University language department - who then pass the question on to a farmer with appropriate knowledge in another part of the world.

On the ground, ‘extension workers’ in Tanzania for example, will be communicating with farmers on foot and will have smart-phones and iPads to aid communication.

Warren Hutchinson, experience design director at SomeOne/Else says ‘It means that for the first time a coffee farmer in Peru can ask questions, and share tips and advice with other coffee farmers from all over the world.’

Hutchinson says he is working on the design of an interface using SMS, and may use USSD, a type of SMS that allows real time chat sequences.

In addition he says, ‘We’ll need to design a responsive website for desktop, tablet and mobile which the translators and the extension workers can use – but we don’t want all the knowledge locked up in the website – that’s what the SMS is for.’

The WeFarm brand development and pilot projects were started by Airside in 2010 and since the consultancy closed in 2012, Airside co-founder Nat Hunter has remained involved. 

Hunter invited SomeOne/Else to pitch two month ago and the consultancy is now working alongside technical partners Manifesto and the Conker Group.

This follows three years of work by the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation which conceived the idea and has been leading the project, as well as developing a pilot and proof of concept work.

The design is expected to be finished in the first quarter of 2014 and the service is expected to launch in in Haiti, Kenya, Peru and Tanzania in the second quarter of next year.

Initially the service will focus on farmers but can be potentially expanded to work for health and education professionals.

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Clean Graffiti – A New and Innovative Way of Marketing

It might be the coolest form of marketing that you’ve never heard of – clean graffiti (or reverse graffiti) is an innovative, environmentally safe and eye catching technique to advertise or simply display art that has only been popularized in the last 8 to 10 years. Those who are looking for cheap alternatives to normal publicity and want to limit their environmental footprint in the process may want to take a deeper look at this cool artistic method. In the following few paragraphs we will discuss everything you need to know about the phenomenon that is clean graffiti.

What is it?

Clean graffiti is just like normal graffiti but with one major difference – no paint or colors are needed. How does this work? The artist simply finds a dirty wall, and cleans part of it to form a temporary art exhibit. Think of it like writing a phrase on a dirty car window by using your finger to clear dust out of the way. Clean graffiti artists can use their hands, brushes or even pressure washers depending on the scale of the work they are doing. One common technique for getting finer detail involves laying a stencil down on the surface and using a high powered washer to clean out the area which creates a work of art in just seconds. Inner cities are often coated with dirt and grime – essentially posing as a blank canvas for interested artists.

The exact origin of reverse graffiti is usually attributed to an English artist who simply goes by Moose. His work has gotten so well recognized that major corporations such as Microsoft and Smirnoff have used his skills to advertise through reverse graffiti methods. Many other household brand names have clean graffiti advertisements placed throughout the world. If you want to know more, check out Moose’s documentary.

Those who take notice of inner city streets, walls and tunnels may be a different crowd than the those who watch the 10PM news or visit art galleries. Life size art on buildings is photo worthy, many passers by will snap a shot on their smartphone and share it with friends which becomes free publicity as well – all with next to no impact on the environment. The potential for amazing clean graffiti projects to go viral is also rather high due to their nature and amazing creativity.

Is it legal?

Unlike traditional graffiti which is destructive in nature and frowned upon by legal circles, clean graffiti operates in a more legally ambiguous area. Technically, it is cleaning a public space, which is essentially impossible to prosecute in most areas. This form of advertising is also generally recognized as one of the most environmentally friendly as no ink or paper are involved whatsoever.

Some eye catching examples

Moose was responsible for one of the best examples of clean graffiti on the walls of San Francisco. Clean graffiti also has yielded amazing results on dirty car windows. A quick Google search will yield dozens more.

So, if you have a particularly dirty wall or other surface somewhere in your town and want to turn it into an eye catching piece of art (legally) you should think about bringing in a clean graffiti artist. That, or hire a professional like American Clean & Seal Surface Cleaning to come do the job. If nothing else, clean graffiti is bringing an awareness to just how many of our cities need to be properly cleaned.

- Source: http://www.creativeguerrillamarketing.com/street-art/clean-graffiti-new-innovative-way-marketing/#sthash.eW9s0kqE.dpuf

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MINI is on a roll with their NOT NORMAL marketing campaign.

MINI is on a roll with their NOT NORMAL marketing campaign. This summer, MINI celebrated the not normal relationship MINI fans have with their cars. They did this by creating a digital billboard that is equally as not normal. A spotter identified MINI car drivers passing by the series of billboards and started a communication. They did things like take a photo and place it live on the billboard to treating them to a meal.

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THE XPO GALLERY REINVENTS THE PHYSICAL PRESENTATION OF DIGITAL ART

“Retweeter” – Aram Bartholl

  A physical space presenting virtual artworks might seem out of place but it does make sense when you meet Philippe Riss, director of the XPO Gallery. The gallery relentlessly tries to break boundaries by mixing mediums and problematics, proving, if needed, that digital art has indeed its place in an exhibition space. His approach of digital art is not technologically driven but focuses instead on the relationship our society maintain with the digital world. It is the insertion of this human component that makes the gallery relevant in the digital age. We met with Philippe Riss for a discussion about the challenges of presenting digital art in a gallery as well as the difficulty of preserving such artworks.

The exhibition “Suberiority” closed its doors last month and was a great success. What did you learn from it? Is offering a digital artwork on paper some kind of statement on the gallery’s position?

The digital paintings of Vasilios Paspalis, a young Greek artist who recently graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, were indeed well-received. They really piqued the interest of art collectors to the point that Paspalis is now part of many renowned collections.

The gallery does not have a special position, but a mission. It represents artists from the postindustrial era we are in. When I discovered Vasilios at his graduate show in London, I immediately offered him the support of the gallery as I think he is a great emerging artist from this new postindustrial movement.

Earlier this year, we heard a lot about the Offline Art exhibition, where digital artworks were sold as routers. How did you end up with this scenography and would you repeat it in the future?

The OFFLINE ART- new 2 was a proposition made by Aram Bartholl. We wanted to create a physical and spatial experience with “offline” net art pieces. We will reiterate this exhibition format next year with a solo show of Kim Assendorf.

What is the place and the role of a gallery in the digital era? How does the XPO gallery face this challenge?

In my opinion, the role of gallery in the digital era is not to revisit the past. I think the old economic model of the art gallery can no longer exist. XPO Gallery supports artists whose digital environment greatly expands their ability to represent the world. The gallery’s mission is to comment this new era of comparison.

Exhibition view “Retweet if you want more followers” – Aram Bartholl

What upcoming exhibitions should we expect in the coming months and how will they fit in the general approach of the gallery?

I’m very excited to announce the solo shows of Paul Souviron, who works on the tension happening in the world, of Grégory Chatonsky, who will also be exhibited at the Docks Art Fair in Lyon, and of Constant Dullaart.

How do you preserve artworks that are by definition virtual?

The preservation of a digital artwork is a very important question. Every medium has its own preservation problem, but obsolescence when it comes to digital art is almost immediate. That’s why we are currently investigating to ensure the preservation and authenticity of these artworks.

How do you consider digital art? The question might seem a bit odd, but considering your choice to go beyond preexisting boundaries, do you consider part of it?

I do not think there is a digital art but rather art in the digital era. It is very different and that is the reason why we support all kinds of mediums.

“Google Portrait” – Aram Bartholl

The XPO gallery is currently presenting Retweet if you want more followers, a solo show by Aram Bartholl. In a world where Internet dominates the world, the German artist questions our dependence to the virtual world and the underlying tensions born with it. This unbalanced relationship is examined with intelligence and irony through a series of new works where captchas become sculptures and QR codes portraits. The exhibition is on display until June 8 and will continue for a few more days from June 18 to the 21.

XPO Gallery, 17 rue de Notre Dame de Nazareth, 75003 Paris.

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Jim Samalis: Finding the Key to Unlock the Creative

“I was always interested in film. My Aunt Emily used to take me to grown-up movies at a young age, including Barefoot in the Park, Planet of the Apes, Oliver, and A Man for All Seasons. Yes, I saw a beheading at 5 years old!”

    Among many skills, new Executive Creative Director Jim Samalis brings to Kenwood a focus on strategic planning.

“I wasn’t aware of the strategic planning discipline until I went to work at FCB,” he says of his time at Foote, Cone & Belding.

“Until that point, I would rely on a lot of gut instinct, interviews with the corporate constituents of a project, and some anecdotal impressions about the audience. But learning that a planner’s job is to bring key audience insights into the creative process was a career-altering discovery.

“Since my job is to change the way an audience thinks and feels about a brand or product, that insight was the key to unlocking the creative.”

Jim was born in Greece and moved to the U.S. at age four with his parents. His father was a beer salesman, his mother a hairdresser. Jim grew up in New Hampshire.

“I was always interested in film. My Aunt Emily used to take me to grown-up movies at a young age, including Oliver, Barefoot in the Park, Planet of the Apes, and A Man for All Seasons. Yes, I saw a beheading at 5 years old!

“And music has always influenced everything I do,” he says. He cites the influence of “an older cousin, who exposed me to the great music of the 60s when I was growing up—Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, Dylan, Neil Young, the Everly Brothers. ‘Bye Bye Love’ was the first single I ever bought, and Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut album from 1969 was my first album.”

He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Psychology, and found his way into visual media and marketing by accident. One thing led to another.

“I worked for the college radio station while pre-med at Brown, and after graduation, I took the job of Program Director. From there I became a news writer at a local CBS station and worked my way up the ranks to producing the 11 o’clock news. I would also direct local commercials, which took me to Boston, where I worked as a director at a production company, doing videos and events for ITT Sheraton, Digital, Johnson & Johnson, Raytheon, Walt Disney Resorts.”

Besides FCB and boutique creative/production shop Kaleidoscope, Jim served most recently as Executive Creative Director with InVision Communications, where he worked on immersive experiential programs for Genentech, Cisco, Gartner, Takeda and Special Olympics.

Prior to that, he was Director of Marketing, Communications and Events for the Robin Hood Foundation, which fights poverty in New York.

“During that time I was in charge of all marketing materials, annual reports, website re-design and, of course, all of their events. Their annual benefit pulls in about $70 million in one night. Entertainers included: Brian Williams, Seth Myers, Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Sting and more. Our relationship with the Black Eyed Peas allowed us to put on a concert in Central Park for 50,000 people, plus 20,000 virtual attendees.”

Throughout his career, Jim has loved “having to solve a unique business challenge in a completely different way each time. It’s never the same experience twice.” He takes pride in “a level of excellence and a deep commitment to trying to change an audience’s behavior in the way a client desires. I really enjoy seeing an audience interact with my work and leading them to think differently about a brand or product.”

He notes widespread changes in the industry. “But good storytelling is good storytelling. Tools have changed. Interactivity is the biggest shift, allowing people into the story. Creating different inroads into the story shifts our thinking about experiences.”

Jim is happy to be at Kenwood. “This is an interesting time here. Unfortunately, in most experiential marketing and production shops the planning discipline is absent, but we’re changing that here.”

“Kenwood is undergoing a re-branding and re-positioning, expanding on its core capabilities, and bringing in more expertise to help clients solve their business challenges. Spearheading this effort has been a rewarding endeavor so far, and clients have responded well.”

On a personal note, Jim is a single father of four-year-old twins.

“Having children through surrogacy was a journey without a map. I forged my own path, not having any friends who had undergone the same process. So the fact that I accomplished it was a hugely significant event in my life.

 “I used to spend my spare time surrounding myself with the arts and popular culture. These days I do that from a four-year-old’s point of view. When I’m not working, we’re interacting in some way or I’m doing chores around the house. It’s very humbling.

“Before I had my children I would travel every year to visit my family in Greece. I also tried to tie in other destinations in Europe, particularly Italy and France. With the kids, travel has been quite limited, though I did baptize them in a church beneath the Acropolis. It was the circle of life—very Lion King!”

Jim draws inspiration from many sources.

In the creative arts: “I’m really inspired by anyone that does great work, but the first ones that come to mind are [Chinese artist and dissident] Ai Weiwei and [German visual artist] Gerhard Richter. The documentaries about them really ignited my interest in them and my own creative passion. I’ve always loved the sensuality in the works of [Spanish architect] Santiago Calatrava and [Austrian painter] Egon Schiele. And the amazing humanism of Federico Fellini.”

In public life: “My good friend David Saltzman, Executive Director of Robin Hood, has dedicated more than 20 years of his life to fighting poverty in New York City—a Sisyphean challenge. I admire him so much for his sheer tenacity and ability to mix charity and showmanship.”

In his personal life: “My Uncle Bill was the greatest person I’ve ever met. He served in WWII in the Army Corps of Engineers. His job was to take inflatables and make it look like there was an Allied Presence in key strategic areas where they didn’t have the manpower. He was completely and utterly devoted to his wife, who was blind. They never spent a day apart until his 90th birthday party, which she was unable to attend.

“For me, he was the epitome of love, devotion, sacrifice and what it means to be a man.”

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Daniel Pinkham: The Unpredictable-ness of What’s Coming Next

“In college, I supported myself with a commissioned sales job at a prominent Westwood Village camera store. One day I sold a super-8 camera to Johnny Carson and had the pleasure of teaching him how to use it! That was a mind-blowing moment for a film school student, to be sure.”

  Common knowledge about personality types: humans are either left-brained—analytical, detail-minded, mathematical, and logical—or right-brained—creative, thoughtful, artistic, and open-minded. It depends on which side of the brain is dominant, right?

Except new research released this month debunks the theory that we are each dominated by one side of our brains. Neuroscientists at the University of Utah, after examining brain scans from over a thousand individuals, have concluded that “there’s no such thing as being 'right-brained’ or ‘left-brained.’ In fact, our brains work in far more complicated ways.”

"It's absolutely true that some brain functions occur in one or the other side of the brain,” say the researchers. “But people don’t tend to have a stronger left- or right-sided brain network. It seems to be determined more connection by connection.”

Dan doesn’t know for certain. “Doing visual effects work early in my career required a balanced brain. I had to figure out how to use a computer (a very primitive one) and some primitive software, combined with a camera and some stepper motors, to make something look cool. The same could be said about photography or sound recording or music making. Oftentimes one has to embrace the technical side of things in order to create something aesthetically pleasing.

“Beyond that, for me to integrate knowledge about something, I need to dig down a little in an effort to grasp the fundamentals of how that thing works. So I guess I have a temperamental predisposition to want to look at a problem from multiple points of view—from the left and the right, if you will …”

Dan is a native of the East Bay, but spent the formative years from three through eight in England, where he “attended an English boarding school that looked and operated just like Hogwarts, without the magic. There was even a fearsome old man teacher named Mr. Snape.”

He had to shed a cultured English accent after moving back to Orinda with his family. He studied violin for ten years and played with the Oakland Youth Symphony at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, Royal Albert Hall in London, and the Monterey Jazz Festival. He also conducted the orchestra for his high school musical.

His first experience with photography came in college. “A multi-disciplinary trip to East Africa at the end of first year required me to create a slideshow to be shown in my community. I had never picked up a camera before and didn’t think I had any visual aptitude. The experience opened my eyes to visual storytelling, underpinned by my previous musical training. It led me to apply to the film program at UCLA.

“I supported myself with a commissioned sales job at a prominent Westwood Village camera store. One day I sold a super-8 camera to Johnny Carson and had the pleasure of teaching him how to use it! That was a mind-blowing moment for a film school student, to be sure.

“The summer I graduated, I faked my way into a job as an assistant cameraperson at Praxis Film Works in North Hollywood and had to learn quickly how to load 35mm magazines! The facility had been established recently by Robert Blalack, soon after he completed the optical composite work on the original Star Wars series. I worked with early 35mm motion control systems (clumsy computers with command line interfaces), shooting elements for various movies and commercials.

“I soon became a motion control/visual effects cameraperson at Praxis and eventually worked on ABC’s The Day After TV movie (about a nuclear missile attack on the United States). We created mushroom cloud and missile contrail effects by shooting fluid dynamics in water tanks in front of green screens. All of this was pre-CGI techniques. I ended up winning a national Emmy Award for that work, which was a great way to wrap up my time in LA.”

He moved back to the Bay Area in 1983, married his wife Tali the next year, worked freelance as a visual effects technical director, and learned analog and then non-linear digital editing with the first-generation Avid Media Composer. Soon he started directing corporate video projects for a variety of companies. His early freelance directing/editing jobs at Kenwood came in 1987. Then he joined the staff as creative director in 1996 and became a co-owner in 1999.

Dan has seen many changes in the industry during his career.

Transition from analog to digital media—“We were an industry leader in the integration of digital media into corporate events and virtual events. Created the industry’s first real wide-screen projection show with Sun Microsystems, which endures as the default model for corporate shows.”

Advent of the Internet—“The Internet of course has opened up communication channels and democratized media production.”

Current shift in our business—“Kenwood is innovating a strategic shift away from delivering videos or events, toward positioning ourselves as ‘experience architects,’ working across multiple communication channels to solve marcomm challenges.”

What Dan loves about his work: “Exercising the creative muscle, exposure to many different kinds of businesses, helping to solve business problems on many different scales and levels. The unpredictable-ness of what's coming next. Playing some small part in the meta-information age evolution of the planet.”

What he is most proud of in his work: “Maintaining a brand-focused, strategy-minded approach to what we’re doing. Another way of saying it is waging an ongoing quest to avoid boilerplate, generic work. At the end of the day, I’m proud when the message comes through, when the audience gets it, when we make our clients look smart, and when we measurably succeed in moving the needle.”

Who inspires him: “I have always admired the pianist Chick Corea for his ability to move fluidly between genres and feels. To me he is the archetypal eclectic creative adventurer. He can be incredibly lyrical and sensitive in his interpretation of a standard in one moment, and then go crazy-outrageous in the next. His original compositions are amazing and diverse and memorable. He goes solo, jams with an over-the-top fusion band, acoustic, electric, string quartets, duos with classic sidemen and young guys you’ve never heard of, and always improvises with clarity and expansive originality.”

Who in his background was …

… especially proficient or influential technically: “My dad (a Kaiser Engineer) was never afraid to go to the workbench and make something. I think that impressed me.”

… particularly skilled or inspiring creatively: “My violin teacher, Anne Crowden, was an amazing mentor. She taught me how hard you had to work and practice to become an expert, and how that expertise opened the door to meaningful, authentic creative expression.”

In his time away from work, Dan currently sings more than 40 gigs a year with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, recently performing on the yard at San Quentin’s Peace Day for 2000 inmates.

On his proficiency with two instruments (violin and voice), which have no frets to lock in the pitches of individual notes, making them both creative and technical challenges: “There’s a component of awareness there, of training oneself to be able to perceive or measure accurately what is going on in the moment and then ‘tune’ or ‘blend’ one’s own actions to it in real time. This might be why I am also very drawn to documentary filmmaking, because it involves perceiving the story that is actually happening in every moment. The real story is usually quite different than the one you preconceived, and usually much more interesting.”

Dan loves to play jazz guitar and spend time with his family. He has been married nearly 30 years to Tali, a registered nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at Sutter/Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley and “an awesome mother of three: Andrew—13, boy scout, drummer, Minecraft devotee. Claire—16, high school senior, singer, writer, nervous about college plans. Hannah—20, Pomona College, academic, future French or History professor, singer, part-time hipster.”

He also loves “trail running in the Oakland hills or wherever I am, skiing, home remodeling and maintenance, children’s activities, pro bono video projects, school group chaperoning and mentoring. Oh, and then there's the Words with Friends addiction ...”

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MOTION SCULPTURES CREATED FROM HUMAN MOVEMENTS

Taiwanese design studio JL Design and Lithuanian digital filmmaking and design company Korb for the Chinese channel CCTV Documentary.

Created using motion capture, these short videos show the movements of the human bodies becoming sculptural shapes. Each one of these four idents represents a different theme. The steel evokes the strength, the wood, nature and the aquatic substance of the last one visualizes the fragility of love.