just a reflektor - Arcade Fire

just a reflektor - Arcade Fire

Although it takes a while to load (which might have more to do with work being quiet today than the development…) if you liked their previous offerings, like Sprawl 2, then this is well worth a look. You can either use your webcam or your mouse to interact with the video, similar to the Sprawl one, but this time your movements don’t just pause/skip/loop the video, they directly interact with it creating kaleidoscopes and bursts of light wherever you connect. Here’s how they explain it –

“We’re not just dealing with technology, we’re dealing with unique environments. A big part of the data is our engagement and gesture. We developed a HTML5 video player where we control real-time WebGL shader effects. We pair camera vision with the gyroscope and accelerometer data from the mobile device that we send to the computer through WebSockets. It’s by far the most complex thing I’ve ever worked on.”

“For me it’s always been an obsession to combine these things, to make something rich and nuanced, so you forget the technology.”

Clever stuff eh.

Watch the video and have a play (best viewed on Google Chrome) here

Written, Directed & Produced by: Vincent Morisset
Creative Direction by: Vincent Morisset and Aaron Koblin
Produced by: AATOAA, Unit9, Google Creative Lab, Antler Films

#Arcade Fire#Google#Google Chrome#Interaction#Interactive Video#Mobile site#Multi-device

A lovely short film exploring the different ways people interpret the same piece of music, all shot from the perspective of a vinyl spinning on a record player. The film was created for “Hello, Again,” an initiative by The Lincoln Motor Company that asks filmmakers to re-imagine the familiar into something fresh and new, and I think it does that pretty well. Its the mundaneness of some of the shots that makes it especially beautiful, accompanied by a nice edit to keep the momentum ticking over.

Watch the “Record” behind-the-scenes film here

Or visit the “Hello, Again” micro-site here

Directors: Wriggles & Robins
Music: ‘Be Happy’ by Amateur Best

#experiment#Experiments#Video#Vinyl

Nice (but not so new) campaign promoting Issey Miyake’s last perfume by enabling users to post messages using Google Street View. The experience gets its full power with the app that allows other users to discover messages directly where they have been posted via augmented reality. They don’t look too bad either!

You can take a look on the site here

Or download the App here

#AR#Google#iPhone App#Issey Miyake#Streetview

Tom Walsh Design - Movies In Colour

Tom Walsh Design - Movies In Colour

I stumbled upon Movies In Colour recently and keep finding myself wanting to re-visit it. Not only is it a lovely concept, but it also looks pretty good too (header aside…). The basic premise of the site is to take films, usually themed over each week (so one week may be Pixar, another Female Directors), and then break up the colour spectrum used within the film into ‘Light’, ‘Medium’, ‘Dark’ and ‘General Spectrum’. The process seems fairly manual, but personally I think the result is worth it.

This is how they explain it on their site –

“The idea started when I was watching Skyfall. I was taken with the cinematography and use of color more-so than the story itself. I wanted to find out what colors made up certain stills and after making a few color palettes for Skyfall, took it a step further by extending it to all films and starting a blog.

So far, the blog has not only been an aesthetic pursuit but also an educational pursuit that showcases the relationship between color, cinematography, set design, and production design. Overall, it is a study of color in films, but has other uses and applications. One of the goals is to give artists color palettes they can use in paintings, films, videos, graphic design, and other pursuits.

The Process
Research is first. I search for stills that are compositionally interesting as well as rich in color. I use the help of a color generator to get a very basic range of swatches. Then I piece together the general palette from that and other colors I think are prominent or worth including from the still. It’s all done in Photoshop to keep layout and swatch sizes consistent and to facilitate color sampling from the image.”

If you’d like to see more you can take a look at the full site here

#colour#Film#Movies#Swatches

To launch issue #86 ‘Making the News’ COLORS magazine have created a ‘News Machine’, which you tweet your headline to and it replicates the modern media’s mangling of information and spits out its own interpretation. COLORS explain the process on their site as –

“Twitter is the largest and least verifiable wire agency in the world. Tweet your story to @colorsmachine and watch the message change as it echoes through different media and into print.

A megaphone will read your tweet out loud. Its tape recorder listens, converting what it hears into text so that the television can show it onscreen. A camera watching the television converts what it sees into a signal to the radio antenna, which broadcasts the tweet. And the waiting microphone interprets this radio address as text again for printing.

Pick up your receipt. Compare the original tweet with the final report. Accuracy of reproduction varies according to the clarity of your writing and to chance.”

Unfortunately, as I’m writing this post the machine is offline (I think it’s being re-located) so I can’t send a test tweet to it, but I’ll keep my eye out for when it’s back up and add the results!

If you’d like to read more, or have a play with the News Machine you can visit COLORS’ website here

#Colors Magazine#News#Twitter

Nice, if sometimes a little nauseating to watch, tool by Teehan+Lax Labs which allows you to create instant timelapse (or ‘hyperlapse’) films from Google Street View. To use it you just drop a pin for your start, ‘A’, and finish, ‘B’ points and then create your very own Hyperlapse video! Here’s how the studio explain it –

“Hyper-lapse photography – a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements typically focused on a point-of-interest – has been a growing trend on video sites. Creating them requires precision and many hours stitching together photos taken from carefully mapped locations. We aimed at making the process simpler by using Google Street View as an aid, but quickly discovered that it could be used as the source material.”

To really see what it’s like you need to go and have a play yourself though (best viewed in Chrome) – http://hyperlapse.tllabs.io/

#experiment#Hyperlapse#Teehan+Lax Labs#Video

Just as we were ready to throw out our old record players and submit to a life of MP3, Amanda Ghassaei at instructables has found a way to print a 3D record from your digital copy! Although most vinyl lovers probably won’t see this as being quite the same (and have most likely already invested in turning their vinyls into MP3s for future proofing…), also the quality isn’t quite up there, but I do really like the idea of it. In fact, I would say the inaccuracy of the sound is probably what I like most. With these new weaknesses in the reproduction technique you could inspire a whole new sound and genre of music. Like Instagram is now the ‘look’ of the current era’s photography (whether that’s a good thing or not I’m undecided on), this could be the ‘sound’.

For a bit on the technical side, here’s what Amanda says about the project on indestructables.com

“In order to explore the current limits of 3D printing technology, I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D-printable, 33rpm records and printed a few functional prototypes that play on ordinary record players. Though the audio quality is low -the records have a sampling rate of 11kHz (a quarter of typical mp3 audio) and 5-6 bit resolution (less than one thousandth of typical 16 bit resolution)- the songs are still easily recognisable,”

You can read the full article here

#3D#3D Printing#Experiments#music#record#Vinyl

Interesting second issue of POST’s iPad magazine. I’m not totally sold on the design of the copy sections, but some nice ideas throughout. They describe it on iTunes as –

“…an extra-terrestrial exploration of the ways in which humanity has sought to transcend this invisible force that binds all of life. Pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved on the iPad, POST Gravity opens with a groundbreaking, interactive 3D fashion story powered by infra-red technology in which users can distort, bend and flip the dimensions of model Iselin Steiro.”

I especially like the interactive beauty shoot, with the twinkling galaxy reflecting off the visors, which through hiding the product from initial view built a nice intrigue before the user unveils them. Other nice features are the interactive 3D models in the ‘Inner Space’ Shoot, as well as the skydiving models in the ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ shoot. Overall some really nice concepts, and all pretty slickly executed. I look forward to seeing what they come up with in their next edition!

You can download it on iTunes here – itunes.apple.com/app/post-gravity/

#Fashion#Interactive Video#iPad#Video

Spring Creative - The Ever Changing Face Of Beauty

Beautiful iPad app by Spring Creative for fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø. Conceived by Sundsbø and styled by Marie Chaix, it plays on the old mix and match body parts concept. As you swipe through you can create your own combination of the video assets as well as moving and expanding each element, which in itself is a lot of fun to play with, but you can also tilt and the accelerometer angles the image depending on your tilt. The first time I played with it I had my sound turned off and I still enjoyed it, just for the pure aesthetic of the app, but with sound on it transforms into a different experience. The two bespoke tracks mixed by James Lavelle also react to tilt, so as you tilt it the ethereal track slows down and warps with your movement.

For the purists who think all apps need to serve a purpose I’m not sure how useful it is, I don’t think it was ever intended to be, but for something to enjoy looking at and playing with I’d recommend it to anyone. Also, it’s free. So you’ve got nothing to lose!

If you’d like to have a play you can download the app from the iTunes store here

And you can see more of Spring Creative or Sølve Sundsbø’s work here:
www.springstudios.com/springcreative
www.solvesundsbo.info

#App#Fashion#iPad#Spring Creative#Spring Studios#Sølve Sundsbø#Video

This Exquisite Forest

This Exquisite Forest
The latest interactive project from Google Creative Lab’s Aaron Koblin and Director Chris Milk, ‘This Exquisite Forest’, has gone live this week at The Tate Modern. A clever take on an old surrealist parlour game called ‘Exquisite Corpse’, where each person adds to a composition before passing it on to someone else to continue, they’ve developed a version which runs concurrently within Tate Modern and online. The initial digital ‘saplings’ have been created by Tate favourites Miroslaw Balka, Olafur Eliasson, Dryden Goodwin, Raqib Shaw, Julian Opie, Mark Titchner and Bill Woodrow. From these animations anyone with browser access can choose to continue on the same story, or to take it in a different direction and create a new ‘branch’, using a web based drawing tool developed by Google for the project. As the submissions grow, so will the forest, creating an almost completely user generated art installation of animated ‘leaves’ from around the globe.

You can visit This Exquisite Forest online here (only supported in Google Chrome though, of course…) – www.exquisiteforest.com

Also, check out their previous collaboration on Arcade Fire’s ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ here, another great digital project.

#Chris Milk#Interactive Video#Tate

All content © Copyright 2023 Tom Walsh Design – Tom Walsh Design, Graphic Design, Digital Design, London, UK
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