January 27, 2008, 6:09 am : The Hotness | Version 1.2

Pretty On The Inside | Microscopic Cameras You Can Swallow
Remember the guy in ‘Pretty In Pink’, who was stuck in detention, and was drawing a picture of his girfriend, but without skin? This is how he did it! Puts an entirely new and interesting category in Cannes once people can direct films inside of someone’s body – now we just need an idea to go with it!

Fran Young
‘Song of Farewell’ (2007) is a digital video projection with sound, which uses slowed footage of starlings roosting on a deserted, out-of-season rollercoaster at the end of the day. It’s also totally freaky.

Funky Forest
Wow, why didn’t we have motion and touch sensitive installations when I was a kid? This makes me want to be 10 again. Well, actually 10 and not a just inhabiting the body of a 42 year old.

Jake Sargeant @ Motion Theory
Very cool reel from Jake Sargeant.

The Ronin
Motion graphics, cool photography, design, cool website, ahhhh….

Icon Watch
I don’t just want one of these, I need one of these…

Circuit-printed Contact Lens – I want a bionic eye, please!
I will wear this with my Icon Watch, checking out stuff that noone else can see (check my blog entry on Augmented Reality Contact Lenses…)

January 19, 2008, 2:36 pm : Cool Gadgets (and Art) that Kills!!

Dec 2007/ Jan 2008
During Christmas, I went home to Minot, North Dakota. I met up with an old friend who is a conspiracy nut who puts Spooky Moulder to shame. We nearly always have an uncomfortable moment when we do the ‘what’s going on with you? What are you looking at? Reading? Watching?’ catch-up. I’m usually digging some cool new media-thing (Right now, I’m loving portable, ink-jet printers with roller paintbrushes, connected to digital images via USB). This almost always ends up with my pal explaining how the thing that I am digging on will come to life, decide people are a bad thing to have around, begin organizing all the machines in the world, keep a few of us for slaves and then kill the rest.

This conversation reminded me of an art history class I took at Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the late 1980s. Professor Phil Larson was the curator of the Walker Art Center in the early 1970s. Not only did he know his late modern art inside out, he was also a very cool guy with a dry delivery and snazzy jackets. One day we were studying sculptures, in particular, one of my faves: Richard Serra. His art equally spooks and seduces me – I listen to his sculptures like they are sea shells and get really close, close enough to smell them, which gets some looks and scolds from security guards at MOMA. I had written about smelling Serras’ in a paper I had to present and later, Phil told us that getting close enough to smell a Serra was a dangerous thing. Years before, Phil was at the Walker when they were installing a Serra, standing next to a gallery worker who was there one second and flattened the next by Serra’s multi-ton artwork. My friends and I were bug-eyed and this began a Sophmore Year-long fascination with art that kills! My classmates and I spent many an evening discussing which artists were potentially the most dangerous, like the Legion of Doom as an all-star art movement. (I’ve always thought Josef Beuys had a murderous lard pile stashed away in Berlin). We would occasionally create a most-wanted poster featuring a fantasy FBI top ten with Serra usually in the Top Five. Damn, I want the pizza box that was drawn on….

Now, driving around Minot fuelled by large coffees from the only Starbucks in town, my friend and I jabbered about groovy technology and gadgets and where they might go next. We decided to give things two ratings out of 5. I gave them a rating for how it would bring cool big ideas to life. My pal took a slightly different tack. Here are a few we loved:

Tag! You’re IT (information technology): Subdermal implants which track people’s movements have been around for ages. I’m pretty keen on getting one that would discretely give me a signal (like a tingle) when I am in the vicinity of things that interest me. This would be especially cool if my tag could filter incoming info on-the-fly – I’d get a certain sensation when I’m near a comic store that has a book that I’m missing or boot bindings in my size from the Burton store. This would most certainly have to be entirely ‘wearer-controlled’ – I don’t want to get tingles from a 2-for-1 burger ad when I’m walking down Oxford St. This could be the Apple Xmas must-have in 2012: an intra-body multi-media unit, literally an iPod Nano, except they would have to call it the iMe. You heard it here first…
Cool gadget factor: 3.8 / Likelihood of being an alien tracking device programmed to enslave us: 4.6

Smell (the ad for) the Glove: First, I must disclose that I read comics. Lots of comics. If you do too, you know that 2006 was the Year of the Zombie (Marvel Zombies, Raise the Dead, etc). I predict that 2007 will be known as the Year of the NanoMachines (Mighty Avengers, Ultimates, etc). Recently, these micro-computer controlled mechanical wonders are used to fight crime or do villainous deeds. In my perfect world, we would use nanotechnology to create actual viral marketing: beer companies release a nano-machine virus that gives you the taste and smell of a cold beer, with an accompanying hallucination-like ‘vision’ tied to context-specific placement (for example, released during Memorial Day near beaches for barbecues). This would be the trickiest media placement of all time – how do you book which way the breeze will blow? – but I would love to experience my favourite brands this way, as long as they wear off and I don’t keep experiencing the smell of the Camper store for two weeks.
Cool gadget factor: 4.3 / Opportunity for nanomachines to take over our bodies and create a race of cyborgs: 4.0

Mobilility Advertising: no, I don’t mean mobile. I mean stuff that gets up and walks around. Yup, robots. Not the silly ones that they have at NextFest with rubber face masks stuck on weird-Saturn 3 styled chassis. More like the ones from Westworld, walking manifestations of brands. How cool would it be if we had Prada robots walking around Soho, Batman robots walking around outside movie theatres when Dark Knight comes out or swarms of bird robots that are movable wifi broadcast networks that roam around music festivals? Obviously, the problem comes back to when these suckers stop selling suits and start enslaving us to build massive computers to control the earth. My solution is make them cool, but not too smart, think an iPod wearing loafers, rather than The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes.
Cool gadget factor: 4.7 / Chance that we will eventually have to send someone back through time to undo all of the damage we’ve done 4.9

Augmented Everything: Everyone who knows me has seen my rant on augmented reality. This is because it appeals to the side of me that wants to make cool, gadget-activated stuff. I also have the hologram of Princess Leia pleading for help from Obi-Wan stuck in my head. Last year, we did a project with augmented reality through mobile phones for the Wellington Zoo in NZ. Through a series of press ads containing a black and white image code, you could view 3D images of animals when looking through your mobile phone camera (after downloading a small application). Although I love mobile augmented stuff, I really want augmented reality contact lenses, which make my entire world a giant canvas waiting to be activated through visual codes and image recognition. With the breakthroughs in flexible surfaces and printing hardware at a micro-level, I’m looking forward to creating (and seeing) ideas that are there, but not really. Like car demos which appear in 3D space when you see a car at the dealership. Or seeing a movie reviews appear when you look at a poster, changing each time you blink. This post came out while I was writing this – we’re not far away now. Check out circuit-printed contacts here.
Cool gadget factor: 5.0 / Chance that you will realize that all advertising in the world are actually coded messages from aliens 5.0.

This may have already happened. Don’t believe me, go watch John Carpenter’s They Live

If you’re still reading this rant, these are the things that get me jazzed up. Like reading comics in front of my laptop while checking out notcot with a movie on the TV while listening to music. Although most of this tech is either highly dodgy or too weird to present to a client, I want to always play at the edge of ‘what if?’, keeping an eye on the idea driving the technology, not the other way around. This is where I challenge myself and people I work with to always push a little harder for a ideas that kill. Don’t worry, I mean Killer Ideas, in a good way!