Sensitive Floors - Brand Play

BrandPlay presents Sensitive Floor – a captivating digital outdoor advertising medium in the heart of the retail environment.
Sensitive Floor is a new interactive floor media that uses motion detection and video projection technology to deliver an interactive experience that is fun, engaging and memorable.

Brandplay group are the first for cutting edge advertising using interactivity and digital solutions.  It was established as a vehicle to develop and roll out market leading solutions in the digital and  interactive signage market focusing on destination venues.

They have done numerous ad campaigns for different businesses including budwiser, O2, Vodaphone, Disney, New Look and many more.  They are all based around the same idea.  When people walk over the projection the image changes to a new one, or changes to an interactive animation.

In the video below you see an advertisement for Alice in Wonderland changing each time people walk over it.  It was a two week campaign that was designed to target customers within a specific proximity of cinemas screening Alice in 3D.  Working closely within the creative team at Disney, BrandPlay created a number of interactive effects designed to create a buzz within the shopping centres and drive footfall towards local cinemas.

This a cutting edge way of advertising as it uses interaction to draw attention to the product or service being advertised in a unique unusual way.  This kind of advertising from Brand Play is very interesting and I think that there is no limit to the variation in animation that could be produced for each advert.

I like the example of the type of animation that could be used in the video below.  The bubbles move when a person walks through them and reforms once they have gone.

I think we will see more of this type of advertising using digital media in the future as it is a new and exciting way of advertising.

Fitness First - Bus Shelter Poster?

I love this idea that has been implemented by a Dutch fitness agency called Fitness First.  They have created an advertisement for a bus shelter that will grab peoples attention, not at first but once they sit down they will realize what its purpose is.  At first glance it looks like any regular bus shelter poster, there is nothing particularly interesting or eye-catching about it. 

                                                                                                                                            But once someone sits on the bench at the shelter, the poster displays their weight in Kgs. Suddenly it becomes a lot more interesting!                                             Chances are that most people would stand up immediately once they realised what was happening, what with weight being such a sensitive issue. It takes a confident person to remain seated. While some people may oppose the poster, there is no denying that it is an effective form of advertising.                                              It would leave an impression on the more weight conscious bus traveller and also no doubt be a conversation topic.

I love this idea.  I think it is a new and effective way to advertise Fitness First or any other kind of fitness business.  It makes the person sitting down more aware of their weight and depending on the effect the 'poster' has on that person it might trigger an incentive in them to loose weight or perhaps join a gym or Fitness First.

I think that a lot could be taken from this idea in relation to advertising.  The fact that the possible future customer gets to personally interact with the poster is a very effective way of connecting Fitness First individually with the person.  Weight is a very personal thing to most of us and to be a weight that we are comfortable showing off in public like this is something that I'm sure most of us would like to achieve.

Interactive Mist Projection System

This is an amazing example of how interactivity can me magnified to a whole different scale.  Specially commissioned by the City of Santa Monica, California, for Glow 08, Primal Source was an all-night performance/installation brought to life through the active participation of festival-goers (estimated at approx. 200,000 over the course of the night).

Located on the beach near the Pier in an area that had been specifically landscaped over the course of several days, and making use of a large-scale outdoor waterscreen/mist projection system, the mirage-like installation glowed with colours and ebullient patterns created in response to the competing and collaborative voices, music and screams of people nearby.

As you can see from the video they placed microphones at the projection so that sounds could be picked up.  The projection responded to sounds coming from the crowd and the system's modes changed every few minutes depending on how active the crowd participation was (more quickly when there was more noise). Each mode responded in a slightly different way to the individual voices and sounds picked up by 8 microphones distributed towards the front.

Some modes created "creatures" whose colour, shape and movement followed the frequency and amplitude dynamics of individual syllables and sentences picked up; other modes responded to wider collective phenomena, e.g. distorting a grid in response to the crowd volume, or creating a rush of wind through a wheat-field landscape.


I am fascinated by the use of digital media in this piece and I feel that it is truly cutting edge work.  I would love to see this type of projection used in all festivals but also it should be used for advertising as because it is so unusual people would immediately pay attention.

Interactive Wall

This is a very interesting piece of digital media using interactivity as its key role.  It is a project from PO-MO and Memetic entitled Wonderland.  Programming an ddesign by PO-MO Project and ZOBO Technologies(mobile applications) in 2010 at the cre8ery in Winnipeg on April 25th.  It consists of a fully interactive environment with crowd controlled visuals and the users/viewers will be also entertained by some of the best djing the city has to offer.

The technology includes a 35 foot interactive wall.  There are animations on the wall that are triggered by sending text messages with the crowds mobile phones.  It allows for the caterpillar to talk along with alice to grow taller and smaller.  An interactive floor was also displayed when the interactive wall was on show. 

The text commands range from very easy to very difficult.

I feel that it is a very good way of connecting people together in a social environment and can lead to much conversation and fun.

This is a short video of the interactive wall in action.

Heineken - Interactive Mirror Installation

"Light up the Night"

Minivegas recently created this interactive mirror in Milan for Heineken that allowed users to create light art on site with their body. 

It looks pretty cool and is a great way to get people to interact with your brand in a place where they’ll be purchasing/consuming your product.

The launch of their new STR bottle. The bottle was launched at Salone Del Mobile; a prestigious design fair; in Milan.

It is a kinect-based light installation that responds to the movement of the audience and the Heineken STR bottle.

The installation allows up to 6 people to actively engage with the brand. The STR pattern is mapped on top of the audience’s reflection and back-projected on a huge interactive mirror. 

Various predefined animations like the Heineken star can be triggered by the audience by adapting to certain poses.

They also made a video to highlight this and here are some stills from that video that show how they are using people to light up the night:

As part of a fully integrated and on-going campaign we “light up the night” via various digital platforms and installations. In the film you travel from city to city in an abstract Heineken inspired landscape.

The designs work well as a rendered film, but also when experienced in real-time and this creates unity inside the clubs.


Not only do I love this campaign but I also love how Heineken are using interactivity in their advertising campaign.  It not only creates a sense of interest and fun in the brand but it also gets their customers more involved.  Overall using this technology can only lead to a positive outcome when used correctly like Heineken.

Kinect - Music Visualizer

I love this interactive instant data visualization of particles moving to music.  Mind-blowing real-time music visualizer using the depth data from the Kinect sensor. Interactive particles are reacting to the beat of the music. This is an oscilloscope-like 3D effect with Kinect data and some interactive particle physics reacting "live" to sound input. 

It uses OpenFrameworks, with the following addons:

• ofxKinect (gets the Kinect point cloud data)
• MSAPhysics - controls the particle physics, and enables physics interaction with the kinect data (though most of the kicks here miss the particles, they are interactive and will bounce off the scenery/me)
• You take the sound feed from the mic sound object, get the sound spectrum and apply it to the kinect data to produce the lines.

I love how this has the potential to be huge.  It could be used in concerts for an interactive effect targeting both the crowd and the performers.  It would also be cool to see this in music videos or even advertisements.  Perhaps it could somehow be integrated into an interactive advertisement e.g. advert to promote and inform people of a new club or music festival.

The camera is turning by the sensor reading depth in 3d, the rotation is done once the points are loaded into the computer. It's purely a virtual/software camera pan.

Sonic Body

The Sonic Body is an audio-installation that uses interactive technology to create an orchestra of the human body. Developed as a collaboration between four interdisciplinary artists and a heart surgeon, the installation brings together art and medical-science to reveal the unheard sounds of the body.

The installation, created by artists Harry Neve, Thomas Michalak and Anna Orliac, appears on its exterior as a neutral cylindrical pod. 

Once inside however, the audience is immersed in a contrastingly tactile and multi-sensory space filled with sculptural fabric forms that evoke the shapes and contours of inner body parts. The audiences’ movements and contact with the installation triggers a symphony of spatialized sounds to be played that have been recorded from within the body. (4 speakers and a sub)

The Sonic Body was inspired by the traditional practice of listening to the body to diagnose illness, and began as an investigation into the scope of sonic activity that exists within the human body. Medical professionals were consulted to help understand which parts of the body make sounds and why, and various methods were used to record unusual and unheard sounds from deep within the body’s organs, muscles, bones and veins. These included conventional medical equipment, such as a stethoscopes, as well as more unorthodox devices such as a hydrophone (normally used for recording aquatic-life) to capture sounds in liquid, an anechoic chamber to record microscopic external sounds, and equipment to detect and re-tune the body’s ultrasonic activity, which is usually inaudible to the human ear.

The material gathered, and relayed via the installation, reveals a spectrum of bodily acoustics beyond that of just stomach gurgles and heartbeats. There is a lung that sounds like a baby crying, an intestine that sounds like a rainforest, and there is even the anatomical sound of a female orgasm that sounds like high-pitch whistling. The project aims to create a unique way of thinking about and experiencing the body, through sound.

I am fascinated with this installation.  It lets the person immersed in the environment of the pod listen to what it may sound like in their body.  I think it is a wonderful concept and well thought out, everything from the shape of the pod to the quality of sound used.  I think it would be interesting to see how people react to the experience, I would love to try it out.  I think it could attract a lot of attention at festivals.

Jackoon Painting

Art generated by the collaboration of autonomous painting machines and artists.

Art Bots are autonomous machines that paint or draw on a canvas, sheet of paper or a surface of some kind. Systems that utilize this concept are currently used widely to create generative or algorithmic art. Some Art Bots that were created, walk around the surface of a canvas and paint a composition predetermined by the image or video they use as reference.

At first glance it seems that the Art Bots are painting a random pattern. As time passes by and they lay more paint down, it will be apparent that they are making a figurative painting. The artist can then make additions to the work to encapsulate an ideology, or to improve the composition. The work that results from this collaboration is Art Robotica. 

The ArtBots will communicate with a central computer that serves as the robots' eyes. The computer analyses video feeds from two sources; one video feed or image with data of the subject to be painted and a second camera that tracks the current position of the robot. 

I love the idea of this however in my opinion the finished product looks a bit sloppy from the images that I have found.  

I think it is a new interesting way of painting and creating art as it uses technology to create an abstract looking finished product.  

Touch Wall/Music Game

Music game is an interactive installation based on our multi-touch wall project. People generate music by hitting music instruments icons with rubber balls. As well they control concert lighting equipment via MIDI.

This solution is based on their GPU-accelerated computer vision technology called ACV. It allows to process a 4096x4096 px frame in just 5 ms (200 fps) utilizing a standard nVidia 9800 GT card. They use high-speed Fire-Wire cameras to feed their tracker at such a high data speed.

Developed by Front Pictures Studio located in Kiev, Ukraine. frontpictures.com

 

I really like the idea behind this installation.  It is an encouraging way for people to interact with each other in a new fun competitive way.  It allows for different music to be made each time people play the multi-touch wall. 

Tuborg - Pixel Rock

"Pixel Rock" - They all started out small....

This is a website where people can upload a video, song or a picture of themselves or of their band performing their music and visitors to the site play, share and rate the performers.  Everyone starts out equally small - the votes from people liking your music will make you bigger.  The nine biggest bans will win the opportunity to play the biggest scenes in Denmark, Roskilde festival and places already sponsored by Tuborg.

I really like this concept as it gives small and up-coming bands a brilliant platform to showcase their music to the public that otherwise may never have come across them.

All social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter are great channels to recruit for help to win the competition.

One of the most interesting things about this competition is how they are finding new ways to bring the music to the public instead of sticking to social networking.  You can connect with your headphones and listen to new music while waiting for the bus.  This is something that I think most people would enjoy and make great use of, I know I would.  The Airbus is connected to the website for the top nine updates and random selections of smaller bands.

Another cool thing about the Airbus is that you can download the mp3 or video to your mobile device.

I absolutely love the idea of having the option to listen to music while you are waiting for your bus to arrive.  You get the option to hear the top 9 of that day by putting your headphones into the particular duct.  I think it is a new way of thinking that combines avant garde in digital media with a huge gap in the market, which all in all makes this a huge success in my eyes.

City Remix

J&B Global

City Remix

This is the "Start a Party" campaign for J&B whiskey.  They established this new campaign so to encourage consumers around the world to  Start a Party by hearing the party potential and turning their city into a dance track. A natural next step from inviting people to see the party potential anywhere.

It was produced by One more production, the print photography was done by Hans Wilschut and was made at KesselsKramer.

For the next campaign, J&B asked KesselsKramer to develop a participation campaign.

They joined forces with producer Russ Chimes to create a unique international music project for the party whisky J&B. J&B City Remix has been launched across 12 countries to inspire people all over the world to make music in an unconventional way. This J&B initiative is designed specifically to celebrate global cities and the energy that makes them special.

Taking inspiration from ambient city sounds, Chimes created a unique party track composed of a mix between the vibrancy of urban metropolises and a memorable bass line. To help bring this concept to life, they created a music video and a TVC to accompany the track, showing how everyday sounds can lead to great music.

I love this idea as it is inspiring and radical.  They have found a new way of manipulating sounds from around the city for this Start a Party campaign.

SpiritCam Vvs HD

I came across this piece of technology as I was researching avant garde in digital media.  The attention to detail that this slow motion camera possesses is truly out-standing with every clip it captures.  It is the first fully integrated broadcast Live Ultra Motion System based on Emmy aware winning technology from Vision Research.  


The HD video that is displayed below, is shot between 500 and 1,000 frames per second, giving a razor sharp photographic quality to the slow-motin video.  The latest version of the product - the SpiritCam Vvs HD, operates at up to 5,800 frames per second and provides instant replay at native HD resolution and image quality with a dual output for a live and replay feed.


This video below shows the IMovix SpiritCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel and it is truly amazing how it can capture things we might have missed while watching it in real time.

I feel that this piece of technology brings new aesthetic qualities to video that were not possible before.  I was truly mesmerized as I watched the jelly bounce onto the ground.  I love how you can see every movement it makes, something you would simply miss in real time.  Not a single detail goes unnoticed.  I feel that by using this slow motion camera, art can be created from everyday movements.

This is the SpiritCam itself:

This camera has been used many times for slow motion in documentaries etc.  One example of its use in commercial terms is in an advertising campaign for Schwepps where it is shot at an amazing 10,000 frames per second!

The Fun Theory - Issues Present

• People/Children not brushing their teeth
• Over consumption of alcohol - knowing the one that's one too many
• Laziness - couch potatoes
• People who are afraid of flying - make it fun for them some how/take their mind off it.......
• Public speaking - people that get very nervous

Kyle Lambert

Kyle Lambert - Painting Illustration and 3D Animation 

Kyle Lambert is an animation and illustration student from the UK. On his website he lists his specialist areas as “photorealistic illustration, digital painting, 3D modeling/animation, motion graphics and website design”. But one look at his portfolio and it is clear that digital painting is his forte. He paints digitally in both highly detailed and accurate photo realism and oil painting style.

His work was recently mentioned on the Photoshop User TV podcast and he was a tester for the latest version of Pixelmator (an image editor for Mac) and had his test piece featured on Pixelmator’s  official blog.

Photorealistic digital paintings are quite common today and a quick search on YouTube for “speed painting” will give almost 40,000 results but Lambert’s work is on another level to any digital painting I have seen before. Also a keen watercolour and oil painter, Lambert has an amazing talent. It is worth mentioning that it doesn’t take him hours upon hours to complete these works. On his portfolio website he indicates the time it took him to complete some of the paintings, one is as short as 2 hours.

    

From my research of him I have found that he still mainly uses his finger for sketching and painting on the iPad, but he has been sent a few other cool stylus solutions such as the NomadBrush which was the first iPad stylus that he had the opportunity to try. It is a great product that solves one of the biggest problems presented when painting with your finger - friction. The soft bristles allow you to paint across the iPad’s glass screen effortlessly. Not only does this allow you to work quicker, but in his experience makes you work in a much looser and more expressive way.


His work combines his passion for art, technology and story telling. He trained as a traditional oil painter and consider his main strengths to be the manipulation of colour, light and form to create striking images for storyboards, character designs and concept artwork.


"I have a fine attention to detail, a strong work ethic, love what I do and thrive on the constant challenge to learn and improve as an artist."

Avant Garde

This is my blog for Avant Garde in Digital Media!  I will post what I think are important and relevant issues and facts here and will give my honest opinion.  Enjoy reading!