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Nigel Ficke is a real human being. And he's awesome. In fact, he's so awesome that when he showed up for the 2010 Electric Daisy Carnival auditions the Insomniac team decided to make him the feature character in this episode for the 6 part EDC 'Audition' mini-series. And yes, the video lives up to the prodigious heights that the above image sets it.
Dutch artists Theo Jansen has been preoccupied with creating new forms of life for the past two decades. He builds kinetic sculptures that are able to walk on the wind, with the ultimate aim of releasing these 'creatures' in herds onto beaches where they can live their own lives. Here is Animaris Rhinoceros.
Very interesting short by Simon Cottee exploring the merits and impact of pixel art, animation and chiptune music - music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in real time by a computer sound chip. It includes interviews with game designers and animators Jason Rohrer, Joe Brumm and Alex Yabsley and music from 8BitCollective.
A new app for the Museum of London very nicely brings its extensive art and photographic collections to the streets. StreetMuseum, developed by Brothers & Sisters, uses geotagging with Google Maps, to guide users to the locations of various images amongst their vast collection.
As part of Adidas' 'shirt with a story' world cup campaign, TBWA\Hakuhodo has created a giant 13 canvas manga comic strip in tribute to Japan's footballing heroes. With Japanese youngsters invited to finish inking in the colours of the mural, the strip has finally made its way online. Each panel will ultimately appear at Tokyo's Haneda Airport on 25th May, where it will be assembled as an inspirational send-off for the team as they board the plane to South Africa.
Finally, an answer to the question "Where would I end up if I was to dig straight down?". Using Google maps the mashup simply works out your diametrical opposite location on the globe. Above is the exact end point from my house in east London. Give it a go here.
The Status of Africa is a facebook application that lends your status to one of seven Africans for 5 days, helping them reveal what daily life's really like there. It's from BBH London for the charity AMREF, an on-the-ground NGO with 97% African staff, who have been working there for the past 50 years to try and improve the health and lives of some of the world's poorest people. Hmm, quite interesting.
As I'm sure sure everyone with internet access will have no doubt already realized, Google has taken it's weekend doodle to a whole new level. In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, the infamous search engine is currently housing a playable, 256-level game. So stop what you're doing and go eat some ghosts.
Wieden & Kennedy have revealed their new global campaign for Nike, based on the lovely insight that players can carve their name into history during a world cup. Drogba, Ronaldo, and Rooney all feature in this full-length version.
A very interesting installation from French composer/artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot has turned the Barbican's Curve gallery into a temporary walk-through aviary. As the birds - a flock of zebra finches - go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of musical equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape. The exhibiton is free, but closes this Sunday, 23rd.
Umbro's Terrace Tweets measures the support of football fans on Twitter. Mention your team, a player, or the FA cup in your tweets and watch your team's support increase during the match. Great idea.
Lovely stuff from creative agency Jung von Matt/Alster and digital design studio Demodern for the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra. Using motion-tracking users are able to compose arrangements with tracked objects on a live videofeed.
TBWA\Chiat\Day's Skittles formula is well and truly established now, and it's not getting old. Here's Fizz the Rainbow, the latest trip in a long line of trips.
Such Tweet Sorrow, Mudlark and The Royal Shakespeare company's Twitter-based Romeo and Juliet 'production' is now in it's final few days and has been attracting much attention online. Script writers Tim Wright and Bethan Marlow updated the tale, transplanting the characters and their background to the present day. The actors have been receiving a three-page mission document each morning informing them of the key events that need to take place during the day, and reactions to the day's most common tweets. There's also a live tweet timeline that allows its audience to follow the progress of the story and characters. Like it or not, it's an innovative use of social media and for that reason alone, deserves it's recognition.
A stroke of genius once again from Nike. Liquid Mountaineering is a fictitious new sport supposedly created by some guy called Ulf, who describes it thus on the sport's very own blog: "By accident we found out that with the right water repellant equipment you can run across bodies of water, just like a stone skimming the surface. It’s a difficult technique, involving the right water conditions, making use of the surface tension, speed and angle". Apart from a few shots of the shoes themselves, neither the video nor blog has any obvious branding. Nice.
Projection mapping seems to be the craze lately. I saw a nice one recently in Covent Garden for Nokia's Ovi Maps. This particular 'projection installation', was created by technology collective Seeper, in collaboration with Wieden & Kennedy London, and features dynamic face tracking, custom optical flow and something called arrow chess. It does look awesome and I'd expect to see a whole lot more over the coming months.
This looks interesting. A film telling the story of Charlie, an abandoned dog. The clever bit however, is that the next episode only becomes available when a certain number of views is reached. Nice technique for getting a message passed on...well, as long as it's for a charity I suppose.
The Introvert's Corner is Texas-based writer Sophia Dembling's amusing blog on how to live a quiet life in a noisy world. With posts like 'We gotta fight for our right not to party' and 'The solo team player' it's a nice place for us introverts to descend ever once in a while for a little reassurance that a loathing for the telephone and brief party appearances is no bad thing. It's just how you look at it.
Another flash-mobbing cheesefest from Saatchi & Saatchi London has been invigorated somewhat by Dare's Hopper Warehouse, supposedly the world's first online flashmob. Using the #pumpt hash tag on Twitter, visitors were invited to pump up a warehouse full of deflated hoppers over the course of two weeks, watching their contribution via a live video feed. Good so far. The big 'but', however, being that Dare had no idea what they were going to do with these inflatable eyesores, leaving it entirely to the public to decide. The means does seem, in this instance, to indeed be the end. Technically, it's very interesting; creatively...a bit of a cop-out I'm afraid.
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