Publicis & Hal Riney Website

Ok, now this is seriously a cool idea for a website.



Publicis & Hal Riney are a design firm in the San Francisco Bay Area that go way back. They recently updated their website to include some pretty cool motion graphics.

But more importantly than that, you can navigate the entire site via webcam. You can swipe your hands that any of the cardinal directions of the screen and the website will move you along.

The work is decent, and the mouse version is severely lacking (mostly because they are obsessed with mouseovers to reveal navigational info... ick) but navigating the webcam version is more fun than I've ever had navigating a website with a mouse. You should check it out if you fancy flailing around your arms for a good 15 minutes:

http://www.hrp.com/

Sight.Sound.Interaction 2.0 Review up on Rhizome

Just a quick update on the previous post about the Interactive Media show at MICA, curated by Jason Sloan, Rhizome has posted a short review of it called Baltimore Rising by Marisa Olson. Go and check it out (your's truely has a sentence or two!)

sight.sound at Maryland Institute College of Art

Sight.Sound exhibit in Rosenberg Gallery (Brown Center, 2nd Floor) features some of the latest interactive works from MICA Students and interactive artists from around the globe (New York, London). From processing to Atari to Yves Klein and Philip Glass inspired work, each piece gets its own space in this well curated show. The show opens March 3rd.

MoMA - Design and the Elastic Mind

http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

The new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, "Design and the Elastic Mind" is an absolute gold mine of advancements in design, science, art and interactivity in the past decade.

The exhibition website is a great resource and experience. It has a really clever way of using tags - a system that has become common, but this design is far from dull. Who knew that navigating with tags could be so refreshing and exciting? As for the actual featured bits, we get little glimpses and then deeper looks. It's mysterious, yet fluid and intuitive.


On the exhibition:

“Design and the Elastic mind” is the most uplifting show MoMA’s architecture and design department has presented since the museum reopened in 2004. Thanks to its imaginative breadth, Nicolai Ouroussoff concludes, we can begin to dream again.

- New York Times

The exhibition and the website include objects, projects, and concepts offered by teams of designers, scientists, and engineers from all over the world, ranging from the nanoscale to the cosmological scale.
- Computerlove

The New York Talk Exchange

The New York Talk Exchange, that's right--not Stock, it's Talk--is MIT's latest publicly announced project. Created with the help of AT&T, BT (British Telecom), and Yahoo!, the program monitors the incoming and outgoing calls and internet communications of New Yorkers.




The whole idea of this makes me kind of scared--like, when did MIT tell New Yorkers that the were logging their transmissions?--but when I saw what pretty visuals were created from the data, I relaxed a bit. Makes me think if the PATRIOT Act included spiffy 3D recreations of their wiretaps I would be a little more OK with it... Right.




Anyway, Orwellian or not, the fruits of the MIT team's labor is on display in MoMA until May and, once again, available at any time here. You can read the AP article written about the exhibition here.



I'll leave you with what I think is the most interesting fact gleaned from this info: "From Manhattan, the most-called city is London, which represents about 8 percent of all calls overseas. The second most-called city from Manhattan is Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with more than 5 percent of all calls."

Makes you think...

P.s. In the first image/link, I love the time of night--must be like 4am or something, when the communication dies out altogether for like a split second. Incredible.

We Feel Fine

We Feel Fine is one awesome-looking website.



It's a website that queries blogs all over the internet for the phrase "I feel _____" and then organizes the results in something that, in my opinion, looks bitchin' sweet. Colors relate to a happy or sad feeling, and depending on where you click, you can have results organized into gender, age or even what the weather was like outside during the time that the poster made the blog post. Combined with particle physics that are just so fun to play with; We Feel Fine is probably one of my favorite sites to check out on a fairly regular basis.



Go check out We Feel Fine today!

Hack 2 School

core77 - hack 2 school

core77 put together a resource website dedicated to design students called hack 2 school. It's got advice on classes, how to promote your work, tips on how to make witty use of the internet - you really should check this out if you are a student or if you've just graduated. This thing is packed, hot!

qubibi

quibibi - DAYDREAM
quibibi - TORIKAGO


quibibi, based in Japan, has created some really beautiful interactive artwork. The website is difficult to navigate because it is not in English - but it really is worth the time to click on the imagery and launch some of the pieces.

DAYDREAM, a campaign for Japanese hat designers and manufacturers Weave Toshi, is an abstract narrative that is time-sensitive to your cursor's movement. The interactive minisite showcases Weave Toshi's designer hat collection in a way that seems more like net art or indie film and far from a season catalog. DAYDREAM has won a few awards since it launched: One Show Interactive 2007 -Gold, D&AD Global Awards 2007 :Websites -Yellow, Cannes Lions 2007 :Cyber Lions -Silver.

TORIKAGO mixes narrative and interactive in a subtle, beautiful way - the user can interact with the film but not control it. quibibi's work makes me really wonder about the possibilities of crossing film, photo, and programming.

Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson - FUNKY FOREST

Emily Gobeille and Theo Watson (both Parsons Communication Design + Technology Alumni) - FUNKY FOREST

Emily and Theo worked collaboratively to create the interactive installation, 'Funky Forest' which premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands. 'Funky Forest' is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. The health of the trees contributes to the overall health of the forest and the types of creatures that inhabit it. The piece was executed using openFrameworks.

See FUNKY FOREST and more of Emily's work at: www.zanyparade.com

Theo's work can be found at: www.muonics.net

Magnetosphere iTunes Visualizer

http://software.barbariangroup.com/magnetosphere/


This is one of the most beautiful visualizers I've seen.

"Magnetosphere was born of some experiments in Processing that Barbarian Robert Hodgin (of Flight404 fame) was conducting on his experimental blog. "

"There is magnetism, there is gravity, but on top of all of that, there is awesomeness. Watch as all the dots and ribbons go bouncy bouncy when you play music and trigger this mo-fo of a visualizer. This is the future of visuals. God help you if you smoke the reefer cause you can kiss your productivity goodbye. By the way, don't go crazy with the A and S keys - they add or subtract a hundred particles at a time - tap once or twice and wait for the results."

Kyma X + Wiimote

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESDzYYl0__s

Make a post!

(Apple + shift + 4)
This key command will allow you to target your screen shot and save it to your desktop. Quickly open it in preview and Save As a .jpg. Log in and make a New Post and Upload your screen shot image to your article. Use previous posts to get an idea of article formatting: make sure to include a link and artist info.

Augmented Sculpture - Pablo Valbuena

http://www.pablovalbuena.com/augmsculpt_condeduque_web.mov

This projection/sculpture installation takes a leap much needed to test the boundaries for digital work. In this movie, watch Pablo make digital and tactile surfaces coexist. I wish I could see this phenomenal illusion in person!

Good Things Should Never End

http://www.goodthingsshouldneverend.co.uk

"A never ending web page felt like a good, simple idea. The kind of thing that the world would like to see. So we made it." -POKE London

The promotional site Goodthingsshouldneverend.co.uk is web design at its best. Fun, creative, and nicely illustrated. The site produced by POKE London for ORANGE Unlimited really keeps going and going. Seriously, try to reach the bottom of the scrollbar! Impossible! Goodthingsshouldneverend.co.uk has been talked a lot about online and has won two awards so far: IAB Creative Showcase Winner, December 2007, and FWA site of the month for November 2007. It's even up for FWA Website of the Year 2007.