What a video the original Neurosciences video was (bottom). And damn I wish I’d done it. When it came out we’d just completed a project for Bacardi using Beardyman and it could have been a great alternative way to approach the campaign.

Now, and with even more ‘I wish I’d done it’, (and rather weirdly using Beardyman as well), director Chris Cairns has teamed up with holographic projection experts Musion to create a live performance based on his Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs film, which features a number of disembodied rapping heads…

The film above shows live footage from an initial test performance of the holographic heads, with no post-production added.

The original:

Another great example of publishing interface design by Wired magazine.

For other noteworthy examples , see this, and this.

Impressive.

The “Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus” by Julius von Bismarck & Benjamin Maus is a drawing machine illustrating a never-ending story by the use of patent drawings.

The machine translates words of a text into patent drawings. Seven million patents — linked by over 22 million references — form the vocabulary. By using references to earlier patents, it is possible to find paths between arbitrary patents.

Glance by Andy Holtin

They’re giving away a 2 night break every 30 minutes for 24 hours, started 8.30 this morning, all you have to do is become a fan and be on the page on the hour or half past the hour to comment on the status question within 15 minutes and then they pick a winner before the next question.

The questions themselves build on peoples awareness of the brand: ‘How far away from the sea is Best Western Northfield Hotel in Minehead?’ and ‘Are pets welcome in our hotels?’

To see for yourself, try this link, or failing that search for Best Western of Facebook.

Thanks Jonny for the tip.

I managed to get myself over to the Kinetica art fair yesterday, a show curated from artists specialising in kinetic, electronic, robotic, light, sound and time-based works.

The exhibition was a visual extravaganza of electronic wizardry and macabre machines - confirmed by my 5 year old son Robin who for once didn’t moan that he was hungry throughout - although he did want the beer poured from a robotic waiter.

For me this piece, entitled Trace by Balint Bolygo was the stand out. The work consisted of a revolving plaster cast of a person’s head which was slowly deconstructed into a mathematical diagram.

This happened using a mechanical contraption that relayed the changing contours of the heads rotation to a pen connected via a series of metal arms, resulting in these impressive drawings:

Pic courtesy of The Telegraph

Pic courtesy of Chris O’Shea

For other works, also see Pixelsumo’s review who I’m glad to say was in agreement, plus see the Beeb for a vid.

A direct manipulation video player lets users drag items within the video frame to move forward and back instead of just via a scroll bar on the bottom of the video.

It’s an interesting technique that surfaced at the start of 2008 and this campaign for Wrangler, although admittedly simple in its complexity, is the first I’ve seen to harness its beauty.

Thanks Chris for the link.

Sport’s Illustrated have produced a nice little demo of the types of content and interfaces that we can expect from devices like the iPad:

In terms of general approach it’s not too far away from Bonnie’s prototype created by Berg.

Beyond the cleverness in interface and content, these devices present a real opportunity to take ad targeting to the next level.

Historical location based targeting has struggled to take off. It’s generally mobile based and plays out as follows: I’m passing Boots and get a Bluetooth coupon giving me 50% off toothpaste. 2 problems. 1. No targeting - it blanket sweeps all passers by. 2. Timing - I might want toothpaste, but I’m on my way elsewhere and don’t have time to stop.

So what’s needed is a system that a) learns what I buy and b) learns when I buy it, or more importantly when I’m thinking about buying it so I can plan for changes.

By using these 2 bits of info in combination brands can gain visibility to the right people at the point of decision, and not just when their physically near a point of sale.

I’ll bring in Dopplr’s rather snazzy diagram at this point to help explain things: (you can read their use of it here)

The bit where the 2 cones converge is the sweet spot. This is the present where the past and the future collide. Now we’ve highlighted that just getting into the present doesn’t necessarily work, it’s the decision making present we want to find. That’s when the What and the When need to be delivered.

And that’s where these devices play their part.

On the whole we’re all creatures of routine. We do the same things on the same days, buy the same brands with the same frequency and generally speaking, patterns emerge.

By interpreting these patterns and tying all these loose ends of learnings together for a single cause, we face the exciting prospect that these devices will enable brands to deliver their messages with maximum efficiency.

See here for further insights.