Christmas installation by Lost Boys International

Why not celebrate the fact that it's christmas by creating a big Christmas-carol-playing mobile?

The Mobile Mobile installation is created by London agency Lost Boys International who decided to turn a company mobile phone upgrade into a giant Christmas themed recycling project - now on display in their lobby. Mobile phones hanging from the ceiling are assigned an individual tone and connected to computers that call them up when activated.

The result: Whenever the installation is tweeted the mobile ringtone orchestra plays Choir of the Bells. Or, you can play your own Christmas jingle live in their lobby by using your computer keyboard. Pretty cool!

Via Imaginary Foundation

MediaBeat interview with Nick Law

Nick Law, Chief Creative Officer at R/GA (they have among other things done the interactive NIKEiD platform), shares his views on future advertising trends. He talks about how social media and platform building will play a bigger role in the advertising landscape in 2010. Law also points out that it's going to be more and more about maintaining ongoing relationships with customers than it is about broadcasting a message. This means that brands will have to focus more on fitting into people's daily lives and their individual media rhythms in order to engage with them in the digital space.

Via psfk

Print After Party

Great project from Posterchild and Jason Eppink.

The little installations inside abandoned newsracks in NYC are meant to celebrate the end of print. Radios, disco balls, paper cut outs and LED lights all make up the good bye party for the news paper media.

Eppink explains:"When the last vestiges of a collapsed empire litter the landscape, there's only one thing to do: throw a bumpin' party and dance on the ruins."

Print After Party from Jason Eppink on Vimeo.

Posterchild is a very productive street artist from Canada - his blog is worth checking out, there are almost new up dates every day. Jason Eppink is probably most know for his Pixelator project - also worth checking out if you're not familiar with it already.

Stencil

Spotted along one of the canals in London.

Learn Something Every Day

Learn Something Every Day is a great little project by British design studio Young. You can submit lesser know facts on the web site and the design team will pick one every day and turn it into a little graphic illustration. Every month the best one is made into a poster and the winner gets one free.

I don't know how well they check the facts but the illustrations certainly are entertaining.

Via psfk

Business models for media in the digital age

Clay Shirky - author of "Here Comes Everybody" - on new business models for online media.

Interesting!

Via Big think

Crowdsourcing

Over the last few months the advetising industry seems to have experienced increasing competition from crowdsourced advertising solutions.

First there was the story about Unilever dropping their long time collaboration with advertising agency Lowe back in August. Instead Unilever put up a $10.000 prize for creative ideas for the new Peperami TV commercial on the Idea Bounty web site.

Then there was the launch of the new agency Victors & Spoils in October that claims to be the first crowdsourced ad agency in the world.

And finally Pepsi owned brand Mountain Dew is asking consumers to vote for the best advertising idea on their web site. Both agencies and other creative individuals can submit their ideas.

And there's probably been lots of other similar examples that I haven't noticed.

A couple of years back London agency TBWA had a go at crowdsourcing ideas for some of their briefs. They called it The Big What Adventure and encouraged people to submit their ideas for different campaigns. I don't remember all the details but it's safe to say that it wasn't well received. Advertising bloggers all over the world lined up to have a go at TBWA and acused them of fishing for free ideas and exploiting consumers.

I don't know if it's a question of us becoming more used to the idea of crowdsourcing now or if TBWA really didn't offer a fair deal back then. But people definitely seem more open to crowdsourcing in an advertising context today.

It's going to be very interesting to see how the advertising industry will adapt to this potential threat, and if the corwdsourced business model will be more succesful this time round.

The best music videos of the decade!

Earlier this year Pitchfork published a list of the staff's top 50 music videos of the 2000s and now music video blog Antville follow suit with their take on the best 101 music videos of the decade - only this list is based on their readers' votes. "Fell in Love With a Girl" by The white Stripes directed by Spike Jonze tops both lists.

It's hard to pick a favorite because there are so many good ones, but I really like Bat For Lashes' "What's a Girl to Do" (dir. Douglas Wilson) which made it into the top 10 of both lists. "Here I Go Again" by OK GO (dir. Trish Sie & OK GO) and "What else is there?" by Röyksopp (dir. Martin De Thurah) are also great videos.

Perfect entertainment for the weekend so check it out!

Absolut goes naked.

A new limited edition bottle with no label or logo has been launched by Swedish vodka brand Absolut. The only thing added to the iconic bottle is a small removable sticker proclaiming that "in an absolut world there are no labels." The new naked design is part of a campaign meant to challenge prejudice about sexual identities.

Via PSFK

Video paint

This reminds me of Graffiti Research Lab and their inventive ways of mixing graffiti and technology, but it's actually done by multimedia video artists Bruno Levy and Blake Shaw. Together they form multimedia group Sweatshoppe and They've come up with a way to paint with video involving LED lights on paint rollers and video control software. If you want more technical details on how it's actually done then go to Wooster Collective.

Very cool!

Mutate Britain - One Foot in the Grove

Just a reminder: go experience the One Foot in the Grove art event before it's too late - next weekend is last chance!

You can expect to see live street art, pole dancing robots, humorous scrap metal scuptures, beautiful prints, men riding fire breathing metal creatures and many other weird installations.

Once you get through the crowds looking to make a good deal at Portobello Road Market it's a really great way to spend a saturday afternoon.

And remember to put on some warm clothes because it's outdoors.

Finally Friday!

Here's something to enjoy while you're celebrating the fact that it's Friday.

I love Aakash Nihalani's tape stuff - it's so simple and yet so effective in making people see their surroundings from a different perspective.

Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Arts

It’s not allowed to take pictures inside the galleries so these photos are of the big sculpture placed outside in the court yard called “Tall tree and the Eye.” Which leads me to my first point: if you don’t have time/don’t want to pay £12/can’t be bothered to stand in line to get in, then at least spend 5 minutes in the court yard looking at this amazing piece.

If you want to go see the full exhibition then here is a word of advice: book tickets online! Then you can walk right past the massive queue and go straight in.

Also, if you are flexible on times then make sure to go on a week day. I went on a Saturday and it was completely packed which meant that it was sometimes hard to see the art for all the people.

That said, I really enjoyed the exhibition. The large scale works are by far the most interesting, especially “Swayambh” which according to the catalogue is Sanskrit and means something like ‘self-generated.’ It’s a 30 ton block of red wax that slowly moves along tracks through 5 galleries. No point in trying to describe it further, you really have to see it for yourself.

Spotted along Regent's Canal

There's a great little graffiti wall along the branch of Regent's Canal that runs along the southern edge of the park. The tags and pieces quickly get replaced, but I managed to get a photo of this one before it dissapeared. Pretty cool!

Google Wave

Great little explanation of Google's new communication platform Google Wave by Epipheo Studios.

Via Mashable.

Tetris!

I have always been fascinated by Tetris. Here are 2 very different takes on the game to enjoy this Friday afternoon. One is a low tech commercial for Freeboard skateboards and the other is an After Effects animation of a Berlin building block by Sergej Hein.

I love them both! More Tetris stuff!

Bat For Lashes!

I’ve really been looking forward to this concert for a long time. I absolutely love the latest album Two Suns, and I still think she should have won the Mercury prize for that. This was my first time to see Bat For Lashes live, and I have to say that it was a really good experience. One beautifully performed song followed the other and there was a good mix of quiet and more up-beat tracks. I especially liked the live version of Pearl’s Dream that was almost stripped down to drums and percussion. Siren Song was another high point of the evening for me. Performed live with strings and everything almost brought tears to my eyes.

I also really enjoyed the variety of sounds – all the band members played several different instruments throughout the concert. At first it was a little confusing, I think the guitarist (if you can call her that) played 5 different instruments during the first 2 songs. But all in all I think it made it a more interesting experience.

Only negative thing was the length of the concert – only 1 hour and 10 minutes. That was a little disappointing.

Oh, and there was also an interesting warm up band called Yeasayer. I only caught the last couple of songs, but they had a nice mix of some 80’s sounds, some police and some folk music going on. Think I’ll check them out on Hypemachine or something.

Drinkspiration

I really like this little app by Absolut Vodka. As the name “Drinkspiration” suggests it’s a cocktail finder designed to help you decide on what to drink based on location, sound level, ingredients and time of day etc. I’m just thinking of the countless number of times this could have saved me from ordering yet another boring gin&tonic (don’t get me wrong, I like a gin&tonic as much as the next person, but variety is key here). When you have decided on a cocktail the app will tell you exactly what ingredients you need, so all you have to do is show it to the bartender or start mixing. I think this is one of those rare occasions where a company actually gets it right when it comes to branded content and comes up with something people would actually want to use.

The app also connects to social sites like Facebook and Twitter so you can share cocktail recipes and tell people where you’re having your new favorite drink. I don’t know if I would ever use that feature myself, but if it caught on with more active facebook users it could potentially give Absolut a much sought after presence in people’s social networks.

But I think the real strength of Drinkspiration is that it doesn’t overdo the advertising side of things. It uses the visual identity of Absolut but keeps the application looking stylish at the same time. It doesn’t limit it’s recipes to vodka based cocktails, but suggests drinks based on other kinds of liquor as well. So you don’t really feel like you’re being subjected to advertising when you use it, and I think that’s key to making it attractive in the digital age of today where you almost always can find an ad-free alternative.

If you have an iPhone then simply download it for free, otherwise you can check it out on youtube.

Junior Boys live!

I went to see Junior Boys last night - overall a good experience.

First up was Voluntary Butler Scheme. I had never heard of it before but was positively surprised by this one man band – nice little melodies and a decent voice on top of a variety of beats and looped samples (created on the spot like Yoav does it). Think I’ll have to check him out on myspace later.

I’m not going to waste any time on the second warm up band - a horrible art project type band with questionalble vocals and no obvious purpose in life, so I’ll skip right to the main act.

I had really been looking forward to Junior Boys. I saw them at Sonar a couple of years ago where they gave a quite disappointing performance, partly due to some technical problems I think. But it was a great experience this time, I especially liked their live versions of the songs from the old album that had new variations in both melody and beats. But the new material was great as well and at times it almost had an Erasure feel to it. Which is a good thing.

Go see them if you get the chance. And if you like melodic dance friendly synth pop.

Oh, and sorry for the blurry photo - I'll try to do better next time!

New stuff from Hi-ReS!

One of my favorite web design agencies Hi-ReS! has done a new really great campaign for The Economist.

Ever since I came across the Hi-ReS! designed site for the movie Donnie Darko I have been a fan of the way they use sound to create atmosphere and their ability to construct interesting little universes for the users to explore.

And the Thinking Space campaign they have created for The Economist is no different. It’s a 3D site showcasing the thinking spaces of a selection of creative thinkers like Spotify founder Daniel Ek and Georgia Tagliette who’s the head of International Media and PR at the Sónar Festival.

First of all, I think the design is exceptional. The 3D layout is so convincingly executed that you want to keep exploring the site and see the different spaces assemble and dissolve.

But the content is very interesting as well. I love the way you get a glimpse of these interesting peoples’ workspaces and thought processes, and the narrative voices give it such a personal touch.

It’s very clever how they make you see The Economist through the eyes of these interesting people, and how it almost becomes a peer to peer recommendation instead of an advertising campaign. I wasn’t really interested in The Economist before, but now that certain sections of the magazine come recommended by the founder of De-Bug Magazine Mercedes Bunz, I might give it a read.

More advertising like this Please!

First post! Yay!

Not really expecting anyone to be reading it, but here’s a little bit about what you can expect to find on this blog in the future anyway.

I just thought that there aren’t enough people out there talking about the insignificant little details of their lives, so I saw the opportunity to jump right in and fill that void.

Basically it’s going to be about all the curious little things I come across every day. Some of it will be my own experiences, but I’ll probably also be copy/pasting a lot from other blogs and web sites because let’s face it, my life is not really that interesting. And I guess that’s the way of the digital age anyway.

Things I will be likely to talk about are: art, music, social media, street art, web 2.0 and advertising – and everything else that has an interesting angle to it.

Oh, and I’m working on improving the dull appearance, but I’m in serious need of brushing up on my HTML skills so it might take a little while.

That’s it for now I guess.