Kinect has been a big thing in the past few years. Designed for Xbox in 2010 has been hacked by designers, media artists and curious minds.
Recently James George and Jonathan Minard attached it to a Digital SRL to shot a documentary on coding and interactive arts, presented at Resonate, with impressive visual results.
“The project has come to life with the aim of replicating the organic feeling of a painting exploring the beauty of code”
Clouds looks like the beginning of a new visual style in filmmaking.
It will be interesting to see what else could be generated when the storytelling goes beyond the digital world.
I had the pleasure of visiting Belgrade, in Serbia, for 3 days, attending Resonate, a festival on music, digital art and new media.
The city that has decided to leave its scars visible, to remember those dark days (bombed on 1999 by Nato during the war in Kosovo. ntr.) revealed a vibrant and eccentric feel while building the present and shaping the future.
The Dom Omladine, main venue of Resonate festival was full of local and foreign students, media artists, teachers, hackers and all the possible curious minds out there.
For three days I felt like I was back at University, looking on the board for the schedule, going up and down the building to catch different talks and spotting an empty seat through hundred of heads. The difference was that now, I was listening to the most futuristic teachers out there.
Speakers were, to name just a few: Golan Levin, Memo Akten, Studio Nanika, Hi-Res! Joachim Sauter and many more. Not forgetting the evening party with Mouse of Mars. (Obviously not a bureaucratic University)
I caught my plane back to London on Sunday morning and 79% of the speakers were on the same flight.
This made me think that even if we are in a digital arena, where time and space are stretched becoming playful tools at our service, the metropolis, and especially London, remain the main hub for the digital players.
If that Sunday morning flight had crashed, right now the world would be back to the hieroglyph era.
School conjures bad memories for many people. Maybe you were bullied, maybe a teacher said that you would never ever amount to anything as long as your stinking carcass sludged its way across the earth. Maybe.
So it was with trepidation that we opened this year's Campaign School report. To our delight we had our best score yet, a mighty 8. It was like whacking that bully in the nuts all over again. Joyous.
Please read the full write up below, we're dead proud.
Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues last week announced major redesigns to the Facebook News Feed. In a live stream press statement, they outlined three main areas of change which they hope mirror the ever-changing ways in which people around the world use the network.
RICHER STORIES
Facebook want to create a richer, more beautiful News Feed, without the ‘clutter’ surrounding the stories which bring people to the platform
Photos become central to the stream, which is now two, not three, columns wide. This allows all posts, whether image, text, video or ad, to take up the majority of screen space, with more prominence given to visual assets
Links to articles/news sources are displayed in a magazine format, with more prominent headlines, longer summaries and a publisher’s icon
The News Feed will continue to highlight news and events from liked Pages
CHOICE OF FEEDS
A drop down menu will allow users to choose which stream of content they want to view
Demand for all news to be collated in one place has resulted in the ‘All Friends’ feed, so you never miss a single movement
New feeds include Music, Photos and Following, which will show only the news from the Pages and public figures that you have liked
MOBILE-LED DESIGN
Much of the design has come from Facebook’s work on mobile, using minimal screen space to prioritise key features and utilities
The pop-out black bar, which many are used to seeing on the left hand side of their mobile app, now comes to desktop, eliminating the right hand bar (previous home of Ticker, Chat and ad space)
Facebook have worked hard to create consistency across numerous devices and screens, which should create a better user experience for all users, wherever they are and whatever they’re using
These three aspects come together to form what Zuckerberg calls ‘a personalised newspaper’ – drawing on both personal and public news sources, in various formats, to create a more colourful feed. These are the stories without clutter; note too that Facebook no longer use their full name as a logo, but a more simple, streamlined ‘f’ to demonstrate their back seat role.
Rollout will be slow and considered – users can sign up now, but it will be some time until we see the new designs on the majority of profiles.
For advertisers and Page owners, whose Reach has been significantly damaged in recent months due to Facebook’s internal mistakes, questions mainly surround the anticipated effectiveness of paid media on the new News Feed. Facebook maintain that nothing about how users interact with ads has changed – however the sheer prominence of posts in the new feed, in terms of pixel space, is undoubtedly a bonus.
The algorithm which determines who sees your Page’s news will remain unchanged, although the focus on images discussed here might suggest a return to image-led assets, after a period of experimentation with text-only updates.
Advertisers should also consider the placing of their brand’s posts in the new Following feed. Brand posts used to sit intermingled with personal news; however they can now be viewed in stark contrast to each other, within the same forum. For advertisers with major competitors within similar Facebook demographics, it is more important than ever that Facebook content is creative enough to engage and enthuse both current and potential fans.
