A selection of digital work that gets the thumbs up from Flo…
1.
www.googleartproject.com/
Yeah, I know, my first reaction to this also was, I’d rather go to see the real thing, but then I zoomed into Botticelli’s Venus and found a little urchin sitting in one of the flowers falling from the sky. I doubt I would have been able to get that close IRL. This is a great experiment to add to the experience of seeing a masterpiece for real. Serious technology meets good old fashioned oil paint.
2.
“It’s revolting. It’s violent it’s everything you love in a game.” Your mum hates Dead Space 2, comes along as a bit of a mix between Whopper Virgins and a “Have you been goatse-d?” memes, but I love the simplicity of this and how the inevitable in game footage has actually got a point for once. “Why would they even make something like this?” Genius.
3.
dashes.com/anil/2011/02/reading-is-fundamental.html
Now this is brilliant. A web/mobile app that strips out all online clutter and presents copy in a beautiful, flexible and very readable way. You know, a bit like a book, but totally on screen. Save it away and read at your leisure. Also gets a big tick from the forest.
4.
mlkshk.com/
Purely because the stuff posted here is the freshest, weirdest, craziest shit you will see and it is also a beautiful alternative to the piss ugly twitpic or yfrog or whatever you are using to post pics on Twitter. Once signed up you can make mlkshk your default twitter pic upload tool. Join the queue. Izzz nizzze.
5.
www.saveaswwf.com/en/home.html
Command P, can you print this for me please? Hang on I just need to quickly print this out. No you’re not, because with this you can’t. The WWF have developed a file format that you can’t print out. It turns documents into unprintable PDFs: WWFs Incredibly simple. Amazing. Say goodbye to those piles of paper cluttering the tables and chairs around your office printer that somehow always materialise. This is inspired. Do I need to go on?
6.
www.bmwactivatethefuture.com/
When you stop looking at a site for it’s cool interactive features, but get lost in a story instead, you know that something is good, really, really good. This is such a site…thing, what is it actually? Not sure. But that’s my point it doesn’t matter, because the content on here is so brilliant. On top of that the interactive features are incredibly well thought through and at the same time kept simple enough to not get in the way of the storytelling. A great initiative by BMW to look into the future of mobility. And to quote Faris Jacob “It has Buzz Aldrin in it. He’s completely awesome.” Couldn’t agree more.
7.
www.police.uk/
A lot of people hated this site when it first hit their browsers. Mainly because it didn’t really work at first. When the UK police opened up their crime database’s API so many people typed in their postcode into the search box that the site totally crashed. Some of the results are not entirely accurate, so am told, but I applaud the spirit of this effort. I like what it represents. Openness.
8.
noadny.com/
I watched a piece of footage the other day of Jimi Hendrix performing Foxy Lady to a small audience, I think it was in Hawaii, can’t remember. I had never seen this before and I couldn’t quite work out what it was that made the footage so powerful. Only after stumbling across this project it dawned on me: it’s the absence of type and festival advertising what makes the clip so watchable (Jimi’s beautiful performance aside of course). Now imagine Times Square without any ads. Boom!!
9.
www.donothingfor2minutes.com/
It’s difficult isn’t it. With emails, tweets, status updates, uploading, downloading and everything in between going on. 2 minutes of nothing. Try it. Stay at your desk. And don’t touch that keyboard. For two minutes. No. Just sit there and don’t do anything. Fucking difficult isn’t it. I couldn’t do it. I never knew two minutes could be so long.
10.
www.redbullstratos.com/Gallery.aspx#Gallery
The sheer ambition of this is mind blowing. The poetic simplicity of the idea is something else. One man jumping out of a plane 23 miles up in space. This is on a different scale to what other brands call content development. It’s red Bull breaking new ground in what is humanly possible. I get my coat.
11.
www.mta.me from Alexander Chen
This stunning interactive/film music piece turns New York’s actual subway system and schedule into an interactive string instrument thing. It’s Massimo Vignelli meets HTML 5 (I think) Anyway. It’s art and I love it.
12.
itunes.apple.com/gb/app/honda-jazz-this-unpredictable/id416723205?mt=8
Not sure if people actually bothered to do this and I have to admit tat this didn’t really work for me since I still have an iphone from 1836, but the concept I really love. Totally pointless, but somehow it appeals to my addictive nature. I love collecting stuff. This is interactivity at it’s best. Wave your iPhone in front of the TV or computer screen and the characters from the ad jump onto your phone. Also the production on this is stunning. I wish I had come up with this.
13.
Here are two magical light painting ideas, one makes the WIFI signal strength visible with long exposure photographs. The other is using an iPad to lightpaint. A virtual stop frame film light animation. Both projects are stunningly beautiful pieces using technology in a totally unique way.
14.
9-eyes.com/
This has been round for a while, but I just rediscovered it. So addictive. So weird. So wonderful. This project is using Google as inspiration. Jon Rafman collects screenshots pilfered from streetview that are arresting disturbing addictive view into what our planet is like. Right now. A comment on humankind without any words
15.
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320664289029#ht_500wt_1100
This is a very smart idea by the guys behind “The World’s Best Ever” to sell a bannerspace on their marvellous site on Ebay. At the time of me typing this the bid for it was for $100.
16.
www.insideoutproject.net
And lastly the 2011 TED prize winner JR. with his inside out project. go online and watch the film. Huge posters on busses and trains. Mindblowing. From the site: “INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world. These digitally uploaded images will be made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities. People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually