The Edge of Now

Ideas at the intersection of culture and new media.

[theedgeofnow-blog]

Robotics are like, so hot right now.

As we speak, Robots being lovingly handcrafted to impress and wow audiences with acts previously considered only capable of being accomplished by humans. If Culture with a captial c was once considered what separated humans from other animals there's another player that's hardwired to be a crowdpleaser.

From fashion, theatre and Pop Music...in Japan, at least...Robots are taking centre stage. In the past 18 months one example after another continually proves that yes, the boundaries between technology and culture are blurring. In ever interesting ways.Hey, you can even get married by a Robot Marriage Celebrant, these days:

But back to the point.

There's the Toyota Partner Robot playing the violin the Japanese pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. 

The latest thing to make headlines recently was the premier of a robot in a play which premiered in the Japanese play Sayonara  where a humanoid known as Geminoid F plays the part of an android alongside actress Bryerly Long.

 This robot was developed by famous Tokyo based robot maker Hiroshi Ishiguro, who is also known for having created a robotic version of himself. The motions of the android actor were controlled from behind the scene during the 20 minute play. Prior to this the robot that created the most buzz was a girlBot called HRP-4C

This is the  FemBot launched in Tokyo Fashion Week 2009. She (It?) appeared ont he catwalk during Fashion Week in Tokyo in March 2009. It was designed to look like an average Japanese woman. Very basic, yes. But our very first cellphones, computers and laptops weren't that flash to start with, either.

Then there's this. The HRP-4C created with Yamaha's Vocaloid voice synth software to sing flawlessly. Now we have autotune, this is probably not all that significant. But then, maybe that's a case FOR rather than AGAINST...

   More recently, this video was released. Showing us now that not only does the HRP-4C  sing, she also performs. Watch her chirp the lyrics to her song, work the crowd, and shake her stuff in sync with her back up dancers. It's pretty amazing.

 Holographic Animated Pop Star

  OK this video is quite possibly a fake. But when you think about it before the Kinect was released, the video leak for that was actually deemed fake. It probably was....but before the general population knew it, the technology it demonstrated was real.

From where I stand, these small examples are really interesting. Because they're pushing technology centre stage into performing arts - changes a lot. And as our technology continues to evolve in the western world, Japanese invetors are already light years ahead working on the third horizon - transgressing one of the most harder to breach what makes humans, human. Our culture. 

How these things - like Robotic Pop Stars and Actors - will translate - or even be embraced - by the western world is unclear. But I think, with the Holographic pop star at least, there's bound to be quite a bankable impact in years to come. I mean, you can totally see a holographic versions of the GORILLAZ in live performance, in the not to distant future....right?

And several sources say that a Westernised version of this holographic Pop Star technology is on it's way.

[theedgeofnow-blog]

Cool new interactive billboard for McDonalds Sweden

This clever campaign for McDonalds Sweden demonstrates an amazing way of engaging passersby in a quest to win coupons for free fast food at a nearby restaurant. It's quite a simple concept but an awesome interactive case study and all in all a fantastic example of things to come.

I love this because it manages to pull together so many things so effortlessly, and in a wholly engaging way. It's so simple, but when you look at what it unites in one simple execution - gameification, geolocation, mobile, online (further opportunities to connect with and follow the brand), coupons (which drive foot traffic into the restaurants) - it's actually insanely clever. What is especially cool about it is that there's no need for an app download to interact with the billboard either. And upon successful completion of the game you get a coupon sent to your mobile with instructions on how to redeem it!

This level of interactivity and engagement really invigorates the old boring medium of billboard advertising - and it improves on other forms of interactive outdoor that we've seen over the past couple of years.  I think we'll be seeing more and more of this level of integration with outdoor - and other forms of one-way advertising in the near future. It's not hard to see that this sort of interactive strategy is treading on the edge of now.

Via Simply Zesty and Digtial Buzz Blog 

The creators are some clever monkeys working at DDB Stockholm.

[theedgeofnow-blog]

QR code Street Art from SWEZA

If you're the kinda person who tends to be quite observant about the things that you come accross in the city chances are you're familiar with the paste-up style of street art. It's a style that has been quite popular for some time and around the streets of Berlin there's no exception. However locally based artist SWEZA is taking the form one step further with his cool new project QRadio, which croses audio, street art & mobile technology all at once - and it's actually pretty sweet.

Instead of pasting up his quirky beatboxes around the place he also makes them interactive. With each box - there are 5 in total and moroe to come - he places a QR code on the front, rewarding those curious or observant enough to check it out with a unique treat in the form of an audio track that you can pick up with your QR Code reader on your Smartphone. 

    Thanks to Kristien via brandflakesforbreakfast

Also check out this Flickr group for more examples of Paste-ups below:

[theedgeofnow-blog]

Paris Based Tattoo Artist inks First Interactive Tattoo

See the full gallery on Posterous

Paris-based tattoo artist K.A.R.L (Karl Marc) inks an incredible QR-Code activated tattoo. This is part of a wider marketing campaign called the Human API  to promote Ballantines whiskey. 

There's a lot of these sorts of things out there in the moment, but the concept of an animated tattoo is nice, which is why I've blogged about it. In fact I quite like the concept of qr code activated tattoos that have meaning above and beyond the physical tattoo.

The actual tattooing was streamed live on facebook, so facebook users could log in and exchange thoughts with the tattoo artist as he worked on his subject. Adding a social element to the whole thing as well.

Real. Fake. Or whatever. It's Whiskey + tattoo art + animation + mobile technology and it's hot.

Picked up via Creative Social Blog

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Marketers should be taking a leaf from Burberry's Digital Strategy

Surely there's a connection between the fast pace of the Fashion Industry, it's tradition of working collaboratively and the rapid uptake of new media marketing strategies. There have been numerous examples which have captured my attention in the past few years. Fashion - with it's seething with a precious sort of creativity and uncurbed desire for the new, the edge, that hidden factor - is exactly makes it such a fertile ground for pushing ahead in new media, and new ways of promoting itself via real time, social and mobile media. This is a fact should be encouraging for all of us working in the creative industries at large - as well as those of us practising and playing around with new marketing strategies. I think there's a lot we can learn creatively, and commercially as marketers - which we all are to some extent these days - from the new strategies that come about. What has drawn my attention to this recently is the strategy that unleashed Burberry's S/S 12 Collection at London Fashion week - a strategy that clearly stole everyone's thunder thanks to a killer game of digital show and tell. A combination of tweets, live streaming and instagram made them easily the most talked about label. They made it to the top often brands in terms of online buzz and Sentiment according to fashion data specialists EDITD, who analysed 300,000+ daily tweets from LFW and took statistical updates to produce the graph below, which featured in their Special Report on London Fashion Week which I encourage you to look at - because it shows just how much buzz they've grown. How did they do this? What was behind the strategy that propelled them to become the most talked about show - on and offline? Burberry partnered with Twitter to initiate the #Tweetwalk - Making full use of the recently released photo gallery feature, a first for the brand bringing it to the largest possible Audience - the partnership also helped support The entire S/S 2012 collection was live tweeted to 532,716 odd followers via their twitter stream here. In effect giving the labels fans and supporters a first glimpse before the models hit the runway. That is - before the likes of Anna Wintour, Sienna Miller, Kanye West and all the rest. Their strategy didn't twitter and facebook, either. Burberry also hired the most-followed Instagram user in the UK, photographer Mike Kus, to take live pictures using their Instagram account, for the duration of the show, as in conjunction with a live stream both hosted on burberry.com and published to over 8 million fans on facebook and The show started at 4 pm, and according to The Guardian UK by 4:15 pm Burberry became the third most buzzed about topic on twitter, globally It's worth noting that even Christopher Baily himself shies from being called a designer - instead priding himself on being a 'practitioner in multimedia. Something which - considering the role a designer today has in influencing everything from materials, shows and creative direction of marketing strategies - is perhaps more relevant than ever before. Fashion industry leaders like Baily stand out because of their media nous as designers. But innovating and bending the boundaries of the industry you are practising in shouldn't necessarily be restricted to fashion. In my mind - as I've said - the fashion landscape is a catalyst for this kind of movement - but the fact that collaboration is necessary to survival, that working as a team to produce something amazing, and borrowing ideas and not being afraid to copy and reinvent is part of pushing forward - is remarkably similar to what marketers and advertisers are having to embrace in order to succeed in their strategies today. It mightn't be breakthrough stuff - but the combination and strategy used to shake up a standard industry formula is something I think other creative industries and marketers should be taking note of. What is so fascinating to me about the Fashion industry and it's uptake of integrated media strategies is that it readily transgresses all the boundaries of which the industry has been formed. For the uninitiated outsiders at least, the industry rituals have always been a sort of high-cultural snob fest. Until now. Because that's all starting to change. via mashable, guardian.co.uk, PSFK & EDITD