We can host Radical Collaboration workshops for your projects or, if you're a creative inventor, turn your IP into real solutions.
We want to ignite new ideas for campaigns to come and demonstrate the breadth and depth of expertise within our reach.
In every edition we include an exclusive interview with one of our creative collective, ready for some Radical Collaboration. We also want to inspire new campaigns with our Tech Check and Think-Through Calendar sections. The former spotlights some on-trend tech that we like to use in our projects. Our Think-Through Calendar highlights upcoming national and international events to theme an activation around and the Ideation Centre demonstrates how our featured tech can be used in these activations.
We want to ignite new ideas for campaigns to come and demonstrate the breadth and depth of expertise within our reach.
We want to ignite new ideas for campaigns to come and demonstrate the breadth and depth of expertise within our reach.
We want to ignite new ideas for campaigns to come and demonstrate the breadth and depth of expertise within our reach.
This edition's Radical Collaborator is robotics engineer and DJ, Ad Spiers. He’s worked for Harvard, UCL and (more importantly) Strange Thoughts - Ad helped us produce Homer mark one.
This edition’s Tech Check is on IoTs. IoT stands for Internet of Things. Their name doesn’t give much away so click here to find out more.
Our Think-Through Calendar features upcoming events to theme an activation around. We’ll even demonstrate how our featured tech could be used in these campaigns.
This editions radical Collabator is robotics engineer and Dj, Ad Spiers. He’s worked for Harvard, UCL and (more importantly) Strange Thoughts - Ad helped us produce Homer mark one
This edition’s Tech Check is on IoTs. IoT stands for Internet of Things. Their name doesn’t give much away so click here for more info.
Our Think-Through Calendar features upcoming events to theme an activation around. We’ll even demonstrate how our featured tech could be used in these campaigns.
Laura's main fascination is with "fusing movement, music and technology." She founded Hellion Trace to help her do so while utilising cutting edge technology. Renowned for their unique, accessible and interactive instillations, Hellion Trace has wowed audiences across the world. It has also won many awards - Media Innovation and Royal Television Society accolades to name a few. Laura is also the CEO at the Barbican Plymouth where she is looking at changing the pipeline. She wants to develop easy pathways for creative work to move from a regional basis to national and international tours.
"I like making ludicrous projects happen. I like taking something and showing it in a different way, making it into a spectacle. I have all these ideas in my brain and really I just want to materialise them."
To get a better idea of what Laura does, let's hear about some of her favourite past projects. An obvious one is a synchronised dance routine performed by construction cranes. Laura conceptualised and choreographed the project which was accompanied by spectacular lighting and a unique score. The project started originally through a "stamp-your-feet type desperation," Laura was frustrated with "the limited way people were thinking about digital and interactivity. I wanted to show that these things can be physical, tangible, and real. The magic lies in the way you combine things." The crane dance has reached live audiences of 10,000 in Bristol with over 4 million people online views (without live streaming or national press advertising). "The crane dance is proof that actually you can work commercially, in a really large scale, but still honour the teams and creative practises behind the project."
Discussing this project prompted questions on the difference between choreographing for humans and machines. "They work identically in my brain. What you're looking for is the movement affordances of a machine or a specific dancer in terms of their backgrounds and teachings. Then you look at how you can show those off to the most exemplary level and how you can tell the best stories with them. At all times, it's about translating energy through time and space. If I'm looking at doing a crane dance in the city, I'm looking at the location as our set, I'm looking at my audience narrative, my audience journey, what their viewpoint is, the same as I would do as I think about the stage show."
Laura's work often beings as an exploration of a question. Another of her favourite projects, Hellion, came from a question on the difference between "composing choreography and choreographing composition." Hellion lets the audience "see sound created by a tap dancer, manipulated and changed in real time into any instrument I choose. While the sound is looped and layered with vocals, it paints me in light generated by a full sound-reactive dress..it's tangible wearable magic." Hellion has toured tech festivals, headlined South by Southwest music festival and prompted Key Change to name her as one of the top female innovators in music.
Due to boredom "with the standard framework of spaces and their allowances," Laura looked to the pervasive media studio in Bristol. There she hoped to find out what would happen if she "liberated sound the same way that I was already liberating choreography out to public spaces."
Technology continually entered Laura's spaces because "there were things I couldn't do unless I invented or modified a piece of technology that allowed me to do it. My journey into tech was always to solve problems I couldn’t solve otherwise, increasingly it became about creating systems and tools that allowed me to do impossible projects. There was something about the robust, iterative process of refining when creating technology, which felt very familiar to me."
"I think creative technologist is a very useful turn of phrase. You're not necessarily inventing completely new systems, but you're always creatively applying them. You're looking at the application of the tech, the adaptation and the outputs. So often you are bending, stretching and altering the possibilities of hardware or software, tools that already exist or are there for another use. With that being said, you often end up creating new things. So for Hellion, a show which headlined South by Southwest music festival, we created a fully wireless multi page midi controller. There currently wasn't anything that gave me the tactile and light page feedback, which was also totally wearable and fulfilled all my Ableton needs. So there are occasions where, as you're iterating past existing solutions, you end designing and manufacturing new products. But I think the focus of a creative technologist is not necessarily that you want to take that product to market, that's where strange thoughts comes in, My primary focus is the creativity that the technology enables."
Speaking of more commercial uses of Laura's work brought us to her relationship with Strange Thoughts. "Strange Thoughts has been one of my close sounding boards for looking to commercialise a lot of Hellion Trace's work. We've also worked together to devise projects for a lot of brands. We've had a really great and healthy relationship over the years applying projects to specific campaigns and delivering them to specific customer bases. I really enjoy thinking outside the box, even within a set brief from a client. I like acknowledging peoples boundaries and spotting bits on the edge of them. When you can identify a space that is inside a client's boundaries but outside of their usual thinking, that’s when the magic happens."
Today our Tech Check is on augmented reality (AR).
Augmented reality is a subset of virtual reality that portrays real life with a twist - our Industrial Designer, Reza, tells us more.
Augmented Reality allows us to interact with the physical world in truly remarkable ways by enhancing a user's environment with digital content. The Drum reported that AR can capture attention for over 85 seconds, when this is compared to the 8 second human attention span that Microsoft found in 2015, AR's power for marketing is undeniable.
But augmented reality has endless uses going beyond the advertising world. AR is currently used in medical training allowing complex surgeries and anatomy training to be carried out without the need to dissect cadavers or watch a live operation. It's also currently employed by Porsche mechanics to improve the efficacy of repairs as well as fighter jet pilots to eliminate blind spots and ameliorate threat-detection. Ikea introduced an at home application of AR in 2017 which allows users to digitally place furniture within their own homes. This meant users could accurate determine what furniture would suit their home aesthetic from the comfort of their own home and led to a 50% increase in Ikea's digital sales by 2019.
In addition to shopping and educational purposes, AR can fundamentally change the way products are designed. One example is product design or CAD models; these models were previously entirely digital and remote but now can be viewed and ‘held’ while they are being made, thanks to augmented and virtual reality. This can completely revitalise the creative process by underlining necessary improvements, highlighting new design opportunities and allowing market research before a physical prototype is constructed.
Here, we want to ignite new ideas for campaigns to come. We’ve collated upcoming national, and international events that are perfect to theme an activation around. We’ve also dreamt up some examples of campaigns, which feature this edition’s chosen piece of tech, to colour in your imagination.
New year for those of Hindu faith. According to Hindu mythology Brahma, the supreme god, created the universe on this day.
A holy month in the Islamic calendar associated with fasting. Since the Islamic calendar is Lunar, Ramadan only begins upon the sighting of the new moon.
A christian festival and cultural holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus.
A major Jewish holiday that celebrates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.
Our April campaign is themed around Easter. It would be perfect for any company in the FMCG sector
We would install a smart mirror (essentially a mirror fitted with AR tech) inside a bus stop that turns you into the easter bunny fit with buck-teeth, giant ears and your very own egg basket. As virtual eggs start to cascade from the sky individuals must catch them before they smash. Thrown in amongst the eggs could be the brand's own product, consumers who have to taken extra care to collect these will be presented with the chance to win a special prize at the end of the game. This would be a great chance to get consumer detail's and increase your online presence.
Shrove, derived from shrive, refers to the confession of sins as a preparation for Lent, a usual practice in Europe in the Middle Ages. Nowadays Shrove Tuesday is known as pancake day and celebrated fittingly.
An annual observation and celebration of black achievements and contribution to history.
A commemoration of the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women.
A day to celebrate sleep and draw attention to issues related to sleep such as medicine, education, social aspects and driving.
Our March activation revolves around International Women's Day. We feel this campaign could be applicable to any company or sector, its about the message not the branding.
For our International Women's Day activation we would propose an augmented reality overlay of famous statues in London. The augmented reality would reimagine the statues that currently depict men as commemorations of famous and important women. By clicking on the augmented statue, plaques would pop up providing information on the accolades and achievements of the woman in question. This activation could easily be themed around a sector to suit a brand by recognising women that have had achievements related to tech, food etc. We could also gamify this by offering rewards to individuals who viewed all the augmented statues hat had been augmented. By using time and location sensitive drops, we could offer people who have visited all augmented statues the chance to see themselves immortalised in a statue, either real or augmented.
Established and first celebrated in Mumbai on 10th May 1998, this day celebrates laughter, happiness and their emotional and physical benefits.
A festival celebrating Mexican and Mexican-American culture, originating from a commemoration of Mexico's victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla.
Also known as "Buddha Day", the day of the full moon in May commemorates the day Buddha was born, attained enlightenment and passed away.
A day to celebrate Fair Trade and encourage the public to buy Fair Trade goods and be more ethical consumers.
For our May activation we'd like to focus on World Laughter Day, we're all in need of a good laugh after the past few months.
We'd create a web-app for your smartphone or tablet that turns your living room into a laughing room. The web-app would transform your front room to the Hammersmith Apollo stage by adding red curtains, the "Live At The Apollo" signage as well as a walking, talking, augmented-reality comedian. We could even produce flat packed stands for you to prop your tablet on while you enjoy the show. This idea would suit any streaming or production company as well as a furniture company - "After years of bringing furniture into your lives, now we are bringing laughter too".
