The Wilderness Downtown

By Grant | Published: August 31, 2010

Image via Fast Company

We shall now take a musical interlude, courtesy of The Arcade Fire, and all you will need is Google Chrome and your childhood address.  While it is being said that Lady Gaga has been saving the art of the music video (though in my opinion that credit should be given to OK Go), The Arcade Fire, in collaboration with Chris Milk and Google, is instead taking the music video to the next level, and while showing some Flash-killing, HTML5 prowess in the process.  The interactive video, titled The Wilderness Downtown, is for the song We Used To Wait, a single from their new album The Suburbs, a concept album dealing with the idealized, nostalgic view of our childhood homes that are now literally or figuratively crumbling.

Where this video takes a departure from previous work in the genre is the integration of personalized information, interaction, aggregates content from public databases, and blends it all beautifully across multiple windows that dance around, appear and disappear, and elicit user participation.  Only so much can be gained by me describing the video, what you really need to do is experience it yourself (after downloading Google Chrome if you have not already), and visiting thewildernessdowntown.com.  Here are some handy tips from Fast Company about how to get the most out of the experience.

  • Type in your exact childhood address when prompted–right down to the street or apartment number. And, yes, you’re telling Google even more about your personal life, but remember, they have most of it already. This is the fun side of privacy invasion!
  • Put on headphones. This song sounds amazing, and the music is half the experience.
  • Don’t touch anything. You’ll be tempted to move around windows to see better, but it’s supposed to look a bit jagged.
  • Close everything else but Chrome–all other browsers, tabs, and as many programs as you can. This thing will hog every processor cycle you have (it’s unabashed about this).

If you are wondering what this could possibly have to do with taking down a distressed property and reclaiming the materials, just imagine watching this video, but with the added text entry at the beginning of a year, and not just seeing your childhood home, but the change of it from as it was then, to as it is now, and what may happen to it in the future.  The immersive, personal experience could not just be used to make music more powerful and personal, but could be used to help foster personal connections with other media and objects.  It is also a great example of the potential of HTML5, and the power it has to use public information, and seamlessly integrate it into another context, and could be a great tool for storytelling.

Via Fast Company

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Some Tasty QR Codes

By Grant | Published: August 30, 2010

Image from SETJapan.com

Do you want some QR codes that you can really sink your teeth into? I am sorry, that was a really horrible pun, but I could not resist with these two candy codes.  The first is a code made out of Frisk Mints, the most popular brand of mints in Japan, made as an example of the possibilities of “built codes” by SET out of Japan, who are probably the premiere custom/designer QR code creating company, who we have featured before here on D-Build.  Below is a video showing them making the code, which when snapped, resolves to SET’s website.

After revolutionizing the way in which QR codes are used with the “designer” code, SET is now promoting the use of “built” codes made from real objects. These codes offer brands a unique opportunity to incorporate them into outdoor stunts and events, allowing the consumer to truly interact with the code in fun and exciting ways.

What is nice to see is that this is extending past the realm of marketing, and has entered the realm of product hacking.

This video is very in line with what M&M and Mars would want you to associate with their product, where is it is used to make a self-referential code, but it is easy to see how this could be used in ways contrary to the company’s ideal image.  A pretty basic but clear example would be making a QR out of candy that resolves on an article about childhood obesity, or clothing arranged to lead to information about sweatshop labor.  Of course there are other, more conventional uses, such as working a QR code into the tilework at a subway station that could lead users to the transportation website for schedules or delays.  It would be amazing to see an internet meme start based around creating built QR codes, and I could actually imagine it happening.

Via 2d Code

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Cleveland’s Big Brother Likes Recycling

By Grant | Published: August 27, 2010

Image from GOOD.is

Cleveland Ohio has recently announced a plan to roll out 25,000 smart, RFID chip implanted recycling bins to households that will track if people are taking out their recycling, with the threat of a fine if they are instead throwing away their plastic, metal, and paper.  If you are starting to get a bit of a “Big Brother” vibe, notice the great Orwellian irony of branding the trucks with “Cleveland, A City Of Choice.”  This is an expansion of a pilot program of 15,000 bins started in 2007, and there are plans to add an additional 25,000 every year until all of the city’s 150,000 are covered.

How the system will work is the garbage trucks will pick up the bins with an robotic arm, which will simultaneously read the RFID chip, and track that the household’s bin has been picked up.  If a bin has not been picked up for a few weeks in a row, a trash supervisor will inspect the trash can, and if more than 10% of the contents are recyclable materials, the homeowner is subject to a $100 fine.  While this may seem like extreme measures, it is actually less intense than regulations that have been in place in the UK for years, where a household’s trash is weighed, and you are charged if you exceed your yearly allotment.  While it would be great if the motivations behind this were purely environmental, but there is a strong economics factor as well.  For every one ton of garbage the city sends to the landfill, they have to pay $26, but for every one of recycling the city earns $30, which means that the extra money invested into the technological infrastructure will not only pay for itself, but will soon help bring in revenue.

As for the big brother connotations, the double edge sword of transparency is accountability at the sacrifice of privacy, mixed with the fear that any loss of privacy is the small edge of the wedge.  People should recycle, and realistically, your garbage people already know if you are recycling, this is just helping automate the tracking, so in my personal opinion, this is not an unacceptable invasion of privacy.  Also, if you are that worried about what you are throwing away, you really should not be leaving it out for the city to pick up anyways, but that is besides the point.  This is though on the cusp, where the intelligent environment transitions from helpful to invasive, and it is in some ways comforting that there are those up in arms against these RFID Smart Bins, people who are making sure that everyone is aware when they are giving up a piece of their privacy.

Via GOOD, via The Register, via Cleveland.com

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D-Build In The Everson Museum

By Grant | Published: August 23, 2010

Sorry about the lack of posts last week, we had a huge crunch here at D-Build HQ, and had to temporarily put the blog on hold.  This means that we are also a week late in announcing some very exciting news.  To coincide with the traveling Good Design exhibition, featuring the stories and design of Herman Miller, the Everson Museum has put on Design To Scale, to showcase design in Central New York.  We were honored to be picked as part of the representation of local design, both as D-Build and as some of our other ventures.  The show, which had its opening reception on August 13th (which we are happy to say was packed!), also served as the debut of the Arbor & Taylor furniture series made from wood reclaimed from Lincoln Supply here in Syracuse.

So far we have had a very positive response to the show, and to the Bound and Elevation end tables, pictured above, which you can learn more about on the D-Build site.  If you are in Syracuse before October 24th, the show is worth checking out, just to see how much activity is happening right here in Central New York that normally flies is under the radar.  Also, we will be giving a presentation about D-Build at the museum at 10:00 am on Tuesday, September 21st, so if you are in the area, I hope that you can make it!

The blog should be back on regular schedule now, so keep checking back for more news, updates, and sometimes just interesting stories.

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History Detectives: Investigating The Story of Objects

By Grant | Published: August 10, 2010

Image compiled from PBS.org

Looking for a good distraction on a late summer Tuesday?  If so, I fully recommend watching PBS’s History Detectives, full episodes of which are available for free on PBS’s website.  History Detectives is an hour long documentary style show where a team of experts from different backgrounds are presented with an object whose owner is curious of its history or significance, presented in the manner of solving a mystery.  Fact is separated from fiction, and the true story of the object is revealed.  Above is a Japanese map of Iwo Jima brought back from battle by a WWII veteran, with the corresponding video segment below (warning, video does contain images of war/battle).

Watch the full episode. See more History Detectives.

You can visit the History Detective’s site to watch the rest of this and other episodes, as well as learn more about the objects featured.  You can also Submit Your Mystery, and present them with images and details of your object to see if they would be interested in searching for its history.  It is amazing that objects that are already cherished family heirlooms can become all the more powerful and significant when their story is revealed.  It would amazing to have them unearth the past of a historically significant house that was slated for demolition/deconstruction, and be able to tie what they discover with the materials salvaged and later the new products that can then carry on that story.

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5 Branding Commandments, and Potatoes

By Grant | Published: August 6, 2010

Image from Co.Design

Peter Clarke has written a great piece for Fast Company’s recently launched Co.Design site which addresses the 5 Branding Commandments for the Post-Crash Economy, how companies can work to rebuild the Circle of Trust necessary to get the respect and loyalty of customers.  The five main commandments are Simplicity, Transparency, Responsibility, Sustainability, and Affordability, with their crossover qualities being Clear, Candid, Conscientious, Reasonable, and Essential.  You should head over and read the full article, because it makes many very good points, and a brief summary will not do it justice.  What is interesting is that he views the situation from the perspective of branding, and how companies want to be perceived by the public.  While this is a valid concern, the same thinking should also be applied when developing new businesses, and in many ways these criteria should be addressed when making any decision or developing strategies.  Companies that do not embrace these practices are going to be viewed as antiquated, and will remind people of the large corporations whose greed and secrecy has helped create the economic meltdown that we are still recovering from.

This then brings be to a lighter point mentioned in Clarke’s article, about an interesting way that a company has embraced Transparency to connect with their customers, and remove the mystery of supply chains and our groceries.  The potato chip manufacturer Frito-Lay has debuted their Chip Tracker, where using your zip code and the first three digits of the product code, you can learn where the potatoes for you bag of chips were grown, where they were then manufactured into chips, and the path they then took to your grocery store.

This chip tracker includes video interviews with some of the farmers, making a personal connection between the consumer and the people at the earliest and most important stage of the manufacturing processes, a step which is usually invisible to the average customer.  While at first it may seem silly and frivolous to expend this much time and energy to know more about your bag of BBQ chips, it hints at the real power of Transparency.  This means that every bag of chips is trackable and traceable, and they are allowing the lay person (no pun intended) access to this information.  Imagine the power, convenience, and ease of mind this would create the next time there was a salmonella outbreak in a batch of food, if you could see and track where the product came from, its distribution path, and if products in your area were effected.  It would mean that you could remove just the contaminated food, and not everything produced within a certain time period.  This is just one of the examples given in the full article, and it is well worth it to read the full article, and learn what trends you are going to be seeing in the next few years among successful companies.

Via Co.Design

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Beautiful Reclaimed Wood Bench Longest In UK

By Grant | Published: August 5, 2010

Britain’s Longest Bench (both in title and name) just opened this July in Littlehampton, West Sussex, which is 350 yards long, and winds along the promenade of city along the Blue Flag beach.  The undulating, parabola based design was conceived by Studio Weave, constructed by Millimetre Ltd., can seat 300 people, and is designed to allow for future expansion, making it possible that this may one day be the longest bench in the world.  The design is made out of reclaimed hardwood lumber, which was salvaged from old coastal groynes and landfills, some of which has been painted with bright enamel that shifts hues down the beach, mimicking the transition of a sunset.  Along the length of the bench are two structures that act as shelters from the rain and wind, which were designed with the help of elementary students, and are made to mimic charms added to a bracelet, which would be the bench itself.

If you want to help support the Longest Bench, you can have you personal message, up to 68 characters long, engraved onto the sides of one of the slats for £60.  The bench is part of a larger revitalization project, aiming to regenerate the UK’s seaside resort cities, and it is great to see such a large and explicit use of reclaimed wood in a public project, and it would be amazing to see similar scale uses in other cities.

Via Treehugger

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C Restaurant’s Floating Dining Room

By Grant | Published: August 4, 2010

Image from Core77

The premiere sustainably harvested seafood restaurant in Vancouver, Canada, C, has recently opened a unique new dining room.  Diners can now eat in a floating structure moored off of the docks of False Creek Yacht Club, constructed out of reclaimed pine and held afloat on top of 1,700 plastic bottles.  The bottle buoyant raft is the brainchild of Shannon Ronalds, the head of The School of Fish Foundation, whose aim is to teach chefs sustainable seafood practices, to ensure that fishing has a minimal impact to the world’s oceans.  The structure also plays reference to the impact that plastic trash has on the ocean, similar to the Plastiki project, the plastic debris boat that recently finished a voyage across the Pacific.  While the future of the floating dining room is uncertain after it closes this Fall in September, the responsive has been positive, and there have been requests to create similar structures in other cities.

Via Core77

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Itizen: Attach Stories To Your Objects

By Grant | Published: August 2, 2010

Rob Walker has done a great round-up post on his Murketing blog of different sites that are focused on attaching a story to an object, including D-Build!  In addition to some projects we have covered here before, namely StickyBits and Tales of Things, there was a new project I had not previously heard of called Itizen.  Itizen uses combination alpha-numeric and QR code tags, both in sticker and sew on patch form, to allow users to tag their personal stories to objects.

They encourage people to tag objects with which they have personal connections, or items they are giving as gifts, so that the story can travel and evolve.  One of the first stories on the site is for the Mark II Phaser, pictured on the top of this post, which belongs to Steve Boland.

Work can be so –*work*. Years ago, I went to work for a company where everyone was encouraged to have their favorite geeky stuff around them. I hit the-then nacent eBay and bought a replica Phaser from the original Star Trek television show. I loved that show, and loved being in a work place that encouraged us to personalize our space.
That was a long time back, but this phaser has traveled with me from work place to work place. Some more professional, some less, but everywhere since it has been an obvious difference in my environment. This thing showed a part of me that doesn’t come out in what I do for a living, but it is very much a part of who I am. (BTW – it really makes the phaser sounds when you push the trigger. How cool is that?)
I get two reactions to the phaser (and tricorder and communicator and Mark I phaser I also own) when people see them in my office. 1. Ignore it. 2. “Omigosh – is that a phaser??”. When that second reaction comes, we have something new to talk about.

You can order a free starter pack of tags, and start attaching stories to your environment!

Via Murketing

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Visit The New QR City! (Bring Your Cellphone)

By Grant | Published: July 29, 2010

Photo from 2d-code.co.uk

A city has recently declared itself QR City, and surprisingly it is not in Japan, the ancestral home of the QR code.  The Italian city of Senigallia, located on the country’s Adriatic coast, has placed markers and signs like the one above on all of the historic buildings and places in the city.  When the codes are scanned, they resolve to a website that contains historical information and photos, both in Italian and English.  The sign above, located at the Palazzo Comunale, or The Municipal Building in English, directs them here to a brief history, along with historic images of the building and a geotag of the location.

The Municipal Building was built at the beginning of the seventeenth-century by architect Muzio Oddi. The elegant bricks façade, decorated with Istria stone and embellished by the Fountain of Neptune, is emphasized by the elegant arcades of the Porticos, where numerous gravestones are embedded. On them it is possible to read Roman inscriptions as well as others in remembrance of the World War II fallen.
The entrance’s stairway, made of Furlo stone, was realized in the eighteenth century by architect Alessandro Rossi, and gives access to a sumptuous council chamber. Its ceiling is painted with deceptive trompe-l’œil architecture, and is characterized by the monumental Bohemian crystal lamp, who used to be in “La Fenice” Theatre. In the chamber, realized in the middle of the eighteenth century by Bonamici, it is possible to admire the four medallions framed with stucco. Among the building’s numerous art works, the “Saint Gerolamo” (reputed to be by Lo Spagnoletto) in the major’s office is well worth a visit

Despite being over 15 years old, QR technology seems to finally getting the widespread and mainstream adoption that people have been expecting for the last 5+ years.

Via 2d Code

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