The Source Code of Music Videos

After seeing US industrial band Nine Inch Nails released the source of a complete album for the fans to play around with (as reported previously on this blog), last week Radiohead took the concept of open source in music a step further.

 

First of all, they made a funky little video for their song "House of Cards" in a non-traditional way:

"No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes."

This did not only lead to a very cool music video (something Radiohead's been known to do more often, take for example the classic Street Spirit (Fade Out)), but the technologies used also made it possible to release the actual data gathered for and used in the video. Which is what they did: open source meets music video productions. Or at least a first step in the right direction has been made.

On YouTube, a House of Cards group has been created to keep track of user-generated videos from the released data, and Google Code features details of the project, including the making-of video and a data visualisation tool which allows you to browse 'navigate' the video yourself while it plays. Nice.

 

Get on the Bus!

In a recruitment effort, we've been decorating some Amsterdam buses, egging people on to come work with us. This time around, in a bout of megalomania brought on by deadline-rush, we discovered our inner superheroes. The result jumps of the bus right atcha, even on a dreary, rainy day...

Keywords: recruitment,wearehiring,amsterdam,bus

 

A game, a name and a song

It’s only 9 a.m. and already I’ve come across three juicy bits of interactive goodness

• There’s a game console designed for active playing indoors and outdoors
• Crowds naming products and getting paid for it
• And my personal fave — a 2.8 inch karaoke machine (w00t!)

Last time, I posted about Locomatrix, a UK-based company that develops location-based games. Locomatrix creators, Richard Vahrman and Moira Nangle, who described themselves as ‘keen walkers’, wanted to make game that would encourage kids to play outdoors. Now, there’s ‘Swinxs’, a game console designed to encourage active and social play among children. It’s created by Swinxs B.V., a Dutch games developer.  

How it works: You’ve got Swinxs, the game console. which talks, cheers and explains the games, referees and keeps score. Then there are the XS tags, wristbands with microchips that communicate with the console. It starts the games, retrieves player profiles and measures performance. Up to 10 individual players can join in a game.

(Read more...)

Keywords: game,branding,karaoke,crowdsourcing

 

Reboot 10: spirited sh*t-sharing

by Ilko Batakliev

The theme of this year’s edition of Reboot in Copenhagen was “free”. Is there such a thing as free lunches, software, mobile phones, networks…? What are the social boundaries of the concept of freedom? How free or gratis or libre is the open-source melting pot we dwell in? How much does freedom actually cost?

The conference kicked off with an invigorating talk by Tor Nørretranders in which the proverbial line ”Share your shit” was born and which became something of a motto of the conference. Just like physical shit, intellectual shit (or ideas in other words) need to be shared and released. Otherwise they become waste. In order to be able to continuously generate progressive and effective ideas, we need to share them with the world when they are born and set them free.

At conferences like this, it’s about those two lines a day which your hear and which make perfect sense to you. I certainly had more than two of them and I feel grateful for the insights they provided me with. Thanks to them, the inevitable quasi-intellectual nagging of some of the talks did not disturb me.

Day two was definitely more stimulating with talks like Beauty in web design by Cennydd Bowles, Building the open web by David Recorden and the absolute highlight for me: Complexity and freedom by Flemming Funch. In a smooth and convincing manner the concepts of complexity as self-organizing criticality and freedom were explored and married. In both the realms of nature and nurture complexity means self-organizing criticality and not an equilibrium. This state makes freedom possible and from then on, we are “free” to redefine the concept of freedom until it matches our needs and desires. The speech was intensely intricate and the audience was “in the flow” from start till finish. Even the overtly flamboyant outfit and appearance of Funch failed to distract or raise an eye-brow.

In general the amount of verbal diarrhoea was rather limited and the creative shit-sharing prevailed. Outside the conference too, sharing took place in different forms and shapes. Well, hungover is simply overrated…toch?

More inspiration: www.reboot.dk