The Little Artists

Last night at Dare Darren and John AKA The Little Artists (http://www.littleartist.co.uk/) came in for a chat on our sofas...They talked us through their work, inspirations, art in 2007 and next steps.

To date they have concentrated on Lego - recreating art and the people behind the pieces in a 'Lego World' size, as well as an entire Lego gallery (see below)




They had some interesting thoughts about art as an interactive medium - being able to immerse yourself in the work rather than look on as an outsider. This has led to the developement of edible art and who knows what else in the future.

Updates on their latest work to follow.

Thanks :)

Martin Parr

Martin Parr, one of Britain's best photographers, came in and had a chat with us.

He showed us some great photos that told his story - what his early influences were, what he's interested in and how he makes an idea happen.

Interesting facts:

- he's an avid collector of stuff (collecting is one of Russell Daives' points on how to be interesting)

- he's an e-Bay addict and is always on the look out for Margaret Thatcher memorabilia

Top quotes included:

"I am so middle-class - it's ridiculous"

And then at the end, he kindly signed K750 books (if you haven't already, take a peek at the Sony Ericsson project we did with him)

If you want to join other Martin Parr fans, check out this Flickr tribute group

And keep a look out for Saddam Hussein watches!

Russell Davies: thoughts of an Account Planner

Russell Davies, was Global Planning Director for Nike. Before Nike Russell spent 9 years as a planner at the advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy.

Campaign magazine called it “a sign of the times” when Russell announced his resignation from Nike via a blog rather than a press release.

Check out his blog to read about anything from planning and post-rationalisation to anything about the world that takes his fancy...

http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/

Session M: Part One

In Pete's half of the session we explored how companies are sharing their content for others to repurpose and redistribute. Sharing, rather than protection, is one of the hallmarks of many of the successful "web 2.0" websites. So when you think of a concept in the future but think "ah but they'd never have the budget to map the entire world" think again...

The presentation was made with a new tool called Trailfire which allows you to annotate, and then share, a series of web pages. You can try clicking on this trail, although I'm not sure if it will work as a lot of the linked pages include a lot of DHTML:

http://trailfire.com/snowcrash

Either way, here are the URLs that featured in the session:

http://www.mapsack.com/

http://loc.alize.us/

http://ononemap.com/map/index?maptype=Sales

http://www.zillow.com/

http://www.discoverpirateisland.com/

http://www.armyoneverest.mod.uk/GoogleEarth/

http://www.programmableweb.com/matrix

and if a website isn't playing nice and not sharing it's content then you can always use a tool like http://www.dappit.com/.

PS If you'd like to create your own mashup then IBM have a very good tutorial

Clever thingymajigs from Sonarmatica

Sonar - the Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art - came and went in Barcelona this June. To conform to the recent Dare mandate that all staff holidays must involve intense immersion in current client brand experiences, two planners spent 3 days consuming this Vodafone sponsored event.

Sonarmatica - the Multimedia element of Sonar - was entitled "Always On" and focussed on mobile culture and location projects. The tastiest morsels, as shown in the Dare session, are listed below. Plus there is a tantalising dash of some of the advanced music to add a whiff of off topic excitement.

Sonar 2006
http://www.sonar.es

Blast Theory - The Day of the Figurines
www.blasttheory.co.uk
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008663.php
SMS driven community game set in a universe parallel to the 3 day festival.

Michelle Teran - Life: A user's manual
http://www.ubermatic.org/life/index.html
Strange Canadian lady who uses home-made radio receiver equipment to discover the hidden world of private wireless CCTV streams that surround us.

Yellow Arrow project
http://yellowarrow.net
Linking personal messages to physical locations using the power of sticky yellow arrows. When the pack I've ordered arrives, I'll update here with the locations for you to visit.

GPS drawing
http://www.gpsdrawing.com
The spatially intriguing art of drawing using your location.

G-Player
http://www.jensbrand.com
Discover the mad Germanic practice of using the Earth's topography as a vinyl record to produce sounds. It won't chart quite yet.

Zapped!
http://www.zapped-it.net/
Immerse yourself in the increasingly Orwellian world of RFID ubiquity.

Bio mapping
http://www.biomapping.net/
Mapping "arousal" against geographic location. George Michael peaked on the Heath.

Tactical Sound Garden
http://www.andinc.org/
Plant your own sound garden. Black Hole Sun optional.

Interpretive Engine for Various Places on Earth
http://34n118w.net/
I'm not sure of the use of this, unless you live in California. Well for the moment anyway.

reacTable*
http://mtg.upf.es/reactable
The reacTable is an electronic multi-user musical instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Erm. Yes.

And now for a musical interlude:



Birdy Namnam
http://www.birdynamnam.com
French DMC Technics team championship winning DJs make music with decks.

Doravideo
http://tubech.com/test/read.cgi/DIHsuUgQeGo/tag/jitter/l50
Fat Japanese man with a drum kit connected to his VHS. Hero.

And some pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sonarfestival/

Andrew Shoben and Greyworld

Andrew Shoben is the founder of Greyworld (www.greyworld.org). They create works in public spaces - parts of the city that people see every day but normally ignore - that surprise and allow people to interact. That means doing things like making things like singing bus stops. Andrew is a former lecture and the RCA and Research Fellow at Goldsmiths University.

Greyworlds' goal is to create works that articulate public spaces, allowing some form of self-expression in areas of the city that people see every day but normally exclude and ignore. They aim to establish special intimacies through the unexpected articulation of objects installed in these spaces - to ‘short circuit’ both the environmental and social expectations supplied by the surrounding urban environment. They create spaces that offer the passers by an opportunity to join an unexpected ‘community of presence’, initiating an intimate communication which often leads to a personalization of the environment.

Feedback space

As the Dare sessions open up a whole new way of looking at things, we figured that there should be somewhere we can all express our thoughts and responses to their content...