Placed within Tent Lon­don (a design show part of the Lon­don Design Fest­ival), Tent Digital is an inter­na­tional show­case of the best digit­ally enabled design. FIT vis­ited the event at the Old Tru­man Brew­ery, Brick Lane on the sunny Sat­urday 26th Septem­ber 2009.

As we entered the digital exhib­i­tion we found ourselves in near abso­lute dark­ness, sur­roun­ded by flash­ing lights and fluor­es­cent beams. This came as a sur­prise because the rest of Tent Lon­don had been bright and cheerful.

Nick: The first piece we examined was “Go Scan Your­self” by Wag­gott Tripp & Gra­ham. This install­a­tion involved a wall moun­ted scan­ner and a selec­tion of old tele­vi­sion sets. I took a time to scan my face and become part of the exhib­i­tion.

Kana: I believe this install­a­tion was about intro­du­cing the audi­ence to Tent Digital, play­ing on the human desire to use every­day objects in altern­at­ive ways. It’s com­mon for people to have a desire to scan their body parts with a pho­to­copy machine, simply because it’s pro­hib­ited.  This was a fun intro­duc­tion to the event.

Nick: The next install­a­tion of interest to me was “Tokyo Won­der” by WOW, ori­gin­ally com­mis­sioned for the Milan Salone in 2008. The imagery in this piece was sub­lime and cre­ated tricks using simple visual ele­ments. We see a train in the dis­tance as it gets closer our per­cep­tion changes as we real­ise the wid­ows of the car­riages are vend­ing machines lined up side by side. Then we see a haze of multi-colour particles as they drift down to form a tech­nicolor city scape. There was a lot of visual beauty in this short fea­ture, don’t you think?

Kana: Per­son­ally for me it was sen­ti­mental, as I’m from Japan. The com­bin­a­tion of move­ment and col­our really cap­tured the essence of Tokyo. The piece had an exquis­ite beauty and the move­ment made it very enga­ging and mes­mer­ising. I found it quite humor­ous that the drum machine install­a­tion next to Tokyo Won­der was mak­ing such a lot of noise, it iron­ic­ally cre­ated an ines­cap­able Tokyo like atmo­sphere.
Nick: The next exhibit we saw was an inter­est­ing one, in fact it made me moment­ar­ily con­fused. Troy Abbott’s digital bird cage fea­tures a pre-recorded bird (Actual Video Birds) silently perched within a small LCD like monitor.

Kana: I liked the fact that it had a kind of a pat­ron­ising atti­tude towards human beings. We become engaged by the bird stand­ing proudly, dir­ectly look­ing at us from within the cage … it leaves no space for us to treat it as a digital cre­ation. I liked the choice of animal, birds are almost arrogant-like and dis­play great con­fid­ence. How­ever, as more Tamagoc­chi like vir­tual pets appear, it’s sad to think that people are so eas­ily enter­tained by visual stim­u­lus. I feel wor­ried about those who are only attrac­ted to the cute­ness of pets and don’t want the respons­ib­il­ity of real­ity, leav­ing the neg­at­ive aspects behind.

Nick: This essence of los­ing real­ity was again cap­tured in the next piece by MSA visu­als. A star like digital por­trait morphed as par­ti­cipants stood before the cam­era and screen. This install­a­tion writ­ten in C++, Open­Frame­works and OpenCV ana­lysed a video feed via an infra-red cam­era in real time, cre­at­ing 1080p HD out­put using OpenGL.  This exhibit was a great show­case for open source soft­ware, which is a key ele­ment of digital inter­act­ive work. You can down­load the developed tech­no­logy on the memo.tv web­site.

Kana: What did you think of over­all Tent Digital?

Nick: I think Tent Digital was a great way for product design­ers to become more aware of the digital. Digital and product design can some­times feel sep­ar­ated, so for a digital event like this held within Tent Lon­don was an excel­lent oppor­tun­ity for each party to gain inspir­a­tion from each other. I can see future Tent exhib­i­tions fea­tur­ing a great deal of digit­ally adap­ted product design.

Kana: I really enjoyed this event, but was by a little saddened by the lack of aware­ness for sus­tain­ab­il­ity. We are in an age of cre­at­ing the unne­ces­sary as neces­sary. How­ever say­ing this I’m excited for the future of the design industry to provide sus­tain­able and mean­ing­ful designs.

The next event that FIT atten­ded was This Happened at Shored­itch Town Hall, Fri­day 25th Septem­ber 2009. The concept of this event was to high­light stor­ies behind inter­ac­tion design, open­ing up meth­ods and ideas behind the cre­at­ive pro­cesses. As usual FIT arrived late, after being dis­trac­ted by the Mov­ing Brands open stu­dio held a stones throw from the Town Hall. This means we missed two present­a­tions out of a total of four.
Nick: I always find present­a­tions very dif­fi­cult. What’s your opin­ion on this?

Kana: Present­a­tions get bet­ter every time you do them. I think care­fully defined struc­ture is vital to present­a­tions, not just the per­form­ance. Present­a­tions often may not be the most favour­ite part for cre­at­ive people. How­ever bril­liant ideas can’t just be spon­tan­eously recog­nised by poten­tial investors.

Nick: There are mil­lions of great ideas, but usu­ally it’s only those thought about in great details that suc­ceed. There are also a mul­ti­tude of ways to present these ideas, but the com­mon thread among every suc­cess­ful present­a­tions is con­cise and cor­rect structure.

Kana: Yes I think that’s right.

Nick: Being pre­cise is an import­ant factor. Without this your present­a­tion can have no impact.

Kana: Pecha Kucha Night, first star­ted in Tokyo by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, has a clever way of con­trolling cre­at­ive present­a­tions by only allow­ing 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This means the presenter is given 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. I think it helps keep present­a­tions con­cise, without los­ing the interest of the audi­ences. This method also increases the num­ber of presenters per night. Though I have never atten­ded this event, it’s become very pop­u­lar among cre­at­ives world­wide. Without these strict rules I ima­gine it would never have been able to deliver the impact it has achieved.

Nick: When con­sid­er­ing each minute of a present­a­tion, it becomes much easier to be pre­cise. It’s not often neces­sary to include every piece of inform­a­tion about the pro­ject, merely the most import­ant.

Kana: There are things we need to think about, such the audi­ence and how to appeal to them. How­ever what becomes the most import­ant ele­ment is the mes­sage deliv­ery. Every present­a­tion has dif­fer­ent pur­pose, whatever the goal is, it needs to be achieved, oth­er­wise it becomes a failure.

Nick: Whether it be busi­ness or per­sonal, failed present­a­tions can harm your cre­at­ive spirit. No one wants to fail, good pre­par­a­tion can pre­vent this.

Kana: This reminds me of Dragon’s Den. Suc­cess­ful cre­at­ives can also be cre­at­ive in the busi­ness aspect of a pro­ject. No one wants a Duncan Ban­natyne to say “I’m out!”.

Held on the last Thursday of every month, Glug Together, is a Lon­don based event for design­ers, cre­at­ives, cli­ents and friends. This event was star­ted by Ian Hamb­leton of Stu­dio Out­put and Nick Clem­ent of Pro­fero / Made Stu­dio. This Lon­don Digital Week Spe­cial edi­tion was held at The Queen of Hox­ton, a club-bar-art space in Shored­itch on Thursday Septem­ber 24th 2009.

Kana: So, what was your impres­sion of Glug? I wasn’t able to attend this one.

Nick: I hope you feel bet­ter now.  We didn’t have much time to attend all the net­work­ing events dur­ing Lon­don Digital Week. How­ever I man­aged to find the time to attend this one. The name Glug and the strap line “Cre­at­ive Drinks & Not­work­ing™” are very fit­ting for this event. There was a lot of noise, drink­ing and con­ver­sa­tion from around 400 attendees.

Kana: How were the presentations?

Nick: I arrived a little late so wasn’t able to get a front row seat, which made hear­ing dif­fi­cult. I saw a present­a­tion by Mer­lin Nation, a motion graph­ics designer. He showed some good work, espe­cially a piece that used super 8 foot­age inter­twined with some smart motion design. The presenter seemed to be bat­tling with the audi­ence to get atten­tion and like­wise I was bat­tling to hear him. I returned upstairs to join the people net­work­ing with beer in hand.

Kana: So it was more of a net­work­ing event, rather than a present­a­tion event? More people are hold­ing net­work­ing events recently in the cre­at­ive industry. Rather than net­work­ing online through the use of social net­work­ing sites like Twit­ter or LinkedIn, it’s more often as effect­ive to talk to someone face to face. Net­work­ing events can be very intim­id­at­ing for some indi­vidu­als. Provid­ing the oppor­tun­it­ies of net­work­ing in the envir­on­ment where people can buy drinks and have fun would make it easier for everyone.

Nick: When I was start­ing out as a designer I wasn’t aware of these type of events. I did go to some but they were of smal­ler scale and often held in more unwel­com­ing loc­a­tions. It cer­tainly didn’t seem to be as easy to par­ti­cip­ate if you’re were a young designer or a start-up com­pany. Stu­dio Out­put, Digital Gurus (a recruit­ment agency who organ­ised the Table Ten­nis Tour­na­ment) and the organ­isers have done a great job organ­ising this event to encour­age cre­at­ive people to net­work in a com­fort­able envir­on­ment. Cre­at­ive people are often intro­vert and can spend a lot of time work­ing in a stuffy office or home. Some of us some­times need a push to act­ively com­mu­nic­ate together.
Kana: So the organ­isers have taken an import­ant role in activ­at­ing young parts of the industry, which essen­tially leads to the fur­ther improve­ment and devel­op­ment of the Lon­don cre­at­ive industry as a whole. This form of cas­ual net­work­ing has been made easier by the pop­ular­ity of Face­book groups and other sim­ilar meet up websites.

With offices in Lon­don, Tokyo, Zurich and San Fran­cisco, Mov­ing Brands is an innov­at­ive brand­ing agency, star­ted by Ben Wolsten­holme and James Bull. On Fri­day 25th 2009 they held an open stu­dio, invit­ing guests to come and see their work and work­space. We were inter­ested in attend­ing this event, as like our com­pany, Mov­ing Brands has links to Japan.

The space was very clean, well tidied and busy with attendees inter­act­ing with the company’s work (which was gen­er­at­ing a lot of heat!). We stud­ied the dia­grams of the Swis­scom, played with some Aug­men­ted Real­ity pro­jects and other inter­act­ive pieces.



To wrap up the event Mov­ing Brands gave us some branded gift wrap­ping, which was greatly appre­ci­ated. You can see much more of their work on their web­site, it’s worth a visit.

We took some time to enter the Digital Agency Table Ten­nis tour­na­ment held in the eerie crypt of the St. James Church on the 23th of Septem­ber 2009.  Unfor­tu­nately we were knocked out in the first round, not through lack of try­ing, but through lack of train­ing. Steak Digital walked away with the title defeat­ing Col­lect­ive Lon­don in a tightly fought final.

The first event FIT atten­ded dur­ing Lon­don Digital Week was “A Talk With Tomato” held at JWT on 22nd Septem­ber 2009. Tomato is a highly respec­ted cre­at­ive art and design col­lect­ive co-founded by Rick Smith and Karl Hyde of Underworld.

First we got ourselves some com­fort­able seats and com­ple­ment­ary drinks cour­tesy of JWT (of course). We then had a talk from two Tomato col­lect­ive mem­bers, Simon Taylor and Dylan Kendle, who have been involved in Tomato’s digital pro­jects. Sadly though there was expec­ted to be three mem­bers of Tomato present­ing, but one had a road acci­dent and couldn’t make it.
Kana: I was sur­prised that they star­ted the present­a­tion with a pro­ject based in Japan, I didn’t expect it.

Nick: I remem­ber you men­tion­ing Tomato sev­eral years go, but I can’t remem­ber in what respect …

Kana: When I first heard about them, I had the impres­sion of them being a video mak­ing col­lect­ive for Under­world. I didn’t actu­ally know that Tomato oper­ated on cre­at­ive pro­jects inde­pend­ently from Under­world in Japan.

Nick: The first present­a­tion was about “Art Jam Japan”, which was held in Novem­ber 2007. The basic concept was a live paint­ing ses­sion on the walls of the Mak­uhari Messe. This was quite an old pro­ject, but set the tone for rest of the present­a­tion, which was based around organ­ic­ally inspired digital work.

Kana: Then they presen­ted “Word Col­lider” for Nokia, “Nos­tal­gia” multi-screen film install­a­tion for the Ta Mat­ete Gal­lery in Rome, “Voices: Expo 2004″ in Spain, “Water for Life” for the inter­na­tional Expo in Zar­agoza, Spain, re-branding for “TV Asahi”, “Un Movil En Le Pat­era” in Spain, “Hotel Claska foyer” in Tokyo, “Aspesi Flag­ship store” in Milan, “You Me Who” in Japan, “Nou­velle Vague” third album design and “Gang­ster No.1″ open­ing title sequence.

Nick: I was inter­ested in the TV Asahi re-brand, as it seems unusual for an art col­lect­ive to do brand­ing.  I had never heard of it before. Had you?

Kana: Well I think I’ve seen the logo, but not the mov­ing one.

Nick: Whilst work­ing on the pro­ject, Tomato had to cre­ate around 20 dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the inter­act­ive logo of which only one was selec­ted. They said this was unusual as at the time, because they had lots of cre­at­ive free­dom and less rules, mainly due to less com­pet­i­tion. Dylan men­tioned that the logo was still going strong and had been recently been re-printed on the side of a heli­copter and cof­fee mugs. So I decided to check up myself online.

It’s impress­ive that the logo is still in use today, and is still evolving. The ori­ginal logo was designed from a gen­er­at­ive audio driven anim­a­tion, yet here it appears static. I think often mov­ing logos lose rel­ev­ance when they become static, the static logo works today but appears a little abstract, which is per­haps has been key to it’s longev­ity, yet the reason why it’s now sup­ple­men­ted by a little green monster.

Kana: The main theme of the present­a­tion was “Gen­er­at­ive”, wasn’t it? Each present­a­tion was related to move­ments and had organic ele­ments in it. The TV Asahi re-brand was no excep­tion. It is impress­ive the logo still keeps going as I think they said the re-brand was in 2003. They also said it was “live brand­ing”, never to be seen as a same logo, mean­ing it’s unique each time. I think their work has an asso­ci­ation with “lan­guage” in terms of com­mu­nic­a­tion and inter­ac­tion, it’s very organic.

Nick: This is why I think the present­a­tion was inspir­a­tional for me. It’s nice to see some­thing that’s digital yet organic, which seems to be com­ing very much in vogue today. Most of the pro­jects talked about used ana­logue ele­ments and it gave me a desire to use less digital quick fixes.