MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..

= a trip of a lifetime.

move, eat, learn

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover

On my recent trip to NYC, I had to re-visit the High Line, a revitalization project transforming the elevated rail line into an innovative public park and space for exploration, interaction, and art installations. This summer, the High Line opened the new section 2 extension that lead to a new public plaza below called The Lot. To my delight I encountered Rainbow City, a whimsical playground filled with giant colourful balloon sculptures (including a bouncy castle) inviting both children and adults and to play.

The installation has since been taken down, but now in its place is another great idea: an open air rollerskating rink. Wonderful inspiration for other urban cities.

Other resources that serve as good references are Mobile Design Patterns (iOS) and Android Patterns.

MIT Media Lab’s Tangible Media Group have developed Recompose, an experimental touch interface that provides tactile feedback.

Recompose is a new system for manipulation of an actuated surface. By collectively utilizing the body as a tool for direct manipulation alongside gestural input for functional manipulation, we show how a user is afforded unprecedented control over an actuated surface.

Made up of motorized tiles that pop up/down, the 3D interface can be directly manipulated by pressing down on the tiles or simply using gestures by waving your had over various areas of the surface, which move in response to your input. The feedback is a 3D visualization of the user’s physical interaction with the tiles. A camera and projector, combined with computer vision are used to recognize and understand the language of the physical interactions.

via Fast Company

One of my favourite bands, Arcade Fire, has collaborated with Google and writer/director Chris Milk to create an experimental video for their song “We Used to Wait”. Made to play in Google Chrome, The Wilderness Downtown starts off asking for the address of your childhood home and then becomes in an incredible audio and visual experience that uses choreographed browser windows of varying sizes popping open or closing and displays animations of digital flying birds flying from one window to the next and a pair of feet running along a street. All of that builds up to a climax when images of your street and childhood home are blended into the video, creating moments of surprise, delight and nostalgia. Self-reflection and sentimental thoughts are triggered near the end with pause allows you to write a message to your younger self, after which animated trees sprout all along your old street.

Using HTML5 technology, the collaborators have created a technologically impressive and creatively piece of work to create an awe-inspiring audio/visual experience.

Clockwise from top-left: Golden-Breasted Waxbill; Indian Blue Peacock; Buff-Bellied Hummingbird; Red-Throated Sunbird.

More pictures on Flickr.

Of course, this type of creative happening also brings out spontaneous activities unplanned by the city: buskers with fire and chainsaws, collectives encouraging group gatherings in the middle of the street, and my favourite, an awesome 8-bit musician by the name of deadbeatblast performing electronic music using the sounds from playing GameBoy and Nintendo games.

Unfortunately in the 6 hour span I was out, I didn’t get the chance to see all the exhibits on my must-see list and completely had to skip out on an entire zone. It’s become a victim of its own success — meaning huge lineups and massive crowding. Some projects had up to 75 minute waiting times, such as the fantastic Space Becomes the Instrument (but quite worth it in the end.) In total I probably waited around 2.5 hours in lineups, which was a horribly inefficient way to spend my time.

Below maps the highlights of my evening from 10pm to 4am.