Burning Man Festival 2012

Following on from last years post on the Burning Man Festival, this years gathering is now well under way in Black Rock City, Nevada. The Burning Man project was started in 1986 with humble beginnings and has grown steadily since, now being recognised as a global event. A combination of art installations, social experimentation and radical self expression this years themed event Fertility 2.0 is expected to reach its capacity of 50,000.

Anyone lucky (or brave) enough to be travelling to this years event can download useful survival guides from the official Burning Man website.

For anyone who cant make the festival you can see some great photos of Burning Man 2012 from Neil Girling of The Blight  on his Flickr feed here or check out some of the highlights below:

You can also check out galleries from previous events here.

Related Links:

Story via Laughing Squid

Burning Man Festival 2011

The Blight 

Snapshots Of Burning Man 2012

www.sovibrant.co.uk

Sight - Short Film On The Dangers Of Augmented Reality

With the advent of new augmented reality projects such as Google Glass, filmmakers Eran May-Raz and Daniel Lazo have produced a short film speculating on the possible uses of this technology and the potential dangers it may hold for our future.

The film focuses on the character of Patrick who appears to live a fairly spartan existence in non de script apartment. We quickly learn however that Patrick is almost completely immersed in an augmented reality/ virtual existence. The blank walls in his apartment are filled with apps, trophies & artwork that are visible through his digitised contact lenses.

Whilst some of the applications of this technology had me geeking out (for example the awesome fruit ninja cooking sequence), it can be seen that the constant distractions begin to impede on human to human social interaction. This is particularly evident where Patrick uses a constant flow of on the fly data to manipulate his date but suffers from awkward pauses within the flow of conversation.

If you can ignore some of the clunky acting the film has an important message to portray and I believe it strikes the right balance between technological speculation of the (not too distant) future, and the dangers that unimpeded technological advancement may hold for the human race.

You can catch the video on YouTube here or watch the embedded video below:

Related Links:

Project Glass

Sight Systems

Mashable

www.sovibrant.co.uk

Bill Hicks - Kinetic Typography Animation

I love this kinetic typography animation from azzurevision The subject is one of my all time favourite and most inspirational speeches from the late comedian Bill Hicks. The world would be a much better place if we could just follow some of this sound advice. Peace.

Its Just A Ride

Check out more of azzurevision's kinetic typography animations of iconic speeches here.

Artist of the Week : Fausto De Martini

Good morning readers

Today we bring you a 3D artist from Huntington Beach, USA. Frausto De Martin has worked in the gaming industry for a number of years now and has made a name for himself creating some of the most realistic creatures and characters in 3D using software like 3ds Max and Mudbox. 

The software aside his actual designs are inspiring. The way his concepts mix organic anatomy with the hard surfaces of nuts, bolts and metal is brilliant.

If you are interested in learning more about Fausto please visit his Gnomon workshop page where he is planning to do a live workshop.

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/live/

Enjoy

Sovibrant / Artist of the Week

Tron - Syd Mead - Architecture Film & Design

1982 was a good year for sci-fi and one man who helped shape two of the most forward thinking films that year was Syd Mead. We have already featured Syd Mead as 'Artist of the week' two years ago and I recently blogged about Blade Runner, one of his landmark films.

The other film Syd Mead worked on which aired that year was Tron, written and directed by Steven Lisberger. It stars Jeff Bridges as a computer programmer who is transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer. Triple-III, the CG pioneers of Westworld, used a computer that only had 2Mb of memory, which is about 1/2000th of the capacity of your average PC today.

In a post modern age of remakes and sequels it’s good to remember a time when cinema was trying to be cutting edge and ground breaking. We definitely need more people in cinema like Syd Mead who describes himself as a "visual futurist". There's no point trying to remake a classic Joseph Kosinski, (Tron Legacy) these ideas are more than 30 years old now.

Tron - Syd Mead - Architecture Film and Design

www.sovibrant.co.uk 

How times have changed...

Social media has a huge effect on life today. Whether it's Facebook telling you what our glorious Olympic athletes are up to with their month off or celebrities modestly posting about themselves on Twitter, whether we like it or not social technology is having a bigger impact on people's lives than ever before and bringing people from all over the planet closer together.

There is one particularly exciting adventure that social networking has had an enormous role in connecting us to.  In the wake of Olympic fever it has, in my opinion, been greatly underestimated.

The story begins way back on July 20th 1969 as families around the globe sat in their living rooms, gathered round their tiny black and white TV's waiting for the moment when Apollo 11 carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins would land on the moon. This event, at the time, was the most highly televised moment in history.

On Earth: The moment Apollo 11 landed

On The Moon: The moment Apollo 11 landed 

Nowadays sitting in the living room with your family watching in awe as the biggest moments in history unfold is a thing of the past. The accessibility offered to the world by social media and social technology has made it easy to see the greatest moments of our time happen from a wide range of devices, at any time of day, on the move and in an enormous range of geographic locations.Below are a few examples of how recently some of the greatest pioneering feats of human endeavour have been made readily available to a global audience.

Last week Felix Baumgartner base-jumped from the edge of space back down to earth and you could watch it live on Facebook.

Three weeks ago our world finally landed a fully functioning robot on another world, this robot "Curiosity" tweets photos ever day from 34.8 million miles away back to the NASA app on your phone.

And using the NASA app on my own phone, I can live stream the many cameras on board the International Space Station which is currently in orbit around our planet.

Its amazing how technology and social networking has opened the doors for us to gain access to more information than we could ever have imagined. And all at the click of a button or a swipe of the finger. If you consider the what the reaction of that family huddled around a low resolution, grainy, black and white television back in 1969, may have been to you walking in with a retina display iPad showing a full HD, astronauts-eye-view of the moon landing. Then, for kicks, pulling out a mobile phone that is streaming pictures from 34.8 million miles away. Surprise is probably not the word...

How times have changed.

Google Offices, London

Google have continued their tradition of creating offices for their staff that are anything but traditional. The latest addition is 160,000 sq ft set within Renzo Piano's St. Giles Court mixed-use development in London's Covent Garden.

In an attempt to keep Google's staff happily engaged, the environment appears to include every design idea that design giants Penson have ever dreamt of, resulting in an interior that looks a little bit like the Big Brother house.

This may come across as jealousy from a designer who didn't work on the scheme. And that's because it is. Let's face it, every designer would love to work on a project like this.

Despite some dodgy areas, including one that looks like Vera Duckworth's front room, it no doubt fits the brief:

SoVibrant www.SoVibrant.co.uk