100 Interesting Things
by Schneider, Carsten
25 November 2009
in Just Interesting
Visual Acoustics
by Schneider, Carsten
24 November 2009
in Just Interesting
I hope this comes to a cinema (or DVD drive) near me soon: Visual Acoustics - The Modernism of Jules Shulman.
Grace
by Schneider, Carsten
21 November 2009
in Just Interesting
Grace, the latest project of Michael Hecken, is a new type of electric bike, combining the light-weight design of a mountain bike with the performance of a scooter. Top speed is 45km/h in the street-legal version, range between 30 and 50km, and it only takes one hour to fully charge.
Grace bikes are made to order, hand-crafted in Biesenthal, just outside Berlin, where Michael also hosts the annual ART Biesenthal.
Update: Join us for an exclusive making-of presentation, December 1st, at our monthly "Talk about the Weather".
Machinarium
by Schneider, Carsten
19 November 2009
in Just Interesting
Machinarium is a new point-and-click adventure by Amanita Design. Following in the footsteps of predecessors Samorost 1 and 2, your goal is to guide a character through a number of beautifully illustrated and animated scenes. Eurogamer has a more detailed review here.
Best in Class
The Red Bull Soapbox Racer wins the "Best in Class" Award at the 2009 Interactive Media Awards. Congrats, Less Rain!
Gold at London International Awards
by Schneider, Carsten
5 November 2009
in Just Interesting
Partner agency Less Rain wins gold today at the London International Awards in the Online Games category, with the Red Bull Soapbox Racer. Sapient, Tribal DDB and Dentsu were left in the dust.
The Soapbox Racer is currently also shortlisted for a British Interactive Media Award.
Fabio Viale
by Schneider, Carsten
30 October 2009
in Just Interesting
You will find Fabio Viale's work all the more impressive when you realize he doesn't use Styrofoam at all, but marble. Found at Today & Tomorrow.
code: TiWiKi
by Schneider, Carsten
28 October 2009
in Mobile
Fellow designer Gunnar Bauer, Aline Mandai, and Thomas and Thibaut Rocher created this interactive urban installation for the Tokyo Designtide 2009.
Hundreds of little handcrafted TiWiKi figures have been deployed across Shibuya. Finders can photograph, collect and release them elsewhere in town/the world. Their journeys get mapped at the code: TiWiKi site.
More on the TiWiKi facebook page.
Interactive TV Interface Study
by Schneider, Carsten
5 February 2009
in Interactive TV Interface Study
Excerpt from a fully functional interactive prototype for a new interactive TV service. Developed for a Japanese electronics manufacturer as an internal concept presentation.
This example shows how content in our prototype is navigated in 3D space. The perspective communicates the user's position inside the content - the closer one gets to the edges of it, the more tilted it appears. Elements that do not fit onto the screen appear stacked at the end of each row, to give a better impression of it's actual length.
A low contrast night version is complimented by a high contrast day version.
The full prototype included a complete set of features, including EPG, sharing and voting functionality, and more, which we cannot show in full here.
Spherox, BBC
by Schneider, Carsten
1 February 2009
in Spherox, BBC
Video-Trailer
Spherox, im ganzen Universum gefeierter Held und Bekämpfer des Bösen, möchte sich zur Ruhe setzen. Mit seinem - manchmal etwas vorlauten - Raumschiff Sidereal 300 erkundet er einige in Frage kommende Planeten: Die glühend heisse Fast-Food-Welt Overica, das technik-verrückte Populia, Touristenfalle Maropa, und Tiefkühlplanet Polaria.
Anflug auf Overica
Sperox dockt an einem Donut-Restaurant an
Overica-Level
Während der Suche nach einer passenden Immobilie hilft Spherox - ganz Held des Universums - nebenbei den Bewohnern der Billig-Lohn-Planeten bei ihren Examen, um deren berufliche Perspektiven zu verbessern.
Spherox hilft einem Bewohner auf Maropa
Das Spiel Spherox wurde für die BBC als Begleitmaterial zum Schulunterricht entwickelt. Spherox hilft so nicht nur intergalaktischen Fast-Food-Köchen, sondern auch konkret den Spielern, 14 - 16-jährigen Schülern, für ihre GCSE-Examen zu lernen und bereits gelerntes zu wiederholen.
Destination Death, BBC
Video-Trailer
Der Reporter Paul Hacket kommt per Zufall einer Verschwörung auf die Spur - Vampire versuchen, die Kontrolle über einen Flughafen zu erlangen. Ihr Plan ist, Reisende zu infizieren, um so das Vampir-Virus rasend schnell über den ganzen Globus zu verbreiten.
Paul erkundet den Flughafen
In diesem Point-and-Click-Adventure schlüpft der Spieler in die Rolle von Paul. Beim erkunden des Flughafens trifft er auf Angestellte, die es zum Kampf gegen die Vampire zu mobilisieren gilt.
"Destination Death" wurde in Kooperation mit der BBC entwickelt, und dient zur Vertiefung von Sprachkenntnissen bei 14 - 16-jährigen. Das Szenario des Flughafens erlaubt, Alltagssituationen wie Einkauf, Arzt- oder Restaurantbesuch in verschiedenen Sprachen nachzuspielen.
Die schaurige Vampirgeschichte sorgt für eine weniger alltägliche Dramatik. Sie orientiert sich visuell an Comics und Filmen für Erwachsene und wirkt somit besonders anziehend auf Jugendliche, die herkömmlichen Lernmitteln wenig Interesse entgegen bringen.
Green Browsing with ECO2
ECO2 is a concept for a desktop software, that automatically measures your computing habits, e.g. how many servers you connect to, which online worlds you explore, or how many print-outs you make. It then calculates your electronic CO2 footprint.
Your footprint is visualised directly on your desktop as a slowly greying and finally decaying landscape. Linked to a donation system, you can offset your electronic CO2 footprint and turn your desktop back into a bright, clean environment, while simultaneously trees in the real world are planted.
Desktop Widget / Air Application
CO2-calculator
The desktop application can be minimised to widget form; or extended into a full CO2-calculator to offset all your household's CO2-emissions.
ECO2 was developed as a self-initiated project. It won first place at the "IID Green Day", a competition in Tokyo around "green ideas". Our presentation was based on the idea that virtual avatars produce very real CO2-emissions, too.
