Nokia hacks itself

This new work from Nokia and Wiedens is an example of niche DIY/hacking culture becoming mainstream. "Hacking" products from furniture to Google has been on the up the last couple of years, but it tends to remain unsupported or discouraged by the brands themselves. It is arguably a dangerous move to suggest the best thing about your product is that people can improve themselves, but nonetheless interesting to see from such a global brand. Clearly Nokia know they need to do something interesting to regain the momentum from Apple and Google.

There are a series of short films on their site.

Constant Creation- Friday Memes

Two internet memes have spring up this week, and they are both great examples of how rapidly the internet will jump onto an idea and start changing it and remixing it. First there was this brilliant news clip, which has not only been given the obligatory autotune treatment but has also been played by an orchester, all within 2 weeks.

Second is the slew of Youtube, Twitter, Ebay movies parodying the forthcoming "The Social Network". Remixes happen for any movie, but the combination of it being both a movie and about an online site seems to have captured the online communities imagination. It is a timely reminder of the speed and creativity of the online community.
Enjoy the videos- good Friday afternoon viewing.

The Original


Youtube came next


Twitter


And my favourite- Ebay


And if I have piqued your interest in memes then have a look at Know Your Meme, and go to the excellent Kitten Camp.

Lexus Dark Ride- Awesome but why?

I just came across this digital experience for Lexus over at Digital Buzz Blog. It includes a lot of very cool bits and pieces, like facebook connect, webcam and microphone integration and pannable film shots. It is by the consistently awesome Stink Digital who were behind the Philips Carousel work, Shelter's House of Cards and a load of other stuff which it is worth checking out.

It is slick, involving and it has got people talking already, though I can't help but wonder whether throwing money at making some cool online thing is really the best way to solve the client's business problem. But then again it is fucking cool.

Go here for the full experience.

Technology catching up with our brains

It is easy to become a bit of a neophiliac when discussing digital trends. Every new site seems to be a march forwards, and consequently the death of the old way of doing things. Facebook is the death of myspace, Twitter is the death of Facebook, Foursquare is the death of Twitter. This "Video killed the Radio Star" thinking ignores the behaviour which has remained unchanged. Recently I have noticed a number of parallels between seemingly digital behaviours and much older expressions.
 
Take Mashups- the remixing of two different sources has been used in music for years, but only recently did I discover the first video mashup was supposedly done in 1987. "Apocalypse Pooh" has since achieved cult status, and the end product is indistinguishable from a lot of modern mashups, even though its production was done on VHS.

Another might be multi-layered, interactive story-telling. Television shows are more complex than ever before, from the multi-layered narratives of 24 or The Wire to immersive videogames such as the forthcoming Heavy Rain. However, though modern media has made this easier to accomplish, and therefore more prevalent, there were attempts to make older media more interactive. There were interactive books- you may remember those "choose your own adventure" books where you rolled a dice to determine how the story would progress. Massive online multiplayer games have their spiritual origin in the hugely popular boardgame ‘Dungeons and Dragons’, where pixels and controllers were replaced by cards and plastic.

Lastly there is Chat-roulette (link to a video)- the digital discussion topic of the hour, seemingly representative of everything that is unique and unusual about the internet. However it is essentially an updated version of a party line, an open telephone line where callers are all connected to each other. That too became used largely by college kids at parties to tap into surreal and anarchic conversations.

In each case the internet has not created new behaviour, but made easier already existent behaviour. Whereas making a book interactive was difficult because the media was never meant to be, the internet was constructed with this in mind. As a final, interesting aside, the interactivity we have become used to with the web, seems to be pushing us to create more interaction in other forms of media and offline: the post-digital trend identified by Russel Davies.

UPDATE: Another great example has just been posted by the fantastic @brainpicker. Before Post Secret and We feel fine, there was The Apology Line, a telephone hotline where people could unburden themselves anonymously.

Mash my mashup right up

A cursory glance over our previous posts will be enough evidence anyone could need that the word "mashup" is overused. We are clearly guilty of this, but its abuse is widespread and is a result of a once niche trend becoming mainstream, without the language catching up. In fact it may describe the dominant way people use the internet now. The lack of a proper definition means it is in danger of losing all meaning, and you have to fear that we start calling Chefs, creators of "food mashups" and artists; "paint mashups".

That said however, we will allow ourselves to use it once more in relation to this interesting video on the evolution of mashups (via the fantastic AltNyttErFarlig and Threebillion). He argues that remixes are  becoming a platform for collective expression.  This certainly seems true, though it is also clear that certain platforms are more appropriate for this creativity.

This was true of the David Cameron posters, which themselves were not created to be endlessly copied and remixed, but became so when placed in the context of the mydavidcameron site, and their creation was made simple. It is also true for perhaps the most successful internet meme of all time, and a growing obsession of mine- Lolcats. Their seemingly inexplicable popularity becomes understandable once you see them as a framework for individual creativity and collective collaboration.

Here are a few examples:

Lolcats- weird, surreal, but getting 1.5. million hits a day
MyDavidCameron- Mainstream mashup
Bubble Project- One of the simplest platforms, consisting only of a speech bubble.
Know your meme- The encyclopedic collection of memes

Mashup my Street

The news that google will be selling outdoor ad space inside Streetview got us thinking about the google maps mashups we had seen. There have been hundreds of interesting uses of maps, but streetview seems to have been underused so far. We see potential in this street art project, we enjoyed a bit of Wally spotting (Waldo?) and the Editors album launch was fantastic, but we want to see more. So here is a list of streetview mashups we hope to see this year.

1. Off Road - The Olympic slopes have the streetview treatment, but what about supermarkets, countryside walks and slums.
2. Storylines - The ability to “explore” streetview as you would the real world means clues could be left, mysteries solved and “criminals” tracked down.
3. Race - Why race in the real world when you can do so in a virtual one? Compete to navigate across London, free from the fumes and road rage.
4. Foursquare mashup - We have seen it with tweets but why not with the “twitter of 2010”.

We are sure there are many more. The challenge is set.

Political Mashup

If there is one thing which is already clear about a 2010 election campaign, it is that the public will be more involved than ever before. On the one hand this may mean campaigning and engaging in sensible debate, however it is just as likely to mean mashup culture and remixing.

There was the Cassette Boy remix of Nick Griffin for example, making him sound only marginally less ridiculous than in real life, the Soundbox of political speeches, and most recently the My David Cameron site. All are lessons to politicians that there is a community of people who need to be engaged in different ways. They are also a lesson that the most sensible debate can be remixed, and out of context becomes hilarious.