Hasta La Ideas

Calvin Harris performs his latest single, Ready For The Weekend, on a giant human synthesizer made of, er, pretty ladies…

Take 15 bikini-clad lovelies, paint them in special ink and put them in a dance studio with special conductive pads on the floor and, hey presto, you have the Humanthesizer.

To promote Calvin Harris‘s new single, Sony Music creatives Phil Clandillon and Steve Milbourne (who you may remember were responsible for the AC/DC ASCII Excel video last year) decided to use Bare Conductive, a technology developed by RCA Industrial Design and Engineering masters students Bibi Nelson, Becky Pilditch, Isabel Lizardi and Matt Johnson. Bare Conductive is “skin-safe, conductive ink”. When painted on the skin, it allows a current to be passed through the body without causing an electric shock.

“We saw the technology on a blog initially, and then invited the RCA guys in to demo it to us,” says Clandillon. “We asked if they would be up for doing a project together, and then it was a matter of waiting for the right artist / idea to come along.”

The Humanthesizer consists of 34 pads on the floor which have been painted with the conductive ink and connected to a computer via some custom electronics created by the RCA’s Matt Johnson. The performers stand on the pads, and touch each other on the hands or body to complete a circuit and trigger a sound.

Harris, his hands painted with the ink, played the main keyboard line and effects by interacting with a row of eight girls. The rhythmic portions of the track were played by seven dancers performing a carefully choreographed routine.

Clandillon explains how it all works in this video

This is the homepage of the site for W139, an Amsterdam-based exhibition and production space for contemporary art. All the elements sit on a trolley that is wheeled around the space and photographed from above

The installion, known as the WEX machine, looks like this. It photographs itself regulalry through each day. Each new image is then uploaded online and becomes the website’s homepage.

The various elements on the trolley provide some of the functionality of a traditional site: click on the screen on the left and information about the space and its activities can be read.

Users can interact with the printer on the right: choose a file from your desktop and the printer will output it, for real, on the trolley in the gallery. When the site next updates, your image will appear in the pile of pages next to the printer.

The large mirrored ball reflects whatever is on display in the part of the gallery that the trolley has been temporarily parked in.

Here it is during the website-launch performance. And here it is being made

The WEX machine was created by Roel Wouters (one of our Creative Futures from last year) and Erik Borra. “The WEX Machine has two different faces: a physical installation within W139 itself, and virtually on the web,” they explain. “Visitors, whether online or offline, can contribute to both installation and site. Visitors to the site can upload a file and print it on the printer at the installation. If the website is not used for a while via the touch screen it will start playing all by itself, generated by pathways (clicks) chosen by the site’s other online and offline users. By later playing these clicks as a movie, the visitors’ online behaviour is used as user generated and curated content within the installation and website.”

The idea is rooted in American scientist Vannevar Bush’s concept of the memex, the theoretical proto-hypertext computer system he proposed in 1945 which some claim as a conceptual forerunner to the web. Bush saw the memex “as an electromechanical device that an individual could use to read a large self-contained research library, and add or follow associative trails of links and notes created by that individual, or recorded by other researchers”.

The WEX Machine is a project by Roel Wouters & Erik Borra, a Vincent Lindeboom production, developed together with the staff members of W139 and Rene Bakker.

Mug Shooter is the latest bit of digital fun from Yugo Nakamura’s studio, Tha

As Tha explain on the site, Mug Shooter is a screensaver that takes a mug shot of you, using your webcam, and shares it with the world. Move around, and the camera morphs your expression. This video explains all

The Mug Shooter is being sold for $15 by Tha through its SCR venture – a ‘label’ through which Tha releases interactive artworks and ideas developed by the studio, thus generating revenue from its R&D work.

See our feature on Yugo Nakamura here

Click, CR’s conference on digital creativity, is about to embark on something of a world tour. Well, three continents anyway

For the first time, we are taking Click to Asia this year. Click Singapore is on August 18 at Dempsey House. Speakers include:

Benjy Choo, Creative Director, Kilo Studio (Singapore)

Johnny Tan, Creative Director, BBH (China)

Morihiro Harano, Creative Director, Drill Inc. (Tokyo)

Tom Sacchi, Partner, Unit 9 (UK)

Richard Bleasdale, Regional CEO Asia Pacific, Iris Nation

Mateo Eaton, Partner in Invention, Mindshare Singapore

Dirk Eschenbacher, Executive Creative Director/Managing Partner Asia Pacific, Tribal DDB

Jean Lin, Founder of wwwins Consulting, Greater China & Global Chief Strategy Officer, Isobar

Mattias Hansson, CEO, Hyper Island

Sean Dinsmore, Creative Director, Factory (Shanghai)

To book a ticket, please go here

Click Singapore will be followed on October 1 by our New York event. As last year, Click New York will be held at the Art Directors Club. The day will be chaired by Michael Lebowitz of Big Spaceship. Speakers include:

Chloe Gottlieb, Executive Creative Director, Interaction Design, R/GA

Rob Reilly, Partner/Co-Executive Creative Director, Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Patrick Burgoyne, Editor, Creative Review

Lars Bastholm, Chief Digital Creative Officer, Ogilvy

Benjamin Palmer, CEO/Co-Founder, The Barbarian Group

Tom Ajello, Founder/Creative Director, Poke New York

Vivian Rosenthal, Co-Founder, Tronic Studio

Vincent Morisset, Web-Friendly Director, AATOAA

Jason Zada, Director, Tool of North America

Gareth Kay, Head of Planning, Modernista!

Ty Montague, Co-President, Chief Creative Officer, JWT North America

Khoi Vinh, Design Director, NYtimes.com

Tickets can be reserved here

And finally, Click London will be at the Soho Theatre on November 12. More details here

If you have any queries about any of the Click events please contact s.davies@centaur.co.uk

According to mediauk.com, CR is now the fourth most popular UK magazine on Twitter, with 11,500+ followers. If you’re on Twitter, and haven’t yet signed up to follow our tweets, you can do so, here. Our Neil does a fine job linking to some very interesting things and the best bits from the CR blog.