Hasta La Ideas

UVA’s High Arctic installation at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich invites visitors to explore the disappearing landscape of the frozen north: one of three new digital works at the museum that include projects from The Light Surgeons and Kin

The National Maritime Museum opened its new Sammy Ofer Wing last week. The £35 million project creates a new entrance to the museum as well as a large temporary exhibition space in the basement. That space is currently occupied by High Arctic, “a monument to the Arctic past set 100 years in the future,” according to its creators United Visual Artists.

The installation consists of 3000 columns, each bearing the name of a Svalbard glacier which will supposedly disappear due to climate change. Visitors use a UV torch to activate the names and a series of reactive projections in the 820 square metre space. In addition, poems by Nick Drake tell the story of our relationship with the Arctic since the first explorers went there in the 4th century.

It was created in response to a visit to Svalbard by UVA’s Matt Clark in September 2010 with the arts and climate science foundation Cape Farewell. Clark sailed around the region on a 100-year old schooner in the company of various artists, musicians and scientists (for more on Cape Farewell’s work, see here).

High Arctic is on until January 13, 2012.

Elsewhere in the new wing are two permanent digital installations. The Light Surgeons‘ Voyagers: The Wave acts as a kind of title sequence for the museum, displaying 300 metatagged images from its archive along with text that alludes to its key themes across a structure of 26 triangular facets and a ‘Puffersphere‘ display.

The overall effect is akin to something that the Eames or perhaps Will Burtin may have created for some 1960s expo (by no means a bad thing). The project is explained in more detail here.

Also seeking to get visitors interested in the museum archives in the Compass Lounge, created by Kin. Here visitors can use a giant trackball to scroll through themed collections of 4000 images of naval uniforms, paintings, boats, medals, coins and flags (personally I would have liked some captions with these). In the ‘plan-chest’ area, drawers contain touchscreens via which visitors can access the most searched for and most viewed images in the museum’s collections.

There is also the Compass Card, a credit card-sized piece of paper bearing a unique barcode. As visitors move through the museum they can ‘collect’ objects that interest them by inserting the card into a series of special units and stamping it. The visitor will then be sent an e-book containing images of the objects.

All of which gives what was previously one of the less exciting options among London’s competing museums a much-needed digital shot in the arm.

High Arctic photographs: John Adrian

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Santa takes a break from his promotional duties with a rival in Pepsi’s latest ad

Ad agency creatives and designers have long bemoaned the influence of focus group research on their work. But perhaps those days will soon be gone

In a recent interview with AdAge, Maasimo d’Amore, CEO for PepsiCo Beverages Americas, stated that “we don’t consumer-research ads anymore. The best consumer research is the social network. So we develop new ads using the best judgment of our team and the agency. We put them on the air and for the first 24 hours we track what’s being said. … If needed, we go back in the editing room, and fix it.”

It’s a little bit like the Hollywood test screening approach whereby endings or even characters can be changed after a film is made (although before it is on general release) if they do not go down well with audiences.

D’Amore seems to be suggesting that Pepsi will re-edit or perhaps even re-shoot commercials if they get a kicking on Twitter or Facebook but that they back the judgement of their agency to get things right upfront.

And if a company as big as Pepsi is doing this, others will surely follow.

CR in Print

Thanks for reading the CR Blog but, if you’re not also getting the printed magazine, we think you are missing out. This month’s bumper July issue contains 60 pages of great images in our Illustration Annual plus features on Chris Milk, Friends With You and the Coca-Cola archive.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine and get Monograph.

Eric Hu’s astonishing 17-foot-tall poster tribute to 1960’s architectural group Archigram is built on a custom typeface with elements of Archigram’s body of work built on top. Although the final product is not immediately readable, this is perhaps intended to capture the way that buildings themselves are not completely “readable” at once, but often require stepping back to understand and comprehend. There’s lots of layering and fastidious detailing to discover as you pore over the poster.

Full poster after the break.

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From the good people who brought you the Webbys comes The Lovie Awards, ‘honouring the best of the European internet’

Set up by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, whose Webby awards have succeeded in bringing together the many diverse strands of ‘digital’, the Lovies have categories for mobile apps, websites, online film and video and interactive advertising and media.

Judges annouonced so far include Wired editor David Rowan, Tweetdeck founder Ian Dodsworth, CR columnist and Wieden + Kennedy digital creative director Andy Cameron and Janus Friis, co-founder of Skype.

Details here

Amnesty TV launches this Friday online. Created by a team that includes producers and writers from News Wipe and the Inbetweeners, as well as the illustrators Robert Thompson and Modern Toss, it aims to “use popular satire and entertainment to reach grass roots audiences”. The new channel features an identity created by Anthony Burrill.

The channel will be hosted online on YouTube, and, according to the advance press info, will be a mix of documentary features with campaign stunts and satirical comedy. The aim is to particularly engage with the “online generation”, which judging by the irreverent, pop styling of the trailer below, is presumably a younger audience than Amnesty has reached out to in the past.

Amnesty TV has put together an in-house team of creative writers, filmmakers and digital artists to create the shows, which will appear every fortnight on the Amnesty TV online channel. The aim is to produce approximately 30 minutes of content a month, with each episode given a different theme. Alongside the aforementioned contributors are writers and directors from Smack The Pony, Big Train, and Shoreditch Tw*t, so the chances are there should be lots of laughs to be found on the channel alongside Amnesty’s more serious messages.

Burrill’s characteristic graphic style and use of slogans can be seen in the trailer and also in an ad for the channel, shown above. The logo for the channel, shown top, incorporates Amnesty’s classic candle mark.

The first programme will appear on Amnesty TV this Friday (July 15). For more info on the channel, visit amnestytv.co.uk.

CR in Print

Thanks for reading the CR Blog but, if you’re not also getting the printed magazine, we think you are missing out. This month’s bumper July issue contains 60 pages of great images in our Illustration Annual plus features on Chris Milk, Friends With You and the Coca-Cola archive.

If you would like to buy this issue and are based in the UK, you can search for your nearest stockist here. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 292 3703 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine and get Monograph.