Parallel Worlds: how VR and AR became artists’ new canvas, and brands followed suit
Snapchat’s big reveal, however, was quickly overshadowed by news that artist Sebastian Errazuriz and his studio Cross Lab had made a replica Balloon Dog in AR and virtually vandalised it as “a symbolic stance against corporate invasion.” The critical gesture smartly asked us to question how companies are managing virtual public space, but it was also yet another reminder of how artists are typically always a few steps ahead of corporations when it comes to innovative design.
This is particularly evident when it comes to virtual reality and augmented reality, which artists have been experimenting with for decades. Now that headsets are more accessible and companies release freely available technologies such as ARKit and Poly that make 3D creation easier, VR and AR are more mainstream than ever. It’s clear that countless brands and artists are using VR and AR for the sake of being part of this movement, but many others, thankfully, continue to create apps that tinker with reality in truly inventive and impressive ways.
One memorable, corporation-produced VR app that promotes experimentation in digital arts is the Museum of Gif Art (MoGA), which Giphy launched in March to foreground individual artists. The first VR museum dedicated to gif art, MoGA presents a mesmerising way to experience animated images, transforming them from flat, looping files into seemingly tangible objects that invite examination. Like any physical museum, it also hosts regular exhibitions throughout the year with a revolving roster of participants, so artists are encouraged to explore how gifs can function in VR.
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Steven Spielberg on how longtime collaborators helped push ‘The Post’ on the fast track
Sound designer Gary Rydstrom
“Gary wanted us to record as many authentic sounds as possible on location, so for example we had microphones hidden all over the linotype machines. Gary supervised our New York sound crew to get all the details to cut into the film.”
Editors Michael Kahn, Sarah Broshar
“Mike and Sarah worked together; they were not cutting in separate rooms. I think the main challenge was the pacing of the entire narrative. Mike has a huge intuition for pacing, so he was less concerned about any individual scene but [more about] how one scene gives over to the next. When we looked at the whole movie, we were able to make important decisions about what to shorten, what to delete, what to elongate.”
Co-producer, AD Adam Somner
“I could not have made this film without Adam. He knew the strain we were under, with a limited time and resources. Adam held the entire company together. He is the greatest assistant director, co-producer and production manager I’ve ever worked with. Adam and his team of assistants allowed me to make this movie in the time frame I was handed. I owe him a lot.”
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Move over Netflix, DIS is your new must-have streaming service
Now, DIS has launched its next chapter. With the awareness that “tools have changed”, but driven by the same freewheeling force, the art collective has tapped into online streaming, and last week it unveiled its own video platform. Committed to fueling debate on the present and future of art, culture, and technology, the new initiative promises to offer content for everybody. This is what the edutainment of the future looks like, so far: a snappy talk about author Chantal Mouffe’s theory of democracy by a man with no head, an otherworldly cooking show involving Putin and french fries, and a video that explores the myth of the American Dream through refurbishing furniture. Up next, a pioneering children’s telly series that teaches kids all about the “machinery of our techno-capitalist world”, and a video-essay by artist Aria Dean addressing the representation of blackness within meme culture.
Ultimately, the goal is to diffuse knowledge in new and exciting ways. “Even when we truly try to get informed,” Boyle claims, “the playing field is muddied by pundits, trolls, conservatives, radicals, or by jargon, fake news, leaked emails, racist comment threads, and ‘alternative facts’.” DIS is out to combat that, setting a soft focus on seemingly disparate themes that intertwine, connect the dots between micro-trends and macro-culture, and provide viewers with vital knowledge amidst the sheer glut of information that defines the current media landscape. Made for “the curious cyborg, the overextended, the lifelong learner”, DIS will be releasing new episodes every Sunday. Besides, even the usual ad section before the start of each episode is made of quirky animations, sparing us from the typical hyper-targeted cringe-worthy commercials.
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As Facebook changes its feed, advertisers see video ambitions
Facebook, which together with Google dominates the online advertising industry, has emphasized to ad agencies that the shift will mostly affect the visibility of publishers that have been able to reach readers for free through News Feed’s automated placement of their posts. It won’t, the company said, affect the sponsored posts that businesses pay to show people as they scroll.
But several advertising executives have speculated that the new rules could ultimately fuel the social network’s long-held video ambitions.
While Facebook said that it wanted people to spend less time “passively” viewing content, including videos, it also extolled the robust discussions that often accompany live video streams. And last week it said it was testing a product, called Watch Party, that will allow groups to watch non-live videos together.
More generally, video content is “among the most shared and commented-upon content on the web,” said Mr. Winkler, who expects videos will now be given priority over text posts on Facebook.
Facebook is changing its site after a year in which the company came under governmental scrutiny for its role in spreading misinformation and hate speech. Separately, the company said on Friday that it would highlight high-quality news on the site by allowing people to rank news sources that they saw as the most credible and trustworthy.
“You can think of the Watch tab as Facebook trying to have its own YouTube inside of it,” he added.
“It’s interesting to see what that might turn into for the type of content Facebook is buying,” he said. “It’s going to pretty radically shift the type of video that is populating the platform.”
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Broadcast advertising is no longer king as ideas are more important than ever
Think back to 1998. To produce filmed advertising of any length was a massive undertaking. It required the intense efforts of around 100 people across many disciplines and organizations and a lot of planning. And to get the thing seen by anyone (alas, there was no “just post it on YouTube” option) cost a lot of money.
All this personnel and expense created an infrastructure of heft and gravitas around the work, and to some degree, limited how fast something could be produced. And for decades, to a non-trivial number of brands, broadcast was the centerpiece of their marketing efforts.
So what happens when that centerpiece shrinks or goes away entirely? We’re finding out.
Because it’s become easier to make stuff, more forgettable stuff is getting made and a lot of that stuff is forgettable because it lacks idea and craft.
Without the anchoring mechanism of a big, complicated, hard thing to make at the center of your marketing efforts like broadcast advertising, seduction is all too easy by the speed and efficiency of creating said forgettable stuff, while skimping on idea and craft.
The bottom line: despite all of the digital advances that have made producing work faster and cheaper, and despite the ability to get that work seen for next to nothing, it’s still as hard as it ever was to produce great ideas — the stuff that makes brands matter. And we should never forget that. As David Ogilvy said, “Unless your campaign is built around a great idea, it will flop.”
The six-decades reign of the 30-second spot is officially over. All hail the idea.
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