BigShinyThing

Three years ago, Docteur Gecko found a new way for ‘hacking’ advertising that you find in bus shelters and his modifications can only be seen during the night when the signs become illuminated. Dark.

Via Wooster with thanks to King Adz for the tip.

Anne Pigalle’s polaroids could teach Dita Von Teese a thing or two about the true art of burlesque.

Born out of a project to entice back a former lover, her photos portray the artist in a series of erotically charged poses. Primarily, the polaroids act as snap shots of performance, but Pigalle then returns and intricately decorates each image until they become reminiscent of feminine religious icons.

Image used with kind permission of the artist. More images are viewable on annepigalle.com and at the Michael Hoppen Gallery website.

[And you might want to check out her classic ZTT album -- Everything Could Be So Perfect].

Not so, says Mr Gates. According to the Wall Street Journal Microsoft is planning to buy in-game advertising start up Massive. According to sources quoted in the article, the deal is thought to be valued between at $200 million to $400 million:

Microsoft’s planned purchase highlights a belief among game-industry executives that videogames could become a large new medium for advertising. Major media companies have similarly begun to increase their investments in game-related media to ensure they stay abreast of consumers’ tastes. This week, Viacom Inc. paid $102 million to acquire Xfire Inc., a start-up that operates an instant-messaging service that connects gamers over the Internet. Last September, News Corp. agreed to pay $650 million to acquire IGN Entertainment Inc., a company that operates a collection of Web sites for game enthusiasts.”

And, of course, Microsoft have a vested interest in the success of the in-game advertising medium.

Microsoft is pitching in-game advertising on Xbox Live online-videogame service as a new source of revenue for videogame publishers such as Electronic Arts Inc. of Redwood City, Calif., and Ubisoft. The Massive acquisition is also part of a broader attempt by the Redmond, Wash., software giant to grab a bigger piece of the online advertising boom that’s fueling the growth of Google Inc. and others. Microsoft has struggled to take control of a larger piece of that market as Google extends its lead in the business of linking online ads to Internet search results.

Advertisers spent about $56 million on advertisements in videogames last year, up from $34 million the prior year. But a recent report by the Boston research firm Yankee Group predicts that the in-game advertising market will reach more than $700 million by 2010. Yankee Group also predicts the number of games with advertising in them will double by the end of this year to more than 200.

MIT has more highlights from the article.

Psyop have created six 15 second station idents for MTV’s high definition channel which will feature exclusively HD work and 5.1 surround sound from MTV, VH1 and CMT. The idents are extracts from a 90-second film which will also be aired in its entirety on MTV HD. According to Justin Booth Clibborn, Pysop’s executive producer:

MTV asked us to “do our thing” and create a spot that would really push the limits of the format. They gave us their complete trust and support to come up with something very different and unexpected. What we gave them can best be described as a ‘visual haiku,’ a spot that is all the more detailed and effective because of its seeming minimalism.

For those of us old enough to remember MTV’s heyday of allowing experimental filmmakers to do its idents, this is a nice return to form. It is also for our money the first truly interesting bit of HD promo work (if you exclude the BBC’s pushing of Planet Earth) that also gets the possibilities of the medium. Co-creator Marco Spier says:

We’ve done HD work before, but always with the knowledge that the work would also be viewed in NTSC. This time, viewers will only be seeing this in HD. We had the unique opportunity to take advantage of the technology and include detailed elements that would be very problematic to accomplish in NTSC. That’s how this spot ended up with so many thin, high-contrast lines that would buzz like crazy on regular television. We were able to actively work with those kinds of elements, knowing the resolution would support it.

Via lovely Proteinos. Watch the full film via the Dexigner site.

So when eBay bought Internet telephony service Skype a while back for rather a lot of money there were murmerings about what in the hell the auction site was thinking. We just got all excited about Skype-enabled click-to-call ads eBay’s small time sellers via Skype… then this happens:

Skype to sell EMI music on retail site

EMI Music Publishing, the song rights company, yesterday announced a deal with Skype, the internet telephony business, to sell music on Skype’s new retail website.

Under the deal, Skype will be licensed to use song copyrights from EMI’s catalogue to sell music as downloads and ring tones. It is the first time that music copyrights have been licensed worldwide in such a way. Normally licences have to be applied for by the seller on a country-by-country basis, making it more difficult for songwriters to collect payments for their work.

Skype has not yet set a launch date for its new online store. The company recently signed a deal with the Warner Bros’ group of record labels, allowing Skype use of Warner Bros’ master recordings.

As the world’s largest music publisher, EMI has more than one million copyrights, including those to some of the best-known songs ever written, such as New York, New York, Singin’ in the Rain and Over the Rainbow.

The clever folks at MIT said this would happen (as did BST, kinda — check prediction #6). Back at the time of the eBay Skype deal they wrote:

The long post in a nutshell: I think eBay wants to use Skype as a distribution platform for content, micro-paid for through PayPal and accessible on a wide range of devices… Imagine a music library into which you can dial either with your Skype, or your cell phone, or even a land line. Finally, all those “free nights and weekends” will be put to good use. Also imagine each user paying a token amount — say, $0.01 — for each content unit, a song. The sound quality is good and the transfer is fast thanks to the Skype’s distributed model. Payments are painless and barely noticeable, and are debited directly from your PayPal account. Who needs satellite radio then? Who needs (oh my God) iTunes?

We’ve been doing some quantitative research into the network structure of online influence. Preliminary results suggest that blogs aren’t superceding ‘traditional’ websites as authoritative references — instead the blogosphere seems to work as a super-responsive way for ‘online’ to grab attention, then direct it back into well-established websites — a emergent, self-organising and symbiotic relationship of benefit to both ‘old’ (Web 1.0) and ‘new’ (Web 2.0) digital media. If, in our brave new digitally-mediated world, Attention is Oxygen, then it seems that blogs are the gills that garner that attention from the world, then efficiently deliver it to nourish the Web.

Looks like we should start thinking of online in ecological as much as economic terms. And start watching to see structures and processes evolve next…

In the current issue of Arena Homme, Stephane Raynor, founder of the iconic 80s clothing label reminisces:

The original BOY shop had two controversial focal points in its window. One was the explicit Polaroids of ‘the action in the changing room from the weekend — it was like some darkroom back there.’ The other was the ever-changing window displays themselves. ‘Perhaps there’d be a Madonna and Child that got the church down, or swastikas; then there was the chopped-up dead boy, with a Dr Martens boot by his bleeding head and signet ring on his severed hand.’ This display caused one passer-by to suffer a heart attack, Raynor says…

Eat your heart out, Damien Hirst et al.

Not only has the blog of the show meant that we are dying to get our grubby little TiVo on the show, we’re fascinated by how the blog (well written, snarky, irreverant and much linked to) has built the reputation of the show. It’s not clear if the blog is officially sanctioned in any way — the network’s own effort is a snore — but it’s certainly slickly put together in way in which only the best bits of citizen media are. We’re starting to see similiar stuff with the UK version of the show like Project Catwalk (which US bloggers have started to adopt now that this run of Runway has ended) but in no way as high a volume.

Via this blog, Project Runway — either deliberately or not — has managed to bottle that thing that many brands with their bland branded blogs are busily allowing to leak out. Hot Gossip. By allowing the show to be cheapened, laughed at, clipped, and generally Paris Hiltonised, BloggingProjectRunway has all the markings of a cult. Not all shows could be marketed in this way — the show is about fashion after all, a subject that lends itself to much bitchery and crapping on anyway. But Blogging Project Runway plonked itself right in the middle of the A list of fashion/gay/whatever blogs like Manolo’s Shoe Blog and just took it from there. As is fitting, we’ll let Manolo have the last word:

Such things as this [BloggingProjectRunway] tour they are the reason why the Manolo is completely in love with the blogging, and why he believes that it has the power to change the relationship between entertainment and the entertained. Indeed, it has already happened.

UPDATE: the lovely people at BloggingProjectRunway have got in touch to deny any formal involvement with the show. This only makes it more interesting to us - it’s the iPod effect. Make people love your property enough and they’ll market it for you …

ABC reports from a recent conference of America’s top sex researchers (including one of our all time icons Annie Sprinkle) that it’s all looking well, a bit mechanical. In a field called ‘teledildonics’ people can already via two remote computers manipulate electronic devices such as a vibrator. According to Steve Rhodes, president of Sinulate Entertainment, “Cybersex is here! The Sinulator lets anyone control your sex toy over the Internet!”:

People who use it are just blown away. This is not something that just the lunatic fringe does. The Iraq war… was kind of a boom for our company.

And it’s not real life relationships that are benefitting. Kyle Machulis (or qDot as he’s known online) talks in this month’s Bon Magazine about all the shagging that goes on in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). In particular, he’s interested in the sex life of one of the most popular, Second Life. Originally conceived as an economic experiment along the lines of The SIMS, the game emulates the pioneer experience with the slogan, “Your world. Your imagination.” As befits any kind of ecoculture, the game is teeming with sexual experimentation. According to Machulis, who edits a news site MMOrgy.com:

Users can build their own objects and program them themselves. And people make .. well… everything imaginable. It’s hard to be more specific. Literally everything can be found in there. Second Life has been around for three years, and I promise you that every sexual fetish you can imagine is represented.

And it’s now getting truly interactive. The programmers are alert to this: the game has developed a porn mag starring nude female avatars called Slustler, which is both shot and distributed within the world of the game. More recently Second Life was equipped with new hardware, enabling objects that exist only in the virtual world to control physical sex play in real life — in other words, it’s back to teledildonics again.

Entrepreneurs are unsurprisingly looking to cash in by melding traditional video porn with real-life sensation. Brad Abram, president of ZStream3D Multimedia, says that his firm’s “Virtually Jenna”, an online game in which the player has sex with a realistic cartoon of porn star Jenna Jameson, can even link hardware devices following the action to genitalia. Which sounds painful. We’ve already written about realdoll.com whose products recently co-starred with Tom Ford in a racy shoot for W Magazine. Real Dolls have reached such critical mass now that there’s even a Real Dolls Surgery site (as featured on this week’s Popbitch — good lord).

At the other end of spectrum is a recently published book of DIY auto-erotica — Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews — which explores the readers’ wives/Forum territory. Fucking in the future — shiny or sordid — take your pick.

With thanks to Tom who reads ABC News so that we don’t have to and apologies to Walter Benjamin. Pictured is the sex machine from Barbarella (top) and Paul Gaertner, inventor of the Thumpstir and Gangbang (above).

The perception courtesy of The Independent on Sunday:

The reality as seen in graffiti in the toilets of Barfly, Camden:

Via Ad-Rag and the NME.

BusinessWeek reports that an alliance of British companies — including ITV, BT, Vodafone and the UK subsidiaries of Yahoo! — have said that a European Commission proposal to impose rules for traditional broadcasters on new media providers could have ‘unintended consequences’ and hurt investment (not to mention hurt their own potential business growth). The EU wants to make IPTV and TV-like services follow the same set of rules as existing broadcast programming. Currently the rules include limits on hate speech, advertising and the kind of content that can be broadcast to children.

All we can say is: good luck.

Ryan Frank flogs ‘repurposed’ graffiti as yuppie furniture. The blurb reads:

Now this is an innovative little idea. Ryan Frank’s distinctly urban shelving systems are constructed from white-painted boards that he leaves around graffiti hot spots in east London for a few weeks to ‘mature’ (ie get sprayed, tagged and doodled on). The designer then retrieves them and turns them into mobile shelving.

We especially like the ’street’ styling in this Sunday Times spread. What we find particularly dubious about this is that the ‘Hackney Shelf’ (shown) is yours for a mere £1,480… if you recognise one of the stencils on it maybe you should get in touch with Mr Frank.

This week’s grand folly: Smirnoff is to teach hiphop and graffiti classes. This is from a vodka brand kids.

Via Consumerist.

King Adz responded with this. Read on without prejudice.

There we were, in an abandoned housing estate in Batley, Yorkshire, and whilst filming Blek pasting a poster, a gang of chavs attacked us. The biggest US street art website, (www.woostercollective.com) ran the story the next day, they put it straight up; they were so eager I was surprised. 12 hours later they took it down as ‘the name “chavs” is a derogatory term and that people were offended’. The fact that someone has begun to rally behind the ‘chav’ cause is an interesting point. They must be American…
When the chavs came around the corner 15 strong, lobbing 1/2 bricks,they didn’t need any backing up, and they don’t now. They can fight well enough without the support of the street art community (a member of which they just happened to be attacking).
The bogus marketing men would have us believe that all youth are into graffiti. The Blek/Chav story proves otherwise. The fake advert would have the chavs rolling up and then chilling with Blek, watching him work, in awe… maybe at some point someone would crack open a refreshing can of soda…Not try to crack Blek’s skull open with a well-aimed lob of a standard issue house brick…

One explanation to what happened is that two manufactured subcultures (Street Art ‘vs’ Chav) met in the street. Neither subcultures are real. Both have been created to divert the attention away from anything of real substance; from what is actually happening in the world. Both are there to keep its members down, away from creating any real trouble. I am aware of this. To be an active part of a subculture means you have swallowed the bullshit, the myth. Street Art/Counter-culture is as mainstream as Hello magazine. If you think you are outside of the system cos you paint stencils or stickers or whatever little twist you’ve given it, think again. I’m not talking about Graffiti Legends here (Blek;Seen;Revolt;Quik;Obey;Lee;DrD;Bozacl Nation) or pioneers of the media. I’m talking about any 15 year old in any European country who thinks he’s Che Guervara, cos he sprays a pathetic toaster or Iron or Kettle on walls all over the place.

When the gang of Chavs rounded the corner I was not in the least bit surprised. I almost was expecting to see them. I’ve got down with Muslim Gangsters in the Cape Flats in South Africa, I’ve been to mental places with GangBangers in the high numbers in Harlem, I’ve been nearly kidnapped in India… and I’m not even a photo-journalist. I’m just there checking it out so I know what is authentic and what is manufactured. Who is real and who is fake. What to do and what to leave…

Adz’s films of Blek and other street artists are viewable on 100proof.tv .

The news is a symbolic nail in the coffin of the 30 second spot. Swedish director and screenwriter Vilgot Sjoman, who sadly died on Sunday, and director Claes Eriksson, had sued the TV4 channel after it put commercial breaks in the broadcasts of their movies in 2002. Two films, Sjoman’s Alfred and Eriksson’s The Shark Who Knew Too Much were made before Swedish broadcasting laws allowed commercial stations to put commercial breaks throughout movies and the Svea Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling saying that the station had violated the directors’ integrity and copyright because they had not given permission for the breaks. Story via Newsvine.

The FT reports today that Google and Earthlink have beaten five other bidders for a contract to blanket San Francisco with WiFi coverage. The ‘catch’ is that users will be tracked to within 100 or 200 feet and beamed ads from local businesses in exchange for wireless internet access.

The service is likely to take six to eight months before it’s up and running and expect lots of debate re the privacy implications of proximity advertising before then. As the FT points out, this kind of marketing has been possible since the proliferation of bluetooth on mobile phones but — with the exception of kids bluejacking each other — very little has been done to exploit it commercially. Google is already teaching people about the possibilities of location-based tech with Google Earth and the already notorious Gawker Stalker Maps (which uses Google Maps to flag celebrity sitings in New York) — and what better way for local businesses to find customers? Beats the ‘Golf Sale Here’ sign anyday.

Something very strange is happening in America. Maybe it’s Parasite Hilton fatigue, or just the latest burst of anglomania, but the shiny media — from gossip blogs to Vogue — have become rather obsessed with our own beloved British double-D-listers. The likes of Kerry Katona and Jodie Marsh have become cult staples on the snark blogs, occupying the very spaces where Hilton was once mocked so mercilessly. Meanwhile, the patron saint of DD, Katie Price (aka Jordan) has even been given a demure makeover in this month’s American Vogue. And US Vogue gets the Jordan thing:

In Britain, a big bust, frankly displayed below a girl-next-door smile, can make a woman famous absent any other talent. Don’t be fooled. Katie/Jordan has talent aplenty. A newspaper editor once called her “the biggest driver of tabloid sales in the country”. She is a living brand. She has successfully parlayed her Dolly Parton-type body toward Brangelina-type celebrity via Martha Stewart-type business savvy and an Oprah-type instinct for female popular culture.

There’s also a lovely moment in the article where the author attempts to clear up Jordan’s cultural roots:

‘Chavs’ is the latest moniker for Britain’s underprivileged white youthquake.

We couldn’t (and haven’t) put it better ourselves.

A bad artist imitates, a good artist steals.

Pablo Picasso’s quote is the mantra for production company MOD Films, who plan to hook remix culture into feature-film making. Hype or heat? We’re not sure. They’ve won funding from NESTA, The Australian Film Commission and others, and have their first film, Sanctuary — an SF short — due for release ‘real soon now’, according to their bloggy website. They’re saying all the right things, but will it fly? Handily, they’re presenting at a London geekfest later this month — we’ll be there and report back what we see. Stay tuned.