Highlights from the E71 ‘Beautiful Connections’ Q&A
The E71 Beautiful Connections Q&A was held earlier today. Participants got a chance to talk to Marcus Wendt, the artistic genius behind the Beautiful Connections project which is a campaign for the Nokia E71.
Nokia was nice enough to let us and a few other bloggers attend the Q&A. Here’s the highlights from our discussion. (The Following questions were asked by a variety of Bloggers, and I dont take any responsibilities for them at all.) Marcus, do you want to introduce yourself and just give us a bit of your background as an artist first?
I’m Marcus from field.io – that is a small design studio which i started last year with my partner vera and some collaborators. We have a visual communication and fine arts background – and actually just finished our masters earlier this year. As you can see on the website http://www.field.io we focus pretty specificly on all things that within the triangle of generative design, interactive art and artificial intelligence. This has been a constant field of research for us over the last 5 years. we feel that there are still many things to be discovered here. especially since art and design itself branches out and creates new exciting possibilities for coded approaches.
How did you get involved in this project with Nokia?
Im not exactly sure. I think it was hi-res who have been following our work online. We regularly publish stuff on flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/fliegerhorst/ and vimeo http://vimeo.com/field we have some traffic on these sites but i wasnt aware that people actually commissioned work
Enter Sermad , Producer :
sermad here – producer on the job – our creative director had spotted some of marcus’s work through just searching for generative artists.
Marcus :
as a side story: when we were commissioned to do the video, we actually just had our flights to india booked. since they gave us a lot of freedom we didnt want to turn it down. so we partly did the production in bangalore and in the north indian countryside. – sitting in a rikshaw and sending a quick mail from my phone to arran who does the music – was quite a fascinating experience. So no matter where you are, you’re still in touch – we take this for granted normally but being in a really different place makes you even more aware of it! This applies no longer only to business but also to private relations – so i see that line a bit blurry.
Sermad :
I think the original timings on the piece for only 3-4 weeks.
Marcus :
yeah it was pretty short
Seeing this picture I think this colour and the shape really fit to Nokia. How have you ”developed” this picture? (Click here to view Picture)
This is a screenshot from the realtime simulation that we wrote. the creative process went through a few stages, we started on black with completely different colours but moved to this feeling it felt more fresh and therefore more suitable to nokia here’s a peek at the early process http://vimeo.com/2869536 theres no gifs yet, but maybe we do some
How did you guys write the simulation to generate the piece?
we have built an extensive toolkit over the years that is based on opengl and the java programming language. we start out by making small sketches in processing http://www.processing.org and then continued developing this into something that is more like a crazy version of adobe photoshop or after effects with loads of sliders (Click here to view picture) this is from the project that followed after nokia but the process was similar as i said we felt the white version looked more modern (for some reason most generative art works tend to start on black – so its good to do something different – need to remind myself of that again i would say this is art indeed. personally i would call it a hypermodernist version of oil painting
Why choose the E71 and Nokia’s Business Range over it’s Multimedia Nseries division ? Marcus :
we havent picked a specific phone ourselves but could identify us very well with the idea of communication that is so important to us these days. but maybe thats something @sermad can give you more insight?
Sermad :
Of course – ‘why the E71′ – This is because the whole campaign was based around shifting perceptions of the E71 from a business phone to one that designers would find attractive. The E71 is amazing as a business phone but it is also super sexy.
How do you feel about a technology company like Nokia embracing this design ethic and focus on art?
oh i think this is a great project for a company like nokia. it is a bit daring to give a bunch of artists this kind of freedom. and i totally appreciate their support for this (still young) art form!
do you think artists have anything to bring to the technology table? Would any of the other guys on here like to see artists bring their influence to the tech space?
of course! creative tinkering with technology has always been a driving force for the arts. especially these days when you see so many people hacking the gadgets and coming out from that with really incredible results (sometimes:) a good ressource for that is http://createdigitalmusic.com/ so this kind of creative misuse of technology can provoke the other guys at the table to react to it. in that way im very liberal and would hope manufacturers open up their devices even further/ making programming on them accessible for small studios/ individuals python on the symbian platform is quite nice, its relatively simple to learn and allows you to do complex things on a massively deployed platform
Do you have any other artsy projects coming up with Nokia ? I believe you helped with the Beautiful Connections Application for the E71, can we expect more stuff like that coming up ?
oh the beautiful connections mobile application was created by marius watz – another guy from the scene:) his url is http://www.unlekker.net/ we dont have anything in particular planned so far but id be delighted to join in again! we had several ideas for this project but of course could only realise one. i’d like to see a well designed (maybe a bit artsy) social network visualizer for this platform. that is also great to use. something that can combine your facebook, twitter, tumblr and whatnot into a useable, digestable feed… but thats to come
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