Yoni Block, CEO of Interlude, Israeli rock star, Member of Y&R's Spark Plug program

Yesterday you may have read this AdWeek piece on Spark Plug, Y&R’s internal/external initiative to “embrace innovation in the digital space.” It’s a progressive idea, bringing outside companies inside the four walls of our agency. I’ve had the opportunity to play a role in this project, acting as a sort of liaison between the outside companies and Y&R and the Y&R account teams.  As you can imagine, such a proposition isn’t necessarily an easy thing to pull off. It’s new and different and scary for some (because it’s new and different), but at the heart of it, it’s an acknowledgement that things move quickly and providing new, innovative ideas to our clients is our number one priority.

As Y&R’s global CEO, David Sable, says in the article, [advertising has] “always been an innovative industry. It’s [all about] understanding that that’s in the industry’s DNA.” Today, innovation is coming at us faster than ever. The role of the agency partner is evolving and only those agencies that can adapt to, and harness, innovation will have a future.

The agency’s role then becomes how to understand these innovations and marry them to creative storytelling through the filter of the client’s brand. No easy task and not something that a small, specialized agency, no matter how good at their discipline, is likely to be able to do.

But digital technology is combing innovation and creativity is startling new ways. Call it the New Aesthetic. Innovation, in the hands of a new breed of professionals called Creative Technologists, is taking on a startling look where the innovations themselves are beautiful or somehow embody creativity.

Take a look at this Kickstarter Project: The Cosmic Quilt

Stunning, right?  This is a project from The Prinicipals. Based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn their studio focuses on industrial design, interactive environments and the influence of new technologies on traditional craftsmanship.

By uniting facets of architecture, fabrication and industrial design, their aim is to both define architectural environments as well as build them.

Following this approach in projects such as prototyping, production of original product lines and experimental architectures, the ultimate ambition is the design of spaces and objects that expand our understanding of the built realm without abandoning its history.

Here’s how they describe the project:

Have you ever wondered what buildings will look like in the future? If the kind of interactivity we have come to expect in our devices will ever make it’s way into the architecture we inhabit?

Soon, just as we can sense a space as calm, contemplative or frenetic, the space itself will be able to sense our presence and react accordingly.

This May, The Principals and 20 students from the Art Institute of New York will take the first step to allow the public to be able to experience this new type of architectural space.  Over 1 week, we will instruct the students in the construction of a reactive architectural environment that will open to the public during New York Design Week, May 19-21.

Students will learn to network a series of sensors, motors and micro-controllers through a unique system developed by The Principals in their Brooklyn studio.

I hope you’ll take a moment to help fund this project. If you want to see the other projects Y&R NY has funded this year, take a look at our Kickstarter profile page.

Be sure to check out the video of David Rees, the Artisanal Pencil Sharpener (really). It’s a great contrast for videos one and two which explore a more digital life. Get it all here.

You can get the Stack via email before it’s posted here by signing up (see the form to the right).

But what I think is also interesting, and maybe more recently has been gathering momentum, is another type of collapsing, this time from what I would call Back to Front.

There was a time when professional and consumers were two distinct entities. Sure, a doctor, advertising exec or lawyer was also a consumer, but those were two discreet parts of her identity.  But those distinctions seem to be breaking down quite a bit. Let me give you some examples:

• Trucks and tools that are marketed as  ”Professional Grade.”
• “Clinical Strength” personal care items.

I don’t recall my father needing “clinical strength” antiperspirant. But it’s not just the tools of the profession, it’s the professions themselves.  Think you could be a good General Manager of a sports team? Fifty years ago that meant arguing over a few drinks in a bar over who the local team should trade for in the off-season. Now, after pouring over reams of data, you build your own fantasy team. Think you could be a Hollywood mogul? Great, play the Hollywood Stock Exchange game.  Want to be a network programmer? Great, go dive into TV By the Numbers and give it a shot.

Walking around Manhattan the last few weeks, I’ve seen a lot of posters like these:

There is another one, I can’t remember the cable network right now, but the copy even jokes that you should watch the network, even if you don’t know what an upfront is. Yes, it is that time of year, and these ads will be gone in a few weeks, but the fact that these are no  longer confined to the pages of Variety and Hollywood Reporter is interesting.

Another example? Sephora has partnered with Pantone to create a new cosmetics line. How many people even knew what Pantone was a few years ago, other than people in design, house painting or publishing?

When everyone has the means of production, we’re now all looking for, expecting really, access to the tools of the trade. When you have this sort of back to front collapsing, combined with the collapsing of the high and the low, you get another aspect of the Cultural Singularity. Here now is a different kind of divide. Some people thrive in this new environment, where the rules have been effectively thrown out the window and the barriers have been removed. Others are completely overwhelmed, paralyzed by the seeming confusion brought about by this collapsing. “If everyone can do my job, or have access to my tools, then what, or who, am I?”

How does a Film/TV critic at The New York Times grapple with this: Style in The Wire is a 36-minute film that breaks down the brilliant HBO show to breathtaking levels of detail and erudition. Or how about this 20-minute masterpiece called In The Cut: The Dark Knight, a critical look at director Christopher Nolan’s choices during one critical scene in the film. When amateurs can produce criticism of this level, what do I need the professional critic for? For that matter, what do I need The New York Times for? And that’s why you see institutions clinging to tradition. They can’t handle the Cultural Singularity.  Can you?

Y&R Dubai Channels the New Aesthetic for Harvey Nichols

Creativity was the dominant theme this week, from Hologram Tupac at Coachella to the wisdom of Milton Glaser.  I continue to be fascinated by the rise of the New Aesthetic, as digitalism continues to become more pervasive.

Actually, quite a bit to enjoy in the stack this week, including a couple of long form videos. If you are a fan of the television show The Wire, you’ll love the video essay on the visual style of the show. For those looking to expand their horizons, watch the BBC program on infinity.

Finally, if you manage to ‘go viral,’ Ben Lashes is the bloke you’ll want to get in contact with.

Check out those and more in The Stack. If you’d like to get my weekly stack via email, you can subscribe here or check out the form on the right.

A Guidebook of Alternative Nows

Combing through the vast expanse of the Kickstarter universe is a fascinating exercise. The breadth and scope of the individual projects is something to behold, yet I also notice that certain types of projects seem to over-index for the platform. Got a graphic novel, RPG or music project you’re trying to fund? You’ll have plenty of company.

And despite the digital nature of the platform, I seem to be constantly pulled towards people creating things in the analog realm. This week I’m backing A Guidebook of Alternative Nows, which bills itself as a collaboratively created book with over 30 contributions by visionary creative thinkers and makers – from the Yes Men to the Critical Art Ensemble and the Community Economies Collective – that illuminates ways contemporary artists, activists and others are devising  more socially, economically, and ecologically just versions of “now.”

I’m always eager to explore alternative pathways and solutions to problems and I find this project interesting because it’s trying to collect a broad range of thinking and solutions, rather than just focus on one area.  I’m also intrigued by the collection of contributors:

The Yes Men / The Laboratory of the Insurrectionary Imagination / Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative / Temporary Services / Critical Art Ensemble / Jeanne van Heeswijk / Recetas Urbanas / UrbanFarmers.ch / Artist Bailout / Howling Mob Society / Fallen Fruit / Spurse / TJ Demos / Valreep Social Centre / Trade School NY / the vacuum cleaner / New Social Art School / Monochrom / Llano del Rio Collective  / Solidarity NYC / Ken Ehrlich & Kate Johnston /swearonourfriendship (Jenn Su & Laura Noguera) / Watts House Project /Platform London / Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens / Conceptual Devices / The School of Critical Engagement / Precarious Worker’s Brigade / Georg Hobmeier & Tommy Noonan / Billy Mark / Sasha Costanza-Chock (Indymedia)/ Dr. Jenny Cameron (Community Economies Collective) / Ethan Miller (CEC)

So, please, check out this project and consider supporting it. You can see the other projects I’ve supported through this program here and feel free to check out Y&R New York’s Kickstarter profile. To see what else we like.

There was a time when fake holidays were created by Hallmark and were for the benefit of the chocolate and candy industry. You know the ones: Grandparent’s Day, Boss’s Day, Secretary’s Day…

But who creates International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and for what purpose? These Culturematic Holidays seem like a relatively recent creation. Pi Day (1988), Star Wars Day (1979), 4/20 (1971) and No Pants Subway Ride (2002) are all of relatively recent vintage. These events have an organic feel to them, devoid of marketing artifice for the most part.

Even a day backed by a corporate entity, TOMS “One Day Without Shoes” (2008) feels like a grass roots movement. Have we overdosed on corporate, overly-marketed holidays? Are we searching for new meaning in our life that isn’t tied to religious traditions?

From Casey Niestat's #MakeItCount video for Nike.

So, I’m really starting to dig the way Delicious has created this idea of ‘stacks.’ For the second week in a row, I’ve put together a ‘stack’ with my cultural findings for the week. Check out my most recent Emerging Culture Stack here.

If you’d like to get my weekly stack via email, you can subscribe here.

So many of the educational challenges in this country can be solved through design. MAP is a great example of this. As described on the project’s Kickstarter page:

MAP (Manual of Architectural Possibilities) is a non profit publication aiming to merge the fields of science and research on one hand, and architectural design on the other, to encourage discussion through design. The publication exemplifies this approach via its format. MAP presents itself as an A1, folded in the shape of traditional maps. Research and data are shown in one page, and architectural projects on the back.

MAP - Floods

Culturally, we are moving in the direction of visuals as a means of communication. Data Viz, Infographics, video, these are the language of the New Aesthetic.

The perfect use for most tweets?

Last week I noted the launch of PSFK’s new print publication. This week, two other ‘digital to analog’ items caught my eye. First up is sh*tter. A service that will put your Twitter feed on a roll of toilet paper. HuffPo has the story. This is a great example of McLuhan’s ‘the medium is the message.”  Your tweets in book form, or on a quilt, even on Kleenex, carry a completely different message than on toilet paper. Take it a step further, and your or my tweets on toilet paper is different than say, @shitmydadsays on toilet paper. That would have a poetic quality to it. 

I think this is important to think about. How does the medium affect the message is more relevant than ever as social media, in all its forms, pushes more and more messages at us. Even within social media itself, does sending a message via Facebook give it different meaning than sending via Twitter or Google+? Does sending a tweet via your laptop mean something different than if you are sending it from your mobile phone?

Somewhat more interesting is Type Breaker, from Len Kendall. Len’s planning on, “us[ing]my Remington Model S fully restored typewriter to punch out a short humorous letter to you. It will be based on your twitter feed and will be customized to you based on your thoughts and items shared. Then I’ll mail you the letter…in the mail. You remember the mail don’t you?” 

An interesting idea and one I wanted to know more about, so I got in touch with Len to ask him a couple of questions:

Rick Liebling: McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message [Foreshadow alert].” So stripping away the content for a minute, how does the medium of a letter, book, magazine, etc. compare, or surpass, the digital medium?

Len Kendall: It’s all about focusing the content consumption experience. A connected device is one that constantly taunts the user with something else. Something that they’re missing that they could be digesting right now. As much as technology can make our ageless stories more visually stunning, deeper in content, or social, there’s always the reminder that the same benefits are waiting for us in the next piece of content. I don’t want to argue that tangible channels prevent us entirely from distractions, (after-all we all have our smartphones next to us at all times) but they do at least remove some of the magnets that divert us so easily in the digital space.

RL: This project requires you to use a typewriter. How does the “equipment” (typewriter v. keyboard) effect the medium AND the message?

LK: Mediums evolve based on society’s needs as well as the opportunities (utilities) that technology reveal. Anachronistic mediums generally don’t captivate our time anymore because of the time it takes to create or consume content within those venues. Where they’re seeing the greatest resurgence today is when they’re used in tandem with digital, or in ways that differ from the original intended design. With Typebreaker, I’m using a typerwriter to slow the frenetic pace of interaction on twitter. People tweet, other people respond within a few minutes, and the conversation is quickly forgotten on both sides. By typing a “long-form” response to my subscriber’s twitter feeds, I’m forcing myself to have a deeper experience with their status updates and spend more time going into archives of their thoughts. By typing a letter on a typewriter, on paper, and then mailing it, I’m taking unusual actions that I hope encourages, a least for a few instances, my subscribers to actually read my comments and reflect back on their own thoughts from the past that yielded my responses.

I’ve signed up for Type Breaker (you can here for just $5 a month) in lieu of a Kickstarter project this week. Check out the previous Kickstarter projects we’ve already supported this year.

Len’s project also reminded me of the recent Twitter by Post project from Giles Turnbull. In both cases the ephemeral nature of Twitter is being subverted and given a weight one can only get from a physical output. It will be interesting to see if these projects portend a larger trend towards choosing mediums that put a greater value on permanence.

If these sorts of questions intrigue you and you are in NYC, DC or Boston, you should check out AETHER, hosted by Orangutan Swing. On April 12th I’ll be the moderator the NYC edition, which is described as a roundtable on the conduit that conveys ideas between people. In other words, how does the format, the channel, even the tools of content creation effect the ways in which we receive and perceive that content.  All very McLuhan-esque. The event will feature Ben Popken, Michael Neff, Andrew Marshall, Dan Blank and Scott McDowell, all of whom you can learn about here. AETHER, which is free, will be held in Bryant Park. I hope you’ll come check it out, should be thought-provoking and somewhat different from the usual industry events. Register for tickets here.