PROJECT: XYFI - Love at Fifth Site [2017]

Falling in love can leave us lost for words, even though there’s plenty racing through our head. Created by by Google’s Creative Lab and Grumpy Sailor, this quirky set of interactive films allows you to explore the inner thoughts of two characters across a series of serendipitous and sometimes awkward encounters that eventually lead to Love at Fifth Site.

Love at Fifth Site allows the audience to use their phone to ‘shine a light’ onto the inner monologue of the film’s protagonists. Using the phone's accelerometer and the browser's native device motion library to respond to audience interaction and movement, the work forms part of an ongoing exploration of how technology can help artists push the boundaries of traditional storytelling.

PROJECT: ACMI commission: Ghosts, Toasts and the Things Unsaid

ACMI's latest VR Commission, Ghosts, Toast and the Things Unsaid is an intimate virtual reality experience that explores the thoughts we don't share, the desires we keep covered and how they affect our relationships.

Ghosts, Toast and the Things Unsaid invites audiences into the lives of two characters, Maude and Steve, and into the kitchen where they fell in love and grew old together over 50 years. In the intimate, two-person experience, audiences will choose the ghost they inhabit, then enter into the memory of their character to journey through time, discovering what went wrong in their relationship. The work is a meditation on our propensity to keep secrets, the words that go unheard, and what this means for our relationships.

ACMI Director and CEO, Katrina Sedgwick, today remarked on the ability for virtual reality technology to bring live performance experiences to a broad audience. “As VR becomes a new tool for artistic expression we are excited about how leading practitioners who work in live performance can harness it and speak to audiences in new ways on this rapidly evolving platform," said Katrina. 

“Through our expanding commissioning strategy, along with our co-working space acmi X, ACMI is supporting artists from across the creative industries to explore cross disciplinary collaborations and embrace new technologies to speak to audiences through the moving image."

Ghosts, Toasts and Things Unsaid was on show at ACMI from 29 Oct to 13 Nov, 2016.

Ghosts, Toasts and the Things Unsaid is an intimate virtual reality experience that invites audiences to become the ghosts of couple, Steve or Maude, and revisit the kitchen where they fell in love, grew old and apart. The work provokes a meditation on our propensity to keep secrets, the words that go unheard, and what this means for our relationships.

PROJECT: Shakespeare's Birthday Hangout [2014]

Google Australia partnered with Bell Shakespeare, a theatre company specialising in the works of William Shakespeare, his contemporaries and other classics, to host six live and interactive events on Google+ to showcase the use of our platforms.  

Apart from celebrating the birthday of the world’s greatest playwright, this initiative  supports our strategy to inspire traditionally non-technology focused companies to go digital and encourage digital in education.  

The weeks activities included a Promotion video, birthday bash Hangout, Elizabethan Hangout in History,  in conversation with John Bell and Peter Evans, Hamlet workshop, in conversation with John Bell and Lily Cole, photos and blog post. 40+ print and online articles and national broadcast coverage quoting Google as the technology and innovation partner. With just under 7,500 tuning into our YouTube channel and a whopping 55,372 of you liking and sharing our Facebook updates, including 11,500 sharing Mr William Shakespeare's Insult Generator, 'Thou art a beef-witted box of envy'!

PROJECT: CHROME - New Dad [2012]

I am probably more personally connected with this than anything I actually worked on at Google. It's a true story from a NY Googler about losing his phone shortly after the birth of his child (it was stolen) and all his photos but he remembered he had turned on Instant Upload. So it was all OK.

Made by Lorraine, Leslie, Sara, Josh, Trumbull and Jon in the NYC Lab. The story is true, the photos are mine however... I hear it is perfectly normal for a new dad to take 14gb of pics and vids in the first 6wks after birth.

UPDATE: The video has now been localised into a number of languages and seen millions of times around the world. It aired during the 2012 Grammys, the 2012 Oscars, and the season finale of a show called Revenge, which I understand was about young, glamorous New Hamptonites killing each other at beach parties. So a perfect placement.

UPDATE 2: The UK localisation with a Scottish V/O has caused much merry confusion about the identity of the real dad.

UPDATE 3: I am now able to have conversations (with Americans) on planes, that go, "You know that kid in the ad about the guy who loses his phone? That's my kid". Nina is mortified.

Just for the record we only really did this to be able to play it at his 21st birthday. I like to think long.

PROJECT: Noi L'Aquila [2011]

Community response site to the earthquake in Italy, allowing people to post imagery and messages that we are now scaling as part of Google crises response.

www.noilaquila.com

PROJECT: Google Voice Search [2011]

Sometimes you do something that tests you all the way through the creative process. I always feel that way about outdoor because it's so one-way, so hard to find a way that it is useful, not an imposition, a constructive and useful piece of communication clutter. So I was proud of the voice search billboard campaign we did with BBH London. Mainly because normal people kept saying they loved it, and lots of people copied it. And it worked. Full of win.

PROJECT: Android in Spaaaaaace [2010]

Stupidest idea ever. Also one of my favourites.

PROJECT: Good to know [2010]

A shout out to Kate Hammond, and a range of people at different agencies including Tom Chitty, M&C and Glue for one of my favourite projects of 2011 and something that made me feel proud to be involved - the Good to know campaign.

"Good to Know helps people stay safe on the Internet and manage the information they share online, with the aim of improving our reputation on privacy and security with consumers and policymakers.

www.google.co.uk/goodtoknow provides users with clear, simple information and guidance on these issues. From advising on how to create secure passwords and explaining cookies, to helping users understand the data they share on Google, the campaign and website aim to provide easily digestible information that computer users of all levels can understand and benefit from."

D&AD's Inspiration Channel

Working with D&AD we created a channel to create a hub for the creative community and a destination presenting the latest in interesting, inventive creative work. The gadget allows agencies to submit content which can then be found by browsing using the organic 'honeycomb' menu.

Indian Premier League on YouTube

YouTube streams the Indian Premier League cricket event live.

This will be the first time that a cricketing event is being webcast live on the Internet.

From March 12th onward, we will show all 60 matches of the Indian Premier League along with more than 1,200 clips and full match highlights, and Twitter gadget.

Marketing across IN, AU, NZ and UK with offline advertising in print, outdoor, radio, trains and buses, in-flight screens, and mobile.

PROJECT: Chrome Features [2009]

In 2009 we rolled out a series of annotated YT videos (called Chrome Features) to the main GoogleChrome channel for the US team to use as part of their Chrome for Mac launch. It was also a sort of experiment into what 'adverts' would look like if Google made them. I insisted they would have to be interactive (I was wrong).

The videos are actually part of the EMEA Chrome Awareness campaign and were created by BBH/ 1st Ave Machine in NY. They are localised for 8 other countries. (The annotation alone involved 8 annotations each on 9 videos for 8 countries. so getting on towards 600 annotations.) big big shout to Rachna (our EMEA producer) and our annotators: Robert, Dezzie, Lina and Orla

Look! A young Ben Malbon, who knew...?

PROJECT: Google at 10 [2009]

A (very) quick look back at the Google story over the last 11 years. From Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring many different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome.

Chrome Experiments

We think JavaScript is awesome. We also think browsers are awesome. Indeed, when we talk about them, we say they are the cat's meow – which is an American expression meaning AWESOME.

In light of these deeply held beliefs, we created this site to showcase cool experiments for both JavaScript and web browsers.

Link:

Chrome experiments

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra [2009] at Carnegie Hall

A 30 second overview of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra

A YouTube-based orchestral audition and mash-up site for classical musicians around the world - featuring most of the world's top orchestras... LSO, Michael Tilson Thomas, Tan Dun, Lang Lang, Johannes Moser and symphony orchestras around the world... Personally I think it is very exciting as it opens up the potential of online collaborations for the most conservative parts of the musical world, as well as presenting possibilities for other creative conspiracies beyond film... theatres, choirs, dance, even ballet??

Probably more technically intriguing is what can be done with all the submissions above and beyond the classical-musicians'-got-talent american-idol type project. For example it's not hard to imagine a tool that lets you mash up the submissions into an international online orchestra composed solely of piccolos from portugal, brazilian bass, venezuelan violins, croat clarinets,  french flautists, and tone-deaf trombonists... Imagine what happens when left-handed latvian lute-players is the only filter...
[Full disclosure - I've been working on this for the last 18 months so i tend to get a bit over excited about the possibilities.]

PROJECT: Radiohead - House of Cards

In Radiohead's new video for "House of Cards", no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data. Directed by James Frost From the album IN RAINBOWS Go to: http://code.google.com/radiohead to find additional pieces of data to create your own visualizations.

I love this video more than the actual video. Cool track but the data side of it is insane. This was when I met one of my great heroes: Aaron Koblin. 

Projects: YouTube [2007-08] Vatican || Buckingham Palace || Downing Street

Not sure on the etiquette on this. Probably shouldn't get into the habit of posting "things I've done" like an CV-extension; nevertheless I wanted to put a couple up because I'm proud.

First up is the Vatican YouTube site which we built and designed working with the Vatican (they are quite tuned in), and launched in January. In answer to your immediate question: No, it's not for videos of the Pope skateboarding, or cardinals miming Rick Astley; No, I don't think YouTube jumped the shark; Yes, there is already Vatican TV so stacks of inventory; No, I didn't get to kiss the ring; Yes, it was very surreal.