PROJECT: Editions at Play [2015-2018]

Editions At Play was an edition of experimental books that cannot be printed by incredible authors including Reif Larsen, Joe Dunthorne, Sam Riviere, Alan Trotter, Misha Glenny, Laurie Penny, Maggie Koerth-Baker & Tea Uglow. Made by Visual Editions and Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney with partners Penguin Random House and Google Books.

Click through to each title:

"..  Google is also interested in this problem of engagement, and cites the declining use of e-readers as evidence that the frontier for digital books has moved. "Phones offer countless new ways to construct narrative and read deeply," says T.L. Uglow of Google's Sydney-based Creative Labs, which created the initiative along with London-based publisher Visual Editions. "These are books that can compete for attention on your phone via incredible, dynamic literature."

The Verge, Feb 2016

Logo designed by Matt @ Universal Everything

PROJECT: Bar.Foo [2013-2015

"Google Has a Secret Interview Process… And It Landed Me a Job

"If Google sees that you're searching for specific programming terms, they'll ask you to apply for a job. It's wild. Here's how it works."
The Hustle,  Aug 2015

https://bar.foo/

PROJECT: TEDdyX [2015]

In 2015, in collaboration with Grumpy Sailor, TEDxSydney and the Sydney Opera House, we developed a teddy bear that could talk. In fact, we developed 40 of them. Not only could they talk, these bears could react to their environment, meaning they could tell different stories depending on where they were within the Opera House. Walking around with a TEDdy X Bear is kind of like having a witty, often cute, occasionally rude, teddy bear companion. We created a series of riddles - Our teddies had lost their owners and we asked users to pick one up, walk around and figure out who the previous owner of the bear was. The teddy bears revealed secrets - and little hints - about their formative years. Guess the owner correctly, and a reward was on offer.

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PROJECT: The Next Stage [2014]

In Dec 2014, The Griffin Theatre and Google’s creative lab witnessed a one-day culmination of a conceptual project called 'The Next Stage’. The final output was a play written with digital ideas at it’s core, and as such I suppose was always likely to provoke. In the end we created a project that was so… so, something, that the audience revolted. They literally forced themselves upon the production (not physically) and changed the experience. That’s got to be interesting right?

Well, I wrote about that here.
But it was also a very special and important and educational project for me in many other ways - mostly covered by these beautiful films:

PROJECT: The Binoculars [2013]

In November 2013, to help celebrate the Sydney Opera House's 40th birthday, Google Creative Lab and Tellart installed a special pair of binoculars on the footsteps of one of the world's most iconic buildings.

PROJECT: Speakeasy [2013]

Sometimes entire projects revolve around a bug. Bugs are problems, and problems are often a failure of perspective. Speakeasy is basically Marcio's response to me asking him to play about with the Voice API, and the problems he has had to overcome. So we crafted a video to show him, the dev and how we tweaked Google’s Voice and Dictionary API’s to make a problem into a solution!

PROJECT: FrontRow [2012]

Live streaming 3 concerts at Sydney Opera House where you could frame the shot, move, focus & take photos of the band, then share, from inside a banner ad.

Yeah, well, it was cool back then.

PROJECT: WEB LAB [2010-2013]

In 2010 I wrote a description of a thing I wanted to do... it looked like this:

Here you go... you're welcome. It just reminds me how far odd ideas can go if you don't pay attention.

Enter Web Lab, a series of interactive Chrome Experiments made by Google that bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life.

Eventually: It became an 'Interactive Museum Exhibition' for the Science Museum in London [with Tellart] called Web Lab. Mainly thanks to Tellart, Max Madile, Steve Vranakis and the London Creative Lab. I basically abdicated all responsibility which is why a) it did so well, and b) the video is so pretty. 

Web Lab connected a physical real-time experience within London’s Science Museum to the virtual workings of the internet.

PROJECT: Dream40 [2013]

Google and RSC's digital reinterpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream

WIRED, June 2103
On June 21-23 2013, the Royal Shakespeare Company produced Midsummer Night's Dreaming in collaboration with Google Creative Lab. The RSC staged A Midsummer Night's Dream in real time in Stratford accompanied by a panoply of new characters online on Google+.

PROJECT: YouTube Symphony Orchestra [2009 & 2011]

Within less than a week, YTSO became the most-watched live music concert on the Internet.  [Limelight]

"The YouTube Symphony Orchestra is an orchestra assembled by open auditions hosted by YouTube, the London Symphony Orchestra and several other worldwide partners. Launched on December 1, 2008, it is the first-ever online collaborative orchestra.
- Wikipedia

YTSO @ Carnegie Hall

PROJECT: BUILD @LEGO [2012]

One of the things I love about working at Google is watching small teams create incredible work (often on passion alone). Projects like Art Project, YTSO, or ReBrief spring to mind. And to that list I'd add BUILD - which I am incredibly proud to have been involved within my little way. Meanwhile huge kudos to Tom, Lockey, Lucinda and Gabi, Mark Sydney, North Kingdom for amazing work.

And of course LEGO for their courage, creativity and enthusiasm. And for letting us do it.  

Build With Chrome is the largest LEGO set the world has ever seen. It brings bricks to the browser in nifty 3D thanks to the magic of WebGL and lets users build a new world of LEGO creations together online.  We launched and were immediately overwhelmed by the response - we have medieval castles,  a kangaroo, giant mouse cursors, waterfalls, nyan cats and kiwi birds. My favourite headline came from WIRED :

Lego Build With Chrome Wins the Internet But most of all we were reminded that the best marketing markets itself. 

Give it a go at buildwithchrome.com. You can build on over 8 billion plots in Australia and New Zealand at the moment - and hopefully the world soon.

PROJECT: Space Lab [2011]

A cross disciplinary effort by ATP, Toaster and Potato for Creative Lab EMEA and YouTube - had netted over 28m views and 50,000 subscribers in its first 3 months.

Challenging 14-18year olds to come up with an idea for an experiment that an astronaut can carry out in space, for the chance to watch NASA astronauts conduct it aboard the International Space Station live on YouTube next year. - it genuinely managed to hit my only real goal - get EVERYONE excited about space, from geeky kids to arty, vegetarian, middle-aged creative directors.

PROJECT: Get Your Business Online [2009-2013]

Getting your business online is now global and growing with more than 40 campaigns running around the world and more to follow. Wonderful to think that we built the engine (and the campaign) that has allowed more than 200k small businesses to create their own websites (and so in our own small way help them grow)

PROJECT: Google Beach in Cannes [2011]

In 2010 I went to Cannes.

It kinda sucked that I couldn't get on to a beach. (Although I did get a cool pair of Yahoo! thongs.)

It’s hard to imagine but before we launched the Google beach in 2011 every beach was corporate and private. You, weren’t invited.

The following year I had Amy Brown and we wanted a free beach. For every one. Like Google. With free wifi, free smoothies, free t-shirts, free yoga, and free from attitude. It was awesome. And I don't think I am alone in thinking so. Personally I think we changed beach culture at Cannes Lions forever :)

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PROJECT: Gold at Cannes. Black at D&AD [2011]

At its heart Google's Lab is in the creative business, and we do our bit for marketing - trying to share the magic of our products with our users.

We're really not motivated by awards... but then I would say that; and it's certainly not everyday that you work on a Gold Cannes Lions winning campaign - yet somehow this year I was involved in three: Art Project, Life in a Day and Voice Search outdoor, not to mention glory by association with Wilderness Downtown and the Chrome campaigns. I was up and down those steps like pro by the end of June as Creative Lab ended up with 1 Grand Prix, 6 Gold, 4 Silver and 2 Bronze Cannes Lions as well as 1 Black Pencil & 2 Gold Pencils at D&AD

The Wilderness Downtown (Cyber Grand Prix winner): an interactive music video for Arcade Fire showed off Chrome’s features.

Chrome Speed Tests: a series of lab-like experiments on YouTube demonstrated Chrome's speed.

The Google Art Project : adapted Street View technology to let people virtually navigate museums and galleries around the world.

UK Voice Search : a series of billboard ads with phonetic spellings touted our mobile app’s voice search chops.

Demo Slam : (remember Chubby Bunny, Extra Spicy, and Mount Rushmore?) showcased users’ innovative applications of our technology and asked them to vote up a winner.

Life in a Day: Ridley Scott asked YouTube users around the world to upload footage from July 24, 2010, which was then turned into a feature film.

Also recognized were Chrome Fast Ball and Google Instant with Bob Dylan

PROJECT: Think Quarterly / Think with Google.

Known for its intelligent coverage of both film and surf/skate culture, The Church of London has a new quarterly magazine in its stable. It comes as a handsome hardback book and is a different kind of venture for a different kind of client: Google

By Mark Sinclair 08/04/2011
Full review: https://www.creativereview.co.uk/thinking-with-google/

Working with the team at Church of London we put together the launch edition of Think Quarterly :: a magazine with an initial UK circulation of 600 copies, (effectively a direct mail piece that ended up reaching more than a million people online ... now gone global with issue two)

From the Guardian:

The first thing to say about about Google's new "online magazine" Think Quarterly is that it's not a consumer magazine. It's a marketing booklet sent to about 1,500 of its partners in the UK.

Google's Think Quarterly magazine

The quarterly magazine is designed by creative agency The Church of London. It features no advertising and is free to view.

Yes, most of the content is produced by Google staffers – alongside contributions from the Guardian's Simon Rogers, and others. But Google is no more a media company today than it was yesterday.

Update: Google nips any media notion in the bud. A spokesman says: "Like most companies we regularly communicate with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials. This short book about data was sent to 1,500 of our UK partners and advertisers.

"There are only a limited number of copies, and they aren't for sale or designed for anyone other than our partners – but anyone who's interested can visit the companion website at www.thinkquarterly.co.uk."

Matt Brittin, Google's managing director in the UK and Ireland, wrote in Think Quarterly's first issue:

"At Google, we often think that speed is the forgotten 'killer application' – the ingredient that can differentiate winners from the rest. We know that the faster we deliver results, the more useful people find our service.

"But in a world of accelerating change, we all need time to reflect. Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It's a place to take time out and consider what's happening and why it matters.

"Our first issue is dedicated to data – amongst a morass of information, how can you find the magic metrics that will help transform your business? We hope that you find inspiration, insights, and more, in Think Quarterly."

Think Quarterly's launch is timely. Earlier this week, the New York Times' David Carr drew some salient points about the business Google and other Silicon Valley high-fliers are drifting towards.

He asked: "What company derives 96% of its revenue from advertising, has a video platform that is currently negotiating with the National Basketball Association, a movie studio and various celebrities, and is developing a subscription service that would be plug-and-play for publishers and consumers the world over. Time Warner? News Corporation? Viacom?"

The answer, of course, is Google. Carr adds: "Up and down its ranks, Google executives will tell you without fail that Google is not a media company, that its organises and manages content, but stays away from producing it.

"It's an article of faith at the internet giant. But it's also beginning to show strain as Google moves into new territory."

Google launches Think Quarterly magazine | Media | guardian.co.uk

PROJECT: Future of the Book @TED [2011]

This is a fascinating project that Juliette La Montagne has got me involved with which kicked off last week by allowing me to talk at length and with monumental digression about what I consider to be the future of the book. Anyway - here are the notes and the slides from the talk. If there is a video I will post it.

Future of the Book.

Notes for talk at a TED Project Launch on 31 May 2011

:: Should i add a disclaimer that I am the son of a publisher, academic, reviewer, writer, and editor; that my godparents are literary academics; that my first post-grad degree was in Book Art; that my first internship was at Random House? in other words... I am quite biased...

Talking about the future is nonsense because it is, even at it’s best, informed guesswork. We can talk about now, interesting, unusual things, happening now, but that rarely seems to interest anyone except the person talking. We can talk about the past, which is interesting because no one can ever remember it precisely, because nothing actually happens precisely, it is an amalgam of perspectives and sometimes we can’t even get the order right. Or we can write these things down and call it sci-fi, or chick-lit, or a historical novel.
Books, the world is still full of wonderful books, authors, and panicky publishers.
Oh. By the way. This isn’t about textbooks. They are not what a book is.

What is a book?

Composition #1. Is  a book written in 1961 by Marc Saporta.

It is 150 unnumbered pages where each page is part of the story but is self-contained so that every page can be read in any order. And Saporta presents this in a box as a loose leaf novel.

The narrative is a “concatenation of circumstances” curated by the reader’s decisions. In other words you choose which page to read next.

On the internet this works very easily, it’s just an “i feel lucky” button - but in a physical form it’s actually an incredibly hard thing to do. Is this a book? In a box is it a book? On an ipad is it still a book? Or an app?

Tom Phillips’ amazing book The Hummument is a book that is made into a completely different book. I love the physical reproduction of the one-off book, I love the ipad version too, but is it a book? Or just picures of a book? ipad version Stephen Fry’s autobiography, MyFry, has a fantastic iPad edition developed by Penguin which lets you browse a snippet-based, tag-generated version.

How has digitisation has changed books?

Press Here - Herve Tullet - creates new content based on newly intuitive interfaces. Taking the language of digital interactions and turning them into physical. And it’s completely charming.

But that is an unusual example of tradition subverting technology.

The general trend has been for technology to usurp tradition, namely through the digitisation and distribution of books across the internet. This has mined the core wealth of the physical book object and taken it to the cloud, (like logging in the Amazon basin or asset stripping on Wall Street - we extract the valuable content without considering its environment.)

This leaves us with two products: the content (data), and a redundant physical vessel.

Let’s follow the data first.

What are the benefits of digital? - ebooks/readers/digital content

they are light; of infinite capacity; readable; unlosable; searchable; scaleable; sociable; collaborative; unbound to time or geography - creating multi-media, interactive, co-reading experiences across distances; they are extraordinary...

And that’s where the smart money is:

Kindle || Apple iBooks || Google ebooks

But is that a book?

Before we fully understand a thing conceptually (i.e. in words) it is hard to begin to make it. Sometimes we only identify the thing by looking at the negative spaces around it.

What isn’t a book?

A book is a collection of content, words, pictures, audio, video. Isn’t it?

Video is still a video. Even if it’s on a page in a book or a magazine, or a textbook. It is atypical content. Video is not foretold, it unfolds live before our eyes, in books it is written, we can see it and hold it all with our eyes. [Viewing Shakespeare]

Audio isn’t a book, even when it is a book. It’s a story, it is the content, but in a completely different form, like water into steam, but it would be interesting to see if you could make that disembodied element into a book itself?

Are pictures a book? Well of course they are. Hence picture books. But when they’re not bound together? Or in a frame? Or projected?

Text that links to other text are links... in fact textual links to other pages on the web are called the internet, and the readers is called a browser. So is the internet a book?

What about ereaders that are on the internet? Or the kindle app on an ipad. Are they books within books?

Sorry. Lost you. So what is a book?

From me a book is an experience.

One that you lose yourself in through reading.

We will call this  ‘immersive’. It is primarily static text-based content that follows some loose rules:

1. It’s generally textual and lives in the reader’s mind’s eye rather than pre-constructed (e.g. video or games) although it may have pictures.

2. it is normally narrative.

3. traditional this is a paginal narrative; or, if not paginal, linear; or, if not linear, multi-dimensional - a self-contained reality, a “world” of the authors imagination. See Tolkein, or Terry Pratchett, or Fantasy Gaming books; or AS Byatt, or Dickens, or any good author, or even a bad one.

4. Lots of people think it should be printed or printable and fit on a shelf. I don’t agree with this.

What happens when lots of authors write a book?

A book is only limited by the output of its author or authors. So in many ways the biggest book is Wikipedia, or, if you can go there - it’s Facebook.

The rise of social narratives mean that we can have huge volumes of content that tell the same short story from multiple viewpoints, with differing degrees of accuracy. Much like sitting around a huge dinner table. It is a multi-dimensional multi-authored anarchic story-telling exercise. And some of it isn’t even true.

Charlie Sheen is an excellent example of this. If you could capture that explosion of narrative in a single form that could be a book. Instead we have the amazing Tales from Tahrir : which is a physical book composed entirely of tweets from Eygpt during the uprising there.   This is a bubbling pot of potential: NYPL is trying to crowd source a book; Neal Stephenson’s Mongoliad crowdsources a community of authorship.

In fact the reemergence of collaborative narrative is really just a hi-tech return to the oral tradition, which was ruthlessly destroyed by those data-aggregating, IP thieves Homer and Herodotus. Those narratives were once collective, orally transmitted, subject to reinterpretation and contextual embellishment. Interactive collective storytelling is at once strange and familiar.

What happens when a book is authored but still has no linear boundaries such as length or narrative, when a story can be carried forwards backwards left and right?

Like, um, life.

In many ways this is a vision of modern computer gaming, interactive narratives or simulations, but these again are live narratives, comprehensible only in retrospect and hindered by the walled garden of the code base and omniscient authorship.

ROME ro.me - is a generative computer pop video for Dangermouse’s new album that the user generates and can explore to infinity. A simpler example of the same model is infinite scrabble.
Renamed wordsquared.com for legal reasons.

I haven’t seen a book do this.

Yet.

But what about the form of a book?

The form of a book simply needs to meet the needs of the author and the user. As described above a book is a form with non-physical needs, but that we think benefits from physicality.

In other words it can be real, or not, it is still a book. This is bookness.

What does the bookness look like in the post-digital physical world?

Time to talk about the vessel.

What is wonderful about the physical book?

the physical book is an augmentation of bookness with ephemeral but intrinsic data that gives context to the content in a physical way.

Imagine this talk was just the content, digitised. Imagine we’d stripped away everything around it, me, my voice, the cadence, the tempo, the tension, my flapping arms, the room, the heat, the dark, the hums, the snores. It wouldn’t be the same thing at all. So, basically when a book has a physical form it acquires lots of information that we just don’t see or understand when it is just the content.

This information can be mechanical, emotional, historical, sensual, tangible, physical, social.

And it can be examined and recorded as data. Just like the content.

Can we put these aspects back into books?

Yes. we. can. and. Book ART!

At this moment I wanted to write/talk about Book Art at length, but, and probably fortunately, we really don’t have time. The same is true for the following 10 questions all of which I have no answers for at all but which seemed like exactly the sort of questions that one should start with if one we’re interested in designing a book for the future). So.

How do we give books all of the physical values that are lost when we strip out content but allow for all the digital possibilities for content that we have when online??

What about books with real-time data feeds?

What about books that are socially connected?

what about books that take place in the place that you are?

[this looks interesting: http://wanderluststories.com/]

What about books that understand time, that grow old with you?

What about books that are physically responsive (weight/size/emotion)?

What about books that see what you see?

Text2.0 is a video about eye-tracking software that tries changing all the parameters of reading so that the computer (or book!) understands and responds to what you read and how you read as well as just showing content.

What about books that merge physical with digital?

The future of digital is physical. Physical is nice. Wood is nice. Plastic isn’t. Paper is real, we are real. Real organic surfaces and unamplified sounds, and unprojected, reflected light are nearer to our natural state than small hand-held computers. This is one reason why the kindle does so well. Reflected light. Ambient displays. Watch Amazon for the next ipad; and in the meantime google “Mirasol” 

Physical life without digital is fine. Digital without physical is a problem.

What about beauty?

What is the most immersive book you’ve ever read?

For me this is a toss up between a graphic novel and a children’s book :: Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan versus Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials. I used to sit at the breakfast table before work reading Jimmy Corrigan and when I closed it I had to remind myself that it was only a book; meanwhile I once punched my best friend for making me stop reading The Subtle Knife - this was especially poor form as all he was doing was making sure I didn’t miss my tube stop.

What about book-love? Private displays of affection.

The emotional value we attach to books often appears in our love of display.

There is a writer I know called Geoff Dyer. His library is a small square of floor to ceiling books and a beaten leather armchair and it  feels like it should be painted by Francis Bacon - it is an incredibly evocative space.

I have a bad habit of judging people on the contents of their bookshelves. Or just if they have bookshelves. It’s snobbish I know, but it’s fun. I compose dinner party placements based on reading peccadilloes. This element of display is significant.

When you can curate by data, how would you display your books?

At periods in my life I have organised, and reorganised my books, by height, colour, author, title width, genre, to show off my literary credentials and based purely on aesthetics. If we could add all those forms of meta-data that we discussed earlier - everything from popularity to age to emotional response - how would we shape our shelves. Would we be able to click our fingers, Mary Poppins style. If books and their physical forms are mutable? What does that look like?

What would a book with a memory of it's readers look like?

We mark our books. And they mark us invisibly, they write notes in our margins, they fold back corners of our psyche - we will never escape the cumulative effect of our reading. And those who never read will never understand quite how magical that immersive realm of the mind is.

What will a book be?

There is a tension at the heart of all good things. And the digitisation of books changes that tension, it creates new design challenges and new opportunities.

• We have lost the form which bound the content and gave it context and meaning.

• We have discovered the possibility to make all content accessible to everyone.

• We have opened up fantastic opportunities to explore and innovate within writing.

• We have subtly shifted the art of reading into the act of interaction.

• We have made everything possible, but possibly damaged the integrity of the physical engagement.

There is a next generation of readers that must be given a heightened experience of deep, sensory reading, not a diminished one - blending digital and physical properties. One of the most magical experiences in the world is to lose yourself in a book. One of the great dangers is that by focusing on the hyper-linked, searchable, social, distractable benefits of digitisation we forget that one of the simplest pleasures is just not being distracted.

Who is Doug Englebart

So let’s end by talking about Doug Englebart. You can go and look him up later, consider this link an augmentation of this textual experience

Doug Englebart worked at Stanford in the 1960’s and was fascinated by the idea of augmentation; and he faced a design challenge that most people didn’t even realise was a challenge - human/computer interaction. To cut a long story short he invented the mouse, and displays, and hypertext and many other amazing things.

But while they were getting to the mouse they tried chin, nose and even knee powered ‘mice’. Turned out the mouse was 98% accurate in mapping abstract movement (your hand) to a digital screen. You know the only thing that beats that? Touchscreens. You know what's more accurate than that? Physicality.

Innovation is a combination of exploration, observation, and experimentation - and the future of the book is in the hands of those who seek to augment the physical with the magic of digital.

Here is the first mouse they made. For me, the truly beautiful thing about it is that it is made of a 1950’s desktop and it looks like it has been dropped, chiselled, and even used as a doorstop. It has a sensual physicality and unique personality. I would like my book of the future, with it’s infinity of content, to have that appeal.