In this recurring column, Leigh Alexander visits exciting new creative frontiers in the video game space, which is seeing a period of incredible growth and diversification, attracting new talent and demonstrating intriguing innovation. Here she’ll cover emerging artists, trends, and so much more.

2012 was a fascinating year for gaming—the commercial market may have narrowed, but as the mobile and social spaces flourished, indie matured to offer a wealth of polished downloadables. Grassroots culture flourished, and the industry seems broader and more creatively rich for everyone.

For anyone interested in playing or making games, there are more opportunities than ever. Here are five creative trends that defined the year in gaming.

Playing Together in Person

Still from Dance Central 2.

Cooperative two-player modes are as old as the arcades, and online play—whether in console-based matches or in massively multiplayer universes—was one of the great forces to emerge from the last 10 years. But this year we see gaming come back to the living room in an entirely new way: Nintendo’s new Wii U is aimed in part to serve the family that’s gotten used to gathering around many different devices, with a controller that looks like a tablet and can offer shareable windows into the gameplay experience.

In recent years, musical instrument games and motion-controlled party games were all the rage, but the music game space has greatly evolved, and now game designers are looking at ways to make new kinds of games that are fun for couples and groups to enjoy. This season we covered the rise of game design geared at party and event spaces; the Sportsfriends collection we covered here has recently gotten funding on Kickstarter for its direct release to PlayStation 3.

Indie Joins the Big Fish

Screenshot from Journey.

No longer an optional part of the fringe, indie gaming is becoming a significant cultural powerhouse even among traditional game consumers. This is thanks in part to the rise of download platforms on PC and console. In the console space in particular, indie’s been important to the hardware makers’ differentiation strategy, since commercial retail titles are now so expensive to make that very few of them are exclusive to one or the other.

Spike TV’s annual video game awards have historically been a dubiously-advised celebration of mass consumerism in games, juxtaposed with Hollywood pageantry that doesn’t quite suit many fans. But this year, accepting the award for Best Indie Game, the creators of PlayStation Network title Journey shared a stage with Samuel L. Jackson at the televised event, while the episodic Walking Dead game, made by relatively-small and scrappy Telltale, took game of the year. It’s a sign of major cultural change: with increasingly equal polish and recognition—and in some cases, heaps more fan goodwill—it’s harder to shunt small creative visions into separate arenas from the traditional blockbusters.

Explosive Grassroots Culture

Screenshot from Gamemaker Studio

Now that small teams and indie successes have been widely embraced by traditional fans, there’s more fertile cultural ground than ever for individual creators to experiment with increasingly low-cost and accessible game-making tools. Virtually anyone who likes games can try making one, seeding a growing community of people who view game making not as a commercial aim, but as a hobby or an outlet of self-expression, the way one might try learning an instrument for fun. This paves the way for an incredibly diverse base of voices making small games on personal experiences, identity and more—especially those that might have gone previously-unheard in the gaming community. It’s an incredibly inspiring testament to the fact that games can be so many things for so many people.

Retro Explosion

Image from a test video for Double Fine Adventure exploring visual styles and techniques.

For many longtime gamers, there’s been a sense of loss as we move into the area of increasingly-realistic and visceral game worlds with expansive narratives and pipelines full of sequels. The types of games they once loved haven’t been commercially-viable for years, as game developers are forced to focus on making games that appeal to the widest audience base possible in order to justify the high development cost.

Crowdfunding has broken through that old standoff, letting players argue with their wallets against the old adage that there’s no market for old-school roleplaying games or point-and-click adventures anymore. Some of the biggest gaming successes this year on the crowdfunding platform came from developers who finally have the leisure to return to their roots thanks to passionate players who want to buy the kinds of games they miss from a bygone age.

It’s drummed up something of a fervor around retro styles, and certainly calls into question the idea that crowdfunding is ideal because it allows for the kinds of innovations that the high-risk retail market doesn’t usually. Who knows how long this trend will last—but for the time being, it’s clear that what’s old is new again.

The New Face of Text Gaming

Screen shot from Katawa Shoujo.

Where once we played text-only games because there were no graphics yet, a once-niche has new opportunities for relevance in the age of tablet devices and e-readers, where many consumers are engaged in reading and interacting with text on the go and in idle moments already. This potential’s supported by the hunger for a focus on more meaningful storytelling and unique themes in games—a writer’s possibilities are limitless, and in the text format their work isn’t going to be constrained by a huge team’s product vision, the way it often is in the commercial space.

Innovations on Al, relationship, and conversation games are sure to come from those already seasoned at designing games you read, and book publishers are hungrily looking to the text gaming space for ways to keep the content they publish fresh, interactive, and engaging in the digital age when fewer people are buying digital books. Gaming is merging with culture and the entertainment experience everywhere.

@leighalexander

Previously: Indie As In “Individual” Gaming

Hey! Do you love the Shout Out Louds? Me either! But just because you and I prefer the soothing sounds of Korky Buchek doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the clever way in which this Swedish indie rock outfit released their recent record. To spread the single “Blue Ice” off of their forthcoming 2013 album Optica, the band send a handful of press people a kit with which to create a record out of ice and play it on an actual record player.

They didn’t send us one, which is just as well because I’ll be damned if my $200 Ortofons are going to go ice skating, but for those who did receive them, the band released a short instructional video taking you through several steps and a number of hours to hear the song at about 30% its original quality. Ah, how I miss the physical format!

Because no one ever watches YouTube videos, we thought it’d be a good idea to break down the making of the “Blue Ice” single for you using pictures and words, just like the Egyptians did with instructions for mummification.

Let’s do this!

Out of the box, the kit consists of a record mold and a bottle of water. Pour the water into the mold.

Now put the whole thing in your freezer. Don’t just throw it into a cooler or icebox as shown in the video, simply because unfrozen things don’t freeze in an icebox. Kills six hours with whatever it is you do normally, then come back and pull this sucker out of the box.

Now turn it upside down and knock out the ice record.

The mold is still frozen to the ice, so use a lil razor blade and create a lil pocket and then use your lil fingernail to separate it all the way around and pop the mold off. Lil.

It’s ready! Drop it on your turntable, put the needle on, and listen intently. It sounds like crap! Go figure, it’s made of ice! You did it though, congratulations.

[via: Make]

@ImYourKid

Aaron Sherwood, whose previous achievements have included merging a glockenspiel, a guitar, and projection mapping, has recently created another experimental audiovisual instrument Firewall, this time in collaboration with Mike Allison.

Using the stadium rockers favored trouser material, spandex, it allows people to create visuals and music by pushing on the stretched elastane, which Sherwood says acts like a membrane interface.

Made using Processing, Max/MSP, Arduino, and a Kinect which “measures the average depth of the spandex from the frame it is mounted on”, people push on the spandex to bring fiery patterns to life which also triggers the music to play, becoming louder depending how hard the spandex is pressed. The result is a stunning visual display that’s, at times, reminiscent of the Unknown Pleasures data viz album cover.

You can see a test video of the project below:

@stewart23rd

As December 21st inevitably approaches, you might find yourself daydreaming more than usual, meditating on crazy ideas like the aftermath of a potential Nibiru cataclysm, or other post-apocalyptic visions. But regardless if humanity will actually enter a dramatic new area on that day, the everlasting energy of the universe will contintue to flow and evolve in mysterious ways.

This theme of evolution and a constantly repeating cycle is at the core of Japanese electronic musician cokiyu‘s sophomore album Your Thorn. (Film buffs may remember her voice on the soundtrack of Japanese thriller Confessions.) Luckily for those of us who don’t understand Japanese, the album comes with fastastic visuals to illustrate its point.

Album art for Your Thorn.

A while ago we looked at Japanese motion designer Ohashi Takashi‘s ACSII art-style hip-hop music video, and now the artist has created a pyschedlic visual world illustrating cokiyu’s album’s concept in two music videos: “With My Umbrella” (above) and “Your Thorn.”

In “With My Umbrella,” Takashi presents us with a microscopic fiesta of numerous spastastic creatures enjoying their unique existences. The artist says these “muscular lumps” were inspired by recapulation theory and the cell-like animations of Japanese artist Mirai Mizue.

Takashi turned these twitching little critters into GIFs on his Tumblr, and here are a few to fuel those daydreams of yours…

Images courtesy of Ohashi Takashi.

@CreatorsProject

Beijing-based artist Li Wei likes to capture unseen forces in his epic gravity-defying photography, working in the space between reality and fantasy. He typically uses heavy-duty wires to create his illusions before erasing the lines in Photoshop. To paraphrase Wei in our behind-the-scenes documentary above… the magic is all in the details.

(AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

This year the Associated Press included a photograph of Wei “levitating” in the sky at La Villette in Paris as part of their top 150 photos of the year. If you look closely, you can still see the wires looming over the artist’s head—obviously, since Wei didn’t doctor this one himself.

Learn more about Wei’s complicated production process in the video above.

@CreatorsProject

London’s Canary Wharf dockyard is under attack by a fleet of boats. And when I say attack, I really mean illuminated, and the boats aren’t typical boats either, no, these are the glowing miniature paper kind. Together they form an art installation called Voyage which features 300 of them floating on the water.

This glowing flotilla was created by Aether and Hemera, Claudio Benghi, and Gloria Ronchi for Canary Wharf’s Winter Lights program. They drifted in last Wednesday December 12th and will be there brightening up the Middle Dock until February 15th, 2013.

As well as looking pretty the piece is also interactive, meaning people can change the color and patterns of the work using their cell phones.

Images courtesy of Colossal via Sean Batten and Ian Docwra.

[via Colossal]

@stewart23rd

Every year, sound tools get more powerful, more versatile, and more ubiquitous, and 2012 was no exception. Not only did we see new ways to control sound, now possible without even touching anything, but we witnessed new ways of creating and manipulating recorded sounds that we never imagined could be processed into music.

Through the LAYERS column that we started earlier this year, we got to take a closer look at the sounds being created by producers from all over the world in all styles, utilizing the processing capabilities of new software technology like Ableton Live as well as classic synthesizers, making for some of the most interesting sounds to heard in electronic music to date. Of the 36 artists and over 200 sounds that we dug into over the course of 2012, these are our favorites.

For the last time in 2012, let’s dive in!

Spills

Beginning with a clarinet sound, Spills chopped and crushed until he arrived at this gloomy woodwind sound that sounds like it’s emanating from the spookiest back alley you’ve ever seen. Check out his phenomenal 2012 album Feel Freehere. [LAYERS: Spills]

Sahy Uhns

Hailing from the synth-addicted Proximal Records crew, Sahy Uhns embedded this gem deep in the composition of “Ice Plant/Newly Destitute” off his 2012 debut An Intolerable Disdain Of Underlings. [LAYERS: Sahy Uhns]

Tomas Barfod

Brafod’s single “Broken Glass” has a whole lot of layers to it, and this sound mainly supports some of the others in the mix. However, on its own it has an awesome neo-Philip Glass vibe that’s just so charming. [LAYERS: Tomas Barfod]

LooseScrewz

Off one of my favorite thematic albums of the year, the space-tinged 20000 Years From Tomorrow, this sound is a perfect representative of the dark love song it was lifted from. [LAYERS: LooseScrewz]

Lushlife

Though in the actual track it contributes to a pure hip-hop composition, this slightly delayed glockenspiel sounds ostensibly holiday-themed, doesn’t it? That’s why it’s here. Happy [insert holiday or lack thereof here]. [LAYERS: Lushlife]

Benedek

There’s been a lot of new jack swing out there in 2012, but none quite as dope as Benedek’s collaboration with the legendary Dam-Funk, and this little doodly-doo was the icing on that track. [LAYERS: Benedek]

Mike Gao

Mike Gao has shown us quite a bit of his self-invented arsenal, and while a lot of the theory behind it all is over the average head, hearing something like this gives us an idea of what he’s doing on the control panel of his spaceship. [LAYERS: Mike Gao]

Fancy Mike

Though he’s recently taken on a more more retro style with his latest, Mary B James Album, this track from Fancy Mike is one of my favorites and it was a true pleasure to hear this ambience in full form on its own. [LAYERS: Fancy Mike]

Supergalactic Expansive

No one does vocal processing quite like KiloWatts can manage with Amagine’s vocals. When you hear it with the beat, everything sort of melds together, but it’s really sweet to hear the vocal isolated along with all its effects. The future of hip-hop? Only if people don’t continue to get stupider. [LAYERS: Supergalactic Expansive]

Disasterpeace

Disasterpeace did an amazing thing on many levels when he remixed his own soundtrack for the game Fez, and this hell sound was a major highlight. He created it by reversing, bitcrushing, and gating a much more conventional sound. [LAYERS: Disasterpeace]

That’s it for 2012! See you next year with lots of awesome new artists breaking down their tracks in the LAYERS column!

@ImYourKid

If you love all things holiday related, you might have watched this Grizzly Bear video expecting the same warm feeling you get when the gang helps Charlie Brown decorate the tree. Instead, what you may have felt is seven minutes of confusion, as you watched random images accompanied by piano renditions of songs from the band’s latest album Shields.

Seems like our holiday gift is getting a glimpse into the sense of humor of this normally very serious band (if you need a refresher of that version of Grizzly Bear, just revisit their last video for the song “Yet Again” below). Click here to jump right to the piano version of “Yet Again.”)

At the very least, when you inevitably resort to your 13-year-old self at Christmas, instead of yelling at your mom because she doesn’t “get” your music, try putting this on and being like “See? they really can play!” Just be careful that you don’t give her too much hope that you’ve sold all your old Slayer records.

@Mark__ODonnell

Our friends at Architizer celebrate the best in architecture and design on a daily basis and have been doing so for years, but this is the first time they’re doing it with an award show. The Architizer A+ awards offer more than 50 categories for recognition, and winners will be selected by an illustrious panel of more than 200 judges from the architecture, design, and creative industries (full disclosure: our own Creative Director and Global Editor are among the judges). The final deadline is only two days away, so get your submissions in by Friday!

If the prestige and accolades of being named cream of the architectural crop aren’t enough, perhaps you’ll be swayed by this awesome award trophy designed by Brooklyn-based art and architecture collaborative, Snarkitecture (rendering below).

In the video above, the Snarkitecture team and the folks from Society Awards (the same people who make the statuettes for the MTV and Emmy awards) take you through the design and manufacturing process of an award trophy. Follow its path from styrofoam to marble and don’t forget to submit your award proposal!

@CreatorsProject

Well before Arcade Fire and Chris Milk collaborated on light painting the Coachella 2011 audience, thousands of people experienced the interactive personalized music video for Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown” and received a little reminder of growing up through the Google Street View integration that turned the video’s setting into your hometown. It’s been two years since the video’s launch, but a lesser known component of the project is still going strong.

After watching your customized video of “The Wilderness Downtown,” the viewer has the option to interact with The Wilderness Machine, which allows you to compose a digital message to your younger self. Since the project’s debut, Milk has amassed roughly half a million postcards and he’s set up a Twitter account as a home for these messages, many of them touching insights into how we look at ourselves and the changes we undergo throughout life.

We’ve gathered several of our favorites below. You can make your own here.

Go behind the scenes of Chris Milk’s latest project,The Treachery of Sanctuary , in the video below.

@ImYourKid

There’s something about glowing crystals, they just hold a mysterious power over people—maybe it’s all those magical adventure kids movies or maybe it’s Christopher Reeves Superman films, but no one could ever just walk past a glowing crystal without investigating further.

In a new project called, yup, Crystal from Studio Roosegaarde—who’s created a robotic lotus flower and digital kids playground in the past—has now created hundreds of crystals that glow in the dark for a new installation located at NatLab—a historical place in Eindhoven, Netherlands where Albert Einstein used to do research and Philips invented the CD, the studio tells me.

These rocks are embedded with LEDs which flicker on when people interact with them, providing a beacon that would draw any human’s attention, like the proverbial moth to the flame. And if you were wondering how artist Daan Roosegaarde got the LEDs inside the rocks, they’re made from a salt which grows around the lights in geometrical shapes and are charged wirelessly through a mat which they sit on.

The artist calls them “The new Lego from Mars” and says “People can write letters or icons to share their stories in a very public way.” Can I steal one? Seems so: “You can share or steal them,” Roosegaarde says. “I see both actions as a compliment. The Crystals can be worn as high-tech jewelry or used as entrance-cards. Some cities even want chips installed to turn Crystal into a special public transport ticket”. Now that would be way cooler than a MetroCard.

Seven-hundred of them will be installed at the permanent location in Eindhoven at the end 2013.

@stewart23rd

Having worked with the likes of Tricky, Sebastien Tellier, and Bag Raiders, directorial duo Fleur & Manu have established themselves as experts when it comes to creative visuals to complement music. Their cinematic work on a trilogy of videos for M83 demonstrates the team’s boundless imagination, weaving an epic tale that increases in scope and intensity with each installment.

Beginning with “Midnight City,” we meet a group of children with special telekinetic powers imprisoned in an asylum from which they escape and, for a few fleeting moments, live like regular kids. That is, until they discover they are being pursued by the faceless authorities, who no doubt aim to place the kids back in captivity, in “Reunion.” In the final episode “Wait,” created with support from The Creators Project, we enter an entirely new level of epic.

The culmination of this tale following unlikely superheroes places us in what might be a different world, with sweeping landscapes, space travel, timeless costume, and honest-to-goodness arctic wolves. In this final chapter, the story reaches its highest level of abstraction, leaving the conclusion of the story somewhat open to interpretation. In our profile covering the creation of the video for “Wait,” Fleur and Manu describe message behind the story, how the characters represent an innocence that only children possess, and how the imagery can at once be serious and playful.

@ImYourKid

London’s Canary Wharf dockyard is under attack by a fleet of boats. And when I say attack, I really mean illuminated, and the boats aren’t typical boats either, no, these are the glowing miniature paper kind. Together they form an art installation called Voyagewhich features 300 of them floating on the water.

This glowing flotilla was created byAether and Hemera,Claudio Benghi, andGloria Ronchifor Canary Wharf’s Winter Lights program. They drifted in last Wednesday December 12th and will be there brightening up the Middle Dock until February 15th, 2013.

As well as looking pretty the piece is also interactive, meaning people can change the color and patterns of the work using their cell phones.

Images courtesy of Colossal viaSean BattenandIan Docwra

[viaColossal]

Finally! Music history, 8-bit, and GIFs come together (right now) for some moments from popular music that are seared into everyone’s memories. From PSY’s horse dance that you probably haven’t seen nearly enough of this year, to the Beatle’s crossing Abbey Road (hence that pun in the first sentence), Michael Jackson moonwalking, MC Hammer doing his pants thing, Marty McFly playing “Johnny B. Goode” (not actual music history, but hey, who cares), and plenty more.

Musician Joshua Carrafa has been creating these moments for his Tumblr Music History In GIFs and below we’ve shared some of our favs. So for a bit of whimsical GIF fun (it’s the year of the GIF, after all), that came too late in the year to make our best GIF list, take a look below and fondly remember these times whether you were alive to witness them or not.

Oppa! Gangnam Style

LCD Soundsystem release debut album

The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne in giant hamster ball at Coachella

White Stripes release Elephant

Napster is born, changes the music industry forever

Prince becomes a symbol

The Beatles stroll across Abbey Road

Nirvana release Nevermind

STOP! It’s Hammertime

A moonwalking Michael

Devo’s debut album Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!

[via FastCoDesign]

@stewart23rd

OK, so this video might only be 55 seconds long, but that’s more than enough time. Called 24×360 it’s a collaboration between Patrick Rochon, Timecode Lab, and Eric Paré, and what they call a “purely artistic and experimental project.” Like Richard Kendall’s light painted bullet time video, it combines a rig of cameras, in this case 24, with light painting to produce frozen, trailing images captured in 360 degrees.

There’s no denying the technique looks impressive, especially if you clothe the subjects in futuristic costumes, so marvel at the video above and check out some of the individual images below.

So now that two (as far as I’m aware) different videos have used the technique, we can officially call it a “thing.”

[via Vimeo]

@stewart23rd

In DARPA‘s continued quest to create terrifying machines that edge us ever closer to a need for John Connor to come through one of those fizzying time-travel portals and save us, they’ve released a video of a new incarnation of their brutal-looking BigDog robot (LS3).

The new version can now obey voice commands, so when the order comes to “Destroy humanity, boy” it can easily follow. Other “improvements” mean it can recover quicker if it rolls over, has better footing over rough terrain and, perhaps most alarmingly, it now has “the ability to maneuver in an urban environment.”

Great, if the Mayan prophecy doesn’t get us, BigDog will hunt us down in the cities where we live.

@stewart23rd

Underwater plant life moves with a captivating serenity that your houseplants just can’t muster. That doesn’t mean that you should start drowning your peperomias in your fish tank. Japanese botanical artist (yes, those exist) Makoto Azuma has devised a way to translate the traditional Japanese bonsai plant (this isn’t it) into a weightless environment. By attaching java moss to deadwood branches, Azuma constructs bonsai plants that thrive underwater, encapsulating them in stark fish tank settings.

The environment is kept pristine with a filtration system, and the water is infused with carbon dioxide to fuel photosynthesis. LEDs provide a source of light. Feel free to ignore those technical details and just zone out to the video.

@ImYourKid

There was a time when the idea of a music video itself was novel, and every one that came out was some amalgamation of Mungo Jerry’s “In The Summertime” video. But as time went on, people began using various story-telling techniques to visually augment music in bold new ways. And once animation entered the equation, all bets were off.

Today the world of music videos delivers some of the most unexpected methods for filmmaking, serving as a short-form testing ground for directors and animators to explore the limits of their craft. On top of that, tools have emerged that allow the average user to achieve a level of quality once only possible with a high budget, and high budgets can now buy ever more incredible results. Needless to say, we love this stuff and cover it relentlessly. Here are the coolest ones we’ve seen all year.

Tanlines– “Not The Same”

The two members of Tanlines served as the directors, stars, and extras in this video. Our personal favorite pair is the one rocking tuxedos.

Jon Lindsay– “Oceans More”

This video utilizes the RGB+D Toolkit, which we’re expecting to see a lot more of in 2013.

Warm Myth– “Working”

Origami and kaleidoscopes seem like they should go together, right? Well, they never had until this video. Relive two parts of your childhood at once.

Benga– “I Will Never Change”

This is what happens every time Benga leaves a room. No wonder he’s so prolific.

Liars– “Brats”

Throw out everything you knew about Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, hunting, game glitches, and revenge and allow this video to seep in and replace them.

Lorn– “Weigh Me Down”

Dude, if you thought your idea of 8-bit hell was dark, you have nothing on Lorn. Hell is a slaughterhouse. AN 8-BITSLAUGHTERHOUSE!!

Kid Sundance– “Tech City”

This is one of the craziest narrative music videos of the year, and a terribly underrated one. Superelectric totally devised their own science, and it’s hard not to be convinced because the characters are so sincere in delivering it.

Bjӧrk– “Mutual Core”

We were severely hyped when we heard Andrew Huang was partnering up with Bjӧrk, and our expectations were exceeded when this insane video came out.

Unstoppable Death Machines– “Do The Devo”

Tod Seelie and a hundred different animators put together this video for the two-piece outfit, featuring too many amazing stills to even process.

Death Grips– “RETROGRADE”

Click here to view “RETROGRADE”

The most inventive video of the year is so inventive that it’s barely even a video anymore. It’s a 109 videos, each a repeated grain of the song doused in once of a few colors. It’s abrasive, it’s loud, and it’s difficult to watch, and we’re pretty damn sure that no one has done something this awesome before. Check out our original premiere of “RETROGRADE.”

@ImYourKid

When Vimeo came out, it filled a certain void for filmmakers, amateur and professional, that sought a high quality platform to present their work on without as much of a social media focus as YouTube. One of the men behind Vimeo, Jake Lodwick, spotted another void in the accessibility of HTML5, which Steve Jobs had purported to be the new and improved replacement for Flash. As Lodwick put it when speaking to The Verge, “When you read the Steve Jobs article Thoughts on Flash, it explains that Flash is no longer necessary as a browser plugin, because HTML5 can handle all the animation and interaction natively. He didn’t mention that there’s no replacement for the desktop authoring app known as Flash CS6. So if you want to do rich media stuff in HTML5, you need serious Javascript wizards to build it from scratch, and those people are in extremely short supply.” Read Job’s article here.

That’s what led him to create Moonbase, a modular interface that allows to use the animation capabilities of HTML5. In the video above, you can see how much it simplifies the animation process that would otherwise require programming skills foreign to the average user. Lodwick’s company, Elepath, is behind the development of Moonbase, and they’re hoping that Moonbase will revolutionize the craft of casual animation. Sorry GIF, your days are numbered.

@ImYourKid

Since it’s launch Google has become an integral part of our lives, used everyday by most of us for good or ill it’s hard to imagine how we’d cope in a world where we didn’t have lots of the world’s knowledge (and lots of total garbage) available to us at the click of a mouse.

But imagine if Google wasn’t just a search engine that existed in the virtual world, but eked out into physical space too. What would it look like? How would we interact with it? These kinds of questions are what Google Creative Lab and speculative design darlings BERG looked at in a design research project called Lamps that took place last year.

The project involved designing conceptual “smart” lamps that create computer interfaces using projected light to play music and watch videos, among other things. In the intro to a blog post they discuss the idea behind it:

At the beginning of 2011 we started a wide-ranging conversation with Google Creative Lab, around near-future experiences of Google and its products. During our discussions with them, a strong theme emerged. We were both curious about how it would feel to have Google in the world with us, rather than on a screen. If Google wasn’t trapped behind glass, what would it do? What would it behave like? How would we react to it?

This traces back to our studio’s long preoccupation with embodied interaction. Also, our explorations of the technologies of computer vision and projection that we’ve talked about previously under the banner of the “Robot-Readable World”.

Our project through the spring and summer of 2011 concentrated on making evidence around this – investigating computer vision and projection as ‘material’ for designing with, in partnership with Google Creative Lab.

The video above outlines their initial approach and the rules they set themselves, and you can see some of their ideas about making the immaterial material through “smart” light in the video below. Head to their blog for more.

Lamps: Dumb things, smart light

[via Design Boom]

@stewart23rd