Last week we had a bit of a clear-out and even though it was upsetting we finally decided the studio no longer needed a giant papier-mache ear sitting in our hallway, (hmm not sure why?). For those who don’t know this ear used to feature on our homepage visualising the tweets from our R&D project Twit-ear. Anyway no sooner had we placed the ear out on the street then a couple of hours later it was spotted on someone’s back making it’s way up towards Shoreditch. Who’s taken it? We don’t know but we wish the ear all the best for the future and hope it’s new role in life (which currently looks like a human shell) is fulfilling. Adiós and much love. Bye ear!

Thanks very much to everyone who attended.

Credits for video images
thisisglamorous.com, http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeywan/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/peregrinari/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberslayer/

I love words.

Written down. Spoken aloud. Imagined.

They don’t have to be long words. They don’t have to be fancy words. They don’t even have to be in the right order.

You can use a handful of them to tell a complete story. Ernest Hemingway once said that one of his greatest pieces of work consisted of just 6 of the beautiful little things; “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

But I’m worried for the future. Where do words fit into the life of today’s human? Will they be bullied into working in the hazardous industries of business reports and shopping lists or worse, in Tweets telling the world of the success of said shopping lists?! Will the spoken word cease to exist forever, replaced by a series of iGestures, the physical hieroglyphics of the modern world?

Probably not. But how we interact using words is most certainly changing. Thankfully there are still pioneers, heroes amongst digital men who are two steps ahead of the game and are bringing the rest of us along with them.

These are just a few of the brilliant projects I have come across recently.

Such Tweet Sorrow: Actors play out the classic Shakespearean tale of star crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet over five weeks through the medium of Twitter. 140 words of love in its deadliest form and Montague-Capulet hatred. Twitter put to better use than the usual shouting about cats.

Poetry Mosaic: London based poet, Naomi Woodis, cuts and pastes together extracts of reactions to her stimulant questions to create a completely new poem. The results are astonishing.

Six Word Stories: And so we return to Hemingway. Since 2008 sixwordstories.net has published user submitted ultra-short stories inspired by the great man’s original. Sixwordstories can also be found on Twitter. Famous writers have also jumped on the bandwagon. Here’s a few of the best.

Simon Armitage’s slightly humorous (although probably not to John) offering: “Megan’s baby: John’s surname, Jim’s eyes.”
Hari Kunzru’s ominous “Stop me before I kill again.”
And of course the inspired; “Man steals some watches. Gets time.” from the sixwordstories.net contributor Bogusky.

Now you know you won’t be able to stop. Answers on a postcard.

So we’ve been working on something new in the R&D lab and this time it’s a mobile site. Here at Digit HQ we are situated alongside some very cool (and some pretty terrible) street art, which everyone seems to have an opinion about. We thought it would be great if we could find some way to leave our comments alongside these pieces for other people to read and add to. So instead of graffing up the surrounding walls with our comments we decided to leave QR codes next to each art piece that would link to a mobile site where viewers can have their say and also read what other people thought.

So if you’re hanging round the east end and spot one of our codes, either scan with your phone or enter the url and add your thoughts about the art. If you’re not local check out the desktop site to see what people have said so far and feel free to join in the discussion from there.

For this summer’s world cup we decided to combine some R&D, our love of the beautiful game and a bit of good old gambling.

The result?…the Digit HTML 5 world cup golden boot interactive game (catchy eh?!).

At the start of the tournament each Digitee picked and ranked the 7 players they thought would score the most goals.

Live feeds of each player’s goal tally are then pulled in to a site built in HTML 5 with the results being displayed through the interface shown below.

So who’s winning? Well with 4 games to go it’s a girl!…who’s American! Maybe it’s broken.

Disclaimer: This site requires a browser which supports HTML5.

It’s that time of year again! The sun is out, the days are longer, and the graduate fairs are on. Hundreds of newbie designers turn out with their portfolios in tow, keen to showcase their ideas and creative talent. Apart from showing off their wares, graduates are eager to meet as many people as possible and get every bit of experience they can.

So as part of the D&AD New Blood festival this year, we offered to organise a workshop, and invite 16 graduates over to our studio to work on a brief. The crew arrived at Digit HQ in Spitalfields after lunch last Friday. After a short introduction to Digit, they were given their task for the afternoon. The brief was to come up with an idea, that would enhance the experience of a live event for those who cannot be there, and make it better for people who are.

Sounds easy right? But with just four  hours to come up with a killer idea, competition was tough. The group were separated into four small groups and given some basic materials to form their presentations.

At the end of the afternoon each team pitched their idea to a panel of judges. We asked Scott Morrison, the Marketing Director at Diesel, and Paddy Gordon-Steward from Channel 4, to join our very own Pete Hamblin and Laura Tan as judges.

The standard was very high, but one team were chosen as winners - congratulations to Sally Bell and Jesse Bray from the American Intercontinental University, and Graeme Wilkinson from Derby University. Also, a big thank you to our graduate volunteer, Jeffrey Lam, for all his support with running the event.

We’re looking forward to next year already! For more information on the rest of the festival, check out the D&AD blog.

Name
Mark Weeden

What’s your Twitter ID?
@weeeeden

What’s your online guilty pleasure?
Too many to mention them all, top three of the moment; Threadless; great t-shirts, Aquabumps; fantastic surf shots from Bondi each morning, Ebay; Is it a bargain if you don’t need it?

Which website do you spend most time on?
Rather addicted to twitter at the moment (mainly via Tweetdeck though), first thing in the morning, last thing at night. It’s a little unnerving if I’m honest

Where were you before Digit?
Small company called Partner Platform; we did a lot of work out in Eastern Europe which was a challenge

What’s the worst job you’ve ever done?
A summer in a factory packing exam papers…very specific, incredibly tedious and rather random

What’s your favourite book?
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts..but it changes regularly

Which celebrity would you never tire of hitting?
Katie Price, is it bad that’s a girl? It is the only girl I would punch

Who would play you in the film of your life?
Oh god, ummm, Ewan Mcgregor?

If brands were people who would you shag, marry or kill?
Sailor Jerry, Aston Martin, Ryan Air

North or South?
South

What’s your favourite biscuit?
Don’t really have a sweet tooth, but a chocolate chip cookie is always a winner

We hosted the breakfast because we had been pondering over how best to measure the success of our own work. And we were finding that many of the ‘digital’ solutions out there were very good at giving us facts and figures, but they didn’t get to the heart of why people did, or did not, enjoy the experiences we were creating.

So we decided to stop talking amongst ourselves and to invite a small group of people – who are all experts at creating experiences in their field – to help us. We asked them how they measured the success of their work; be it creating fabulous meals, hosting memorable events, organizing charity demonstrations, or political campaigning.

The discussion was wide-ranging and lively and certainly gave us some food for thought. Watch the video to find out more!

Look out for more Digit breakfasts in the near future. Next one up – luxury & digital.

Credits

We feel fine – Jonathan Harris / House of Cards – Radiohead / Service cloud – Saleforce.com / drgandy – cheering MIT alumni / xanetia – hearts on hands / Philippe Lavayer – Olympic flame protesters arguing / MOVED! – Thumbs up with smiley face / Stuart Pilbrow – Face behind numbers on a screen / Re_birf – numbers etched in marble / Untrained eye – ‘the Human zoo’, people in a gallery

Last week I took Poly on the train up to Manchester so she could be exhibited as part of the Future Everything festival. Future Everything previously known as Future Sonic is a an award winning festival showcasing art, music and debate around the themes of technology and innovation. After a couple of weeks hiding out in the R+D cupboard building the big Poly it was a great opportunity to exhibit Poly in a different space and to see how people would interact with her. For the festival we collaborated with the Manchester magazine ThingsHappen who were interested in the way the city was perceived by the people that lived there. They supplied us with a number of Manchester themed questions to ask Poly and for Poly to visualise, although many visitors also added their own questions. We also streamed the live video on the Poly site from Manchester so that even people voting online could move the Poly exhibit and watch her move in the space. With around 200 people visiting the exhibition each day and interacting with the artworks, as well as people voting online, Poly was definitely put to the test and stormed through her Manchester themed questions, “Is the Hacienda dead?” – “Yes”. “Should the Oxford Street Odeon be knocked down” – “No”. The results of these questions can now be seen on the ask-poly website in the archive section and I think are still being asked on the live section. It was a great festival and many thanks to the organisers for having us up there and for being so helpful.

I did also manage to check out some of the other artworks and talks at the festival and here’s a quick roundup of some of the great stuff I saw. Firstly an amazing piece of work that won the Future Everything award was the eyewriter project. This is a collaborative project involving amongst others the Open Frameworks team and the Graffiti Research Lab. Basically the project looks at empowering writers and artists with paralysis to still be creative by using a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus and software. This allows them to draw and create using only their eyes. Wow.

Some great kinetic sound sculptures were shown in the basement of the Palace Hotel. Sarah Farmer’s Organised Sound where a power drill powered the mdf and wine glasses xylophone was awesome.

Also loved kimchi and chips – Journey Box. This was an old wooden medicine box that depending on what part of it you opened created a different experience (with light and sound) each time. Amazing model making of a miniature city. Another project the Bicycle Built for 2,000 project was a collaboration between Aaron Koblin and Daniel Massey. Check out the website. Also saw great talks on the future of sound, art and open source projects by Last fm, wow design and tinker London. … ok that’s it for now… phew.