March 9th, 2012
Eric Gunther
I just returned from Raleigh last week. The Ribbon is hung and looking brilliant. The real-life manifestation of most architectural elements falls short of the initial renderings, but I have to say, in this case it surpasses them. None of us had any idea what a stunning object this would be. It actually looks likes it’s floating. And the atrium itself is a gorgeous space, full of light and reflections. Bill and Jeff—along with Greg, Jeremy, and Curtis, their rigging team—did an amazing job installing the piece.
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Posted in In Progress, Installations, Uncategorized
February 7th, 2012
Eric Gunther
For the last two years, we have lovingly toiled on the glass and metal leviathan we call “the ribbon”. We are distilling the beauty of nature’s patterns into 20 x 180 LCD glass pixels that swoop through the four story atrium of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
The sculpture itself is being hung as we speak. Jeff Lieberman and Bill Washabaugh, our collaborators on the piece, are down — I should say up because they are standing in a four-story high cherry picker — in Raleigh with a team of riggers, hanging the glass beast piece by piece. As you might imagine, it took some ingenious mechanical and structural engineering to get 3600 pieces of glass to twist and bend like a scarf in the wind.
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Posted in In Progress, Installations, Studio News
January 20th, 2012
John Rothenberg
Lauren just got back from the North American International Auto Show, where we installed a booming interactive. Building on past work, we developed a touchscreen sequencer that allowed users to create their own custom beats. These beats were then pumped through a 4000 Watt sound system installed in the back of a pimped-out Chevy Sonic. You could also record your beat to share it with friends or download it as a ringtone.
Jack Morton Worldwide developed the concept and we had a great time working with Dave Lentz, Cooley Ludtke, and Linda Nahas to pull this one off. We also worked closely with 24G, who developed the social sharing screen and Bluewater Technologies, who handled the audio hardware.
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Posted in Installations, Mobile
November 11th, 2011
John Rothenberg
It’s been a dream of ours to develop and install a permanent television remix artwork, so we’re very excited to announce that Firebrand TV is installed at the brand new Firebrand Saints. Gary Strack, the chef and owner behind Firebrand Saints, Central Kitchen, and the Enormous Room has been a big supporter of Sosolimited since the very beginning, so we’re especially proud to launch this artwork in his new space.
Firebrand TV is a development of Set Top Box. It’s an installation that continuously watches, catalogs, and transforms live television. The piece is a five-screen video beam. The left-most screen always shows the live broadcast signal. The other four screens display a series of visual and typography transformations of the signal. Firebrand TV is a platform for live television transformation, and a development of our live remixes of the US Presidential Debates.
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Posted in Installations, Open Source
October 31st, 2011
Eric Gunther
Last week, I had the pleasure of spending five days at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, installing our piece Set Top Box at Graphic Design: Now in Production. I’d never been to the Walker before and found it to be an excellent destination.
Walking through the show feels like walking inside the extruded pages of a well-designed magazine. You’re excited to turn to the next page, but you’re happy to sit and gaze wide-eyed at any one spread. The Walker design team is stellar. In fact, the Walker staff is amazing on all fronts—from the workmanship of the exhibition furniture to the A/V crew to the curation staff. Professional and friendly.
The show is an impressive collection of work, spanning many mediums and temperaments, with a focus on typography. There is a mix of design and artwork that uses graphic design as its medium. I was reminded of the accessibility of artwork that looks like design. It has the power to lure people with an aesthetic language they are familiar with, and then deliver a deeper message. Of course, there is always the risk that the viewer walks away, satisfied by a quicky, without letting the real power of the work sink in. However, the pretty face often keeps people around long enough to feel the real punch.
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Posted in Exhibitions, Installations
October 24th, 2011
John Rothenberg
This past summer Sosolimited developed the winning proposal for the lobby of the new headquarters of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This non-partisan think tank is a leader in global issues, energy policy, defense, and health. In preparation for their move into a brand new building on K Street CSIS asked a number of interactive design studios to submit ideas for their atrium. Our proposal is for a global data clock, a grand chandelier that reacts to world news and displays real-time information across a map of light.
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Posted in In Progress, Installations
