Hieratic Gaze at The Panorama Music Festival

We teamed up with Dirt Empire and Antfood to create Hieratic Gaze, a 360 degree visual experience that debuted at this summer’s Panorama Music Festival.

Hieratic Gaze was an immersive – and communal – cinematic experience, allowing dozens of festival visitors at a time to experience a journey through time and space in a huge 69 foot dome.

Brooklyn Magazine wrote “The cherry on top of the entire installment was The Dome, a 360 degree virtual reality theater where everyone lies down on the floor and looks up at the immersive images together. Lying there was the closest and most connected I have felt to a huge group of strangers in a long time, the most overwhelmed and awed I’ve been since I first saw a movie on IMAX. (I also recommend getting … Read More »

Barneys + Lexus: Arctic Chase

Welcome to the future on ice. We made this short film for Barneys’ 2015 holiday window. Arctic Chase mixes classic anime, CG, and glitch into an insane race through an arctic world. Daredevil penguins, Low G racers with anger management issues, monster race announcers, robot submarine captains, cyborg Yeti – and more – crowd into a wild race that threads through futuristic cities, ice caverns, and under the frozen sea.

Less a coherent story and more a lost trailer for some forgotten 97 part series, Arctic Chase is our scrambled love letter to classic racing anime. We were lucky to collaborate with Gary Gerding, who built an amazing translucent slot car track on which 3D prints of our three crystal-embellished heroes race each other.

Barneys was a great partner: Creative Director Dennis Freedman and VP of … Read More »

Oracle: The Voice of Data

We built the Voice of Data for Oracle’s OpenWorld event. Like other projects that we’ve done in the past, The Voice of Data makes it possible to create something beautiful and unique using non-traditional tools – democratizing design and exploring the implications for the creative process in an era where mass production and mass customization are meeting.

Using custom code and an on-site laser cutter, we transformed the human voice into wearable art. Visitors recorded their voiceprints using an iOS app we created for the event. One even proposed (probably still need a ring). Our generative code then transformed each voice into a unique design, which was cut into leather by a pair of lasers generously supplied by Universal Laser Systems. We made more than 1,500 different bracelets over the course of the event.

Creative Director: … Read More »

American Express Rally On The River

We created VS for American Express’ Rally On The River event for US Open Week. Incorporating archival footage, abstract design, high-speed water footage, and CG effects, VS told the story two-time Grand Slam champion Maria Sharapova. Using four 20K Barco projectors, the film was displayed on a 40′ x 60′ screen of falling water suspended over the Hudson River at Manhattan’s Pier 97.

Creative Director: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Design: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Editor: Nika Offenbac, Ryan Powell
Animation: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard, Birgit Rathsmann, Csaba Bardos, Karoly Seiner
Keying: Debra Khoo-Jeffrey
Producer: Nathan Jew
Representation: The Foreign Correspondents Club
Agency: Momentum Worldwide
Production Company: Bionic League
Event Creative Direction: Venom

Porter Robinson Worlds Tour Visuals

We created a wild visual universe for Porter Robinson’s Worlds tour – combining anime with pixel art and glitched out Tumblr-inspired cg into epic landscapes and storylines. A huge cast of animated characters explore love, longing, and adventure in a series of fantastic alternate realities – which unfold on a massive set of on-stage LED screens. As Porter composed the Worlds album, he amassed a huge collection of links, screenshots, and story ideas pulled from the worlds of anime and online MMORPGs. We built on Porter’s foundation by adding layers of inspiration pulled from Indie games like Journey, Below, and Torchbearer and classic games like Another World and Space Harrier.

Our team included traditional illustrators, concept artists, cg specialists, and pixel artists. Many also worked as both designers and animators. Bringing these diverse backgrounds … Read More »

Tao Downtown Projection Mapping

In 2013, Tao Downtown opened at the Maritime Hotel. The Rockwell Group asked Invisible Light Network to create a permanent installation for the restaurant, by bringing the 20 foot tall statue at the center of the space to life.

Client: The Rockwell Group
Creative Direction: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Design: Anny Wong, Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Modeling: The Grid. Győző Lukács
Simulation: The Grid, Győző Lukács
Animation: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard, Shervin Etaat, Csaba Bárdos, Jules Guerin
Representation: The Meta Agency

Google I/O After Hours 2013

Google asked us to take the idea of input/output and run with it for their After Hours party at the 2013 Google I/O conference.

We re-imagined the Google identity as a series of futuristic facilities – a nod to both the physical concept of manufacturing and the binary nature of digital code.

We produced over 15 minutes of ultra HD footage that played out on 7 huge (as in 80 feet huge) screens. Our good friends at Glowing Pictures delivered an incredible visual performance on the night of the event.

Agency: The Meta Agency

Creative Direction: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Concept Artist: Jason Longo
Modeling: Gyozo Lukacs
Modeling, Rigging, Animation: Szabolcs Sinka
Modeling, Rigging, Animation: Csaba Bardos
Lighting and Texturing: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Compositing: Elliot Kealoha Blanchard
Visual Performance Artists: Glowing Pictures
Editor: Rhys Stover
Photos: Oriel Poole
Music: Boys Noize – Ich R U (Justice Remix)

Ring

Want to understand the buzz around SXSW 2013? Ask Ring.

Ring is a installation project commissioned by eMuze and Learned Evolution. Ring debuted at the #FEED space for SXSW 2013.

Ring tracks Twitter and Tumblr activity for all 1800+ bands performing at SXSW Music, mapping the network of retweets and Tumblr reblogs that move initial posts through the social media world.

Ring represented a completely new way to measure how much grassroots buzz bands were getting going into SXSW – and how that changed during the festival run.

And because Ring was built from the ground up as a hardware-accelerated Chrome app, anyone in the world was able to experience Ring using a Chrome browser.

Ring presented a number of technical challenges because of the size of the data that we were visualizing; 1800+ bands blogging and being blogged about on Tumblr and … Read More »

Nu: A bracelet created by sound.

Nu transforms music into a unique piece of wearable art.

Nu uses sophisticated audio analysis, generative 3D code, and 3D printing to understand the fundamental musical elements of a song, and then use those elements to define the structure of a physical object: every song leads to a completely unique form.

Nu represents not just a new type of jewellery, but a new way for musicians to connect and communicate with their audience.

Nu also represents a new approach to design and manufacturing – a way for artists create through code, and an approach that enables both mass production and mass customization.

Nu’s custom fabrication code uses six pieces of musical data:

The BPM of the song determines the overall complexity of the folding pattern.
Beat emphasis determines the ratio of folding from left to right.
Syncopation determines the ratio … Read More »

Nestlé Pillow Fight

While at The Science Project, Elliot lead the design effort to hatch a crazy plan for Nestlé and International Pillow Fight Day. Working with Ogilvy NY, TSP equipped 4 teams of pillow fighters with 40 custom-built impact sensors that recorded both the number of hits landed, and the force of each hit.

After covering the mayhem with 11 cameras and 70 cast and crew, TSP produced a video piece that wrapped up the whole day and revealed the winning team. The Science Project handled everything: the initial concept, fabricating the custom sensors, casting the teams, and shooting the event and producing the final video.