Category Archives: Locative Media

20 Creative Agency Planets in Sydney

Whenever you bump into an old colleague (now working at a competitor agency), you might go: ‘Hey, what a small world!’.
That’s what we think as well and were therefore inspired to create these 20 small agency planets.

A big help was Ryan Alexander‘s web app ‘Street View Stereographic’. It creates a “little planet” using photos from any Google Street View. Simply type in the geographic location in the search bar. As we did in the below for our own ‘little’ agency Publicis Mojo.

PublicisWindmillStreet_LittlePlanet2

So you think you know the agency scene in Sydney? Not like this you don’t. Try to recognise as many of these 20 creative agencies’ neighbourhoods and buildings. Write them with their # into the comments section and be recognised as a real connoisseur of our small agency world.

#1

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#2

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#3

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#4

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#5 (it is around the corner – no Streetview exists)

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#6

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#7

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#8

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#9

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#10

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#11

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#12

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#13

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#14

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#15

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#16

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#17

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#18

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#19

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#20

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Original link via Design Taxi

Holler Hidden Talents # 12: Unicycling

Our newbie Lauren has fallen in love with unicycling. At the same time most people have no idea how fast unicycling really is. So we decided to host a special facebook competition: Tour de Lunch.

Lauren on her unicycle "Tour de Lunch"

Lauren on her unicycle "Tour de Lunch"

You guess how long it takes Lauren next Friday to unicycle to our favourite eatery in Surry Hills, “City Edge“. Check her route on Google Maps. Whoever gets closest to the actual time in minutes and seconds wins a lunch for two at said place. Go ahead and place your guess in the comment section of our facebook post. In the meantime Lauren will practice her fully sick urban unicycling skills. There are no T&C’s but expect an entertaining video of our “Tour de Lunch” next week.

Urban Unicycling by NZ's Pedro Tejada

Urban Unicycling by NZ's Pedro Tejada

Garage Sale Trail goes national

I just caught up with co-tenant and mate Darryl Nichols who heads Garage Sale Trail, an event that collectively organises suburb-wide garage sales with the help of online tools like dynamic maps, heavy-hitting blogs and publishers of course facebook. As you can see from the links and the video below, the first Garage Sale Trail was part of Bondi’s Community Festival Sizzle, and a pretty fun activity as such. Who would have thought, re-cycling and re-using could be such a frolicking kind of event – wait till the end of this video for an extra-gold piano performance (video by Republic of Everyone).

Sizzle was a massive collaboration of agencies such as Holler and creative local inviduals. And happened to be a massive success, with many registrations coming in at the last minute. A couple of weeks later the council where I live organized a similar event which semi-failed: calling a council telephone number to have your name put down on a list that closed 3 weeks in advance of the event just wasn’t working for too many residents.

So now Darryl is talking to councils, sustainability organisations and influential people across Australia to make this modern garage sale a national event. Rachael Botsman from Collaborative Consumption who recently gave a TEDx Talk in Sydney is already on the steering committee.

Get in touch on the Sale Trail site and talk to Darryl if you are able and willing to lend a hand.

Laneways by George – looking sideways in Sydney’s CBD

Forgotten Songs

Forgotten Songs


Following on our trip to Melbourne, the Holler creatives ventured outside Surry Hills (gasp!) and into the far northern tip of the CBD. Laneways by George is an initiative by the City of Sydney to bring its historic laneways into focus. A few months ago Holler pitched an idea (together with Arup, SuperCollossal, UTS DAB, the ABC and the Powerhouse Museum) for a series of installations. Sadly it didn’t get the green light, possibly because it proved way too ambitious. Our proposal included covering all the featured laneways with WiFi, connecting the places with an overarching narrative, projecting dynamically onto the walls, bringing historical footage onto the mobile…you can tell, it was the whole digital shebang.

Don’t quite know why we went overboard like this, maybe a desire to catch up with what other cities have done already (did I hear anyone say Melbourne?). Anyway, maybe there are some nuggets of inspiration in it for you – if you can decipher the tiny type.

Seven Metre Bar

Seven Metre Bar


Some installations stand out like the birdcages in Angel Place (“Forgotten Songs“), the flood-simulating trash collage (“Seven Metre Bar“) or the strangely erotic/revolting humming pieces of flesh in Bridge Lane (“I Dwell in the City and the City Dwells in Me“).
Laneways by George

I Dwell in the City and the City Dwells in Me


In the end, the series of installations is worth exploring. Even if the work doesn’t resonate with you – you walk through spaces you didn’t know existed and wouldn’t use (unless you are a delivery man for some of the bars and shops on the high street).
Bridge Lane painted signs

Bridge Lane painted signs

Surfacing digital in physical: summary of Creative Social

Yesterday’s Creative Social talk by Dan Hill saw a good turnout and a very lively debate; When there is so many talented and smart people in one room, one shouldn’t be wary of digital creativity in Australia. I post Dan’s presentation here in combination with a short run-through interview-thingy I did with Dan beforehand. After 17 minutes we started talking about how his work at Arup is shaping up and what Australian developers and politicians are doing in the field of using digital for triple-bottom-line sustainability (economic, social and environmental).

Dan Hill

Obviously Dan’s slides make more sense when you have been a participant of the evening. You can listen to the MP3 of our chat and click your way through the PDF accordingly. Dan is mainly following his slides from the presentation as he speaks.

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/19202883/view]

Links to sites and videos (in regards to the slide numbers):

02 ARUP
04 City of Sound
21 Traffic visualization in Madrid
21 Bicycle tracking in Barcelona
22 Bicycle tracking in Paris
23 Taxi tracking in LA
26 Zurich trains map mashup
27 Helsinki city transport in real time
28 Cisco sponsored wired bus
29 The Living (architecture) in NYC
30 Mapping excitement of pedestrians on a London map
34 City of Sound: visualizing energy use in houses
36 Helsinki: visualizing emissions via laser projection
37 Stamen: Visualizing data in SF train station
40 MIT Tinkerbell: way finding via lights
44 City of Sound: expressive facades
51 Daisy: robotic flower
63 World maps based on internet acitivity and access density
68 Tactical sound garden: leave sound traces

Again, apologies for making you, the user combine audio, slides and links on the fly. I hope non-participants still find it useful.

[odeo=http://odeo.com/audio/19202963/view]

I also captured some reactions from the creatives present, namely Tim (EuroRSCG), Paul (White Agency) and Ben (Host). Apologies to Lachlan (Clear Blue Day) as on the last bit my Xtreme micromemo started sputtering and the recording became useless.