On Tuesday night I attended the first-ever New York Content Meetup. Meeting at Archway Cafe in DUMBO, around two dozen writers, musicians, artists, and strategists came together to drink beer and chat about content.

First speaker was the endearingly ill-prepared Stuart Tracte, a strategist at Definition 6 and host of Beer Diplomacy. Stuart made one major point:

-People need to stop talking about tech on tech. He led this off by asking how many of us in the room still use Google+. There were very few hands up, and Stuart claims this is because the only thing people talk about on the platform is Google+. I agree that there tends to be an overabundance of meta conversation when new tech ‘things’ come out, but I’m skeptical that the reason Google+ has run out of steam is because of that. (I think it’s probably just because Facebook is light years ahead right now.) Of course his point is true but it’s also inevitable, as customer bases grow and people become expert in a software. When the iPad first came out, it was a device for early adopters; now it’s being billed as an accessible device for less tech savvy users of all ages, young and old. And now apps are being developed to serve that new target market – it’s just part of the natural cycle of development, and it will effect the content of conversation over time.

Next up was Ron J. Williams, founder of SnapGoods and Knodes. He spoke about the importance of curation, a subject we’ve written about before and read about constantly. I did like a few of his lines, which seem pretty self-explanatory and valid on their own:

-Rock my mind with relevance. Cuddle me with curation.
-What was once appreciated is now annoying. (i.e. cat videos)
-Stream fatigue makes social suck.
-Content is king but curators rule.

When I brought up tech’s hot topic du jour – the danger of the filter bubble and suppression of relevant information in the face of hyperpersonalization – Williams clarified that he did not mean curation in lieu of discovery, which is still important. It’s up to product designers to make sure algorithms and recommendation engines are smart enough to give you a balance of the cat videos you love with the information articles you need to read. (And yeah, I get that it’s all subjective, but I think we know when something is informative versus when something is junk food, right?)

The second half of the evening focused a bit more on content creation.

Dan Savage shared his project GIF SHOP, an iPhone app that lets you create animated GIFs on your phone. He showed off some examples of artists using the format as a new medium for creation. Pretty cool and definitely more sophisticated than the animated GIFs we send around at Barbarian.(Not that I’m hating on those because those make my day.)

Risa Shoup, a curator, talked about a few artists doing innovative things in the social media space. She mentioned Jill Magid and Man Bartlett, who use social media to ‘produce’ art. We talk a lot about social media as a medium for curation but I think it’s also an interesting space to discuss how it can exist as art on its own and serve as a medium as real as paper or video. (Think about our Hudson installation that we debuted a few weeks ago.) I think the challenge for this kind of art – especially Man’s – is to prove its timelessness, the standard a lot of art is held against. It was cool think hear this perspective, since so much of social media is used as a promotional tool, especially for creative organizations which low budgets.

One of the coolest examples I know of an artist using social to produce creative work is composer Eric Whitacre. Watch this and this. You’ll see what I mean. He’s a composer who held auditions and put together a 2,000+ choir of voices entirely on YouTube to perform two of his original songs. It’s powerful to watch. Perhaps the next step in this is group composition, something more tangible and permanent than a string of rapidly changing tweets. Or perhaps I’m privileging permanence, tangibility, and timelessness too much when I think about art. What do you think?

Viewing the artwork of an artist you aren’t familiar with is like having a conversation with a stranger. Occasionally you’ll connect immediately and the interaction will be revelatory. Sometimes all you can hope for is an emotional response. But mostly it’s inane small talk about the obvious, leaving you feeling nothing at all except maybe slight annoyance. Without knowing the context of an artwork and motivation of the artist, without any idea of who it is you’re conversing with, all you can base your appreciation on are superficial values like technical execution and style, and whatever other personal baggage you’re bringing to the table.

That’s why I find it such a luxury any time I have the opportunity to hear artists speak about their work and process. This past Saturday I had that opportunity when I attended Seven on Seven, organized by Rhizome at the New Museum. Here’s the official description:

It was an inspiring day, with a good mix of highly conceptual ideas and product centered experiments. In all the presentations it was revealing to hear the artists and technologists talk about the process of meeting each other (some for the first time) and trying to collaborate on a project. The sharing and evolution of ideas was evident in the many different influences and interests that the teams talked about.

One recurrent theme seemed to be the ephemeral quality of digital and the idea of permanence. In Camille Utterback and Erica Sadun’s presentation they spoke about trying to digitally recreate the marks that time and history leave on more tangible objects, and how those marks can add to the experience, especially in regards to user interfaces (the handle of a sword that forms to the wielder’s hand over time, for example). They also touched upon the increasing amount of data that is constantly accruing, and how in the real world time often has a subtractive property, wearing away at the finish of objects, while in digital it’s often additive, with more and more information being stored in memory. These ideas were evident in their final product – an iPad app that utilized the camera to “burn in” images on the screen over time, with the user able to rotate, scale and move the image, creating a sort of visual history.

Two artists/technologists that I was excited to see were Ricardo Cabello, mr. doob, and Chris Poole (founder of 4chan). Their end product was driven by their mutual interest in social interaction on the Internet, and in particular the organic discovery of shared experiences. They presented a site that creates a layer on top of the Internet, allowing users to leave comments, images and videos over existing websites. It is at once a commentary on the ephemeral nature of comments as they fade over time and the content beneath them changes, as well a tool that people can use to interact with each other and create a dialogue.

Another team that commented on ephemera was made up of Emily Roysdon and Kellan Elliot McCrea. Their idea stemmed from the notion of bringing events, ideas and movements back from the obscurity of time in order to emphasize them. Sort of like bumping a thread in a forum, but with historic events.

Other interesting concepts that were talked about during the day included the relationships between humans and responsive architecture, the lack of commitment/permanence in digital life (the ability to undo and change your desktop as much as you want), the appropriation of content in the form of supercuts (supercut.org was created by the team up of Michael Bell-Smith and Andy Baio, interaction with strangers on the street, and the complex emotions that can be read from facial expressions of people doing something as simple as listing important people in their lives (the end project of Zach Lieberman and Bre Pettis included video of this projected onto miniature 3D fabricated scans of the subjects’ faces).

With the compressed timeline of 24 hours, I was impressed by the teams that had more fleshed out products to present, but the most interesting thing was hearing the thought process that led to the end result. Getting an in-depth look behind the scenes of an artist’s process is always inspiring, and Seven on Seven was no exception.

The Festival of Ideas for the New City represents a major undertaking for the New Museum, one of TBG’s longtime collaborators. An extremely ambitious project for The New Museum, the festival will include panels, conferences, projects, presentations, and exhibitions culminating in a two day street festival in downtown New York City.

TBG worked with The New Museum to create a simple but content-rich site where users can plan their festival visit – organizing events by date, time, location, event type and event content via the interactive map or the schedule on the Plan Your Visit page – while following the latest festival news. Whether you’re interested in attending a panel with David Byrne of Talking Heads fame or taking a bike tour of the city led by an iPhone, there is truly something for everyone.

If you’re in town this weekend, we hope you’ll stop by what is sure to be an exciting first in New York City history!

OH boy oh boy oh boy. Are we ever excited about this one. For about a year we have been hard at work creating an awesome experience for Pepcid Max alongside JWT and we are finally thrilled to announce the launch of Max My Dream !!!

‘Max My Dream’ visualizes the sweet dreams you have after a peaceful night’s sleep with Pecid Max. Wether you are dreaming about puppies in space or political discourse, ‘Max My Dream’ visualizes everything. Yeah, everything. We were thrilled with the challenge and really pushed the tech and visual design to achieve our goal. So get ready, we are gonna get really into it here, but it’s really freaking awesome.

Amazing 3D collage things by Adam Neate. More here

“We are going to launch 100 paper planes from the edge of space!”