Beautiful Connections: Mobile artwork for Nokia E71 (see nokia.co.uk/e71)

I recently had the privilege of being commissioned by Wieden + Kennedy to creating an artwork for Nokia’s new smartphone E71. It’s a new model featuring a full QWERTY keyboard, and is intended to function as a complete communication platform for people on the move. As a response to this purpose, W+K’s campaign focused on the idea of “Beautiful Connections”.

My contribution was a mobile app that allows the user to type in a short SMS-style message, which is then used as the basis for a generative animation that results in a visual compositions of curling forms. The final image can then be sent to other users as a MMS or saved to the phone memory for use as a wallpaper.

Technically it was a challenge to get all the different functions to come together in a single coherent application. The project was developed as a pure J2ME app based loosely on an old version of Mobile Processing. To get a smooth rendering style I chose to use the JSR-226 API for Scalable Vector Graphics, which allowed for properly anti-aliased drawings at the cost of a lower frame rate (approx 7 FPS). Standard J2ME graphics would have given 20 FPS, but the final result would have been less attractive.

All interface elements (menus, text input fields and contact information menu) were built from scratch to avoid the lo-tech feel of the default J2ME UI elements. This required quite a bit of work, but it would have been silly to break the organic feel of the application by using the native phone UI. Instead, the decision was made to make the app feel like a completely upgraded experience. This goal was finally achieved through liberal use of transparent PNGs and old school pixel font trickery.

Visit nokia.co.uk/e71 to see the campaign and download the application (it’s free!) Make sure to also check out the four excellent videos produced by Carl Burgess, Universal Everything, Field and SHFT. To complete the Beautiful Connections concept the web site also features an interactive message generator built in Flash that allows you to create images using live sound and web cam input.

My thanks to the Wieden + Kennedy crew for inviting me to do this project, in particular to Sermad Buni and Louis-Philippe Tremblay for their excellent support. My thanks also to Nokia for having the vision of wanting artworks on their phones. Now, if only Apple would create a category for art on their App Store…

Marius Watz: Conical (prints released on Cronica Electronica)

I just completed a new series called Conical, which was initiated as an artwork for the Cimatics festival but never used. So when Miguel Carvalhais from the Cronica Electronica label asked if I would do a cover for Morten Riis’ Digital Sound Drawings, I was happy to have a chance to bring the project to a good conclusion.

In addition to the cover artwork for the album (released as a downloadable rather than as a physical CD), we are releasing a series of 10 limited Conical prints as part of the Cronica Limited series:

Conical is an investigation of a 3D form composed of lines that trace out segments of multiple cones. Seen at a distance, the form becomes a spatial volume. Zooming in, the sense of volume disappears and the form becomes a 2D surface. The image resolves into a complex pattern of optical interference, without any depth cues to indicate its 3D nature.

The 10 prints are 40×40 cm archival inkjet prints, released as uniques and signed by the artist. The price is a modest €125 per print. You can see all 10 images here.