Snibbe Interactive is proud to announce our production of interactive multimedia and concert visuals for Björk’s new Biophilia tour. The Biophilia live show has its world premiere as part of the Manchester International Festival, with Björk’s first live concert performance in nearly four years. Björk continues performances at Manchester through July 15, and then goes on to a three-year world tour of six-week residencies in eight different cities. In each city Björk will perform Biophilia twice a week, using interactive apps to play live a set of custom built musical instruments.

The video and stage visuals produced by Snibbe Interactive evoke an atmosphere similar to being inside an app itself, with eight screens mounted surrounding a central stage. The immersive concert environment also includes floor projections with cymatics imagery of vibrating sand; a collapsing galactic “reverse big bang” that envelops Björk; a 24-woman Icelandic choir; and famed percussionist Manu Delago. Live imagery from interactive iPad apps, and music and instrument control from these apps, blend seamlessly with the stage performance. In addition to original animation and video, Snibbe worked with several brilliant animators including MacArthur award-winning bioanimator Drew Berry, abstract animator Stephen Malinowski, and cymatics artist Meara O’Reilly.

In Manchester and subsequent locations, the venues also host a series of music-education workshops in collaboration with local schools to emphasize Björk’s integrated vision for Biophilia of Music, Technology and Nature.

Press release from Nonesuch Records

Björk at the Manchester International Festival

New York Times review of Biophilia by Jon Pareles

Björk beneath Drew Berry’s Hollow animation

Icelandic Choir performs under Stephen Malinowski’s animated score

Björk in her amazing spliced mini-dress/evening gown with Scott Snibbe at rehearsals

All photos by Carsten Windhorst/Press

Watch the new video below for a selection from the wide range of InfoTiles interactive walls that we’ve installed for museums, entertainment, and marketing.

1) At the Guinness Museum in LA, people discover the top records of Hollywood stars.

2) Dell used InfoTiles at a tradeshow to deliver a complex message on custom software with ease and humor.

3) The College Basketball Hall of Fame uses Infotiles to explore its history.

4) Prudential used Infotiles to colorfully highlight ways of using social media.

5) The Singapore Science Center used InfoTiles to teach about penguins.

6)  Floodgate Investments highlighted its investments in Twitter and Digg.

7) The Miami Science Museum uses an expanded version of InfoTiles that asks questions about sustainability, letting people literally vote with their feet. Many more are coming your way this year!

“Chinese audiences absolutely love the Dream Lantern interactive. Especially kids, it’s a big hit with them!” – Christian Lachel, ICP Creative Director, BRC Imagination Arts

Working with BRC Imagination Arts, Snibbe Interactive created a customized Word Wall experience for Information and Communications Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo, sponsored by China Mobile and China Telecom.

The two interactive walls show colorful ICT Power™ characters flying across the screen. As visitors to the expo walk in front of the walls, the characters drop 3D animated dream lanterns. Using their shadows, people can interact with the wall to catch and collect the lanterns and release fireworks. Visitors can later retrieve a personalized video of themselves interacting with the ICT Power™ characters that can then be shared online via SocialShare. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words – the Word Wall is truly exponential.

Snibbe Interactive created a customized InfoTiles SocialScreen for the recent launch of founder Mike Maples Jr.’s Floodgate Fund. By creating a large interactive wall, entrepreneurs and investors at the launch event in San Francisco were able to interact socially and physically to understand Floodgate’s investments in companies like Twitter and Digg, and also to understand the fund’s unique “Super Angel” approach to investing.

Ann Miura-Ko, Partner in Floodgate said, “We couldn’t have found a better way to get a brand message across in a social setting. The interaction conveyed our brand message directly from the display to the attendees, allowing me to focus on the high level interactions with our guests.”

For more information, read the press release from April, 2010.

Snibbe Interactive recently completed three new interactive exhibits at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry for You! The Experience. This groundbreaking exhibition creates a nonlinear social multi-user experience that mirrors the way people experience media today – through the lens of the personal, social, and online.

As the centerpiece of the exhibition, MSI commissioned Snibbe Interactive to create a twenty-four foot wide multi-projector interactive wall that accommodates dozens, and sometimes hundreds of simultaneous visitors.

The purpose of Get in the Action is simply to get people to move as if they were in an sporting class. In the center of a large screen a video coach demonstrates one of four activities: Basketball, Hip Hop Dancing, Tai Chi, and Yoga. As people follow along, magical motion effects create on-screen trails that outline their past movements, inspired by sports science analysis and visualizations similar to those that professional athletes use. These trails make the audience excited to follow along. In a free play session, people’s outlines overlap in an open-ended experience that encourages even the shyest person to dance and play with his body. Get in the Action can hold people for long durations and promotes physical exercise and social engagement.

Laugh Garden is a cluster of monitors with video faces that play on each screen. When people move in front of a monitor, the face begins to chuckle, to laugh, and eventually to roar. The greater each person’s movement, the greater the laughter. Groups of people can make the whole garden laugh together, and the laughter spreads quickly to the visitors themselves creating a social experience. The exhibit utilizes our newer depth-sensing three-dimensional SocialMirror technologies.

With Support Networks people create personalized collages about their network of friends and family. Using a touchscreen monitor, a person enters her name, which appears at the center of a large wall-mounted display. Next, the visitor enters the names of several friends. As the visitor answers questions about her social relationships, the names of people who provide more support become larger and larger. With our SocialShare add-on, the collages can be posted directly to Facebook and other social networks, or emailed to friends.

Snibbe Interactive will be exhibiting this week at the The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Expo in Las Vegas (IAAPA 2009). Scott Snibbe will be there in person to meet with clients and visitors, and we’ll be demonstrating several SocialScreen products, customized for entertainment applications. Come visit us at booth number 5105 at the Las Vegas Convention Center from November 17-20.

Watch Scott Snibbe talk about Social Immersive Media including applications in museums, commerce, education, and art at UXWeek 2009 on their blog or below:

Scott Snibbe | UX Week 2009 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Art and Tech in the Public Realm
panel discussion including Scott Snibbe and Steve Dietz

Saturday, September 12, 3pm at the Third IMC Expo in New York
The StudioIMC Lab and Gallery, 95 Morton St 7th Floor, New York City

Social Immersive Media
lecture by Scott Snibbe

Friday, September 18, 2:30pm at UXWeek 2009 in San Francisco
The Palace Hotel, 2 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

On Friday, May 15, at 12:30pm, Scott Snibbe will be presenting the Social Immersive Media research paper published at CHI 2009 at Stanford University’s Seminar on People, Computers, and Design organized by Professor Terry Winograd. Scott will also present a variety of new interactive products and experiences from Snibbe Interactive and analyze them within the structure of the Social Immersive Media framework. See the talk webpage for more details. It may also be possible to watch this video online.

The talk abstract appears below:

Based on ten years of experience developing interactive camera/projector systems for art, science and culture museums, Snibbe will discuss a distinct form of augmented reality focused on social interaction: social immersive media. His work builds on the language of cinema, casting users as actors within simulated narrative models. He will discuss design principles and interaction techniques to create strong emotional responses and social engagement through visceral interaction. He will also describe approaches to clearly communicate cultural and scientific ideas through the medium, and how to promote specific distinct social behaviors in users.