Inspiration Via Baghdad
November 1, 2007
We’re going to take a time out from our usual routine of agency gossip and campaign dissection to talk about an astounding project by Alyssa Wright, from the Computing Culture group at MIT. It’s one of these projects that could so easily be co-opted for an experiential campaign. Beyond that, it’s just a smart, touching piece of art worth highlighting – totally inspirational.
Alyssa’s installation is called Cherry Blossoms. Inspired by artist Paula Levine, Cherry Blossoms uses a backpack with a microcontroller and a GPS unit to simulate the bombs currently falling on Baghdad. Nightly, data on the bombings in the city are downloaded to the unit and matched to their relative location on a map of Boston. If you are wearing the backpack in Boston and walk into a “hot zone” the backpack detonates, releasing a compressed air cloud of confetti that looks like smoke and shrapnel. The name of a civilian who has died in Baghdad is written on each piece of confetti.
Spectacular. And that folks is creativity with a purpose.
Like we said, there is a way to re-imagine this to great result.
