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Design

What Happens When Media Becomes Incidental?

A view of the future where media is ubiquitous on every surface, without being intrusive.

Those future-thinking prophets over at creative communications agency Dentsu London along with their design collaborators in all things tomorrow, BERG, have released two videos looking at the possibilities of media landscapes as they become omnipresent yet more economical, and as “app culture” makes the leap from smartphones to domestic products. It’s part of their ongoing Making Future Magic project, which gave us the iPad light painting. The first film, above, looks at alarm clocks that communicate subway delays, coffee shop receipts that display the daily news headlines, and sprites that peer over the edges of UNIQLO shop windows, changing colors to mimic the clothing of passers-by. The Minority Report singularity may be moving closer as our reality gets ever more augmented, but in a less aggressive way than sci-fi movies would have us believe.

The second film, below, looks at different ways of presenting information in a train station, pondering witty public transport announcements and introducing train tickets that point out historic locations.