15 June 2006

Lego my Audi

Could digitized analog be the new black?

From Pixar's incredible Zoetrope to the time-lapse interstitial films we saw between sessions at TED 2006, capturing analog events on digital media suddenly seems a lot more interesting and compelling than slick computer graphics or a carefully manicured piece of Photoshop wizardry.  I think it has something to do with authenticity and tangibility, that Deer Hunter-esque aesthetic sensibility articulated by Robert De Niro which says "This is this.  This ain't somethin' else.  This is this!".  Ultimately, digitized analog just feels more human.

For example, the Audi race car depicted in the illustration to the left is actually a digital photo of a hand-built sculpture made up of, oh, a few quadrillion-zillion Lego bricks.  As you can see from this video about the making of the illustration, starting with a photograph and building a Lego rendition of the image and then taking another photo of the sculpture entails a lot more work than would have gone into a simple digital manipulation of said original image, but the end result is so much more compelling.  It's cool, it's a fun story to watch, and I'm glad that artist Todd Osborn did it.

By the way, the Audi R10 will be racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this weekend.  A wicked piece of technology, entertainment and design, the R10 is the first serious diesel-powered entry at the historied French endurance race, and will make big news if it wins.  No, it doesn't feature quattro, but its V12 diesel motor represents a serious leap in the state of the art.

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