NEXT GENERATION | 073 Here we go. Webcams at the ready and welcome to our eye-popping new adventure in the next dimension. Now we’ll admit, Wallpaper* isn’t the first magazine to turn augmented reality tricks – we were waiting for the technology to catch up with our ambitions. But we like to think our tricks are smarter, more elegant and more useful than other AR efforts you might have seen out there. So, where you see a graphic like this, get twisting ≥ THE NEW REALITY The wheel reinvented and nine other world-changing ideas for 2010 ILLUSTRATOR HORT WRITER STEPHEN ARMSTRONG AUGMENTED REALITY BY NOAH HARRIS AT BLINKINK Change is good, as we like to say to the weary considerable brains to identify the key trends bellhop leaving our room with his pockets and changes for the year ahead. We called in jangling. But if the pace of change leaves us no our outliers for intense questioning, scouted time to stand and stare, it’s easy to lose any the world’s laboratories and combed the books sense of perspective and start muttering aloud of hedge funds and venture capitalists to devise in public about the efficacy of the freemium the following shortlist for use in presentations, business model or some such. To spare you this conversations and emergency revision. Rather social maiming, Wallpaper* sat down with design like the extended games of swimwear baccarat and branding consultancy Wolff Olins – merging we used to break the ice with team Wolff & our respective global networks proved Olins, no one came out on top. Every one unexpectedly pleasurable – and spent many of these beauties is a winner. Don’t thank us. happy hours racking our collective and It’s our pleasure. » ∑ NEXT GENERATION | 083075 ‘Water is going to become as precious as oil to form a giant waterproof layer under the in the 21st century,’ warns Chris Lubkeman, topsoil. When crops are grown in the soil above, innovations director at Arup. If DIME’s (Desalt water stays above this artificial water table, Innovation Middle East) 2010 trials of its new meaning less drains away and water demands water-resistant sand work out, the problem will fall by 75 per cent. In the Middle East and North be, if not eradicated, then certainly mitigated. Africa, 85 per cent of water requirements are The desert could literally bloom. used for irrigation; with DIME’s hefty reduction, DIME is a UAE-based company run by Emirati that could mean the difference between engineer Fahd Mohammad Saeed Hareb who humanitarian disaster and business as usual. has worked for seven years to realise his late So far the rolls have attracted the attention of president Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan’s Dubai’s government which – once the recession dream of greening the desert. By applying a lifts – is working toward greening the Emirate nanometer-thick coating of a water-repellent from the current 3.7 per cent to 8 per cent by chemical to sand, each grain is made entirely 2015. DIME can also help mop up dangerous waterproof. ’The coating is done in 30 or 45 spills, as the sand does absorb oil. With an eye seconds,’ says Hareb, ‘so we can make 3,000 on the mass market, Hareb’s pitching it as a tonnes per day.’ useful gardening tool, too. Having seen it in While similar forms of ‘magic sand’ already action, we’re already planning a complex bonsai exist, DIME is selling the stuff in large plastic desert feature on our Marike ‘Matrix’ shelving. DIME sheets called HST-rolls, which can be spread out www.dimecreations.com We’ve all thought reality could do with a lick of the technology in this issue. And car companies paint now and then, and 2010 sees a technology have begun using AR graphics as sales tools. that does just that go mainstream. Augmented Futurologist Ian Pearson believes AR will enhance reality (AR) combines real-world and computer- everyday experiences like shopping – a chip generated data (virtual reality, in other words), and laser combo could beam information into so that computer graphics are blended into real shoppers’ eyes via a contact lens. ‘Looking at the footage in real time. high street and wanting a shoe shop might mean On the one hand, AR is nothing new – it can that all the shoe shops stand out in bright be something as simple as your TV showing colours, while everything else is murky,’ he says. computer scores over a sports field. On the other ‘Shops could use this for marketing – you might hand, it’s potentially world-changing. Blending see animated shoes dancing on the street.’ the real world with computer images already As space becomes a premium, any business helps US Air Force pilots control their planes that needs to pay out for a high-street presence and lets surgeons conduct previously impossible may resort to AR booths, where the walls become operations. In 2010 we’ll see it at the heart of 3D showrooms and a treadmill allows you to gaming, motors, architecture, telecoms, walk around Ikea-sized emporia without actually medicine, advertising and retail. stepping more than 2ft. We suspect that may AUGMENTED Magazines are already using AR to bring take a while, however; there’s still no AR covers and content alive. None, we like to think, substitute for test-driving a Ferrari or having REALITY as smartly and usefully as we are employing a sit on a Piero Lissoni sofa. ∑ NEXT GENERATION | 077 ROCKCORPS ‘Give 4 hours, get 1 ticket.’ Neat, simple and obvious. Picked up in the UK by mobile operator Orange, RockCorps locks into the volunteer ethos, encouraging people to sign up to volunteer events to win tickets to vast, specially programmed gigs. In 2010, the scheme is set to roll out across Europe. The idea sprang from 1990s US eco-rock charity the Greenbucks Foundation, which staged concerts and encouraged local residents to clean up the outdoor site to earn a free ticket. RockCorps itself was founded in 2005, with its first programme mobilising an astonishing 30,000 volunteers to get involved in good causes. This autumn, RockCorps produced a gig at London’s Royal Albert Hall with performers including Nas and Nelly, Razorlight, David Guetta and Kelly Rowland. To get a ticket, you had to sign up for a volunteer event over the summer. It may sound worthy, but the numbers look good: 5,000 volunteers gave up 20,000 hours to 41 charities. ‘We use music and the promise of a gig ticket as an introduction between a volunteer and charity,’ says RockCorps founder Stephen Greene. ‘As volunteering becomes central to the economy,’ says Wolff Olins’ Robert Jones, ‘this whole movement will get bigger. The best not-for-profit brands should be developing their own rewards for volunteering, not just free rock concerts. What RockCorps does is to change the idea of volunteering from something you do when you retire to something you do when you’re 20.’ www.orangerockcorps.co.uk ∑ 078 | NEXT GENERATION 2010 looks set to be the year for the electric car. to install computers in its new electric vehicles It isn’t easy being creative. First, there’s all the it is capable of projecting 50in images on any There’s the Nissan Leaf, the Chevrolet Volt, four that monitor charge, spot recharge points on the brainstorming, chest-beating, all-night sessions surface, with a resolution of 480 x 320. The from Renault and one from BYD, the Chinese GPS and, by calculating routes in advance, and deadline shredding. Then, when you finally Samsung projector can handle everything from company Warren Buffet has just sunk millions ensure the minimum time is spent at the ‘pump’. present your proposed new building/strategy/ video to word processing documents, but is light into. Wallpaper*, however, recently read Simon With the cars’ batteries slotting easily in and out, artwork/battlefield approach/latex costume, you enough to shoot from the hip – perhaps allowing Garfield’s book on the Mini, where he quotes an this plan may have juice. have to lug a projector the size of a small a whole new world of guerrilla art or advertising. optimistic press release saying exactly the same Better Place is currently building networks quadruped all the way to the pitch until the blood ‘I think the real fun of this is for people in thing: ‘Next year looks set to be the year of the in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Japan and pounds in your ears and all you can do is weep. clubs and bars who can project pictures – electric car.’ It’s dated 1967. the US, and will switch on its first full trial in Finally, 2010 sees the end of that little horror suddenly, instead of just peering at each other’s The problem is batteries. It takes five minutes Jerusalem in 2010 – the Israelis being especially show. Pico projectors are tiny projectors that can photographs, they can show them on a wall,’ to fill a tank, but a five-minute recharge of an keen to avoid oil dependency. The electricity create up to a 60in screen. Look for them in Wolff Olins’ Robert Jones says. ‘It’s a way of electric car takes you about eight miles. Shai needed will come from solar- and wind-based everything from cameras and mobile phones to sharing content that could become a bit of a Agassi founded Better Place two years ago to renewable sources wherever possible – thus iPod accessories. No more squinting at a 2in craze and that’s rare in technology.’ address this very problem, inspired by a question taking advantage of tax breaks.