Fabrica’s new web site kicks-off

Fabrica, the Benetton communication research centre, announces the launch of a new website,  www.fabrica.it is designed to give a taste of the extraordinary range and depth of creative work coming out of Fabrica.

At the same time a trip through a virtual Fabrica will be possible thanks to a 3D online space which models every detail of the famous building by Tadao Ando. Fabrica Virtuale was created as a model for the Quake engine, based on the popular 1stperson shooter game Quake 3, by ID software. A team of the interactive department at Fabrica has been exploring and developing this concept, which enables visitors to interact with each other. At the moment Fabrica Virtuale can be used by those who have already Quake, but soon anyone entering fabrica.it will be able to download it.

Fabrica is a creative powerhouse, constantly producing new ideas, new designs, new music and new works of art. The best way to keep up with this continuously evolving creative output is to follow it online. The website uses a content management system designed and implemented by Fabrica Interactive to facilitate the uploading of new work to the website by all members of the creative community at Fabrica, keeping the site up to date and ensuring it reflects the creative energy which is Fabrica.

This latest project by the interactive department continues an exciting period during which Fabrica has developed an international reputation for innovative and high quality interaction design. Some of the recent interactive projects include:

10x10 ('ten by ten') is an artwork and website created by Jon Harris at Fabrica which shows the top 100 words and pictures on the hour, every hour. It is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life. 10x10 runs with no human intervention, autonomously observing what a handful of leading international news sources are saying and showing. 10x10 makes no comment on news media bias, or lack thereof. It has no politics, nor any secret agenda; it simply shows what it finds.

United People, an innovative interactive marketing project which connects Benetton mega stores to the internet and gives a face - and a voice - to Benetton customers from London to Bombay to Lisbon to Osaka. Customers use a Macintosh computer to record a 7 second video and send it to benetton.com. The videos are also displayed on large plasma screens in Benetton stores worldwide. United People is a new kind of peer to peer marketing communication which builds on the way young people actually communicate  to each other in the 21st century.

Hong Kong Self Portrait - the interactive shop window - is a prototype interactive installation at the Benetton mega-store in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong which lets the people of Hong Kong collaborate on a movie made of tens of thousands of faces. Using a new sensor technology developed in London, Fabrica has turned the shop window into an interface which people outside the store can touch and interact with. When you touch the window, a camera inside takes a picture of your face - each new picture is saved and added to an growing sequence of pictures. The project has proved highly popular - more than 1000 people add their image each day and the resulting moving image sequence - or movie -  is an engaging and powerful testimony to the people of Hong Kong.

Apart from the development of Internet sites that have won many international awards, New Media projects also address Web design, video art, interactive games and multimedia events.

Catena di Villorba, 31 May, 2005

 

For further information:

+39 0422 516349
fabrica.it

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Fabrica’s new web site kicks-off