CES 2010. Zero To Sixty In Less Than Thirty.

I’ve thought a lot about the creative process being subject to fatigue when projects carry on too long. Unsurprisingly, some of the most rewarding work I’ve done has been squeezed through the proverbial “we-need-it-done-yesterday” time vortex. You’re forced to listen to your instincts – you go with your gut. Maybe (just maybe) it’s that having little time to think, also leaves little time to generate fear. After all, it’s always fear that cheapens our ideas and worsens originality.

I was recently lucky enough to play a role in a project which, at first look, had literally every characteristic of certain failure. The timeline was short (less than a month), it was an afterthought experience for a larger initiative well underway at CES 2010, and suffered from a painfully modest budget. We’d have to design, fabricate, and install in just under three weeks. The writing was on the wall.

But that’s how we roll. Fear isn’t an attribute common of anyone here.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I would watch our creative engine hammer away at peak performance. The results were outstanding, and the video above proves that. The experience might have been surrounded by bleeding edge technology & garish large scale displays, but we exemplified the power of experience through interaction – and community. A snippet from an article on Woot.com summarizes it best:

“But the nice thing about being a rich and evil nearly godlike force of nature is, you can afford to drop the cash on some sweet eye candy. So it was an absolute joy to hit what we thought of as the 3D Blue Cylinder Of Death and find that inside, there was a lovely interactive series of cubes. Touching a cube yourself, you activated a single musical loop. Asking a stranger to touch a second cube along with you, you created a tiny dance piece, and got to stand there grinning like an idiot with someone you’d never before met. It was a fantastic little gift to the exhibition and absolutely the best thing we saw all morning.”

I’m grinning like an idiot myself. Hoping projects like this keep coming.

Update: Additional media/reporting

Wired – 0:12 seconds in their CES highlight video
Cnn.com – Thumbail for “10 Cool New Toys From CES”