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Hypertext Killed the Video Star : Page 1, 2, 3

The Peppermint Lounge

Created as a promotional gimmick for the Altoids site, the Peppermint Lounge adds images to the mix (literally) for an even more immersive interactive experience. You have less control at the Peppermint Lounge than at either of the above sites, but the interface is much more abstract and intuitive. Once you've gotten all the required plug-ins (be patient, young Skywalker), you are presented with a collage of images from, you guessed it, a lounge. Six sliders beneath the collage add various sound embellishments to the mix as well as superimposing floating graphics on the collage. But forget the sliders; they are mere icing.

The main audio mix is tweaked by clicking the images in the collage itself. Each image has an audio loop associated with it, and when clicked, the collage remixes itself, always retaining the clicked image and its associated audio loop. As the collage mutates, so too does the audio mix. Images in the collage are often transparent and overlapping, thus mirroring the audio loops they represent. If you get bored, just hit the randomizer button, and the collage re-starts itself with a fresh combination of images. Begin clicking on the new collage, and off you go again. It is a truly synesthetic experience.

This piece would be interesting enough if it were just a collage. The images are blurry abstract photos of groovy '50s lounge lights, furniture, cocktail glasses, shag carpet, etc. The rest of the images are close-cropped, off-angle shots of twenty-somethings – laughing, talking, mixing, and generally "living large" in this virtual retro-environment.

Add to those images several trip-hop lounge loops, salsa rhythms, phat vibraphone and wah-wah pedal licks, mad horn riffs, and the occasional vocal chanteuse, and you've got a pretty darned immersive multimedia experience. The Peppermint Lounge's stroke of genius is, you are not just passively watching this environment. With each click, you modify it. As the site itself proclaims, it's "a hi-fi experience."

Prophet Eno gets the last word:

What people are going to be selling more of in the future is not pieces of music, but systems by which people can customize listening experiences for themselves. Change some of the parameters and see what you get. So, in that sense, musicians would be offering unfinished pieces of music - pieces of raw material, but highly evolved raw material, that has a strong flavor to it already. I can also feel something evolving on the cusp between "music," "game," and "demonstration" - I imagine a musical experience... in which you are at once thrilled by the patterns and the knowledge of how they are made and the metaphorical resonances of such a system. Such an experience falls in a nice new place - between art and science and playing. This is where I expect artists to be working more and more in the future.

Said thrilling future is just a click away. Now how much would you pay?

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Curt Cloninger believes that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and the Burger King Whopper with cheese (add bacon) is both.

Visit Curt at lab404.com.