FROM TIME.COM
“These Green Animated Mountains Reading Your Tweets Aloud Are The Thing You Didn’t Know You Needed Today”
MOUNTAINS OF
MOUTHNESS
CREATIVE / EXPERIENCE DIRECTOR
GOO ENGINE
SUMMARY
Two animated mountains shouting Twitter messages at each other, brought to life as a WebGL and WebVR experiment.
I adapted a story idea I had for a children’s book into an interactive experience that let users tweet directly at the mountains, then watch them scream those words across a virtual valley. Built with our in-house WebGL toolset, the project became both a live website, an installation at F5 in New York, and a world wide phenomenon, even covered by TIME.com, IGN, Kotaku and Game Informer.
TYPE
Experimental Experience
Interactive Installation
PROJECT
Client: Self / Goo Engine
Studio: ORSAK VERKAN
Year: 2015
WHAT I DID
CONCEPT
CREATIVE DIRECTION
ART DIRECTION
EXPERIENCE DIRECTION
AWARDS & MENTIONS
FWA of the Day
FWA Shortlist
TIME.com
IGN
Kotaku
Game Informer
TRAILER
FROM KOTAKU.COM
“Twitter is kinda terrible sometimes. It enables people of all types and backgrounds to come together and get really, really angry at each other, and somehow many of us lose hours to the damn thing every day. These talking mountains, though? They brighten the place right up.”
READ MORE
ROCK SOLID STUPIDITY
We wanted to showcase what could be done with our WebGL production tool Goo Create (imagine Unity meets After effects but in the browser. Now there’s Spline instead so that’s cool. What could we make that really tapped into the REALTIME of things, and still showcasing 3D and browser-based VR in a fun and new way?
Well. Let me tell you. Mountains. Not one, but TWO mountains.
“The Mountains of Mouthness” brought this concept to life, allowing the mountains to vocalize tweets sent to them. By tweeting with “@MoMouthness” or “,” your words become the mountains’ LOUD declarations, echoing in a majestic voice that reached the farthest edges of their virtual domain.
- A website with a 3D world where the user could roam around either on their desktop or in a..:
- …VR mode where the user became one of the deaf villagers and look around from their point of view while listening to the mountains shout out inane tweets
- Early adoption of natural text to speech using the brilliant Acapela groups voices
The project struck a nerve. It became a viral hit, featured in outlets from TIME to Kotaku and Boing Boing, and shortlisted at FWA. The installation version at F5 in New York let passers-by shout their tweets into the valley and watch the chaos unfold. It was weird, loud, and joyful, and proof that experimental work could showcase technology better than any product demo.
LINKS
Kotaku · IGN · Game Informer · TIME MAGAZINE · FWA · Metafilter · Boing Boing · Laughingsquid · Tech times · Hatena Blog · Next Nature
